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One of 52 theoretical papers on school crime and its relation to poverty, this chapter explores programs designed to prevent or to reduce student crime and violence in secondary schools that are based on the assumption that pupils are competent to make rational decisions and take rational actions, and programs that assume pupils are not competent. Program areas explored are organizational modification, curricular/instructional programs, security systems, and counseling services. Specific programs fitting into each category are discussed. The paper concludes that programs of many different kinds are needed to deal effectively with problems of crime and violence in schools. Although there was no striking difference in outcomes between programs that assume competence and those that do not, the author points out that this was not a research project but a cataloging of programs appearing in the literature. The author cautions that youths involved in such programs may be affected in unexpected ways as a result of program assumptions wholly unconsidered by educators and/or program planners. (Author/MLF)

One of 52 theoretical papers on school crime and its relation to poverty, this chapter focuses solely on changes in student crimes in the period from 1950 to 1975. A number of observations are made about student violence. First, assaults against teachers have increased sharply in the past 25 years in absolute numbers, but not in the percent of teachers assaulted. Further, "assault" is so loosely defined that no clear picture of changes in the intensity of assaults can be developed. Second, fires in schools represent the single most costly act students can perpetrate; costs from fires are increasing more rapidly than the value of all school property. Third, vandalism probably increased in this country up to the early 1970s, and has declined since that time in both cost and frequency, but may have increased in intensity. Fourth, estimates of the costs of crimes occurring in schools varies widely, depending on the group collecting the information and the methodology used for computing the figures. The paper concludes with discussions of probable future actions of pupils, of local schools, and of school security offices. (Author/MLF)

One of 52 theoretical papers on school crime and its relation to poverty, this chapter presents four moralization paradigms (psychoanalytic, social learning, humanistic, and cognitive-developmental) as explanatory hypotheses for the relationship between poverty and school crime. The paper takes the position that no one paradigm is sufficient to account completely for school crime. Each paradigm is useful in explaining the moral orientations found both within and between individuals involved in school crime. Recent work in moral education is presented under each of the paradigms as a source for the prevention and control of school crime. It is concluded that an awareness of the complexities involved in the moral orientations of youth is a necessary first step in the development of broad-based approaches to the prevention and control of school crime. (Author/MLF)

One of 52 theoretical papers on school crime and its relation to poverty, this chapter deals with the intrinsic motivation that the systemic structure of a school provides for opportunities for both prosocial and antisocial behavior. On the basis of previous research, the authors propose that the state of enjoyment occurs when a person is challenged at a level matched by his or her level of skills. According to the model, the experience of meetable challenges requires the perception of a constrained set of possible actions, clearly defined goals, and opportunities for unambiguous feedback. Ideally, learning should involve systemic involvement in sequences of challenges internalized by students. However, evidence indicates that such involvement is rare and is often subverted by the school itself. In the absence of such opportunities, antisocial behavior provides an alternate framework of challenges for bored students. Disruption of classes, vandalism, and violence in schools are, in part, attempts of adolescents to obtain enjoyment in otherwise lifeless schools. Restructuring education in terms of intrinsic motivation would not only reduce school crime, but also accomplish the goal of teaching youth how to enjoy life in an affirmative way. (Author/MLF)

One of 52 theoretical papers on school crime and its relation to poverty, this chapter reports that there is a growing trend in this country to blame youth crime on parental overpermissiveness. Available data fail to support this and show that all types of crime, including school crime, develop within families and school systems emphasizing aversive and athoritarian discipline techniques. Also, racism and personal injustice are more common in an authoritarian atmosphere. Of all types of aversive behavior control, corporal punishment appears most apt to induce aggression. A theory relating delinquent agression to the severity of parental discipline is sketched out, and it is suggested that a national effort be made to discourage the use of corporal punishment as a socially acceptable child-rearing technique. Since corporal punishment tends to produce both fear and anger, its continued use in the school can only be counterproductive to the learning process. A joint effort should be made to train teachers in nonaversive but effective techniques of pupil control. In addition, individual teachers need the support of well-trained guidance personnel who are willing to enter homes and work with the behavioral problems at their source. (Author/MLF)

One of 52 theoretical papers on school crime and its relation to poverty, this chapter, by utilizing ethnographic data, develops an understanding of the interrelationships among administrative styles, deterrence, commitment, and disruption. The effect of change in administrative styles on the character of order and disruption in a desegregated southern high school is examined. The concern of this paper is primarily with control systems and their effects, and not with the incidence of misbehavior. The data were drawn from an ongoing ethnographic study geared to investigate the process of interracial schooling. Additional data are presented from an ethnography of another high school in a different southern city to facilitate the formulation of conclusions. The paper concludes that a highly representative governance system fosters commitment in the vast majority of school participants. The participants have a major role in making and revising the rules, and, thus, when caught violating them, they are hard pressed to question the legitimacy of those rules. (Author/MLF)

One of 52 theoretical papers on school crime and its relation to poverty, this chapter is an attempt to adopt a social network model to describe linkages between the school and socialization organizations within a community, and, from this view of the social structure, to develop strategies that will promote more arrangements that are better able to meet the needs of youth and of the community at large. It is the contention of this paper that the divisiveness between the various elements of contemporary socialization systems opens up avenues of alienation for young people. The social network model of school-community relationships that this paper presents is a middle-range effort to develop a conceptual framework for understanding the contacts between different socialization organizations within a limited field. A network model offers a practical action approach to the problems of school and community socialization linkages, restoring to concerned persons some measure of control in handling the serious problems of socialization. (Author/MLF)

One of 52 theoretical papers on school crime and its relation to poverty, this chapter, by exploring the relationships among poverty, the ways schools are organized, and student disruption, generates notions that will help in developing a theoretical perspective on school disruption in terms of the various control patterns of school organization. This analysis suggests that school organizations emphasizing rule-oriented patterns of control experience more disruption than do schools that stress development of student commitment by way of normative controls. The paper begins by examining several research traditions regarding school disruption and reviewing categories of explanations. After discussing the presumed relationship of poverty and school disruption, a theoretical framework based on an organizational analysis of school control is suggested. Finally, solutions to school disruption are discussed in terms of the extent to which they stress either rule-oriented or norm-oriented patterns of control. (Author/MLF)

One of 52 theoretical papers on school crime and its relation to poverty, this chapter examines rebellion against authority in high school from the perspective of school status theories. Extending such theories beyond concern with the immediate response to academic status and structural inequality, this paper addresses the broader issue of legitimacy of authority in high school. Using data from a statewide sample of 3,100 adolescents in Illinois the paper also examines the process of peer support for rebellious behavior. (Author/MLF)

One of 52 theoretical papers on school crime and its relation to poverty, this chapter maintains that social labeling is a pervasive and necessary social phenomenon. However, inaccurate social labeling plagues contemporary juvenile justice systems. Relevant examples include legal adjudication categories such as status offender, persons in need of supervision, children in need of supervision, and juveniles in need of supervision. The only way to make the juvenile justice system effective is to develop accurate social labeling, establish a behaviorally discrete legal lexicon, and provide appropriate social services based on precise, valid, and time-limited social labels. (Author/MLF)

One of 52 theoretical papers on school crime and its relation to poverty, this chapter presents a model of negotiation as a means to resolve school conflict. The assumption is that school conflict is inevitable, but student delinquency is not. Delinquent behavior results from the way that the school deals with conflict. Students resort to delinquent behavior in dealing with conflict because of the lack of opportunity in the school for students verbally to express anger as specific formal grievances; to hear both parties to conflicts express their grievances; and to participate in making decisions on matters that affect their interest and welfare. The school, by punishing delinquent behavior while ignoring its causes, escalates anger, polarizes conflict, and then resorts to the use of more and more avoidance and force to resolve conflict. In the model of negotiation suggested, both sides should (1) provide direct verbal expression of anger over specific issues; (2) analyze the conflict in terms of the issues stated by each side and in terms of the protection of each side's civil rights and civil liberties; (3) agree to common statements of issues; (4) agree to gains and concessions for each side; (5) agree to each side's responsibilities for implementing agreements; and (6) agree to the time and criteria for evaluating implementation. An example illustrates the use of the negotiation model. (Author/MLF)

One of 52 theoretical papers on school crime and its relation to poverty, this chapter examines the human ecology of school crime. It explores the relationship between the structure of the school as a social system and the dynamics of student and staff behavior. The central thesis is that schools become "out of control" when they are large and serve academically marginal or socially alienated students. The potency of the school as a support system for prosocial behavior is examined in the light of evidence linking school size to depersonalization of student-staff relationships, a shift toward impersonal methods of social control, and noncontingent feedback on both prosocial and antisocial behavior. (Author/MLF)

One of 52 theoretical papers on school crime and its relation to poverty, this chapter proposes that many forms of youthful misbehavior (particularly vandalism in high schools) are rooted in the normal dynamics of culture among youth. Typologies are used for understanding the social organization of the peer group world and the issue of high school vandalism. The roles that the school environment and school personnel play in legitimizing vandalism are discussed and four models for response to high school vandalism are analyzed. (Author/MLF)

One of 52 theoretical papers on school crime and its relation to poverty, this chapter presents a series of life studies of children in jail, along with a brief discussion of prison reform. The purpose of the life studies is to allow jailed children or children who have been in jail to speak for themselves of the conditions of jail and the experience of being incarcerated. The studies include children who have been tried and sentenced to jail, as well as children held in detention centers awaiting trial. One of the studies is of a girl who was held illegally in an adult prison. Among the many topics discussed by the children are medical treatment, the lack of educational facilities, the changing nature of their relationship with their parents, the shame and fright of imprisonment, and the physical and psychological effects of being in jail. (Author/MLF)

One of 52 theoretical papers on school crime and its relation to poverty, this chapter states that careful examination of juvenile crime reveals that it is primarily a subcultural phenomenon. The principal types of juvenile crime, such as drug use, vandalism, and theft, are usually committed by groups with their own distinctive attitudes, values, and perspectives--groups of juveniles who are part of a deviant subculture. Given this fact, the role of the schools in the etiology of deviant subcultures becomes highly important. Several recommendations for school policy are made on the basis of subculture theory, including the restructuring of educational institutions to reduce the students' sense of alienation and status deprivation and the creation of programs to encourage involvement in nondeviant subcultures. (Author/MLF)

One of 52 theoretical papers on school crime and its relation to poverty, this chapter maintains that young persons whose behavior patterns have been consistently outside the range of acceptability in a community face the same problems as do deviant adults. School personnel are often reluctant to cope with the proven behavior problems because the juvenile is returning to the same environment that spawned his nonacceptable behavior. A significant turnaround in student adaptation to school and personal behavior is possible when students receive individual attention and assistance from school-based paraprofessionals and from community agencies. A successful program in Kern County, California, is described that provides services to young people released from juvenile institutions and returned to regular school situations. (Author/MLF)

One of 52 theoretical papers on school crime and its relation to poverty, this chapter addresses itself to the identification and training of appropriate personnel to implement intervention programs that prevent disruptive, delinquent acts within communities in general and schools in particular. Two models are presented to prepare teachers both to deal effectively with disruptive behavior and to increase the academic skills of the student who exhibits such behavior. The first model is a preservice model that can be implemented at the state level and may be used in the training of crisis-intervention "specialists." The second model is a local inservice model, that can be introduced into a local school system, involving available personnel. (Author/MLF)

One of 52 theoretical papers on school crime and its relation to poverty, this chapter reviews the various approaches used in the study of school vandalism and attempts to define what is needed now. The main contribution of early research on vandalism is to point out an intellectual dead end. Conventional demographic approaches to the problem, by themselves, lead nowhere. In the years since 1970, five distinct research issues have been identified. The first is the absence of satisfactory reporting and measuring techniques to provide baseline data. The second is the development of causal models that include situational factors and motivational constructs. The third is the problematic relationship between school vandalism and larger forces. The fourth is an outcome of the third: the defensive stance taken by many schools in response to research focused on vandalism as their problem. The fifth is the absence of any theoretical bases for grounded cost-benefit studies of security programs. (Author/MLF)

One of 52 theoretical papers on school crime and its relation to poverty, this chapter is essentially a study of the relations between delinquency and the school system in Britain and an analysis of the extent to which British experience is relevant to the study of delinquency in the United States and in Canada. There is little serious crime in British schools, although damage to school buildings (especially arson) out of school hours is a problem. The principal significance of the British state school system in this regard is that it generates stresses and frustrations that create the conditions in which a delinquent subculture can develop and persist. This paper reviews what is known of the relations among delinquency, behavior in school, truancy, and scholastic performance, and considers how the perceptions and the behavior of teachers may mitigate or exacerbate tendencies towards the development of an antischool subculture. Connections between school and postschool concerns, the significance of the lower-class "leisure culture," and the emergence of a distinctively adolescent culture are considered. Finally, the relevance of British studies to attempts to explain the relations between school subcultures and delinquency in the United States and in Canada is discussed. (Author/MLF)

One of 52 theoretical papers on school crime and its relation to poverty, this chapter describes the Childcare Apprenticeship Program at a special day school for 50 adolescents operating under the auspices of the Harvard Graduate School of Education. The program is a three-year, cross-age experiment that paired troubled adolescents and children from deprived neighborhoods. The theoretical focus of the program was empathy--the encouraging of empathic responding between adolescent and child as a "double-benefit" experience for both. The program has established the preventative value of cross-age childcare as a means of increasing self-esteem, feelings of competence, and empathy for others in formerly delinquent or disturbed youth. (Author/MLF)

One of 52 theoretical papers on school crime and its relation to poverty, this chapter presents an institutional product theory of school crime, along with related evidence and a preliminary test of the theory. Two theoretical traditions, Albert Cohen's "delinquent subculture" theory and the social psychological "cognitive balance" theory, can predict a causal chain linking school failure to various forms of deviant behavior via "affect toward school" and "deviant subgroup involvement." A study of male students in two central New York State high schools supports the causal chain with the exception that "affect toward school" does not appear to intervene between "school failure" and the subsequent variables in the causal chain. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed. (Author/MLF)

One of 52 theoretical papers on school crime and its relation to poverty, this chapter states that youthful vandalism is a multidetermined problem that has its roots not simply in the personality of the vandal but also in interaction with peer, family, and community systems. The costs of vandalism are noted, and various intrapsychic and sociocultural theories of causation are reviewed. A general theory of delinquency is proposed, that emphasizes the central role of the family as the mediating system between the individual and society. Finally, a model is proposed for dealing with vandalism that includes school-based prevention, the principle of personal reparations, family therapy, and recommendations for broader social changes. (Author/MLF)

One of 52 theoretical papers on school crime and its relation to poverty, this chapter reviews the major cultural and structural statements on the relationship between poverty and delinquency. The value stretch perspective, stemming from research on family values and on aspirations is introduced in order to challenge and clarify the basic works of Cohen, Cloward and Ohlin, Miller, and Sykes and Matza. This analysis points out that further clarification is needed of the value modifications predicted for those living in poverty. Only then can hypotheses, stemming from alternative theoretical models of the etiology of delinquency among low income youth be tested. Containment and control theory is also included in the review, and incorporated into a theoretical paradigm that tentatively summarizes the literature on the etiology of male gang delinquency. The major elements of the paradigm deal with the community's limited ability to provide opportunities to achieve in accordance with the dominant values of society; the family's and the community's limited ability to maintain external controls over young people; and the family's limited ability to instill effective internal controls. (Author/MLF)

One of 52 theoretical papers on school crime and its relation to poverty, this chapter claims that considering school crime as primarily a manifestation of conduct disorder permits a better understanding of its nature, origin, and treatment. Research into the nature and origin of conduct disorder is discussed. Studies demonstrating successful treatment strategies carried out within the school context are reviewed. (Author/MLF)