Journal Issue: Juvenile Justice Volume 18 Number 2 Fall 2008 The
Prevalence of Mental Disorders among Adolescent Offenders Two
kinds of studies address questions about the social consequences
of the links between mental disorders and delinquency. One type
examines the degree of "overlap" between a community's
population of youth with mental disorders and its population of
youthful offenders. Knowing this overlap gives some notion of
the risk of official delinquency for youth with mental disorders
and the degree to which mental disorders of youth contribute to
a community's overall delinquency. The second type of study
examines the proportion of youth with mental disorders within
juvenile justice facilities or programs. These studies provide
information with which to formulate policy about treating and
managing youth with mental disorders in juvenile justice
custody. It is important to recognize that these two types of
research begin with very different populations, even though they
both address the relation b