Book Review: Changing Lives: Delinquency Prevention as Crime-Control Policy

• Author: Brian Iannacchione
• DOI: 10.1177/1541204006290150
• Published date: 01 July 2006
• Date: 01 July 2006
• Subject Matter: Articles

281

Book Reviews

Changing Lives: Delinquency Prevention as Crime-Control Policy, by P. W. Greenwood. Chicago:

University of Chicago Press, 2006. 224 pp., 37.00 (hardcover).

DOI: 10.1177/1541204006290150

In Changing Lives: Delinquency Prevention as Crime-Control Policy, Peter Greenwood exam-

ines delinquency prevention models that have been implemented in the United States. He provides

descriptions and analyses of programs that are working, along with programs that have failed but con-

tinue to exist in communities across the nation. Greenwood also explores the history of delinquency

prevention models, strategies to measure the effectiveness of these programs, how the government

intervenes in these programs, and how programming should be implemented in the juvenile court.

In chapter 1, Greenwood introduces the reader to the goal of his book: to describe the most

promising prevention programs in juvenile justice, how they were developed, the quality of the evi-

dence that supports their “claimed effectiveness,” public policy problems that are preventing them

from being more widely used, and the investments in research that must be undertaken to increase the

quality and range of these programs. He then goes on to describe prevention and the kind of crimes

that are most in need of prevention. Finally, he gives a brief overview of the chapters in the book.

Chapter 2 provides a brief history of how delinquency-prevention concepts were developed.

The first section focuses on the term delinquency prevention and how the government uses this

vocabulary to respond to crime. Greenwood further elaborates on this subject by examining two

dimensions of the concerns of crime and when they occur: the past and the future. The past is purely

reactive, concerned only with punishment and assisting the victim. The future, on the other hand, is

where prevention occurs.

The second section looks at delinquency prevention and how it has evolved since the juvenile

court was first established with a prevention-oriented theme. He goes into great detail describing this

evolution, while focusing on the four main approaches for intervening with at-risk youth: (a) focus

directly on the individuals, (b) focus on the parents or guardians who are the primary caregivers of

the youth, (c) prevention through the schools, and (d) changing the community and/or neighborhood

where the youth resides.

Chapter 3 examines the problem of measuring program impacts. Greenwood explores a

number of measures used in delinquency prevention research. He looks critically at the traditional

measures that have been used to assess delinquency prevention, such as self-reports. Finally,

Greenwood looks at different strategies that have been used to summarize the research in delin-

quency prevention. This chapter is well placed, leading right into chapter 4, which discusses

programs that work.

Chapter 4 is a fascinating chapter, in which Greenwood introduces the reader to proven and

promising delinquency prevention programs. Greenwood has four main goals in this chapter: (a) exam-

ine delinquency prevention programs that, in the literature, have been suggested to be the most effective;

(b) examine the quality of evidence the literature presents; (c) suggest how communities can implement

these programs; and (d) propose where future research may be pursued. From here, Greenwood

describes a plethora of delinquency prevention programs that work for infancy and early childhood, ele-

mentary school-aged children, adolescents, and adjudicated delinquents, all the while detailing each

program and providing the costs and benefits of each program. Finally,he examines how replicable these

programs are, which allows a community to decide if it is the best program for its situation.

Chapter 5 examines delinquency prevention programs that do not work. There are several

important reasons why Greenwood focuses on these failed prevention models. First, there are many

delinquency prevention models that are still in operation long after they have been found not to work,

or worse, have been found to be harmful. Greenwood highlights three programs: DARE, boot camps,

Youth Violence and Juvenile Justice, Vol. 4 No. 3, July 2006 281-282

© 2006 Sage Publications