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Despite recent attention both to sex offenders and violent delinquents, there is little empirical knowledge on the causes and correlates of juve nile sex offenses. Juvenile sex offenders (N = 34) were identified among a sample of chronic violent offenders (N = 242) from official records and face-to-face interviews. Juvenile sex offenders were 14. 1 percent of the sample. Sex offenders more often lived with their birth parents while violent offenders often lived in single parent families. Sex offenders had fewer nonviolent offenses, but more often had been incarcerated. Sex offenders had lower self-reported delinquency, fewer drug and alcohol problems, and less often were gang members. Their families, their sib lings and friends had less justice system involvement. However, sex offenders more often came from families with spousal violence, child abuse, and child sexual molestation, according to both official and self reports. They appear to be more sexually and socially isolated, less often have girlfriends or report sexual activity, interest or experience. They had stronger beliefs in the law, but fewer internal behavioral controls. Juve nile sex offenders appear to be a "hidden" population, more closely resembling normative populations than delinquent populations on a vari ety of social factors and attitudinal variables. Further research is needed on broader populations of sex offenders to expand and validate these preliminary findings.

Research and theory on violent behavior have treated aggression between intimates and aggression between strangers as separate phenomena. Major criminological works on violence and aggression have generally overlooked violence in the home. As a result, independent and distinct bodies of theoretical and practical knowledge exist regarding family violence and aggression toward strangers, and the relationship between family violence and violence directed against strangers is little understood. Estimates of the intersection of these behaviors vary extensively. Severity of domestic violence is associated with violence outside the home. Exposure to violence as a child consistently emerges as a strong explanatory factor for both domestic violence and the behavior of “generally” violent men. Behavior patterns appear to shift over time, from domestic violence only to violence toward both strangers and family members. However, an integrated theory of violent behavior by males provides explanations of both stranger and family violence. Early childhood socialization toward violence, modified by social and cultural supports during adolescence and adulthood, suggests a social learning paradigm. Hypotheses are developed that integrate and unify theories of stranger and family violence.

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The Million Clinical Multiaxial Inventory (MCMI) was administered to 106 alcoholics and 100 addicts in separate VA inpatient rehabilitation treatment programs. The alcoholics scored higher on the personality style scales of Avoidant, Passive-Aggressive, Schizotypal, Borderline and Paranoid, while the opiate addicts scored higher on the Narcissistic personality disorder scale. Separate cluster analyses for both groups further revealed common personality styles among both groups. Several MCMI scales showed significant correlations with age, but in no case were the effects attributed to age larger than 5% of the total variance. The MCMI may alert clinicians to subtle similarities and differences between and among alcoholics and opiate addicts.

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Family is central to contemporary theories of delinquent and violent behavior. Yet, the processes by which families shape violent behavior in their children are not well understood. In the past, structural views posited that a weak family exposed a child to the evils of the street. More recently, functionalists have suggested that the family plays an active role in socializing youths to violent behaviors through supervision and discipline practices and modeling and reinforcement of antisocial behaviors. Integrated theories presume that socially disorganized families weaken children's conventional bonds and attachments, leading to associations with delinquent peers and in turn antisocial behavior. However, the influence of the family as a socializing environment may shift over time, and some suggest that its influence is overshadowed during adolescence by that of other social domains—schools, neighborhoods, peers, and work. This study describes the family processes and environments of (n = 98) chronically violent delinquents. Interviews with youths and their mothers assessed family social process and environments and the social domains and institutions with which they interact.Analyses of youth reports of family environments and processes yield three family types: “interactionist” families exhibiting a high degree of internal interaction and bonding; “hierarchical” families characterized by parental dominance and the presence of family bond and interaction patterns; and “antisocial” families marked by criminality and family violence. Family variables have weaker explanatory power than do other social influences on violent delinquency. The relative contributions of family supervision practices and school environment varied by crime type. Social influences outside the family appear as stronger contributors to delinquency and violence during adolescence, regardless of early childhood experiences. The results underscore the importance of integrating social policies regarding family, crime, and neighborhood.