Predictors of Youth Violence

Adolescent gang involvement: The role of individual, family, peer, and school factors in a multilevel perspective

“…Factors associated with gang membership that have received more support in the literature are academic failure, lack of commitment to school, and dropping out Esbensen & Deschenes, 1998;Hawkins et al, 2000;Hill et al, 1999;Howell, 2009). Perceptions of school as unsafe and disorderly have also been linked to gang membership, with some studies indicating that many youth decide to join gangs to fulfill the need for safety and protection (Dukes, Martinez, & Stein, 1997;Gottfredson, Gottfredson, Payne, & Gottfredson, 2005;Klein, 1995).…”

Parental Divorce: A Protection from Later Delinquency for Maltreated Children

“…Fortunately, delinquency adjudication is not the inevitable outcome for all maltreated children; risk and protective factors interact to help minimize these harsh outcomes. Addi tional protective factors have been identified by other researchers to include a strong parent-child attachment, youth having a close relationship with at least one adult, clear and consistent family norms, increased parent moni toring, and youth involvement in prosocial recreational activities (Hawkins et al, 2000;Howell, 2003), although these factors were not studied in this project.…”

“…These results should be reviewed in light of research that has found delinquency to be a cumulative outcome for the child, with these risk and protective factors having interactive effects (Ford et al, 2007;Hawkins et al, 2000;Wiebush et al, 2000). Predicting delinquency is a difficult research-to practice task for professional fields involved, and one that should not be performed in a vacuum of understanding.…”

Classifying Violent Versus Nonviolent Offending in a Diverse Sample of Adolescent Juvenile Delinquents

“…Some authors have concluded that more research is needed that contrasts risk factors for violent and non-violent offenders (Hawkins et al, 2000).…”

“…Given that early offending is a risk factor for violent offending (Hawkins et al, 2000;, including a broader age range in the sample, and including age as an independent variable, may have yielded more accurate classification of cases into violent versus non-violent groups.…”