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.

By Ben Sanders 

  The use of sport for development and peace (SDP) has grown rapidly in the 21st century, with sport being recognised as a means to contribute to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and other global priorities. This includes the use of sport-based approaches for positive youth development and to prevent and address risk factors linked to crime, violence and substance use, especially among vulnerable populations. As part of its efforts to support the implementation of the Doha Declaration (A/RES/70/174), in 2016 the United Nations Office on Drugs and (UNODC) launched a global youth crime prevention (YCP) initiative that aims to promote sports and sport-based learning as a tool to prevent crime and to effectively build the resilience of at-risk youth. By strengthening key life and social skills and enhancing normative knowledge on risks related to crime and substance use and their consequences, the initiative seeks to positively influence behaviour and attitudes of young people and prevent anti-social and risky behaviour. In this regard, UNODC worked with international experts to develop an evidence-informed, sport-based life skills training curriculum called Line Up Live Up to address risk factors associated with crime, violence and substance use, such as poor behavioural control, as well as to strengthen protective factors. The evidence was drawn from existing life skills programmes, including those reflected as impactful on preventing substance use as implemented in classroom settings (UNODC/WHO, 2018) and on preventing youth violence through cognitive, emotional, and social skills development (UNODC/WHO/ UNDP 2014). The Line Up Live Up curriculum includes a 10-session manual and additional materials to assist coaches, trainers, youth workers and others working with young people to deliver life skills training to male and female youth aged 13 – 18 years. In the context of the Line Up Live Up programme, “sport” is used as a generic term, “comprising sport for all, physical play, recreation, dance and organised, casual, competitive, traditional and indigenous sports and games in their diverse forms” (Kazan Action Plan, UNESCO 2017). An internal assessment of the Line Up Live Up programme, piloted by UNODC in 11 countries from 2017-2019, has been conducted. The assessment is based on quantitative and qualitative data collected from routine monitoring and evaluation (M&E) and selected process and impact assessments reports, including analysis of youth and trainer surveys, in-depth interviews, focus group discussions, observation, trainings and country reports. This paper aims to place key findings and lessons learned from the assessment of the Line Up Live Up pilot programme in the context of relevant research on the use of sport for youth violence and crime prevention, and to provide recommendations on the effective use of sport in this context. It is anticipated that the paper will help strengthen programming and the effective integration of sport programmes in crime prevention frameworks and interventions, as well as contribute to the broader analysis of the contribution of sport to the Sustainable Development Goals and violence and crime prevention in particular.   

Vienna:  United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) , 2020. 52p.  

By Kevin T. Wolff, Michael T. Baglivio, Joshua A. Lang

This study examined differences among youth in deep-end juvenile justice residential placement who did, and did not, present with co-occurring disorders. The prevalence of co-occurring mental health and substance use/abuse issues was found to be 19%, far lower than that of prior work. Researchers demonstrated more similarities than differences between youth with and without co-occurring disorders, both in terms of their criminal histories and the prevalence of their criminogenic needs. Additionally, the residential programs across Florida appear to provide treatment at similarly high levels of integrity, as measured by 1) matching treatment services to the highest three dynamic risk assessed criminogenic needs, 2) providing dosage of treatment at the number of contact hours and weeks of service provision as dictated by the SPEP assessment, and 3) providing high quality treatment as per FDJJ’s operationalization of SPEP treatment quality. Importantly, while treatment provision occurred uniformly, youth with co-occurring disorders do not appear to benefit as equally well from treatment matching to assessed needs, though such matching was certainly beneficial for such youth. Additionally, the recidivism rates were substantively identical between youth with and without co-occurring disorders, indicating (as they presented with similar criminogenic needs and criminal history) youth with co-occurring disorders may not be expected to pose higher risk to public safety or likelihood of reentering the justice system.

New York: John Jay College of Criminal Justice, 2024. 96p.

By Trudy van der Stouwe, Jeanne Gubbels, Yvonne L. Castenmiller, Marion van der Zouwen, Jessica J. Asscher, Machteld Hoeve, Peter H. van der Laan & Geert Jan J. M. Stams

Objectives

To examine the effectiveness of social skills training (SST) for juvenile offenders and for whom and under which conditions SSTs are the most effective.

Methods

Multilevel meta-analyses were conducted to examine the effectiveness of juvenile offender SST compared to no/placebo treatment and alternative treatment on offending, externalizing problems, social skills, and internalizing problems.

Results

Beneficial effects were only found for offending and social skills compared to no/placebo treatment. Compared to alternative treatment, small effects on only reoffending were found. Moderator analyses yielded larger effects on offending, with larger post-treatment effects on social skills. Effects on externalizing behavior were only reported in the USA, and effects on social skills were larger when the outcomes were reported through self-report.

Conclusions

SST may be a too generic treatment approach to reduce juvenile delinquency, because dynamic risk factors for juvenile offending are only partially targeted in SST.

J Exp Criminol 17, 369–396 (2021).

By The The Social Current Organization

This document provides a background and overview of the Child Safety First Michigan (CSFMI) initiative, which involved the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services (MDHHS) in coordination with the Michigan Public Health Institute (MPHI). The final report provides details of the CSFMI initiative from the 15-month planning phase; followed by the implementation phase which began in January 2021, and involved the safety planning workgroup to assist with the implementation of activities. The workgroup’s overall goal was to identify areas of practice or policy change to support child welfare professionals’ capacity to engage families and support their immediate safety needs. The document provides a discussion of lessons learned throughout the initiative, which include issues with framing child abuse and neglect to better inform public thinking, as well as roadblocks that arose from the implementation of changes to practice, among other lessons; the document notes that overcoming implementation roadblocks requires additional action and commitment by a variety of partners over time.

Social Current Organization, 2023. 31p.

By Claire Ely

BACKGROUND: From October 2020 to January 2023 the Youth Justice Board (YJB) undertook a two-year project to better understand prevention and diversion practice and its funding arrangements. Key findings from this project concluded that: youth justice services (YJSs) reported that they deliver a significant amount of prevention and diversion work that is not formally captured in any standardised way; and, the benefits of partnerships and shared visions with other services, including police, health, education, children’s services, courts and wider partners, were consistently highlighted by YJSs and wider justice stakeholders as being essential for effective prevention and diversion. The YJB also found that prevention and diversion practice: ‘is leading to positive outcomes for children. The most common data source to measure prevention and diversion is first time entrants. YJSs provided local data that the work is supporting reductions in first time entrant rates and leading to improvements in children’s lives.’2 However, diversion practice is varied and inconsistent. YJSs feel that children are, in some cases, being unnecessarily criminalised due to differing eligibility criteria for access to services and differing responses to offences, including varied application of the use of No Further Action - Outcome 22. There is also a lack of national and local oversight and governance of prevention and diversion work which needs to be enhanced to improve the evidence-base surrounding current practice. Purpose of the paper There are a number of bodies and organisations that oversee, monitor and scrutinise the delivery of services in the criminal justice system. This paper will focus on how two bodies inspect the work that YJSs and the police undertake with children who receive diversion or an out of court disposal (OOCD), soon to be called out of court resolutions. The bodies responsible for inspecting these agencies are: His Majesty’s Inspectorate of Probation (HMIP) and His Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire & Rescue Services (HMICFRS). Each of these bodies play an important role in ensuring that YJSs and the police are working with children in a safe and effective way. However, there are considerable differences between the various standards, inspection frameworks and data collection approaches required by YJSs and the police, and not all have a specific focus on diversion and OOCDs, or even children who offend generally. Practitioners tell us that this means they often find themselves confused by what is expected of them, with their practice endorsed by one inspectorate, yet criticised or not inspected by another. This paper forms part of the Youth Endowment Fund’s work to provide guidance to local leaders on evidence-led diversion. It aims to do the following: 1. Provide an overview of the national inspection frameworks (including joint inspections) that currently exist to monitor the delivery of diversion work undertaken by YJSs and the police. 2. Summarise findings and recommendations from recent inspection reports. 3. Outline recommendations for improvements regarding the types of inspections and how these are undertaken as suggested by police, YJS practitioners and inspectors.

London: Centre for Justice Innovation, 2025. 20p.

By Queensland Family and Child Commission

This report is an Examination Review conducted by the Queensland Family and Child Commission (QFCC). The Review adopts a mixed methods approach to determine whether available supports and processes are addressing the needs of children and families, and diverting young people from reoffending behaviour. This report provides important insights and perspectives from young people, families and workers on a topic that continues to be the subject of extensive public discussion and debate and has been the subject of significant legislative and funding attention by the Queensland Government. It was informed by the experiences of 66 young people with recent experience of being released from youth detention. It also includes the advice and views of 44 frontline workers across Queensland from community-controlled organisations, government programs, youth justice service centres, youth detention centres and non-government organisations, and six family members.

Recommendation 1: The Queensland Government fund and deliver a dedicated 12-month post-detention transition program that incorporates in-home family interventions and effective engagement in education, training and employment. Entry to this program should commence as part of case management of every young person as soon as they enter detention and should prioritise both their, and their family’s direct participation. Program delivery must incorporate family and community participation that seeks to address criminogenic causes in the young person’s life that commences prior to their release from custody.

Recommendation 2: The post-detention transition program developed under Recommendation 1 should form part of a broader approach by the Queensland Government to target investment in a developmental approach to crime prevention. Programs and services developed as part of such investment must address risk factors and promote protective factors associated with youth crime. At a minimum these should tackle the known factors associated with involvement in the youth justice system (family dysfunction, domestic and family violence, drug and alcohol use, education disengagement, mental health issues, housing instability and poverty), and should promote continuity of support and of relationships with key individuals whether the young person is in custody or in the community. This will require a coordinated and focussed, whole-of-government approach that draws on, and integrates existing housing, employment, health, education, mental health, justice and federally commissioned programs.

Brisbane: Queensland Family and Child Commission 2024. 102p.

By Curtis Smith IV, Laura Whitaker, Stephanie Brooks Holliday

The overrepresentation of queer youth in the juvenile justice system in Los Angeles County underscores the need for tailored service strategies to meet this population's needs. However, given the lack of concrete guidance within the Juvenile Justice Crime Prevention Act's (JJCPA's) Comprehensive Multi-Agency Juvenile Justice Plan, JJCPA-funded programs may require additional guidance on how to best achieve this goal. Staff members of these programs often have competing priorities and may find it challenging to find practical information to guide their services.

In this report, the authors summarize the peer-reviewed literature related to queer at-promise and juvenile justice-involved youth to present a high-level summary of the pathways through which these youth enter the juvenile justice system, the common issues that they experience while in the system, the needs that practitioners should be aware of when serving these youth, and potential strategies to better support queer youth when providing services.

The authors go on to describe the existing challenges and practices that JJCPA-funded programs experience when aiming to serve queer youth. The authors then draw on the expertise of local organizations that serve queer youth who intersect with the juvenile justice system and identify practical solutions to enhancing care for these youth.

Key Findings

• Queer youth who are at-promise (i.e., experiencing factors that place them at risk for involvement in the juvenile justice system) and those involved in the juvenile justice system often experience various forms of adversity, such as parental rejection, houselessness, dual-system involvement, school discrimination, mental health challenges, and criminal justice system discrimination.

• Staff of programs funded by the JJCPA in Los Angeles County are interested in meeting the needs of queer youth; however, they may feel unprepared to do so.

• Key informants from queer-serving organizations suggest that JJCPA-funded programs serving queer youth should foster a safe and affirming environment, integrate school and family systems, consider youths' intersectionality, and implement collaborative care models.

Recommendations

• JJCPA-funded programs should develop partnerships with queer organizations to support at-promise and justice-involved youth with clear goals and transparency about such needs as training or consultation.

• JJCPA-funded programs should build lasting relationships through coaching partnerships for sustained impact, facilitating collaborative workshops, and integrating partnerships into staff onboarding and training.

• JJCPA-funded programs should integrate queer identity into services while considering other identity aspects and broader needs.

• JJCPA-funded programs should adjust approaches based on diverse identities, ensuring that resources and services are available.

• JJCPA-funded programs should offer queer-specific services when needed, using various modalities, such as virtual options.

• JJCPA-funded programs should evaluate and integrate inclusive policies, ensuring that such policies are communicated and reinforced with staff.

• JJCPA-funded programs should document policies for accessibility, detailing application, evaluation, and consequences to emphasize their commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion.

• JJCPA-funded programs should ensure that staff reflect and support the needs of queer youth through diverse representation and expertise.

• JJCPA-funded programs should increase queer representation among staff to create safe spaces and connect with relevant resources.

• JJCPA-funded programs should use staff to coordinate services across systems, considering the diverse needs of queer youth.

Santa Monica, CA: RAND, 2025, 33p.

By Laura Whitaker, Sarita D. Lee, Aarya Suryavanshi, Sierra Smucker, Tara Laila Blagg, Marylou Gilbert, Susan Turner, Dionne Barnes-Proby, Stephanie Brooks Holliday

The Juvenile Justice Crime Prevention Act (JJCPA), administered by the California Board of State and Community Corrections, provides funding to counties to support programs that have proved their effectiveness in curbing crime among at-promise youth (those at risk of justice-system involvement) and youth already involved in the juvenile justice system. In Los Angeles County, the Probation Department oversees the implementation of JJCPA-funded programs, which are approved by the county through the Juvenile Justice Coordinating Council.

In 2019, the Probation Department selected RAND to provide evaluation services related to JJCPA-funded programs. In this report, the authors present findings from the process and outcome evaluation of two court-based programs for youth with significant clinical needs, including mental health diagnoses and developmental disabilities: the Client Assessment Recommendation and Evaluation (CARE) Project and the juvenile mental health court (JMHC). Findings will be of interest to Los Angeles County stakeholders, including program staff, Probation Department staff, and members of the Juvenile Justice Coordinating Council, and to agencies in other locations that are interested in implementing programs of this nature.

Key Findings

Both the CARE Project and JMHC staff cited staffing limitations as a challenge

CARE and JMHC serve youth with a high level of needs, and both reported increasing severity of youth needs within the programs.

Program staff reported having high caseloads, leading to overworked staff and concerns about serving enough youth or serving their cases as effectively as possible.

Both programs aim to connect youth with needed services, and one major challenge is an insufficient number of suitable community-based resources, programs, or placements

Although this shortfall directly affects the work of both programs, it is beyond the control of the programs themselves to make needed changes.

Agency coordination is also a challenge, and highly cooperative partnership and buy-in from agency leaders will be necessary to facilitate improvements.

Despite challenges, staff reported several facilitators of program implementation, particularly the quality of staff in both programs

Staff were very motivated to achieve successful outcomes for youth and described their colleagues as highly effective.

Staff from both programs report strong perceptions of effectiveness

Staff noted the large proportion of youth involved in the juvenile justice system in Los Angeles County who have significant clinical needs and the importance of programs such as CARE and JMHC to provide rehabilitation.

Recommendations

Both CARE and JMHC should increase the number of staff.

CARE should consider adding new types of staff (e.g., paralegal, case manager) to assist with CARE staff workloads.

Both programs should prioritize the process by which youth transition from juvenile halls and camps to the community.

JMHC should be expanded to other courts in the county.

Both programs should implement both equity training and tracking for equity.

The programs should develop a system for the inclusion of youth and caregiver input in the evaluation.

The programs should improve the availability of data to assess program effectiveness.

Santa Monica, CA: RAND, 2024, 61p.

By Laura Whitaker, Alexandra Mendoza-Graf, Tara Laila Blagg, Curtis Smith IV, Nastassia Reed, Sierra Smucker, Aarya Suryavanshi, Susan Turner, Stephanie Brooks Holliday

At-promise youth, who are youth at risk of becoming involved with the juvenile justice system, are often most at risk of engaging in dangerous or delinquent behavior after school hours, in the evenings, and on weekends. Living in an unsafe community, particularly a community with gang and drug activity, exacerbates these risks. How, then, can local governments help at-promise youth minimize these risks while giving youth opportunities to thrive?

The Juvenile Justice Crime Prevention Act (JJCPA) provides counties with funding to support programs that have proven their effectiveness in curbing crime among at-promise youth and youth currently involved in the juvenile justice system. In Los Angeles County, JJCPA funding supports several programs that work with at-promise youth and focus on mitigating the aforementioned risks.

In this report, the authors present their evaluation of JJCPA-funded programs operated by five departments or agencies in Los Angeles County or the City of Los Angeles. The authors interviewed staff members from each of the programs and reviewed program data from 2019 through 2023 to identify facilitators and barriers to program implementation. Part of a series of evaluation reports for JJCPA-funded programs in the Los Angeles area, this report presents findings and recommendations for the programs of interest.

Key Findings

The evaluated programs make programming available after school, in the evenings, and on weekends, and programming primarily occurs in public parks or public housing complexes.

The programs provide mentorship, skill building, and access to resources and activities that youth might not otherwise have.

The programs largely serve Black and Hispanic youth ages ten to 18 who live in disadvantaged neighborhoods or neighborhoods with high levels of gang or other illegal activity.

Many factors have facilitated the programs' implementation, such as structured programming frameworks, program staff's ability to tailor services to youth's needs and interests, and many staff members' personal connection to the local communities that they serve.

Program staff also face several implementation challenges: limited funding and staffing shortages; difficulties engaging with youth, safely transporting youth to the programs, and building trust with youth; and a lack of services that better address the needs of the marginalized youth that programs serve.

Recommendations

Provide additional and flexible funding to support new activities or allow programs to address logistical barriers to youth participation, such as a lack of transportation to program sites.

Additional funding could allow programs to add more staff capacity by increasing the number of staff in existing positions or creating new roles (e.g., a case manager).

Hiring staff from the local communities the programs serve would improve client and community engagement. Programs should also ensure that staff have sufficient access to professional-development opportunities and training.

Programs should tailor or augment the programming to meet the diverse local population's needs, such as by translating program materials in languages besides English and hiring staff members who speak those other languages.

Programs looking to improve on their existing data collection can consult the JJCPA data collection toolkit, which RAND developed specifically to support programs in collecting data relevant to an evaluation.

Santa Monica, CA: RAND, 2025, 75p.

By The Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe

To evade prosecution, organized crime groups are increasingly targeting recruitment efforts towards young people under the age of criminal liability. The COVID-19 pandemic and security developments across the OSCE area exacerbated socio-economic vulnerabilities and risk factors, making young people more susceptible to being recruited into criminal networks and activities. This can put them on a path to long-term criminality, with significant consequences for themselves, victims, criminal justice systems and society as a whole. Research shows that by the age of 25, a single “multiple offender” has had – on average – 100 victims and generated EUR 1.7 million in social follow-up costs.1 Investing in effective youth crime prevention and strengthening youth resilience from an early age therefore have major economic and societal benefits, and contribute to good governance and the rule of law. This report builds on the OSCE’s longstanding focus on youth development and crime prevention, emphasizing the need for targeted strategies to mitigate vulnerabilities. The OSCE’s commitment to promoting the role and inclusion of youth in its security agenda dates back to its founding document, the Helsinki Final Act, and has been strengthened though many subsequent OSCE decisions. The OSCE’s mandate in combating organized crime underscores prevention as a key approach, as reaffirmed in the 2020 Tirana Declaration, which calls for a multi-stakeholder and gender-sensitive response.

Prague: OSCE, 2025. 57p.

By Janine Boshoff,  Stephen J. Machin and Matteo Sandi

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.

 CESifo Working Paper No. 11812, Munich: CESifo, 2025. 28p.

By Marcy Mistrett and Mariana Espinoza

At the turn of the 21st century, it was estimated that 250,000 children every year were charged as adults in the United States. By 2019, that number had dropped 80% to 53,000. This drop is to be celebrated and is the result of legislative changes in 44 states and the District of Columbia, as well as federal funding incentives. However, there is still much work to be done.

The children that remain exposed to the adult criminal legal system are overwhelmingly youth of color. The vast majority serve short sentences in adult jail or prison and return home by their 21st birthdays, the age at which services can be extended to in the youth justice system in the vast majority of states; indicating that many youth could be served, more appropriately, by the youth justice system.

This brief reviews the history, harms, pathways and trends that treat children as if they were adults.

Washington, DC: The Sentencing Project, 2022. 10p.