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During the last two decades, Laos has undergone major transformations due to a massive influx of foreign investment. Improved communications and new forms of mobility have dramatically altered rural life. Changing Lives in Laos brings together contributions from young scholars that look closely at these transitions and the resulting rise of a new social, cultural, and economic order. The essays in this volume draw on original fieldwork and provide fresh analyses of topics such as the structures of power, the politics of territoriality, and new forms of sociability in emerging urban spaces.
 

One of the most astonishing aspects of juvenile crime is how little is known about the impact of the policies and programs put in place to fight it. The most commonly used strategies and programs for combating juvenile delinquency problems primarily rely on intuition and fads. Fortunately, as a result of the promising new research documented in Changing Lives, these deficiencies in our juvenile justice system might quickly be remedied.

Peter W. Greenwood here demonstrates here that as crimes rates have fallen, researchers have identified more connections between specific risk factors and criminal behavior, while program developers have discovered a wide array of innovative interventions. The result of all this activity, he reveals, has been the revelation of a few prevention models that reduce crime much more cost-effectively than popular approaches such as tougher sentencing, D.A.R.E., boot camps, and "scared straight" programs. Changing Lives expertly presents the most promising of these prevention programs, their histories, the quality of evidence to support their effectiveness, the public policy programs involved in bringing them into wider use, and the potential for investments and developmental research to increase the range and quality of programs.