Good Kids from Bad Neighborhoods

Delbert S. Elliott is Distinguished Professor of Sociology Emeritus and Research Professor at the Institute of Behavioral Science at the University of Colorado. He was past president and Fellow of the Academy of Experimental Criminology. He was the Senior Science Editor for the Surgeon General's Report on Youth Violence in 2001 and the General Editor for Blueprints for the Violence Prevention Series of Monographs. He has published many books and is a member of The MacArthur Foundation Research Network on Successful Adolescent Development. Scott Menard received his BA from Cornell University and his PhD from the University of Colorado, Boulder, both in sociology. He has published extensively in the areas of quantitative methods, statistics, criminology and delinquency and also in the areas of demography and development. His current research interests include the use of standardized coefficients in logistic regression analysis, the short and long term consequences of victimization, particularly in adolescence and the interrelationship between different types of substance use and illegal behavior. Bruce Rankin is an assistant professor of Sociology at Koç University, Istanbul, Turkey, and a Research Fellow at the Malcolm Wiener Center for Social Policy, John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University. He received his doctorate in sociology from the University of Maryland, College Park in 1993. Prior to his faculty appointment, he was the research coordinator of the Center for the Study of Urban Inequality at the University of Chicago and, later, a research associate at the Joblessness and Urban Poverty Research Program at Harvard University. His research has focused on various issues related to urban poverty and social policy. Amanda Elliott is a research analyst in the Institute of Behavioral Science at the University of Colorado. For the past seventeen years, she has been involved in longitudinal studies of child and adolescent development and domestic assault, and was the Field Director of the Denver Neighborhood Study. Her work also includes cross-national projects with researchers from Bremen, Germany examining the effects of training for the labor market and the effects of juvenile justice system processing on delinquent behavior. She is a co-author of an article in the Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency. David Huizinga is a Senior Research Associate at the Institute of Behavioral Science at the University of Colorado and holds graduate degrees in mathematics and psychology. For over two decades he has been conducting basic and evaluation research on developmental life-span issues. He is the co-author of three books as well as several book chapters and numerous journal articles and government reports on issues surrounding the development of delinquency, drug use, and mental health. William Julius Wilson is Lewis P. and Linda L. Geyser University Professor at Harvard University, Massachusetts. He is one of only 18 University Professors, the highest professional distinction for a Harvard faculty member. He joined the faculty at Harvard in July of 1996. Wilson has received 41 honorary degrees and was selected by Time Magazine as one of America's 25 Most Influential People. He is a recipient of the 1998 National Medal of Science, the highest scientific honor in the United States, and was awarded the Talcott Parsons Prize in the Social Sciences by the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2003.

"This book has numerous strenghts. As Richard Jessor, chair of the Research Network on Successful Adolescent Development, explains in the foreword, Good Kids offers an example of the new transdisciplinary research taht tackles a complex social problem from multiple perspectives. In moving beyond sociology's traditional focus on structural variables, such as social class, to identify the explanatory mechanissm that ccount for the effect of those structural variables on human lives, the researchers have contributed an important model for future development." --Patricia T. Ashton

• Foreword; Acknowledgments; 1. Growing up in disadvantaged neighborhoods; 2. Growing up in Denver and Chicago: the neighborhood study; 3. Good and bad neighborhoods for raising children; 4. The effects of growing up in a bad neighborhood: initial findings; 5. Critical dimensions of neighborhood organization and culture; 6. The effects of neighborhood organization and culture; 7. Family influences: managing disadvantage and promoting success; 8. School climate and types of peer groups; 9. What matters most for successful youth development?; 10. Successful development in disadvantaged neighborhoods; Appendix A; Appendix B.