By Jasmine J. Jackson, Amber Nogelmeier, and Erica Bower, with assistance from Valerie Meade and Amanda Coscia

The intended purpose of the youth justice system is to maintain public safety by balancing accountability with rehabilitation and provide youth with opportunities that foster positive development and long-lasting behavior change. Over the past two decades, youth justice systems across the country have shifted their approach, embracing community-based alternatives to more costly, harmful, and unavailing carceral responses to youth behavior. Increasingly, leaders recognize effective, evidence-based approaches to minimize justice system exposure by diverting young people from formal system involvement when possible, limiting out-of-home placement to only the most serious cases, and connecting young people

with resources, services, and supports in their own communities. To enhance staff-client interactions and reduce a youth’s likelihood to re-offend, youth-serving systems are leveraging research to incorporate evidence-based and data-driven practices into every aspect of the system. When used effectively, these practices establish the foundation for improving long-term success for the youth they serve. Using individualized approaches informed by research on adolescent development, tailored to a youth’s identified needs, emphasizing strengths, and holistically involving their family and community, as well as holding youth accountable in developmentally appropriate manners fosters a young person’s growth, and creates opportunities for positive behavior change. To effectively make this shift, youth justice systems are taking a comprehensive look at their policies, practices, and data to gain a better understanding of the youth being served and the impact of the various system responses. That information is then utilized to inform policy changes, training needs, and strategies for system improvement. Shelby County is Tennessee’s largest county in population and size. Its county seat, the City of Memphis, is the second most populated city, behind Nashville. According to the 2022 Census figures, the population estimate of Shelby County is 926,440 people,8 while Memphis makes up approximately 68 percent of the County’s population.9 The largest racial group, representing just over half of the population in Shelby County, is Black or African Introduction Background American (54%), followed by white (37%).10 Almost 25 percent of the population in Shelby County is under 18 years of age,11 with nearly 24 percent of the children in this age group living in households with incomes below the poverty level, higher than the percentage of children in poverty overall in Tennessee.12 During the last decade (2012 to 2022), Shelby County was among Tennessee’s 10 counties that saw the largest declines in the overall crime rate for youth under age 18, but the current rate is still higher than the Tennessee crime rate for the same group.13 In 2022, 3,301 Shelby County children ages 10 to 17 were referred to court for delinquent, status, and / or unruly offenses.14 According to the most up-to-date figures, the rate at which Black or African American children under the age of 18 were brought into court for the same offenses was significantly higher than the rate for white youth.15 It should be noted that the 2020 rate for Black or African American youth brought into court in JCMSC was 19.1 per 1,000 youth, while the rate for white youth was 6.1 from the same population. The mission of the Juvenile Court of Memphis and Shelby County (JCMSC) is to provide interventions that result in positive outcomes for families and children, by addressing family matters with dignity and respect, and when necessary, holding youth accountable in developmentally appropriate ways.16 In August 2022, after nearly a decade of his predecessor’s leadership, the Honorable Judge Tarik B. Sugarmon was elected to serve as the new juvenile court judge. A transition team was established to support Judge Sugarmon, his leadership staff, and their goals of having a more data-driven, trauma-informed court. To further support this transition, JCMSC established an implementation team (a subgroup of the transition team) and solicited the Crime and Justice Institute (CJI) for assistance. In October 2023, JCMSC requested CJI to conduct a comprehensive system assessment of their Court Services Division which encompasses the following Bureaus: Children’s Services, Youth Services, Evaluation and Referral, and Detention Services as well as the Youth Court Program. The Court Services Division serves the community by working with children under the age of 18 who are court-involved and alleged to be delinquent, unruly, and/or dependent and neglected. The purpose of this system assessment is to understand the Court Services Division’s current

practices, the impact of those practices, and inform recommendations for court improvement, as well as implementation strategies for meeting JCMSC’s mission and improving outcomes for justice-involved youth in Memphis and Shelby County. At the time of the system assessment, Shelby County Sheriff’s Office provided oversight to Detention Services; therefore, limited analysis was completed as it pertains to the interworking of this Bureau. System Assessment To better determine where the Court Services Division should focus its improvement efforts, CJI used a systematic, multi-pronged approach to perform a system assessment, including a qualitative assessment and quantitative data analysis. This process allowed CJI to thoroughly evaluate the Court Services Division’s policies and practices and their impact on outcomes relevant to the youth justice population, thus helping inform research-based considerations for system improvement in court processes, data collection practices, and supervision practices. The following sections describe CJI’s system assessment methodology.

Boston: Crime and Justice Institute, 2024. 52p.

By The City of New York Department of Investigation

This report examines the impact of Raise the Age (“RTA”) legislation and Bail Reform on the City Administration for Children’s Services’ (“ACS”) two juvenile detention centers: Horizon Juvenile Center in the Bronx and Crossroads Juvenile Center in Brooklyn, operated by ACS’s

Division of Youth and Family Justice (“DYFJ”). The Report explains that these legislative changes pose significant challenges for these juvenile facilities, including managing an older population facing more serious and violent charges; and describes some of the specific incidents that have occurred at Horizon and Crossroads that demonstrate the safety risks to both residents and staff. The Report also explores key issues that include a troubling pattern of resident misconduct, criminal activity and lack of staff control over the facilities since the implementation of RTA and Bail Reform, as well as deficiencies in the behavior management systems ACS uses. DOI issued 15 recommendations to ACS in key areas including behavior management and disciplinary systems in the facilities, and staff training. ACS has accepted seven of these recommendations, two have been already implemented; five are either partially accepted or partially implemented; and three recommendations were declined.

The Report examines three main areas of concern: 1: STRIVE – A Behavioral Management Tool Used by ACS STRIVE, which stands for Safety, Teamwork, Respect, Integrity, Values, and Engagement, is a tool used to manage and document resident behavior and maintain a safe environment. DOI determined that STRIVE is inadequate to deter behaviors such as youth-on-staff assaults, security breaches, and contraband possession. DOI also found flaws in the daily management of STRIVE documentation. 2: Safe Crisis Management When violence or misconduct occurs within the facilities, ACS seeks to restore order and maintain the safety of youth and staff in detention using the least intrusive and least restrictive intervention necessary. In response to an incident, staff employ Safe Crisis Management (“SCM”), a comprehensive crisis intervention behavior management system that promotes non-physical intervention. Based on DOI’s SCM training observations, as well as the incidents and discussions with staff described in the Report, DOI concludes SCM is insufficient to maintain order in the facility. 3: Staffing Challenges With the increase in the number of residents in juvenile detention facilities, ACS has worked to increase the number of YDS who are part of a team of direct care staff at the facilities. Despite this effort, staffing issues continue. DOI’s investigation indicated an urgent need for additional hires and better working conditions at both facilities, as under-staffing poses a significant challenge to order, morale, and safety. Staffing challenges are also due in part to the relatively high number of YDS who are unable to work as a result of an injury sustained on the job, resulting in a Workers’ Compensation claim. During this investigation, DOI also heard concerns from staff about a lack of control over resident behavior and a lack of support from DYFJ management. Nearly every staff member with whom DOI spoke consistently stated, in substance, that ACS was ill-prepared for the new demographics of the RTA population, particularly the residents’ age, physical size, and violent criminal history. Staff members have asserted that now, some five years later, ACS remains unable to properly assess and handle the RTA population. Staff consistently cited a lack of physical safety for staff and residents, facilities controlled by residents rather than by staff, a lack of consequences for violent behavior and a lack of support from facility and DYFJ management.

New York: The City of New York Department of Investigation , 2024. 75p.

By Haley Walker,

This article explores the intersect between mentally ill youth and the juvenile justice system. Mentally ill youth are disproportionately represented at every stage in the juvenile justice system due to their symptoms being mistaken for delinquent behavior. This stems from the legislators

reforming the juvenile justice system from rehabilitative to punitive over the years in an attempt to hold delinquent youth accountable for their actions. Federal statutes have been enacted and federally funded programs have been implemented that seek to address the mental health crisis in today’s youth and keep mentally ill youth out of the juvenile justice system. This article discusses the goals, regulations, and guidelines set forth by these statutes and programs along with the shortcomings that are faced when they are actually put into practice. This article then gives suggestions to improve these statutes and programs based on current research that has proven to be successful

22(2) Marq. Ben & Soc. Welfare L. Rev. 147 (Spring 2021)

By Dewan, Fathima

School-based violence is of major concern in the South African schooling system, particularly in secondary schools. School-based violence has a negative impact on the physical, social, cognitive and emotional well-being of learners and teachers. To compound matters, family and community environment also play a role in escalating school violence. There is a need to develop interventions that are evidence-based and developmental in nature to address the issue of reducing school-based violence. Youth empowerment can be used as a helpful strategy to address the issue of school-based violence. This scholarly book focuses on using the framework of youth empowerment to address the issue of school-based violence. Through sound research, the author proposes that schools should involve learners in decision-making around school policies and design strategies to address school violence to create safer schools and a better school climate. The author further posits using key aspects of youth empowerment in school violence campaigns and programmes to increase youth motivation to collectively influence changes within their school through a process of shared decision-making, collective vision, and partnership with young people.

Cape Town: Avarsity Books, 2024. 218p.

By Stephen Case , Kathy Hampson and Andrea Nisbet

This Child First research project was commissioned by the Nuffield Foundation to gain a greater understanding of what children think about their collaboration in youth justice decision-making processes. Participation and engagement of children in youth justice processes and practice is vital, particularly since the Youth Justice Board’s adoption of Child First justice as its guiding principle and key strategic objective. Child First is an evidence-based framework for working with children incorporating four tenets: see children as children; develop pro-social identity for positive child outcomes; collaboration with children and promoting diversion away from the justice system. The focus for this project is the third tenet, ‘collaboration with children’. Purpose Children’s voices have traditionally been neglected within youth justice policy, practice and research, which have mainly been undertaken and developed by adults for adults. Consequently this project sought to readdress this imbalance with its child-focus of facilitating children to share their genuine perspectives and experiences of their involvement in decision-making processes. The study explored children’s collaboration in decisions affecting them at allstages of the Youth Justice System and focused on four interconnected research questions relating to: collaboration understandings, collaboration objectives, collaboration effectiveness and collaboration practise development. Methodology The qualitative methodological framework of Participatory Interpretivism was chosen, which prioritises coconstructing the research with justice-involved children to ensure child-centric, Child First, co-creation of all research elements. Two different sample groups of justice-involved children were identified from a range of community and custodial settings, in order to address the research questions through participatory and cocreated methods and analyses: Project Reference Group (PRG) of justice-experienced children (n= 22) collaborating together with researchers throughout the life of the project to co-create the project design (including exploring creative methods), implementation processes and interpretation of findings, recruited from one hosting Youth Justice Service (YJS). Research Participant Children (n = 66) recruited from six geographically and institutionally diverse research sites to take part in system journey interviews and complete digital/paper diaries for reflecting on involvement within- and between-stages

of the Youth Justice System (3 x youth justice services, 2 x youth offending institutions and 1 x secure children’s home).

Summary of Findings and Discussion Findings provided a rich description and interpretation of children’s views from the PRG sessions and interviews undertaken with participant children at the research fieldwork sites. PRG session observations highlighted the development of the project methodology throughout the fieldwork to: ✓ ensure child-friendly, child appropriate ways of communicating with children about the research concepts and questions ✓ trial creative activities/methods to neutralise power dynamics and encourage engagement ✓ interpret research findings from the participant sample to provide an opportunity for children to discuss, challenge and validate emerging themes and sub-themes ✓ disseminate research findings – children chose a pre-recorded rap backing track and, using quotes from participants and their own words, recorded a full rap song in a professional studio. Participant children sample findings in relation to the research questions: ✓ identified what children considered to be the essential elements of ‘collaboration’, summarised as being encouraged to engage in respectful conversations, being spoken to appropriately, being provided with clear information and having their views considered and taken into account ✓ revealed that children wanted professionals to ask them about their aspirations, listen to what they were saying and offer support to help them to achieve their goals so they could move forward with their life ✓ indicated that effective collaboration practice needs to be based around building authentic, positive, nonhierarchical relationships with professionals who cared about them, in a comfortable environment, to facilitate the development of effective and relevant support ✓ identified the main areas for practice development which they believed would improve Child First practice as: o wanting professionals to listen to children and their ideas for improvement o acknowledging and breaking down power imbalances by creating child-friendly environments o keeping children continually informed throughout their involvement with youth justice agencies o involving children in decision

trategic and practice levels to benefit their experience and improve outcomes across the whole of the Youth Justice System. Furthermore, findings revealed that children’s experiences of Child First collaboration practice are inconsistent, with some parts of the Youth Justice System better than others. For YJSs, collaboration experiences were generally positive; within custody, it varied depending on the establishment and incentive scheme level; whilst interactions and engagement with the police, courts and children’s social care services were mostly negative. A discussion of the findings provides an overview of the main themes/sub-themes developed and an exploration of how they consolidate and extend existing knowledge related to children's collaboration and youth justice decision making and children's views of effective youth justice collaboration practice.

Loughborough, UK: Loughborough University. 2024. 130p.

By Emily Mooney

Children are uniquely risk-loving, adaptive and vulnerable to outside influences. Their minds and bodies are still developing, and their identity has yet to be firmly defined. For these reasons, they are traditionally considered less culpable for poor decisions than adults and are more capable of behavior change as they mature. As one saying goes: “It is easier to build strong children than to repair broken men.” Yet, while our society broadly recognizes this truth—we mandate education, for example, and have a different system of justice for the young—we sometimes forget it when crafting policy. In Maryland, there is no clearer example of this than when youth are automatically charged in the adult system. Accordingly, this brief provides an overview of the current context of this issue in Maryland, as well as a short argument against the practice, and concludes with policy recommendations that can encourage positive change.

R STREET SHORTS NO. 76 October 2019

Washington, DC: R Street, 2019. .5p.

By Nila Bala and Emily Mooney  

The youth justice system in the United States is rightly shrinking. And yet, the historic disproportionality between white youth and youth of color in the system remains. Indeed, when it comes to the arrest rate of youth of color relative to that of white youth, the gap has actually widened over time. For this reason, more reform is needed to further limit youth involvement in the justice system overall and to ensure that those of all racial and ethnic backgrounds are held accountable in the most equitable manner possible. For this reason, Congress closed 2018 with the reauthorization of the Juvenile Justice Delinquency Prevention Act  (JJDPA), a key piece of juvenile justice policy. One of its provisions guides states and localities to locate and address racial and ethnic disparities (RED) in the juvenile justice system, which according to the law, occur when: “Minority youth populations are involved at a decision point in the juvenile justice system at disproportionately higher rates than non-minority youth at that decision point.”5 Too often, the issue of addressing racial disproportionality in the juvenile justice system has become a partisan issue. But, the problem should concern us all, as it can directly affect the rule of law and procedural justice, and can undermine the efficacy of the system’s responses. Furthermore, disparities in how youth are treated at the beginning can compound into disparities further down the line, such as ultimate commitment to the juvenile justice system. And moreover, reforms to the juvenile justice system will not be meaningful unless we address the reasons youth of color are disproportionately involved in the system today and often face harsher outcomes. While RED can occur at many decision points in the system, a useful place to focus our attention is at the point of diversion. As shown by developmental research, many youth who make poor decisions today will naturally grow out of these patterns as they age. Given this reality and the potential negative effects of system involvement,8 diversion from the juvenile justice system altogether can be an effective solution both to reduce juvenile system involvement overall and to promote racial and ethnic equity. Indeed, even those who have committed more “serious” offenses can benefit from diversion.9 Accordingly, the present study will first consider diversion and its overall goals, and how—when best practices are followed—it can be an intervention that supports individual dignity, limited government and the preservation of community. It will then address the need to promote racial and ethnic equity and identify a few causes of disparities at the point of diversion. And finally, it concludes with policy solutions that aim to promote equity and the proper use of diversion. 

R STREET POLICY STUDY NO. 178 July 2019 

Washington, DC: R Street, 2019. 8p.

By Lars Trautman

The success or failure of our criminal justice system hinges in large part on the quality and capabilities of the prosecutors operating within it. If they wield the powers of their office with precision, restraint and competence, they have the potential to right wrongs and even redress inequitable outcomes created elsewhere in the system. On the other hand, if they are unable to live up to the burdens of the office, incarcerated populations can swell and undeserving individuals can be unnecessarily tarred with a criminal record. Increasing prosecutorial capacity and effectiveness should therefore be of paramount concern, yet all too often, prosecutors must labor under far from ideal conditions. A typical prosecutor operates under a crushing caseload and in an information vacuum. She is expected to find effective and equitable justice for hundreds or thousands of cases a year, despite having little-to-no information on which prosecutorial recommendations have proven successful in the past or how her peers have treated similarly situated defendants. Likewise, her bosses may not only share her ignorance on prosecutorial performance and outcomes but must also consider how the average prosecution fits in with larger issues like community relations and how the office should respond to structural inequities such as unequal arrest rates. These demands and pressures can be aggravated in many prosecutor’s offices by a continued reliance on paper files and gut-level decisions rather than digital information and statistically sound policies. Often, prosecutorial offices have neglected to develop strong data due to a lack of resources and buy-in from prosecutors. Whereas the costs of new data investments are easily tallied, the benefits can be more difficult to identify and measure. The problem is also exacerbated by the healthy dose of skepticism with which many prosecutors view data. One study, for example, found that line prosecutors—the individuals actually prosecuting cases—overwhelmingly remain wary of data. They believe that it will either highlight issues over which they have no control, or worse, be taken out of context to pillory them and make their jobs even harder. Given the incredible power of prosecutors and the plethora of problems afflicting our justice system, this reticence is a shortcoming we cannot afford to ignore. Accordingly, the present study will address how data can be harnessed as a tool to reveal the extent of, and then help mitigate, many of the challenges facing prosecutors in their pursuit of justice. It will highlight promising existing programs and strategies as well as suggest how these efforts could be expanded in the future for even greater gains. It will conclude with a short argument in favor of additional data investment.

R STREET POLICY STUDY NO. 169 April 2019

Washington, DC: R Street, 2019. 7p.

By Emily Mooney and Jesse Kelley

Each year, hundreds of thousands of youth are referred to the justice system and placed on probation, which makes probation the most common sanction for young people. Yet despite its prevalence as a response to youth misbehavior, in its current form, probation is often an ineffective long-term intervention. For example, approximately 63 percent of Texas youth adjudicated delinquent and sentenced to probation in 2013 were rearrested within three years and 28 percent were re-adjudicated or convicted of a new offense within that same period. Similarly, in one study of Nebraska’s youth probation system, in the period between 2010 and 2015, one in four youth who successfully completed probation was adjudicated for a new offense within the following year. These trends are explained, in part, by the juvenile justice system’s failure to completely embrace the principles of adolescent development. Developmental research suggests that it is normal for young adults to make poor decisions during this period in life. Experimentation and risk-taking are often symptoms of a struggle to regulate one’s own emotions, anticipate the consequences of future actions or an attempt to impress one’s peers. In most cases, research also shows that adolescents will grow out of these habits on their own as they age. Thus, in many cases, youth currently placed on probation may do just as well or benefit more from local community-based interventions, such as diversion, or from dismissal from the justice system altogether. In contrast, formal justice interventions, such as probation or incarceration, may actually serve to increase the likelihood of future crime. For example, a 2013 report by the National Research Council notes: “[U] nduly harsh interventions and negative interactions between youth and justice system officials can undermine respect for the law and legal authority and reinforce a deviant identity and social disaffection.” In other cases, youth are appropriately served by youth probation but nonsensical probation practices, such as long lists of conditions or the use of incarceration as a response to technical violations, set them up for failure. Given the fact that youth are constantly developing, probation plans and services should be individualized and dynamic rather than stagnant. Further, incarcerating youth for actions that pose no substantial threat to public safety is a waste of time and resources, and jeopardizes the likelihood of future success. There have been some positive developments. Over the last decade, the total number of youth on probation has substantially declined. In 2008, approximately 540,000 youth cases led to the sanction of probation. By 2016, that number had decreased to approximately 282,000. And, in states like Virginia, the average daily youth probation population has decreased by more than half. While these trends, along with the decreasing number of youth behind bars overall, suggest positive movement away from “lock ‘em up” policies of old, there is more work to be done if we are to better serve our youth and their communities. Accordingly, the time has come for a new vision for youth probation. To achieve such a vision, states and localities must return to the core aims of juvenile justice involvement: namely, improved public safety and youth rehabilitation. They must also reassess the current paradigm regarding what probation looks like and whom it should serve. Accordingly, the present study provides an overview of the current state of youth probation and articulates a new paradigm, wherein localities limit government intervention, promote the role of families and—by better reflecting the principles found in developmental research—improve public safety; and finally, it presents a practical guide for how jurisdictions can improve their youth probation systems today.

R STREET POLICY STUDY NO. 168 April 2019

Washington, DC: R Street, 2019. 9p.

By Stephen Case , Kathy Hampson and Andrea Nisbet

This Child First research project was commissioned by the Nuffield Foundation to gain a greater understanding of what children think about their collaboration in youth justice decision-making processes. Participation and engagement of children in youth justice processes and practice is vital, particularly since the Youth Justice Board’s adoption of Child First justice as its guiding principle and key strategic objective. Child First is an evidence-based framework for working with children incorporating four tenets: see children as children; develop pro-social identity for positive child outcomes; collaboration with children and promoting diversion away from the justice system. The focus for this project is the third tenet, ‘collaboration with children’. Purpose Children’s voices have traditionally been neglected within youth justice policy, practice and research, which have mainly been undertaken and developed by adults for adults. Consequently this project sought to readdress this imbalance with its child-focus of facilitating children to share their genuine perspectives and experiences of their involvement in decision-making processes. The study explored children’s collaboration in decisions affecting them at allstages of the Youth Justice System and focused on four interconnected research questions relating to: collaboration understandings, collaboration objectives, collaboration effectiveness and collaboration practise development. Methodology The qualitative methodological framework of Participatory Interpretivism was chosen, which prioritises coconstructing the research with justice-involved children to ensure child-centric, Child First, co-creation of all research elements. Two different sample groups of justice-involved children were identified from a range of community and custodial settings, in order to address the research questions through participatory and cocreated methods and analyses: Project Reference Group (PRG) of justice-experienced children (n= 22) collaborating together with researchers throughout the life of the project to co-create the project design (including exploring creative methods), implementation processes and interpretation of findings, recruited from one hosting Youth Justice Service (YJS). Research Participant Children (n = 66) recruited from six geographically and institutionally diverse research sites to take part in system journey interviews and complete digital/paper diaries for reflecting on involvement within- and between-stages of the Youth Justice System (3 x youth justice services, 2 x youth offending institutions and 1 x secure children’s home).

Summary of Findings and Discussion Findings provided a rich description and interpretation of children’s views from the PRG sessions and interviews undertaken with participant children at the research fieldwork sites. PRG session observations highlighted the development of the project methodology throughout the fieldwork to: ✓ ensure child-friendly, child appropriate ways of communicating with children about the research concepts and questions ✓ trial creative activities/methods to neutralise power dynamics and encourage engagement ✓ interpret research findings from the participant sample to provide an opportunity for children to discuss, challenge and validate emerging themes and sub-themes ✓ disseminate research findings – children chose a pre-recorded rap backing track and, using quotes from participants and their own words, recorded a full rap song in a professional studio. Participant children sample findings in relation to the research questions: ✓ identified what children considered to be the essential elements of ‘collaboration’, summarised as being encouraged to engage in respectful conversations, being spoken to appropriately, being provided with clear information and having their views considered and taken into account ✓ revealed that children wanted professionals to ask them about their aspirations, listen to what they were saying and offer support to help them to achieve their goals so they could move forward with their life ✓ indicated that effective collaboration practice needs to be based around building authentic, positive, nonhierarchical relationships with professionals who cared about them, in a comfortable environment, to facilitate the development of effective and relevant support ✓ identified the main areas for practice development which they believed would improve Child First practice as: o wanting professionals to listen to children and their ideas for improvement o acknowledging and breaking down power imbalances by creating child-friendly environments o keeping children continually informed throughout their involvement with youth justice agencies o involving children in decision-making about them at both strategic and practice levels to benefit their experience and improve outcomes across the whole of the Youth Justice System. Furthermore, findings revealed that children’s experiences of Child First collaboration practice are inconsistent, with some parts of the Youth Justice System better than others. For YJSs, collaboration experiences were generally positive; within custody, it varied depending on the establishment and incentive scheme level; whilst interactions and engagement with the police, courts and children’s social care services were mostly negative. A discussion of the findings provides an overview of the main themes/sub-themes developed and an exploration of how they consolidate and extend existing knowledge related to children's collaboration and youth justice decision making and children's views of effective youth justice collaboration practice.

Loughborough, UK: Loughborough University. 2024. 130p.

By Noella Sudbury

The incarceration rate for youth is steadily declining, and so is youth crime. Over the past decade, the number of minors committing violent crimes and property offenses has dropped by over 50 percent. In 2019, the number of youth arrests throughout the country was at an all-time low. Combined, these statistics show us that it is safe for communities to keep youth in their homes and to effectively address youth behavior through community-based programs. While these figures show significant progress, the confinement of youth in costly, out-of-home placements is still far too common. On any given day, approximately 43,580 children are confined in detention centers and secure residential treatment programs across the United States. At an average annual price tag of $148,767 per child, the cost of this intervention to U.S. taxpayers is more than $6 billion per year. While juvenile justice stakeholders around the country uniformly express an intent to use out-of-home placements as a last resort, the data shows that the vast majority of children in out-of-home placements are there for relatively minor offenses. According to the most recent numbers, 72 percent of young people in out-of-home placements have a non-violent offense as their highest charge. Research demonstrates that in most of these cases, a costly out-of-home placement is not useful, and leads to more recidivism than community-based alternatives. The term “out-of-home placement” is used in this piece to refer to a situation in which a child is ordered to complete some type of residential programming outside of his or her home. Out-of-home placements can be publicly or privately run and broadly include juvenile detention centers, residential treatment facilities, long term secure facilities and other settings like diagnostic centers or boot camps. While these interventions vary widely in shape, size and programming, most are large—housing between 20 and 200 kids—and most are locked, meaning that those housed there are not free to leave. This paper argues that for states to reduce their reliance on out-of-home placements, policymakers need to take more direct legislative action to limit the use of these costly interventions. To accomplish this goal, this study recommends three actionable solutions that will cost states less money, keep kids with families and make communities stronger and safer for everyone.

R STREET POLICY STUDY NO. 233 June 2021, 7p.

By Jesse Kelley

Juvenile public defenders represent youth charged with crimes through the juvenile court system. Each state has a process to provide access to counsel for allegedly delinquent youth who are unable to pay for a hired private defense attorney. Indigent defense provides juveniles with the constitutionally mandated access to counsel, even if they cannot afford it. Court-appointed lawyers who work on delinquency matters in the juvenile justice field can be labeled as juvenile public defenders, indigent criminal defense attorneys, or contract or “panel” attorneys. While often interchanged, the key difference is that public defenders are part of an organized, professional office while contract attorneys are independent practitioners and usually have their own private firm. Enormous responsibility falls on each of these attorneys to diligently represent their young clients, but often these professionals are not adequately supported by the state. Supporting juvenile public defenders is necessary to ensure that justice and equitable outcomes are experienced by all young people in the juvenile court system. This policy study intends to highlight the many perils currently facing juvenile public defenders, how those disadvantages impact youth, what obstacles COVID-19 added and what solutions states can undertake to ensure that young people facing delinquency have the best resources available.

R STREET SHORTS NO. 95 October 2020, 5p.

By Andreea Matei ; Leigh Courtney; Krista White; Lily Robin; Paige S. Thompson; Rod Martinez; & Janine Zweig

In 2018, the Urban Institute received funding from the National Institute of Justice (NIJ) and the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP) to develop a guide for using research-based practice to reduce youth gun and gang/group violence. The guide aims to translate research into actionable guidance on policy and practice. It is intended to inform local government, law enforcement, and community-violence-intervention stakeholders as they implement new strategies and refine existing ones to reduce youth gang/group and gun violence in their communities. The primary audience for the guide—and for this report—is the leadership of local government bodies (e.g., mayors, county executives, county commissioners, youth violence reduction task forces) because their decisions greatly influence whether violence reduction practices are successfully implemented and sustained. We frame the findings in this report with this audience in mind, although we hope and expect they will be of broader use and interest to any entity involved in designing and implementing violence reduction efforts—including community-based organizations serving youths and young adults—as well as community stakeholders, policymakers, professionals, and researchers working on youth gang and gun violence. We used a narrow scope for this project, focusing on strategies and approaches explicitly intended to reduce gun-related violence committed by young people between the ages of 10 and 25 who may also be associated with gangs/groups (box 1), including interventions that solely or primarily serve youth. 1 We did not focus on all strategies designed to reduce youth gun violence, nor on gang prevention and intervention efforts not expressly intended to reduce gun violence and homicide. Based on this framing, we focus on interventions that are immediate responses to an acute problem, rather than those that address risk factors associated with violence broadly. For this project, the Urban research team conducted the following two core tasks: ■ A review of literature on violence reduction strategies. Urban identified and synthesized research on the implementation and impact of relevant violence prevention, reduction, and control strategies. ■ A scan of practices designed to reduce violence. With input from a group of subject-matter experts advising the project, the NIJ, and the OJJDP, Urban identified 14 violence reduction interventions including focused deterrence, public health efforts, and the Spergel Model of Gang Intervention and Suppression/OJJDP Comprehensive Gang Model. Urban worked with leadership from each intervention to collect program materials, observe activities, and interview intervention leadership and staff, community partners, law enforcement and justice system personnel, and program participants. These activities resulted in the practice guide, a scan of practices, and this research synthesis, in which we lay the groundwork for the practice guide by reviewing and synthesizing the state of research about youth gun and gang/group violence.

Washington, DC: Urban Institute, 2022. 51p.

By The Southern Poverty Law Center

When it comes to Georgia’s approach to its youth legal system, the past is prologue. Policies that emphasize youth incarceration over rehabilitation have political roots going back decades in the state. Rather than providing young people with needed services, this approach has led to vast racial disparities, systematic school pushout, well-documented harms meriting federal intervention, and significant fiscal waste. This report explores the policies and practices of Georgia’s youth legal system, as well as the political culture that undergirds it. Georgia has a youth legal system that is designed to incarcerate and punish, not restore or rehabilitate children.

• Georgia has a history of “tough on crime” laws, even though youth crime decreased by 80% in the state between 2000 and 2020. • Georgia is one of the few states in the U.S. that prosecutes 17-yearolds as adults and prosecutes children as young as 13 as adults for certain offenses – detaining them in adult facilities. • Georgia’s youth detention facilities have a well-documented history of physical and sexual abuse – including the death of three teenagers within weeks of each other in 2022. • Georgia’s Macon Youth Development Campus for incarcerated girls is the fourthmost sexually abusive detainment facility in the U.S., according to a national survey. 4 Georgia has a school-to-prison pipeline that is fueled by a reliance on zero-tolerance policies and alternative schools. • While Black children in Georgia’s schools make up 37.5% of students, they also make up well over half of all out-of-school suspensions, expulsions, and assignments to alternative schools. • Several Georgia alternative schools, designed to educate students deemed too “disruptive” for traditional school, have dropout rates higher than their graduation rates. • Georgia’s zero-tolerance policies often lead to the suspension of students for minor infractions like vaping, which produced over 22,000 disciplinary actions in the 2022-23 school year. • Only 4.8% of incarcerated children educated in Georgia’s detention facilities tested as “proficient” or better on their 2022-23 end-of-grade assessments, with 29.9% dropping out of school that same year. Georgia’s youth legal system is fiscally wasteful and disproportionately impacts Black children. • Black youth in Georgia are more than twice as likely to be charged with an offense compared to their white counterparts, and more than three times as likely to be charged in court as an adult. • Black youth make up 35.5% of youth in Georgia, but comprise over 60% of all youth court referrals, delinquent adjudications, youth that are incarcerated, and youth sentenced in adult court. • Georgia spends $217,517 annually to incarcerate a child in its system, only to produce a threeyear recidivism rate of 35.1%.Policy reforms in Georgia should commit to a system designed to disrupt the schoolto-prison pipeline, reduce harm to children, and rehabilitate young people in a costproductive way. The Southern Poverty Law Center recommends: 1. Georgia should raise the minimum age of youth incarceration and prosecution to at least 14 years old, while ending the practice of charging and prosecuting 17-year-olds as adults. 2. Georgia schools should enforce fair and consistent due process hearings and end the use of zero-tolerance policies. 3. Georgia should make nonviolent offenses, especially technical violations and minor drug offenses, nonjailable for children. 4. Georgia should prohibit the assessment and collection of court fines and fees against children. 5. Georgia should create more opportunities for diversion and invest greater resources in community-based alternatives to incarceration. 6. Georgia should ban the practice of incarcerating youth in adult facilities and sentencing youth to life without parole.

Montgomery, AL: Southern Poverty Law Center, 2024. 26p.

By Richard Mendel

A detailed analysis of news coverage at six media outlets in the Baltimore area during the first half of 2024 finds that they have been providing their audiences with skewed and misleading information about youth crime. Problematic coverage has been more frequent at the four local TV news stations analyzed than the two newspapers reviewed and especially prevalent on one local station, WBFF Fox45.

For decades media scholars have noted that local news coverage is often sensationalized and framed in ways that heighten public fears of youthful offending. And this tendency has continued since the outset of the pandemic. This coverage has likely contributed to a shift in public opinion toward tough-sounding policies that conflict with the evidence on what works to reduce youth crime and promote youth success. Indeed, problematic coverage appears to have been a factor behind the bipartisan passage of a juvenile justice bill in Maryland in April 2024 that rolled back evidence-based reforms enacted only two years earlier. The new law imposes harsher responses on youth that are not grounded in research and that are likely to worsen crime, damage young people’s futures, and exacerbate the Maryland youth justice system’s already severe racial and ethnic disparities.

Specifically, this analysis of local news coverage in Baltimore reveals:

Disproportionate focus on crimes committed by youth. All six local media outlets in Baltimore, but especially TV news stations (and particularly Fox45), highlighted crimes by young people far out of proportion with their arrest rates.

Misleading representation of youth crime trends. Whereas the available data on youth offending rates in Baltimore show a mix of trends, most of them favorable, all six local media outlets repeatedly asserted a recent spike in youth crime and violence.

Failure to support assertions of rising youth crime rates with accurate and representative statistics. All six of the news outlets often made or echoed claims about rising youth offending rates either without providing statistical evidence, or – when they did offer statistics – doing so in problematic ways.

Widespread use of fear-inducing rhetoric about youth crime. All six outlets published stories that included rhetoric suggesting that youth crime in Baltimore was rampant or out of control.

Fox45, relative to other news outlets, was much more likely to air sensationalized coverage highlighting youth crime incidents and perceived leniency in the justice system. Each of the problems described above were an order of magnitude more intense on Fox45. On that station, viewers were presented with a steady stream of often lengthy stories offering graphic footage of youth crime incidents as well as sharp and fear-inducing rhetoric from select victims, witnesses, experts, and community residents.

The tone of the Fox45 coverage, and to a lesser extent the coverage at other news outlets, fostered an atmosphere of panic around youth crime during Maryland’s 2024 legislative session. The problematic media coverage in Baltimore (the state’s largest city and home to the State Senate President and the Speaker of the House of Delegates) likely contributed to a bipartisan rush to toughen juvenile justice policies that is unsupported by the evidence of what actually works to reduce youth offending and maintain community safety.

Washington, DC: The Sentencing Project, 2024. 16p.

By Rachel Worsley, Anna Beckett, Charlotte Baker (Ipsos UK) - Kevin Wong, Samuel Larner, Gavin Bailey, Sonny Osman, Anton Roberts and Linda Meadows

This research project investigated the use and quality of pre-sentence reports (PSRs) in the youth justice system. The research also explored whether PSRs might contribute to racial disparity in sentencing decisions as identified by previous YJB-funded research. PSRs bring together important information about the child to help inform the court’s sentencing decision.

Description

The research was conducted by Ipsos, an independent research company in collaboration with Manchester Metropolitan University (MMU), funded by the Youth Justice Board (YJB).

The authors analysed a sample of 95 PSRs from five Youth Justice Services (YJSs) in England, assessing their quality and language. They also conducted interviews in England and Wales with youth justice case managers and service managers, defence lawyers, judges, and magistrates.

Key findings

• Purpose: The findings suggest that PSRs generally serve a dual purpose: providing background information on the child and recommending a sentence. However, there’s sometimes tension between advocating for the child and presenting a balanced picture for sentencing.

• Quality: PSRs were generally of good quality – i.e. they broadly reflected the requirements of the YJB Guidance on writing PSRs. Sentencers substantiated this finding, reflecting that the quality of children’s PSRs was typically good in their experience, and of better quality than adult PSRs.

• The authors found no differences in quality between PSRs for Black children compared to White children. However, certain sections – ‘Assessment of Child’ and ‘Conclusions’ – were often weaker overall, but this was the case for all children.

• Language used: The research examined the language used in a sub-sample of PSRs and found differences between PSRs for Black and White children.

  • Differences in number of quotations included from the child themselves (more common for White children) and from victims/witnesses (more common for Black children).

  • Black children’s PSRs were more likely to refer to co-defendants, while White children’s PSRs referred more frequently to co-accused. Additionally, Black children’s PSRs more frequently referred to negative peer influences.

  • It is important to note that these differences were identified in the sample, but due to the small number of PSRs reviewed these findings are not statistically significant meaning we do not know whether we’d find these same differences if we looked at more PSRs. However, they do indicate that further research might be useful.

• The research also found that it can be difficult for children and their families to understand the language and terminology used in PSRs, making it difficult for them to engage with the content of the report.

• Challenges: PSR writers reported challenges in gathering information from schools and colleges, which sometimes resulted in incomplete or inaccurate information in the reports.

• Sentencers also felt the sentencing proposals included in the report may not always align with what’s realistically available in the community. There can also be tension between advocating for the child and maintaining objectivity.

• Limitations: While these findings are an important step in understanding the role and use of PSRs in youth court, the research findings are based on a reasonably small overall sample. Therefore, many of the findings warrant further research to confirm their relevance to all youth justice service.

Recommendations and next steps

The authors recommend reviewing the PSR guidance issued by the YJB, reviewing best practice in drafting PSRs and wider decision-making, and adapting the guidance accordingly.

• Updates to the case management guidance: The YJB provide guidance on case management and the production of PSRs. National guidance was issued in 2019 and updated more recently in 2022. The YJB will draw on the more detailed findings and recommendations to make further updates to the guidance as part of the regular updates in the near future.

• Wider work on courts and assessments: In 2023, all YJSs submitted a self-assessment of their work in court as part of the Standards for Children audit. Alongside an assessment of their court strategy, this audit focussed on the quality of their assessments, including PSRs. The outcomes from this audit will be used alongside the findings of this research to provide best practice on writing and utilising PSRs to the sector.

At the YJB, we remain determined to change the system, but we cannot change it alone. Our work with partners in the courts and youth justice services are important to us making any progress in this area.

London: Youth Justice Board, 2024. 74p.

By Jennifer Maeng

This study, funded by a grant awarded by the U.S. Department of Justice to the University of Virginia in 2020, examined the implementation of student threat assessment in Florida public schools. This project investigated threat assessment training and implementation, the kinds of threat cases that schools experienced, and how they were resolved. Of special interest was whether threat assessment was conducted without disproportionate negative consequences for students across diverse groups defined by race, ethnicity, and special education (disability) status. This project used a mixed-method approach with four broad research questions:

1. What are stakeholder reactions to training and implementation of threat assessment in their school?

2. What are the characteristics of threat assessments conducted in Florida public schools?

3. What relationships exist among academic, disciplinary, and legal outcomes for students receiving a threat assessment?

4. Are there adverse disparities in student outcomes associated with race, ethnicity, or special education status?

Charlottesville, VA: University of Virginia, 2024. 141p.

By Helen Christensen, Aimy Slade, Alexis Whitton

Recent events have reignited debate over whether social media is the root cause of increasing youth self‐harm and suicide. Social media is a fertile ground for disseminating harmful content, including graphic imagery and messages depicting gendered violence and religious intolerance. This proliferation of harmful content makes social media an unwelcoming space, especially for women, minority groups, and young people, who are more likely to be targeted by such content, strengthening the narrative that social media is at the crux of a youth mental health crisis.

However, the parallel rise in social media use and youth mental health problems does not imply a causal relationship. Increased social media use may be a correlate, exacerbating factor, or a consequence of rising trends in youth self‐harm, which may have entirely separate causes. Despite its potential negative impacts, social media is also a source of information and support for young people experiencing mental health problems. Restricting young people's access to social media could impede pathways for help‐seeking. This complexity highlights the need for a considered approach.

Recommendations

• Understand why some individuals are more susceptible to social media harms.

• Assess alternative explanations for youth self-harm trends.

• Mitigate artificial intelligence (AI)-related risks.

• Evaluate interventions that restrict social media and ensure they are evidence-based.

Medical Journal of Australia Volume 221, Issue10 November 2024 Pages 524-526

By Iain Mansfield, Dr Sean Phillips and Niamh Webb

Across the globe, societies are grappling with the dramatic decline in mental health amongst young people – particularly young women. The phenomenon has been particularly notable since the early 2010s and cannot be attributed simply to greater awareness or reduced stigma because of measurable increases in the prevalence of emotional disorders, such as depression and anxiety, or of loneliness, as well as growth in serious mental illness, self-harm and suicide. One important element of the debate is the link between smartphones, social media and mental health – and, accordingly, whether or not mobile phones should be banned in schools. Policy Exchange submitted Freedom of Information requests to 800 primary and secondary schools across the UK to ascertain both the true state of phone bans in UK schools, and whether there was a link between school performance and a school’s mobile phone policy. We found that while the vast majority of primary schools had effective bans, only 11% of secondary schools had effective bans – with others allowing phones to be used in break or lunch, or permitting pupils to keep phones present on them. By examining the results for secondary schools in England, we found that schools with an effective ban were more than twice as likely to be rated Outstanding as the national average. We also found that children at schools with an effective ban achieved GCSE results that were 1 – 2 grades higher (equivalent to a Progress 8 differential of 0.13 – 0.25) compared to children at schools with laxer policies. This was despite the fact that schools with effective bans had a higher proportion of pupils eligible for Free School Meals than schools with less restrictive policies. Smartphones, Mental Health and Schools A range of factors have been suggested as catalysing or hastening the decline in the mental health of children and young people in recent years. Perhaps the most significant hypothesis examined in recent years has been the link between smartphone ownership, social media use and a greater prevalence of mental and behavioural disorders. The most recent work by influential scholars including Professors Jonathan Haidt and Jean Twenge however now suggests smartphones represent a causative factor in declining children and adolescent mental health, necessitating a review of our underlying policy assumptions. As Haidt wrote last year, “skepticism was justified in 2019 but is not justified in 2023.” The case for banning smartphones in schools has similarly been developing. UNESCO has found that 1 in 7 countries globally have policies which ban smartphones in schools. In the UK, the decision on whether or not to ban phones is left to the individual school, although the Department for Education earlier this year issued non-statutory guidance that encouraged schools to implement a ban. Research globally has found correlations between bans and a range of positive outcomes, including reduced bullying, an overall reduction in social media usage, increased healthy play, reduced distraction and improved academic attainment. One former study carried out at schools in four English cities found improved student performance in high stakes exams following phone bans – with the impact particularly strong for the lowest achieving pupils. Overall, the academic evidence of the positive impact of school bans is increasingly suggestive, though not yet conclusive – and it is clear that how effectively a ban is enforced, rather than just the existence of a policy, is critical in whether or not a ban will lead to effective results. It is sometimes said that almost all schools in England have policies banning smartphones. This is correct; however, the Government’s most recent National Behaviour Survey found that 38% of teachers and 57% of pupils said that some, most or all lessons has been disrupted by mobile phones in the previous week. We therefore set out to investigate the true state of smartphone usage in UK schools – and whether there was a link to school performance.

London: Policy Exchange, 2024. 64p.

By Jo Deakin, Claire Fox, Raquel Matos

The construction and labelling of groups of young people as ‘risky’ sets off a multifaceted and dynamic social process of stigma that frequently results in reduced life chances and limited opportunities for change. Drawing on case study data from 4 European countries, this paper focuses on the ways in which stigma is reproduced through interactions and interventions that label young people. Our analysis explores how young people experience and understand stigma, and how they respond to it. Framed within a theoretical understanding of stigma as a construct of power we examine its components and cyclical process, its role in shaping policies of social control, and its consequences for groups of ‘risky’ young people. Our analysis develops Link and Phelan’s (2001) concept to include reference to young people’s reactions and responses: alienation and marginalisation; anger and resistance; empathy and generativity. In conclusion, we argue that stigma acts primarily as an inhibitor of young people’s constructive engagement in wider society, serving to reduce beneficial opportunities. However, some young people are able to resist the label, and, for them, resistance can become generative and enabling.

European Journal of Criminology. 19, 4, p. 653-673 21 p., 2022