摘要：The problem is well known to every parent of a teenager, every high school teacher, every clinical practitioner, and
every social policy maker: vulnerable adolescents risk becoming more deviant through association with deviant
peers and peer groups. Deviant peer infl uences are among the most potent factors in the development of antisocial
behavior. Deviant youth are prone to seek out other deviant youth, but the tendency to self-select into deviant peer
groups does not fully account for the effect that the peer group has on exacerbating the problem. More exposure to
deviant peers increases the opportunity for peer infl uences to operate. It is now becoming known that well-intentioned
adults and government programs may also exacerbate deviant peer infl uences by placing deviant youth into
programs and settings that are populated by other deviant youth. In fact, the most common policy is to segregate
unruly youth from the mainstream peer group and to place them in groups composed entirely or mostly of deviant
peers. New studies indicate that sometimes this practice results in harmful effects. That is, the children whom we
are attempting to help may in fact be made worse by our efforts. Placing a deviant adolescent with deviant peers
can reduce the intended benefi ts of interventions and lead to less positive, sometimes even negative, outcomes,
especially under conditions of poor supervision and lack of structure. Nonetheless, deviant youth do require a
response, and economic, political, and treatment considerations complicate the solution. This report reviews the
evidence on group interventions for deviant adolescents and makes recommendations that address the public policy
problem of placements for deviant youth.
This report makes the following recommendations: 1) Programs, placements, and treatments that aggregate
deviant youth that are ineffective as well as costly should be terminated whenever possible; 2) Effective alternatives
to deviant peer-group placement are available and should be supported; 3) Policy decision-making should
take into account the system-wide impact of interventions and placements on both deviant youth and their communities;
and 4) Practitioners, programs, and policymakers should document the peer context of each placement
and evaluate the impact of each placement on the youth and the community.
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