Juvenile Offending:

Abstract

Behavioral methods for young offenders have had some success but mainly with those at a very early stage of a criminal career. Traditional psychotherapy has been uniformly unsuccessful. Key difficulties in behavioral programs include disparities in targets between officials, therapists, care staff and clients, and lack of provision for generalization. A promising future direction is a shift of emphasis from intervention to prevention by reducing opportunities fro crime and by utilizing and enhancing the skills of families, teachers and peers.