Community crime, poverty, and proportion of Black residents influence police descriptions of adolescents.

Objective: Our study examined officers' attitudes and perceptions of adolescents in general (and challenges in policing adolescents) and the degree to which community variables affect those perceptions.

Hypotheses: Our examinations of officers' descriptions of adolescents and challenges in policing adolescents were exploratory. We hypothesized that community characteristics would significantly influence officers' perceptions of adolescents, such that working in more impoverished, higher crime, and more proportionally Black communities would be associated with more negative perceptions of adolescents.

Emotional responses of staff to assault in a pediatric state hospital.

In this study, we examined the emotional responses of staff to patient-on-staff assault at a state inpatient psychiatric hospital for children and adolescents. Staff (n = 93) completed self-report measures assessing general psychiatric functioning and symptoms of depression and anxiety. Staff assaulted by patients in the past six months (n = 59) were compared with those who had not been assaulted (n = 34).

A prospective study of assault against staff by youths in a state psychiatric hospital.

Objective: This study examined the frequency and nature of violence directed at staff in a state inpatient psychiatric hospital for children and adolescents.

Methods: A total of 215 assaults that occurred over a two-month period were examined by using information obtained from staff at the time of the assault and from the hospital database. Assaults were analyzed for situational characteristics of the incidents as well as the characteristics that best differentiated between assaultive and nonassaultive patients.