Book Review: Whitehead, J. T., & Lab, S. P. (2006). Juvenile Justice: An Introduction (5th ed.). Cincinnati, OH: Anderson. 498 pp

• DOI: 10.1177/0734016808320344
• Author: Jennifer Wareham
• Date: 01 December 2008
• Published date: 01 December 2008
• Subject Matter: Articles

for the buck, I would look elsewhere. Personally, my favorite remains another book that

Robert Bohm edited (with James Acker and Charles Lanier), the second edition of

America’s Experiment With Capital Punishment (Carolina Academic Press, 2003).

Michael L. Radelet

University of Colorado, Boulder

Whitehead, J. T., & Lab, S. P. (2006). Juvenile Justice: An

Introduction (5th ed.). Cincinnati, OH: Anderson. 498 pp.

DOI: 10.1177/0734016808320344

The fifth edition of Juvenile Justice: An Introduction provides a thorough introduction

to the juvenile justice system in the United States. The authors do an excellent job of offer-

ing a comprehensive, yet succinct, discussion of the key aspects of juvenile justice. The text

contains a uniform writing style that undergraduate students can easily understand. The

book is divided into 14 chapters covering 5 general themes related to juvenile delinquency:

the definition and measurement of delinquency, the historical context, etiological explana-

tions of delinquency, the various stages of the juvenile justice process, and treatment issues.

Each chapter opens with a brief introduction and includes a list of key terms, highlighted

in red font, used throughout the chapter. Dispersed within chapters are boxed inserts con-

taining special topics, examples, and anecdotal information relevant to the subject matter.

Following each chapter are discussion questions intended to aid in pedagogy for faculty

wanting to encourage critical thinking among their students.

The first chapter introduces the topic of delinquency wherein the term is defined from

both a criminal law and status offense perspective. The term juvenile is also defined, and

informative and easily interpretable tables are presented to describe the minimum- and

maximum-age limits for juvenile classification and juvenile court jurisdiction for each

state. Furthermore, official (Uniform Crime Reports, juvenile court, and juvenile correc-

tions) and self-report (using various nationally representative longitudinal studies) delin-

quency measures are reviewed and overall trends are discussed.

The second chapter is an overview of the history of juvenile justice. The authors do an

excellent job of portraying the lifestyles and treatment by the criminal justice system of

juveniles prior to the late 1800s and describing the social changes that inspired the formal

development of a juvenile justice system. They effectively describe the idea behind the

parens patriae doctrine and offer a critical perspective of the doctrine.

The next two chapters focus on providing a general overview of the dominant etiological

explanations for delinquency. Chapter 3 describes positivistic theories of delinquency, empha-

sizing the sociobiological and psychological explanations. Although the authors briefly men-

tion personality theories of crime, one potential weakness is a failure to mention the growing

body of research on and movement toward utilizing assessments of psychopathic personality

traits among the juvenile offending population. Chapter 4 describes macro- and micro-level

sociological explanations of delinquency, which include major theories like social disorgani-

zation, differential association/learning, social control, and strain. For both of these chapters,

the implications of such theories on the juvenile justice system are discussed.

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