Cognitive Behavioral Interventions with Delinquents

Abstract

Crimes committed by adolescents and, increasingly, by preadolescent children constitute a major part of the current crime problem in the United States. In 1976, for example, persons between ages 11 and 18, who represented about 12% of the population, committed 34% of the robberies, 52% of the burglaries, 53% of the car thefts, and 17% of the forcible rapes and aggravated assaults that were reported to police and subsequently accounted for by arrests (Federal Bureau of Investigation, 1977). About 35% of imprisoned male felons have spent some time as adolescents in training schools and other institutions for delinquents, and a much higher percentage have had some contact with a juvenile court (Allen & Simonsen, 1978), so that even the very high crime rates just cited for adolescents underestimate the amount of crime that might be prevented by effective treatments for “juvenile delinquency.”