One of the most robust findings in criminology is the fall in crime rates throughout the Western world. However, there is still much to be learnt about this and its causes. This case study analyses the Spanish juvenile crime trends and tests the explanatory capacity of the sociodemographic hypotheses. We use aggregate data provided by the police and self-report data. Our analysis could be of interest in a worldwide debate on the crime drop. Demographic changes and the economic situation have little relevance in explaining the changes. However, public policies seem to have had a greater impact on crime trends. Furthermore, gender equality can be considered a possible explanatory factor.

Considering research on juvenile delinquency more broadly, few studies have examined the legal socialization process whereby adolescents come to accept legal authority and comply with the law as a result of the interaction with informal and formal socializing agents. Police legitimacy is an important dimension of legal socialization, because the police are the visible face of the legal system and contribute to the internalization of norms and values in society. Therefore, this article aims to analyse police legitimacy perceptions as an element of the legal socialization process in Spain among a subsample of 2041 youths aged from 13 to 18 from the Third International Self-Report Delinquency Study (ISRD-3). The results using structural equation modelling reveal that adolescents who perceive the police as a legitimate institution commit fewer criminal offences. Additionally, police legitimacy perceptions mediate the association of parental monitoring, school attachment and procedural justice of the police with juvenile delinquency. Other explanations for juvenile delinquency are discussed from a legal socialization perspective.

The empirical evidence on the process-based model of self-regulation shows that procedural justice evaluations and the perceived legitimacy of authorities impact law-abiding behavior. However, few studies analyze this theory from the perspective of adolescent legal socialization. The present study aims to examine the process-based model and other socializing agents such as family, school and peers that may have an effect on it. The sample comprised 2041 youths residing in Spain, aged between 13 and 18 years. The data form part of the Third International Self-Report Delinquency Study (ISRD-3). Multiple linear regression analyses were conducted to predict police legitimacy and juvenile delinquency. The results reveal that police legitimacy perceptions are not only influenced by procedural justice, but also by parental monitoring, school attachment, and delinquent peers. Moreover, perceptions of police legitimacy, parental monitoring, and delinquent peers predict juvenile delinquency. These findings complement and add new explanatory factors to the process-based model.

La opinión pública internacional considera que la delincuencia juvenil ha aumentado considerablemente en las últimas décadas y que se trata de una delincuencia más violenta, en la que las jóvenes tienen una mayor participación y que no culmina hasta los últimos años de la adolescencia. Estos cambios se han convertido en una fuente de preocupación social y política importante en los países occidentales. En España existe esta percepción social y mediática sobre la delincuencia juvenil. Pero el conocimiento de la evolución y tendencia de estas conductas en nuestros jóvenes es pobre y muy parcial. Este trabajo pretende describir la evolución de la conducta antisocial y delictiva juvenil en el periodo 1992-2006, a través del análisis de dos tipos de datos distintos y complementarios: datos de autoinforme y de diversas instancias oficiales. Los resultados muestran una tendencia estable en este periodo, con pequeñas subidas y bajadas en conductas concretas.

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El estudio de las actitudes punitivas se ha convertido en una de las principales líneas de investigación de la Criminología actual. En este trabajo se analizan las demandas punitivas según los tipos delictivos. Sus principales aportaciones son la utilización de casos concretos y el empleo de una muestra representativa de la población española (n=1000). Los resultados obtenidos muestran cierto descontento con las penas vigentes que genera tensiones entre las sanciones exigidas socialmente y las previstas legalmente. A pesar de ello, los datos evidencian que las demandas rigoristas no son universales, sino que varían considerablemente en función de los delitos.

Although the juvenile justice system in Spain emerged at the beginning of the 20th century, in accordance with the general movement at that moment in the Western world, the distinctive circumstance of the Franco dictatorship (1939 to 1975) meant that Spain maintained a tutelary approach while things were changing in the rest of the Western world. Spain presently has a criminal responsibility law for juveniles, Organic Law 5/2000 of January 12, which came into effect January 13, 2001 at a moment when criminal justice policy in general and juvenile justice policy in particular were in crisis. Although the law initially was conceived as a progressive law, the end result, after some criminal justice policy decisions, was the minimizing of some of the fundamental principles of law. Spain, in this sense, has embraced a much more repressive approach, paralleling new trends elsewhere in the Western world.

After a cursory description of the policy transfer phenomenon (the common subject of the volume) and the supranational character of the juvenile justice, the paper tries to explain the problems that can be found in a specific country when this phenomenon of policy transfer occurs. To show these problems we have gone through a very detailed exposition of the internal problems arising from this process. The role of the juvenile instructor Prosecutor and the methods underlying the paradigm of restorative justice is analyzed. The implementation of this practice is especially interesting insofar as the methods imported come from a common law criminal system, with different tradition and principles to the continental criminal system, as the Spanish system is (adversarial system vs. inquisitorial system).