Book review: Risk Assessment for Violent Juvenile Offending

AuthorStephen Case
Published date01 November 2015
DOI10.1177/1748895815604948
Date01 November 2015
Subject MatterBook reviews
/tmp/tmp-17KkZC37UYGsn9/input 604948CRJ0010.1177/1748895815604948Criminology & Criminal JusticeBook reviews
research-article2015
Criminology & Criminal Justice
2015, Vol. 15(5) 633 –640
Book reviews
© The Author(s) 2015
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DOI: 10.1177/1748895815604948
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Anna Constanza Baldry and Andreas Kapardis (eds), Risk Assessment for Violent Juvenile Offending,
Routledge: Abingdon, 2014; 154 pp.: 9780415662741, $42.95 (pbk)
Reviewed by: Stephen Case, University of Swansea, UK
This edited text reports on the purported ‘risk factors’ for juvenile violent offending and
how these have been assessed and addressed in Italy and Cyprus by the implementation of
a bespoke risk and needs assessment instrument known as the European Assessment of
Risk and Needs or EARN. Beginning with a supportive foreword from Professor David
Farrington, the text is an eight-chapter collaboration between criminologist-psychologists,
a lawyer and a police officer. The authors set out their stall in the opening two chapters by
expressing their support for preventative strategies which target ‘established’ risk factors
for juvenile offending in the domains of the individual (impulsivity, temperament, sub-
stance use), family (maltreatment, criminality, inappropriate parenting), school (poor per-
formance, bullying), peer group (antisocial peers, gang membership) and neighbourhood
(disorganized, low socio-economic status). These risk factors are then fed into a series of
typological ‘pathways’ for offending, variously labelled ‘prenatal risk factors’, ‘childhood
personality disorder’, ‘childhood temperament’, ‘childhood maltreatment’ and ‘adoles-
cent onset’ in line with a developmental approach (Farrington, 2007). The middle chapters
set the contexts for understanding juvenile delinquency and delivering juvenile justice in
Italy and Cyprus, followed by a chapter discussing community-based intervention pro-
grammes for responding to the risk factors...

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