Low future orientation, low empathy, educational difficulty, school expulsion, delinquent peers, gang membership, and low social support were found to be significant risk factors for violence and delinquency among a sample (N = 174) of high risk youth and youth gang members in San Salvador, El Salvador.

Weapon-related violence, especially the use of handguns, among adolescents is a serious public health concern. Using public-use data file from the adolescent sample (N = 17,842) in the 2008 National Survey on Drug Use and Health (NSDUH), this study examines the behavioral, parental involvement, and prevention correlates of handgun carrying. Overall, 3.1% of adolescents between the ages of 12 and 17 reported carrying a handgun in the past year. Results from a series of logistic regression models indicated that males, selling and using illicit drugs, were robustly associated with an increased probability of handgun carrying among adolescents. Furthermore, youth who carry handguns were significantly less likely to report a parent being involved in their lives and were significantly more likely to have encountered violence and drug prevention programming compared with youth who did not carry handguns. Implications of these results for prevention and policy are discussed.

Empathy is considered a key construct in the empirical study of high-risk adolescent and young adult delinquency, crime, and violence. This study examined the psychometric properties and criterion-related validity of a Spanish adaptation of the Basic Empathy Scale (BES), which is an important measure designed to capture both affective and cognitive empathy that has been validated in multiple languages but not in Spanish. The study's sample consisted of 208 high-risk and gang-involved adolescents and young adults in the Greater San Salvador Metropolitan Area. The original BES was reduced from its 20-item design to a more culturally appropriate 7-item design. The results of the confirmatory factor analysis and criterion-related validity analysis indicate that the adapted BES is a valid and reliable multidimensional measure of empathy for high-risk Salvadoran adolescents and young adults. Consistent with previous findings, females reported lower levels of empathy than males and delinquent/violent respondents reported lower levels of empathy than their nonoffender counterparts.

While research conducted in Western nations suggests that religiosity and spirituality protect against delinquent behavior, few studies have examined these relationships in developing world contexts. Using a community sample of 290 high-risk and gang-involved adolescents (11-17 years) and young adults (18-25 years) in San Salvador, El Salvador, structural equation modeling and logistic regression are used to examine the relationships between religious coping, spirituality, social developmental factors, and delinquency. Results suggest that spirituality and, to a lesser extent, religious coping, protect Salvadoran youth at risk for involvement in delinquent behavior. The relationship between spirituality and delinquency was completely mediated by social developmental factors as no direct association was identified between spirituality and delinquency. Spirituality and religious coping are both relevant protective factors among Salvadoran youth; however, spirituality is more consistently protective against delinquency in terms of its relationship to social developmental mediating factors and its direct associations to particular delinquent behaviors.

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