Responding to Troubled Youth considers the current theories and practices in handling status offenders - those children who habitually resist the control of their parents and schools, who run away from home, who drink and stay out after curfew. How does society deal with status offenders today? How should it deal with them tomorrow? What are the social and legal implications of dealing with them in one way or another?

Designed to respond to troubled and troublesome youths, state legislative policies for juvenile offenders are effective at different times for different reasons - and are not always effective in the first place. This book evaluates such policies in terms of three basic and competing philosophies: the so-called treatment, deterrence, and normalization rationales. In examining each approach, Cheryl L. Maxson and Malcolm W.

Klein consider the quality (and quantity) of response to (and for) status offenders at local community service outlets in seven different cities. By this method, the authors can determine whether such response practices conform with the ideological thrusts embedded in state legislation.

The results of their national study will surprise man legislative and youth service policy professionals. Agency characteristics, service delivery patterns, and youth clients can indeed reflect the treatment, deterrence, and normalization rationales, but in ways that have little bearing on the dominant viewpoints embodied by state legislation. Also, special chapters are devoted to those minors most likely to slip through the safety net of youth service - chronic runaways and street kids.

At the conclusion and throughout the text, the authors soundly discuss the implications of their findings for lawmakers and policy developers.