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University of Macau / Faculty of Social Sciences. / Department of Sociology

This study investigated the effects of self-instruction and alternate response training on oppositional behavior. Four oppositional adolescent females in a community-based residential treatment facility were taught to self-instruct alternate responses to their oppositional behaviors by participating in a series of Behavior Skills Training (BST) sessions. Subjects were required to role-play situations which subjects indicated evoke the targeted behaviors, that is, swearing/namecalling, noncompliance with rules, and noncompliance with requests. These self-reported situations were a major component in developing the BST. A multiple baseline design across behaviors was used. As an additional experimental control, two nontreatment subjects were included in the data analysis. Although trend analyses were conducted, variability in the data precluded the possibility of drawing conclusions based on statistical correlation. However, functional analyses of the treatment effects indicated that the BST was effective in reducing the oppositional behaviors of the subjects in the treatment group. Thus these results support the efficacy of using self-instruction and alternate response training procedures to reduce the occurrence of oppositional behavior in adolescent females. / Department of Educational Psychology

It is not the intent of this study to deal with the legal term, juvenile delinquency, but to deal with maladjusted behaviors as symptomatic of frustrations or tensions who need help. The purpose of this study is to survey the needs of children, their difficulties, the attempts that have been made to meet these needs, and to solve these difficulties.

published_or_final_version / Criminology / Master / Master of Social Sciences

This thesis explores how young resisters and desisters in their teenage years maintain their resistance to and desistance from offending and asks to what extent they are agentic in the process. The term 'resister' refers to those who, according to a self-report survey, have never offended, and the term 'desister' to those who have offended and then ceased for at least twelve months. By situating desisters analytically adjacent to resisters, I have moved towards conceptualising desisters as current non-offenders. Desisters may have shared a past with persisters, as they have both offended. However, desisters share their current experience, that of maintaining non-offending, with resisters. It is this obvious, yet largely ignored, link between young resisters and desisters which underpins the thesis. Two qualitative methods, both of which elicited young people's own perspectives, were employed between 2003 and 2005. Secondary analysis of 112 qualitative interviews with resisters and desisters in their teenage years was conducted and peer led focus groups (in which a young peer, rather than an adult researcher, acted as the facilitator) were held with 52 teenage resisters. Young people's resistance to offending does not feature prominently in the literature. When it does, it is often associated with a state of innocence or passivity, while young desisters are said to 'grow out of' offending. This emphasis on an absence of offending, rather than on actively attained resistance, reflects an adult oriented view. The thesis challenges this by drawing on the sociology of childhood, a theoretical perspective which has not previously been applied to young people's resistance to and desistance from offending and which emphasises young people as agentic. Their agency is evidenced by the findings. Chapters Four and Five report how young people employ numerous strategies of resistance and desistance and Chapter Six how that they face trials and tribulations in maintaining their nonoffending, while Chapter Seven focuses on the 'being' rather than the 'doing' of sustaining non-offending. It is the work of Derrida that enables the argument to be taken a step further. Derrida's (1981) assertion is that binary oppositions are rarely neutral, but that one is the dominant pole. For example, in Western society the first of the following binary oppositions are usually regarded as the dominant or privileged pole: white/black, masculine/feminine, adult/child. In respect of the binary opposition at the heart of the current thesis, namely offender/non-offender, the non-offender is - from an adult perspective at least - the dominant pole and the non-offender is hailed as the norm. By contrast, several findings in the thesis point to the fact that the dominant pole in the binary opposition for young people is the offender rather than the non-offender. First, the discourse of young resisters and desisters suggests a view of the offender rather than non-offender as the norm. Secondly, many resisters and desisters face trials and tribulations, such as bullying, relating to their nonoffending status. Yet, if it were the case that the non-offender was the dominant pole and was privileged by young people (as it is in the adult population), resisters would not be penalised in such ways for not offending. Thirdly, some of the strategies used by resisters, such as involvement in anti-social behaviour, signify an attempt to compensate for their non-offending status. Again, if the non-offender was the dominant pole in the binary opposition, far from resorting to mechanisms to compensate for their non-offending behaviour, this behaviour would be encouraged, as it is by adults. This inverted world has implications for young resisters and desisters. Their resistance is to be understood in the context of an expectation of offending, rather than non-offending. Contrary to the notion of the pull of normality bringing desisters back to a non-offending state, the pull of normality among young desisters - and many resisters - is better understood as being towards offending. Resistance, evidenced by the strategies and trials and tribulations of resisters and desisters, is against this pull. Moreover, as non-offending is the modus operandi in the adult world, to be an adult non-offender requires less effort. For a young person, being a non-offender is more challenging than it is for adults and maintenance of resistance constitutes a struggle not previously reflected in adult representations. Adults, not having taken account of the different modus operandi of the young person's world, have not attributed agency to resistance and have underestimated young people's struggle to maintain resistance. The strategies demanded of resisters and desistcrs to maintain non-offending and the trials and tribulations which they face when they do have heretofore been overlooked.

This study examined how restorative justice programs impact the probability of recidivism among juvenile offenders. It compared juveniles who completed restorative justice programs versus juveniles who were released with warning from the courts. Both groups were compared to determine if restorative justice juveniles outcomes differed based on recidivism. Logistic regression showed that restorative justice programs had statistically significant increased odds of recidivating when compared to juveniles released with a warning. However, when the groups of restorative justice were disaggregated, only the adjudicated juveniles were statistically significant. Survival time analysis showed that restorative justice juveniles have longer survival times of recidivism when compared to juveniles released with a warning. Suggestions for further research and analysis are discussed with respect to the current results.

Various sources state that juvenile prevention should be carried out in the possible early stages. Therefore, a position of a social teacher has been introduced in the secondary education schools. It is the youngest profession the aim of which is to notice, evaluate and solve such typical problems of children and adolescents’ as poor attendance, unwillingness to learn, misbehavior, communication problems and others. While adolescent, people face many problems associated with difficulties in communicating with adults or peers. Inauspicious circumstances impel teenagers to commit crimes. The object of the thesis is the work of a social teacher at school in the field of juvenile delinquency. The aim of the thesis is to reveal characteristic points in the work of a social teacher while preventing juvenile delinquency. The following objectives were raised to achieve the aim of the thesis: · reveal characteristic points of the social teacher’s work in secondary schools; · highlight the cases of juvenile delinquency in the context of pedagogical system of secondary education; · carry out a research and summarize its results in terms of social teachers’ work while preventing juvenile delinquency in Utena secondary schools; · provide a social teacher with recommendations in the field of preventing juvenile delinquency. Methods of research are the analysis of manuals and reference books, review of acts of law, questionnaire to students as well as the method of interview. In the... [to full text]

This thesis explored the relationship between youth delinquency, family intervention treatment and recidivism through a meta-analysis of existing literature. Fifty individual effect size estimates were derived from thirty-five experimental research studies examining the impact of involving families in the treatment of young offenders. Initially, family intervention treatment was found to significantly reduce the recidivism of young offenders compared to non-familial responses to youth crime. Methodology, however, was found to be a crucial determinant of the reported effects of treatment; studies using less rigorous methods tended to produce significantly higher rates of success than studies using more rigorous methods. In terms of treatment characteristics, programs treating younger offenders and programs with voluntary participation displayed significantly lower levels of reported recidivism. The results suggested the need to develop more rigorous methods and reporting practices and to target younger offenders with voluntary family-based interventions.

M.A.