Changes in the family structure can be very disruptive to adolescents who live in those families. This article examines the impact of the number of family transitions on delinquent and drug-using behavior. Specifically, the effect of family transitions is hypothesized to be mediated by problems within the family, school, and peer settings. A sample of 646 boys (73%) and girls (27%) taken from a longitudinal panel study of high-risk adolescents are used to examine these hypotheses. For girls, little support is found for the direct or the indirect effect of family transitions on delinquent behavior or drug use. For boys, however, both forms of problem behavior are influenced by family transitions directly and indirectly through changes in, and problems with, peer associations. The findings suggest that during times of family turmoil, the friendship network of adolescent male children is also disrupted, leading to an increase in associations with delinquent others and, in turn, an increase in problematic behaviors.

This article examines whether weapon carrying influences the frequency and variety of violent, property, and drug delinquency adolescents commit through fixed-effects analyses of data from the Rochester Youth Development Study (RYDS). We conclude that weapon carrying contributes to violent, substance, and property delinquency, and delinquent behaviors learned during weapon carrying continue to affect substance and property delinquency long after carrying has ceased.

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This research explores the ability of neighborhood-level factors to serve as either promotive or protective factors to reduce the risk of violent outcomes among adolescents. Unique contributions of this research include a novel definition of neighborhood constructed through a housing market study, the aggregation of individual-level survey responses to the newly defined neighborhoods, and the application ofhierarchical linear modeling to explore cross-level interaction (e.g., protective) effects. Using data from Waves 1–9 of the Rochester Youth Development Study, our analyses find little support for promotive effects at the neighborhood level. However, several of our constructs are revealed to provide protective effects across various domains of risk. In specific, we find that high-risk youths whose parents report high levels of social integration and neighborhood integration are less likely to experience violent outcomes than similar youth whose parents do not report high levels of integration. These findings were particularly strong in the domains of school and peer risk which may inherently reflect the “social” quality of risk in these realms.

Correctional boot camps are a controversial alternative sanction for adjudicated juveniles that emphasize a militaristic style of operation. Program characteristics vary with the political atmosphere of the jurisdiction in which the boot camps are running, but most focus on rehabilitating offenders within a punitive environment. Goals are similar across the board, with most programs aiming to reduce recidivism and reconviction while controlling costs associated with juvenile detention. Empirical research indicates little or no benefit of juvenile boot camps with regard to these and other goals.