Book Review: The Cycle of Juvenile Justice

• Author: Sharece Downey
• DOI: 10.1177/0734016811404063
• Published date: 01 December 2011
• Date: 01 December 2011
• Subject Matter: Book Reviews

moderating effects. Although this is an inductive approach, to the extent that such spatial variability

forces the researcher to think about why it might exist, this is a useful step forward for the field.

The third analysis chapter employs a spatial analysis of offenders’ target selection using block

groups in Glendale, Arizona. This chapter employs a conditional logit model to explore the question

of why offenders choose a target in one particular block group rather than all the other possible block

groups they might have chosen. These models allow exploring how characteristics of offenders

interact with the characteristics of destination neighborhoods to predict the choice of offending

location. For example, an interesting finding is that racial homogeneity of the target neighborhood

is most important when offending along with cooffenders.

A limitation of the book is that despite the sophisticated statistical modeling in this project, the

substantive takeaway points are not necessarily clear. What are we to conclude from this study?

Given that the techniques employed often feel more like a demonstration of how one might statis-

tically model such data, and less as a selection of the most appropriate tool for the theoretical task at

hand, conclusions are quite difficult. In fact, one could argue that attempting theoretical integration

would have led to a different ordering of the chapters. Specifically, the first and third analytical

chapters could have been reversed. Given that the third analytical chapter explored where offenders

travel spatially for committing crimes, it might have been nice to incorporate the insights learned

from these analyses into the models specified in the other analytic chapters. And then the insights

obtained from the GWR cross-sectional models in the second analytical chapter could inform the

longitudinal and spatial models from the first analytical chapter. Such an approach might have led

to more theoretical integration. As it is, one is left with an overview of the quantitative techniques

available to researchers exploring neighborhood processes over time.

T. J. Bernard and M. C. Kurlychek

The Cycle of Juvenile Justice (2nd ed.). New York, NY: Oxford University Press,

2010. 3, 243 pp. $24.95. ISBN: 9-780-195-37036-2

Reviewed by: Sharece Downey, Prairie View A&M University, Prairie View, TX, USA

DOI: 10.1177/0734016811404063

In the book, The Cycle of Juvenile Justice, authors Thomas Bernard and Megan Kurlychek provide

an interesting and informative evaluation of what they refer to as ‘‘the cycle of juvenile justice.’’

This cycle encompasses the notion that the policies, beliefs, and changes pertaining to the juvenile

justice system have been repeated over the past 200 years. Since the first publication in 1991 by

Bernard, Kurlychek adds discussions of policy changes which further compliment the characteristics

associated with the cycle of juvenile justice. Ultimately, the authors assert that juvenile justice

and its policies are not to blame for juvenile delinquency, nor are its institutions to solve the problem

of juvenile delinquency in the United States; instead, the authors suggest that juvenile offending is

due to poor social conditions and economic inequality. The authors argue that the only way to

improve juvenile justice is to break the cycle that we have become accustomed to repeating.

The authors chronicle the evolution of the juvenile justice system by beginning with how juveniles

were perceivedand treated in the 1800s, tothe origin of the juvenile justicesystem as influenced bythe

nation’s founders until the 21st century’s ‘‘get tough’’ legislation. The authors also describe how spe-

cific US Supreme Court rulings have influenced how juveniles are viewed and treated within both

adult and juvenile courts. Evidently, decisions concerning punishment and policy reflect perceptions

of what constitutes a juvenile and juvenile delinquency.

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