Turk, William L.

About the author: Dr. Turk received his PhD from the University of Texas at Arlington. He is currently Lecturer in the Department of Political Science at the University of Texas Pan American.

When Juvenile Crime Comes to School

1999 0-7734-7979-1
After a brief examination of the creation of the public school system resting on historical and philosophical notions of good order and discipline, this study examines the extent and patterns of juvenile crime, and posits a theoretical model of school crime based on family, home economics, and demography, in association with minority status and educational elements, exacerbated by drugs, gangs and weapons. For 90 consecutive days in 1994, a sample of 50 public school districts in Texas participated in a school crime reporting experiment. Scrupulous attention was paid to the recording of criminal incidents and their associated offenses in the sample districts. This afforded a rare opportunity to analyze empirical data relating to actual criminal offenses on public school campuses. This study gives detailed descriptions of numbers of incidents, offenses, age and sex of offenders, place of offense, involvement of drugs, gangs, and weapons.