By Kathryn N. Stump; Janis B. Kupersmidt

This document reports on a research project with the primary goals of determining whether program practice implementation was associated with youth and match outcomes, and to describe the experiences of mentoring programs as they engaged in the Mentoring Youth for Leadership (MYL) initiative and worked to better align their practices to those described in the Elements of Effective Practice for Mentoring (EEPM). The report provides a description of the sample population, which included a total of 1,413 mentees that participated in the outcome evaluation study, and representatives from 17 Leadership Foundations (LF)-affiliated mentoring programs. Results from the outcome evaluation indicated that program practice implementation was unrelated to youth outcomes and mentee-reported match quality, it was, however, significantly associated with match length. Results also suggested that one-to-one matches from mentoring programs that implemented a larger number of benchmarks from the EEPM had significantly longer matches than from those with fewer than 75 percent of the EEPM benchmarks. Additionally, matches from programs meeting the Recruitment, Matching, and Monitoring and Support Standards had longer matches than those programs that did not implement those Standards. Other results discussed have implications for pre-match training requirements and communication with national parent organizations. The report suggests that improving program practices so that they align with EEPM may result in longer matches and that certain Standards are especially important for fostering longer-term matches among mentors and mentees; and success in implementing the MYL initiative requires consistent support and communication with the national LF parent organization.

Durham, NC: Innovation Research & Training, 2024. 98p.

By Samantha Harvell, Teresa Derrick-Mills, Constance Hull

Over the past decade, Milwaukee County’s youth probation agency—the Department of Health and Human Services’ Children, Youth and Family Services (CYFS)—has fundamentally changed its approach to supervision, redefined staff roles and responsibilities, and adopted a new trauma-informed, developmentally responsive case management model to improve practices and boost outcomes for the young people and families it serves. Implementing changes of that magnitude has not been quick or easy and remains a work in progress. Yet CYFS leaders and staff have learned much from the process, and Milwaukee County provides a helpful case study of youth justice reform in action.

Why This Matters

Community supervision, typically in the form of probation, plays a central role in the juvenile legal system. The majority of young people adjudicated delinquent are placed on probation in the United States. In 2019, the most recent year for which data are available, half of all juvenile cases sanctioned in court—nearly 250,000—resulted in probation. Because of this, reforming probation could transform how youth justice is administered across the country.

What We Found

Drawing on interviews with 20 local stakeholders and our experiences providing technical assistance to CYFS leaders over more than two years, this report summarizes lessons from Milwaukee County’s reform efforts, including factors that have supported and hindered progress. Key findings include the following:

• Having a team dedicated to quality management provides critical infrastructure to support reform.

• Implementation science offers a helpful framework for promoting change.

• Effective leadership is essential.

• Investing in staff development and organizational infrastructure and systems is vital to long-term success and sustainability.

• Building internal support and buy-in for reform is crucial.

• Developing tailored, targeted, and effective messages about reform is critical to growing and leveraging external legal partnerships.

• Centering community is essential.

• Expanding funding structures can support transformative change.

Washington DC: The Urban Institute, 2023. 33p.

By Samantha Harvell, Arielle Jackson, Constance Hull, Colette Marcelin, and Leah Sakala

The COVID-19 health crisis, which reached the United States in early 2020, has significantly impacted youth legal system agencies’ policies and practices worldwide. In the pandemic’s third year, new variants of the virus continue to threaten health and safety, and agencies continue to grapple with how best to support young people and their families. Even before the pandemic, incarceration posed significant risks to young people’s physical and mental health, particularly among youth of color, who are disproportionately impacted by the criminal legal system. During the pandemic, some youth legal system agencies increased their use of traumatizing practices like solitary confinement and at times ended all in-person visitation with caregivers and siblings, demonstrating the need for agencies to double down on efforts to end youth incarceration and instead invest in community-based strategies that support youth long term. This brief is designed to help inform those efforts by highlighting how three states—Maryland, Massachusetts, and New Jersey—have reduced youth incarceration over the past two years. Each state has taken a unique approach to changing policy and practice championed by a wide range of stakeholders, including governors, legislators, and judicial and corrections agency leaders, and each case study in this brief shows a different path to lasting reform. Taken together, the examples provide several options for reducing youth incarceration and investing in more effective strategies to prevent harm and support youth accountability and needs.

Washington, DC: The Urban Institute, 2022. 16p.

By Samantha Harvell, Chloe Warnberg, Andreea Matei, and Eli Mensing

Over the past several decades, the knowledge base about how to address juvenile delinquency and improve outcomes for youth and families has grown considerably. The documented benefits of well-designed community-based programming over residential facilities have spurred a movement away from the outdated institutional-youth-prison model and toward more effective community-based solutions. States and localities are exploring how to support a new juvenile justice approach that builds continua of care and opportunity in communities disproportionately impacted by youth incarceration and prioritizes fair, equitable, and effective treatment for all youth. This is the next frontier of juvenile justice reform, and effective strategies for closing youth correctional facilities and redirecting resources to community-based solutions must be identified. Juvenile justice administrators are uniquely positioned to lead facility closure efforts as part of broader system reform

By Andreea Matei

The Juvenile Diversion Initiative (JDI) in the San Diego County District Attorney’s Office is a pre-file diversion program for youth under 18 that aims to intervene early and limit the number of youth entering the juvenile justice system by providing individualized services based on each youth’s needs. This case study, part of the Mapping Prosecutor-Led Diversion Project, focuses on the JDI's broad eligibility criteria and its incorporation of education advocates, highlighting takeaways for other prosecutors and stakeholders looking to launch similar programs. The information included is based on the office’s submitted response to the Mapping Prosecutor-Led Diversion Project survey and interviews with program leadership, staff, and partners. This case study is intended as an overview of this diversion strategy and is not an assessment or evaluation

Washington, DC: The Urban Institute, 2022. 6p.

By Luis Alonso-Armesto. Julio Cáceres-Delpiano, Warn N. Lekfuangfu  

This study examines the impact of increasing the Minimum Legal Drinking Age (from 16 to 18 years old) on the academic performance, substance use, and peer behaviours of teenagers. Using a difference-in-discontinuities design, we exploit regional MLDA reforms in Spain and PISA data to identify significant improvements in mathematics and science performance, particularly among male teenagers and those from lower socioeconomic backgrounds. A complementary analysis using data from the Survey on Drug Use in Secondary Education in Spain indicates that these academic gains coincide with reductions in alcohol consumption, intoxication, smoking, and marijuana use, suggesting a link between substance use and educational outcomes. Moreover, the reform led to less drinking and less use of illicit drugs within peer networks, highlighting the amplifying role of peer effects in policy impact.   

  IZA DP No. 17772

Bonn:  IZA – Institute of Labor Economics , 2025. 55p.

By Eóin O’Meara Daly, Jackie Dwane, Caitlin Lewis and Seán Redmond

What does it mean for youth justice practitioners to examine their own relational practice with young people and consciously adapt their approach according to available evidence? This paper presents empirical findings from a project undertaken in Ireland that examined effective relationship building through complimentary processes of a systematic review of evidence, practice reflection, and action research – the latter has been described as a systematic collaborative approach where researchers and practitioners both conduct research and take action to simultaneously investigate and address an issue (Mac Naughton, 2001). The project was undertaken in collaboration with 60 youth justice practitioners from 16 Youth Diversion Project (YDP) case study sites across Ireland. YDPs are community-based focussed youth interventions that address offending behaviour with targeted young people to divert them from further involvement in crime (Reddy and Redmond, 2022). The 16 case study sites represent a purposive sample of 100 projects managed by over 30 youth organisations. Youth justice work in Ireland emphasises non-custodial alternatives to detention for young people who offend (Hamilton, 2023). These alternatives include community-based diversion, intervention and prevention strategies, and/or programmes that focus on addressing risk and need (Convery and Seymour, 2016). Youth justice practitioners are frontline workers trained in youth work, social care or similar disciplines who engage with referred young people to help reduce their offending behaviour. Building relationships with young people for crime diversion purposes accounts for a substantial proportion of youth justice practitioners’ time and taxpayers’ investment in Ireland. It has been argued that without the relationship between the youth justice practitioner and the young person, there is no intervention (DCYA, 2014). However, little is known about what constitutes effective relationship building in youth justice (Fullerton et al., 2021). As a result, policymakers and practitioners have not been able to fully understand the extent to which relationships can help divert young people from crime. In 2021, as a first step in understanding the ‘black box’ of relational practice, the Research Evidence into Policy, Programmes and Practice (REPPP) project in the School of Law, University of Limerick, published a systematic evidence review to present the international evidence regarding the development of effective relationships for youth crime diversion (Fullerton et al., 2021). The findings provided a summary of evidence relating to building and maintaining effective relationships between professionals and young people in youth justice settings. The review proposes that ‘the core skills involved in developing effective working relationships with young people include active listening, taking the time to get to know the young person, empathetic responding, advising, guiding, modelling pro-social behaviours and challenging ideas and behaviours in a non-threatening or judgemental manner’ (Fullerton et al., 2021, p. 8). The next step, and the substance of this paper, was to learn from youth justice practitioners working at the frontline with young people. Action research was used to more closely examine existing relational practice and then develop a new evidence-informed model and guidance. The new model is informed by international evidence from the systematic evidence review and a substantial reservoir of tacit knowledge shared by youth justice practitioners.

Manchester, UK: HM Inspectorate of Probation, 2025. 13p.

By Jamie J. Fader & Dijonée Talley

This policy brief brings together what is known about respect as a necessary element of justice contact for emerging adults. We examine the developmental role of respect in supporting healthy transitions to adulthood, the ways in which typical justice system operations undermine positive outcomes by building disrespect into the process, and highlight some innovative justice programs that are respect-centered. We conclude with suggestions for specific techniques for building respect into justice-related contacts with emerging adults. We believe that respect can be incorporated into any intervention or interaction to improve outcomes and support healthy transitions to adulthood. Honoring the human dignity of justice- involved emerging adults involves reframing their relationships with justice professionals working in all capacities.

New York: Columbia University Justice Lab, 2021. 30p.

By Lael Chester, Soraya Shri-Pathman, Maya Sussman

Emerging Adults Incarcerated on Rikers Island: An Overview raises concerns for emerging adults aged 18 to 25 and describes the harmful impacts they disproportionately face while being exposed to the violent environment of Rikers Island. Exposure to this neglect and violence during the transition to adulthood causes long-lasting trauma, hindering young people’s well being and impeding their healthy development. The report details the gross racial disparities present at the NYC jail complex and makes the following recommendations for the NYC Department of Correction to take immediately:

Expand the definition of “young adulthood” to include 18-25-year-olds;

Collect data on this distinct population and establish data transparency;

Invest in and use alternatives-to-incarceration courts and programs to stop detaining (and sentencing) emerging adults on Rikers; and

Remove all emerging adults from Rikers and follow other successful community-based models and those in alternative settings to implement more effective, developmentally appropriate responses to emerging adults.

New York: Columbia University Justice Lab, 2022. 17p.

By Noor Toraif and Lael E. H. Chester

In this report, we collate a set of promising practices to support the implementation of pre-arraignment diversion programs for emerging adults. Emerging adults are roughly between 18-25 years of age and are uniquely situated between the developmental stages of adolescence and mature adulthood. This stage of adolescence poses a variety of challenges, because it is developmentally appropriate for this age group to be impulsive thrill seekers who are highly susceptible to peer influence and are ill equipped to assess risk or potential long-term consequences. As a result, they are overrepresented in almost every activity that involves bad judgement, such as: car crashes, accidental drownings, unintended pregnancies, and illegal behavior. The fact that this age group is maturing physically, emotionally, socially, and neurologically also creates a unique opportunity for non-punitive interventions designed to promote better life outcomes for the individuals and safer, healthier communities for everyone. We identify some of the limitations of the criminal legal system’s traditional responses to undesirable behavior for emerging adults and then recommend the implementation of pre-arraignment diversion for emerging adults as an effective way to prevent further criminal legal system involvement by responsibly supporting positive youth development. In this report, we note the key differences between the juvenile and adult criminal legal systems - their goals, strategies, rules, procedures, and resources – and the fact that emerging adults are automatically excluded from the youth system, often limiting (if not eliminating) the opportunity to be diverted before arraignment in a developmentally appropriate manner. We begin this report by describing the distinct developmental stage of emerging adulthood (also referred to as transition age youth) and the need to implement developmentally appropriate responses within, and adjacent to, the criminal legal system. Next, we analyze how the developmental frameworks of Positive Youth Development and Positive Youth Justice can be used to guide and inform the supports and interventions necessary to nurture young people’s development, especially when designing and implementing pre-arraignment diversion programs for emerging adults. We assess and review examples of pre-arraignment diversion programs for emerging adults, noting that they are relatively rare. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, we identify 13 promising practices derived from the existing examples of, and research on, these programs:

New York: Columbia University Justice Lab, 2023. 34p.

By Timothy McCuddy, Owen Gallupe, Marleen Weulen Kranenbarg, Frank Weerman

The field of criminology has spent nearly a century investigating the link between peers and delinquency, but only recently turned its attention to the online peer context. We examine three ways online and offline peer delinquency are related to self reported delinquency. In theory, online peer delinquency may influence delinquent behavior independently of the influence from the physical presence of delinquent peers. Adolescents may also select online peers who are similar to their offline peers, and experiences online may contribute to being more receptive to offline peer influence. We use survey data from a longitudinal sample of middle and high school students in a large, metropolitan area, which includes measures of online peer support for delinquency and perceived delinquency of ofine peers. Employing path models, we find that perceiving to have offline delinquent peers is partly related to previous behavior but also to previous experiences with online friends. We also find that the measures of both offline and online peer delinquency are independently related to later self-reported delinquency, and online peer support for violence can enhance the apparent influence of offline violent peers. Overall, this study illustrates that research examining delinquent peer influence should also include online peer processes.

Journal of Developmental and Life-Course Criminology (2024) 10:573–600

By Kristin M. Lloyd, Brae Youn

Adolescence is marked by incredible change that impacts the life-course. One change that may have profound impacts is teen parenthood. Having access to emotional support may act as a protective factor that reduces negative outcomes, yet little is known about teen parents’ access to such support. Accordingly, using data from the Pathways to Desistance Study, the current study examines how becoming a teen parent changes the number of supportive adults this group had access to (diversity of support). Further, the current study examines the extent to which gender impacts the ability for justice involving youth to leverage support. Results indicate that justice system involved teen parents have access to fewer supportive persons after they become parents. The same is true for residential parents—those who lived with their child—and young mothers.

Journal of Developmental and Life-Course Criminology (2024) 10:550–572

By Pamela Quanrud, Leah Roemer, Nina Motazedi, Anne Holsinger, Tiana Herring

In 2005, in Roper v. Simmons, the United States Supreme Court held that the “Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments for­bid impo­si­tion of the death penal­ty on offend­ers who were under the age of eigh­teen when their crimes were com­mit­ted.” The deci­sion, after the exe­cu­tion of twen­ty-two peo­ple who com­mit­ted crimes under the age of 18 dur­ing the mod­ern death penal­ty era, marked the end of the juve­nile death penal­ty in the United States.

In Roper, Justice Anthony Kennedy drew on state trends in the treat­ment of young peo­ple, sci­en­tif­ic and med­ical stud­ies, and the peno­log­i­cal jus­ti­fi­ca­tions under­pin­ning cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment to sup­port the Court’s deci­sion that “today our soci­ety views juve­niles … as cat­e­gor­i­cal­ly less cul­pa­ble” than oth­er defen­dants. In doing so, Justice Kennedy acknowl­edged the inher­ent arbi­trari­ness in select­ing an age cut­off: “The qual­i­ties that dis­tin­guish juve­niles from adults do not dis­ap­pear when an indi­vid­ual turns 18,” he wrote, “[h]owever, a line must be drawn.”

Twenty years lat­er, the sci­en­tif­ic, pub­lic pol­i­cy, legal, and com­mon-sense ratio­nale that sup­port­ed the Roper deci­sion has become stronger in almost every respect — with one excep­tion. The Roper Court said age 18 was “the point where soci­ety draws the line for many pur­pos­es between child­hood and adult­hood.” Today, a grow­ing body of evi­dence now sug­gests that the line has been redrawn.

This report intro­duces new DPI analy­sis of the trends in sen­tenc­ing and exe­cu­tions of defen­dants age 18 to 20 based on twen­ty years of data, from the time of the Roper deci­sion on March 1, 2005 through the end of 2024.

Washington, DC: The Death Penalty Information Center, 2025. 75p.

By  Kathryn Fleisher,  Lisa Geller,  Spencer Cantrell,  and Josh Horwitz

The Indiana Jake Laird Law (JLL) Implementation Guide is designed for law enforcement officers, attorneys, judges, mental and behavioral health professionals, public health practitioners, suicide prevention and gun violence prevention advocates, and other stakeholders in Indiana to understand key concepts of the JLL. The JLL allows for the issuance of risk warrants, which are civil orders designed to prevent violence with firearms. Commonly known as extreme risk protection order (ERPO) or “red flag” law, the JLL is used to temporarily prohibit an individual for whom there is credible information to believe is at risk of harming themselves and/or others from purchasing or possessing firearms while the order is in effect, and allows law enforcement to temporarily seize and retain firearms under the law. In Indiana, only law enforcement agencies can petition for risk warrants under the JLL and are also the only entities that can serve court-issued warrants to remove a respondent’s firearm(s). Importantly, risk warrants are only one tool—albeit an important one—to prevent firearm violence before it occurs. The JLL is used with the intent of preventing mass shootings, suicides by firearm, and interpersonal gun violence.   

Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Violence Solutions. 2025. 26p.

By Cheryl Thomas KC (Chair), Kate Aubrey-Johnson, Sir Robert Buckland KC, Susana Castro-Kemp, Anne-Marie Day and Frank Grimsey Jones

An independent review into how the current system can fail to prevent children with special educational needs or disabilities (SEND) and neurodivergence from unnecessarily entering into the justice system, how they are dealt with once in the system, what happens when they leave the justice system and how this parlous situation can be cost-effectively dealt with and increase the likelihood that children with SEND or neurodivergence who commit crime go on to become well-functioning, law-abding adults.

London: Michael Sieff Foundation , 2025. 121p.

By Ella Armstrong

RECOMMENDATIONS Girls, along with their families, carers, and professionals, have highlighted critical changes needed to transform their experiences within these systems. Their recommendations call for a shift from punitive and stigmatising responses to approaches rooted in trauma-informed care, stability, and genuine empowerment. Girls emphasised the need for trust, time, and presence from professionals, highlighting that meaningful relationships are critical in preventing harm and promoting recovery. Increased professional training and awareness to ensure that those working with girls — particularly in Children’s Social Care and youth justice — understand gendered trauma and avoid reinforcing stigma. Address systemic biases, including adultification and criminalisation of girls in care, particularly for girls of colour, by embedding anti-racist and anti-discriminatory practice in all levels of policy and service provision. Ensure girls' voices are central to policy and decision-making, such as including girls with lived experience in the Girls’ Justice Board, as recommended in the Independent Review into Girls in Custody, to create meaningful change. 4 EXECUTIVE SUMMARY METHODS This report is based on qualitative research, including interviews with girls, caregivers, and professionals across youth work, Children’s Social Care, and the Youth Justice System. Testimonies were collected to highlight lived experiences, supported by a review of policy documents and existing literature on gender, youth justice, and social care. Statistical analysis was also incorporated to illustrate key trends in girls’ experiences and outcomes. FINDINGS Specialist gender-sensitive services are often unavailable due to limited resources, leaving girls without the tailored support they need. A lack of professional confidence and consistency in working with girls means responses are often punitive rather than trauma-informed, reinforcing stigma and disadvantage. Girls in contact with the Youth Justice System experience heightened criminalisation, often due to systemic biases, a lack of gender-sensitive support, and being mischaracterised as disruptive rather than in need of help. A cycle of disadvantage then persists, with girls more likely to experience abuse, mental health struggles, and exclusion from education, yet receive inadequate support. Adultification bias disproportionately affects girls of colour, and coupled with systemic racism, this leads to harsher interventions and fewer protective responses.

London: SHiFT, 2025. 26p.

By Chandra Childers

Efforts to continue exploiting Black workers led to racist anti-worker policies that continue to maintain high rates of poverty, low economic mobility, and high levels of inequality for workers of all racial and ethnic backgrounds in most Southern states.

Poverty rates across the South (12.4% in 2023) have been consistently higher than other regions (11% in the West and 9.8% in both the Northeast and Midwest).

Today, the Southern states in which slavery was most prevalent and where policymakers embraced the Southern economic development model have poverty rates above the national median, with the highest rates in Louisiana (18.9%) and Mississippi (18%).

Women (13.9%) have a higher poverty rate than men (10.4%), especially white men (8.3%). Hispanic (17.7%), AIAN (19.3%), and Black (19.9%) women have the highest poverty rates, with almost one-fifth falling below the poverty line.

At 18%, the South has the highest child poverty rate of all regions. Black children across the region have the highest poverty rate at 30.1%—almost three times the poverty rate for white children—followed by AIAN (24.4%) and Hispanic (24%) children.

Southern states have consistently shown lower levels of intergenerational mobility than other regions.

Why this matters

The Southern economic development model leaves many workers and families across the region struggling to provide for themselves and their families. They have less access to adequate nutrition, safe and stable housing, and fewer other sources of support to nurture the growth and development of their children. Many children and families in persistently high-poverty areas across the South will not have access to opportunities outside their neglected communities, further reducing the likelihood that their children will achieve economic prosperity.

How to fix it

Raising the minimum wage to a living wage, investing in communities, and strengthening the safety net to ensure that all Americans have access to safe, affordable housing, healthy food, and medical care can all help reduce poverty, especially child poverty, and increase economic mobility rates in states across the South.

Washington DC: Economic Policy Institute, 2025.

By Anna Piil Damm · Britt Østergaard Larsen · Helena Skyt Nielsen · Marianne Simonsen

Objectives The questions of when and how society should sanction juvenile offenders are subject to ongoing political and scientific debates. In this study, we use a policy reform that lowered the minimum age of criminal responsibility from 15 to 14 years for a 20-month period to investigate whether lower age limits of prosecution and conviction in the legal system affect juvenile crime. Methods In a quasi-experimental design, we compare monthly crime rates for cohorts of 14-year-olds before, during, and after the temporary reform while controlling for the downward trend in youth crime. We use population-wide administrative registers (N=162,959 individuals) to estimate individual-month panel data models as well as a range of robustness checks. Results We find no evidence that lowering the minimum age of criminal responsibility reduced the probability of committing crime among 14-year-olds. In fact, we observe an important increase in reported crimes during the reform, most evident among 14-year-olds with prior offending records. We find no reform effects on crime rates among 13-year-olds and 15-year-olds and the reported findings of no general deterrent effects are consistent across different crime types and robust to model specifications. Conclusions The age limits in the legal systems vary greatly across different jurisdictions and political discussions of when juvenile offenders should enter the criminal justice system are enduring. The findings from this study highlight important policy implications as the “tough-on-crime” motivated reform did not have the intended crime-reducing effects.

Journal of Quantitative Criminology , April 2025, 27p.

This paper combines ten years of idiosyncratic variation in school closure dates for all secondary schools in England with administrative records of educational and criminal trajectories linked at the individual level to study the impact of the school schedule on the dynamics of youth crime. When school is not in session, students commit more property offences, more serious violent offences and fewer minor violent offences. Thefts, robberies and violent assaults drive these effects. This is novel evidence of strong incapacitation effects from the protective factor of schooling which affects not only the incidence of violence, but also its severity. 

Discussion PaperNo. 2092   

London: The Centre for Economic Performance , London School of Economics, 2025.   

By Derek Miller, M.D.

Dr. Derek Miller graduated from our School of Psychiatry in 1954, and was on the staff of the C. F. Menninger Memorial Hospital for a time, where he did excellent work, especially with disturbed adolescent boys. When he and his wife returned to England, he began work at the Tavistock Clinic and served as a consultant to the Harts Training School, a “home-like residential institution or model therapeutic home,” to which boys were sent by the court after failures elsewhere. Gro'ivth to Freedom describes three years of this experiment, which in essence was to give these mostly homeless and unloved boys a place to live in which they would be taught, guided, counseled, but not punished. Dr. Miller gives many thumbnail illustrations of the process. A few of the boys were transferred to other institutions—hospitals, Borstal homes, or prisons—but the majority went on to social recovery. Statistics about such programs are always misleading. Who knows what “well” is here? Who can say what would have happened had these same boys been given some otner treatment? We know that other boys of somewhat similar types have done less well in nearly all the other available programs and places. The author gives figures, but no figures are as important as the spirit of the book, which shows what love and concern and dedication can do for boys who have never experienced it.

INDIANA UNIVERSITY PRESS, 1964, 248p.