This book discusses patterns and trends in crimes committed by children and adolescents, analyzing youth crime as a subset of general crime and studying the impact of race and gender. It evaluates different approaches to forecasting future crime rates. Data come from a national panel that examined what is known about juvenile crime and its prevention, treatment, and control. Six chapters discuss: (1) "Introduction" (e.g., child and adolescent development and international perspectives); (2) "Patterns and Trends in Juvenile Crime and Juvenile Justice" (e.g., crime trends and girls and delinquency); (3) "The Development of Delinquency" (e.g., individual, social, and community risk factors); (4) "Preventing Juvenile Crime" (e.g., family, school-based, peer group, and community interventions); (5) "The Juvenile Justice System" (e.g., history of the juvenile justice system, girls in the juvenile justice system, and recent legislative changes); and (6) "Race, Crime, and Juvenile Justice: The Issue of Racial Disparity" (racial disparity and bias in the juvenile justice system). Four appendixes present a definition of offenses used in uniform crime reporting; "The Indeterminacy of Forecasts of Crime Rates and Juvenile Offenses" (Kenneth C. Land and Patricia L. McCall); workshop agendas; and biographical sketches. (Contains approximately 800 references.) (SM)