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Little is known about the health needs of detained juvenile females, yet there is emerging concern regarding substance misuse, mental health problems, poor sexual health and poorer general physical health on a range of indicators. This study sought to identify health needs from the perspective of imprisoned young women themselves and key professionals working with them to inform healthcare provision. We conducted semi‐structured interviews and focus groups with detained juvenile women and adult professionals in four specialist female young offender institutions. The study presents new qualitative findings on the profound impact of social exclusion and multiple forms of abuse and victimisation on the health of juvenile women prisoners. Concerns regarding substance misuse, mental health problems, self‐harm and poor sexual health are reinforced by this study. Young women tended to focus on their immediate health needs in contrast to the professionals who emphasised longer‐term issues. The study identified the need for priority interventions in relation to mental health, substance misuse, self‐harm and sexual health and tentatively suggests that ‘compensatory care’may offer some scope to redress health inequalities experienced by these young women.

While the rest of the world focused on girls' issues around education, girls' victimization in the family, girls' problems with sexual assault and harassment, and girls forced into early marriage, the US seems curiously mired in a series of media-driven moral panics about girlhood. The last few decades have seen worries about girls: girls going bad, mean girls, and girls who are bullies, girls mimicking boys' violence, and girls getting sexually trafficked and engaging in prostitution. Given this, it is important to review several key themes: the current evidence about the actual dimensions of female delinquency and trends in juvenile arrests, particularly girls' arrests for non-traditional offences; the role of race in girls' delinquency will also be explored. This analysis will document the need to explore gendered consequences in the policing of girls' misbehaviour. Specifically, the chapter will explore the implication of girls' increasing presence in a largely male-oriented juvenile justice system and the feminisation of juvenile justice in the United States.

This study examines the relationships between the age at which female juvenile offenders receive their first sentencing and individual risk factors, family risk factors, and race. The individual risk factors include dropping out of school, physical abuse, sexual abuse, prostitution, substance abuse, gang involvement, poverty, pregnancy, and the existence of co‐defendants. The family risk factors include parents’ marital status, familial criminal activity, education level of parents, and receipt of public assistance. The results showed individual risk factors to have a statistically significant relationship with the dependent variable, age at first sentencing. Family risk factors did not have a statistically significant relationship to the dependent variable. Socio‐demographic risk factors were found to be statistically significant only indirectly, through the individual risk factor scale.

Delinquency as well as juvenile recidivism cuts across all nations in the world with its negative consequences on individuals, social and economic phases of life. Despite various interventions, strategies, the rate of recidivism has been on the increase. This calls for concern and a need to find a solution to the menace. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the nexus between early release of inmates and juvenile recidivism using Barnawa Borstal Training Institute, Kaduna, as case study and to identify other pre-disposing factors that contribute to juvenile recidivism in the society.

The study adopted a survey research design and used the questionnaire as the main instrument of data collection. The sample for the study consisted of 210 juvenile inmates from the Institute. Simple percentile and frequency distribution were used to analyze the data collected from the juvenile, while χ² was used to test the only hypothesis formulated for the study. The χ² result ( χ c 2 =1.409; df=3; α level=0.05; χ t 2 =7.815) showed that there is no significant relationship between early release and juvenile recidivism, and rather lack of proper reformation, stigmatization and lack of parental care are some of the important factors causing juvenile recidivism in Nigeria.

Based on the findings, it was recommended that government should, through the Borstal homes all over the country, ensure proper and adequate rehabilitation of inmates and provide adequate public enlightment for the safe and total re-absorption of inmates without stigmatization.

The major limitation of the work is the fact that the Borstal Institute in Kaduna has only male inmates, so there is no opportunity to consider the effect of gender on juvenile recidivism.

The practical implications is that the result of this study can be added to the field of criminal justice in Nigeria. The result also bring to the fore the fact that rehabilitation and success rate of re-integration of juvenile delinquents back into the society is everybody’s business.

The social implication of the study is that the study will go a long way in assisting policy makers in government and the prison authority to design and implement policies that will bring about proper reformation and rehabilitation of inmates.

The research was carried out among juvenile delinquents, some of who have been in and out of the Borstal home many times. So the researchers were able to collect first-hand information from the delinquents that serve as the respondents for this research. Moreover, the research setting was located in the northern part of Nigeria, whereas some of the earlier studies were carried out in the southern part of the country.

The purpose of this paper is to explore factors that shape police behavior in juvenile interactions occurring in rural communities.

Using data collected in rural Kentucky through a factorial survey instrument, this study assessed the effects of situational, officer, organizational and community variables on officers’ authoritative and supportive behavior toward juveniles.

Officer background characteristics, such as race, sex, education, and having children, and occupational attitudes, such as rehabilitation and dispositional beliefs, were significantly related to both authoritative and supportive behavior. While organizational variables affected officer supportive actions, they were weakly linked to authoritative behavior. Neighborhood social disorganization was ineffective in predicting both types of police behavior.

Although a considerable amount of research has been conducted in the past several decades to examine police behavior, a relatively small number of studies have empirically assessed factors that shape police behavior toward juveniles with an even smaller number assessing juvenile interactions in rural communities. This research provides a comprehensive theoretical explanation of police-juvenile encounters in rural communities which will allow for a more complete understanding of the factors that account for police attitudes and behavior in these interactions.

The purpose of this paper is to improve the police, policy makers' and researchers' understanding of the likelihood of fatal outcomes befalling missing persons.

Data on the age, sex, duration missing and outcome (fatal or non‐fatal) of over 32,000 cancelled reports of missing persons were extracted from a police database of missing persons in the London metropolitan area. The analysis highlights the risk of a cancelled missing person report resulting in a fatal outcome by the same variables.

Shows that the risk of a cancelled missing person report resulting in a fatal outcome is overall very low, though it does increase with the age of the person reported missing and the duration they remain missing for. Males face a higher risk of being found dead than females.

The risk estimations use a base rate of all cancelled missing person reports, therefore excluding persons who have never being found. The estimations are based on missing person reports rather than individuals. Insufficient detail was available to analyse the fatal cases by type of death (e.g. suicide, homicide, accident, etc.).

This paper provides new empirical evidence on what happens to people reported missing. The findings provide an actuarial context in which clinical risk assessment by police officers can take place.

Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) may have a detrimental impact on the individual’s ability to benefit from rehabilitative prison-based programmes, and studies have also found that there is an association between PTSD and higher rates of re-offending. Studies have also found that a significant number of cases of trauma and PTSD go undetected and therefore untreated in individuals who are incarcerated.

A literature review was carried out exploring studies that have investigated PTSD in incarcerated populations to identify current clinical considerations and recommendations.

This paper explores the key findings from the literature and highlights the important clinical implications and recommendations.

To the authors’ knowledge, this is the first paper focusing specifically on how the findings from the literature can inform clinical practice and also what factors need to be given greater consideration, going beyond the current systematic and literature reviews in the field.

An analysis of recent trends in juvenile employment and their significance to the bulge

Prisoners are at greater risk of developing mental health problems compared with people of a similar age and gender in the community. They are less likely to have their mental health needs recognised, are less likely to receive psychiatric help or treatment, and are at an increased risk of suicide. Prison mental health in‐reach services have been developed in the UK to address these problems. An organisational case study method was used to generate theory about the links between the aims, processes and impacts of the introduction of mental health in‐reach teams to prison contexts. Case studies were undertaken on six sites and included interviews and focus groups with in‐reach team staff, prison healthcare staff, and discipline staff. The aims of prison mental health in‐reach were related to providing an equivalent service to a Community Mental Health Team, with a primary focus on serious mental illness, but a widening role. Achievement of these aims was mediated by the organisational context, active relationship development and leadership. Overall effects were positively reported by all stakeholders. Successful development was not just a function of time in post, but also a function of the effectiveness of leadership within the in‐reach teams. The more effective teams were having a wide impact on the response to mental health problems in the prison setting