Alden D. Miller

Delinquency and Community: Creating Opportunities and Controls

Introduction Varieties of Correctional Subcultures Recidivism An Analytical Approach to the Natural History of Correctional Reform Conceptualizing Social Control in the Community Community Change, Social Control, and Juvenile Delinquency A Research Agenda for the 1980s

The Politics of Secure Care in Youth Correctional Reform

Changes in secure care in Massachusetts juvenile correction over the last decade are understood in the context of the larger processes of reform and counterreform during the same period. The decision-mak ing process used for placing youths in secure care since 1978 is ex amined in more detail. Secure care as a statewide system caught up in a struggle over community-based correction is seen to reflect changes in the system as a whole.

Introduction to Delinquency and Community: Creating Opportunity and Controls

Delinquency is a community problem. In the final analysis the means for its prevention and control must be built into the fabric of community life. This can happen only if the community accepts its share of responsibility for having generated and perpetuated paths of socialization that lead to sporadic criminal episodes for some youth and careers in crime for others. Studies of the causes of crime point to many individual and social pathologies that may find expression in deviant and criminal behavior. In a competent community, however, the opportunities and motivations for crime are controlled by the way its institutions are organized to respond to such threats to public safety. There is a willingness to experiment and improve the responsiveness of individual and family services, religious organizations, neighborhood groups, schools, recreational agencies, housing associations, employment markets, and juvenile justice agencies. The result is a communal context that is sensitive to the problems of growing up and possessed of the institutional capacity to respond appropriately.