By The Children and Young People’s Centre for Justice

There have been significant changes in recent years to children and young people’s experiences of Scotland’s care and justice systems, building on the historic legacy of the 1964 Kilbrandon Report. Notably, no longer will an under 18 be detained in a Young Offender Institution (YOI) in Scotland, and all policy and practice must now conform to the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC). However, despite this and other areas of progress, there is still much more to be done to end the continued overcriminalisation of children and young people in Scotland. Research has identified that these are overwhelmingly children from disadvantaged backgrounds, many of whom have suffered adverse childhood experiences (SCRA, 2022). Evidence has also shown the significantly detrimental impact on children and young people, both in the immediate and long-term, of being detained, from re-traumatisation to curtailing life opportunities and increasing chances of reoffending (McAra & McVie, 2022). We at the Children and Young People Centre for Justice (CYCJ) believe this can and should be changed, and that creating a more rights-respecting, trauma-informed approach will support all children and young people who come into contact with the care and justice systems, including victims, and will create safer communities. Drawing from our participatory work with children and young people with care and justice experience, our research evidence and policy and practice knowledge, we have identified three key ambitions for Scotland: 1. Keep children out of police cells 2. Provide community alternatives to secure care 3. Raise the age of criminal responsibility Within these three areas, we have identified nine actions which can be taken in this Parliament session and the next, to end the overcriminalisation of children and young people in Scotland: • Deliver the Places of Safety model through legislative change • Use all available resources to create Places of Safety • Extend the Whole System Approach to 26 • Provide greater support for youth work and youth services • Recognise and respond to Criminal Exploitation of Children • Deliver the Reimagining Secure Care report • End the inequity of use of Home Detention Curfews • Enable 18 year olds, where required, to remain in secure care in place of a YOI • Produce a roadmap for raising the age of criminal responsibility  

Glasgow: Children and Young People’s Centre for Justice , 2025. 8p.

By Alex R. Piquero, Michael T. Baglivio, Kevin T. Wolff

There has long been a concern about the imposition of monetary sanctions on the risk of recidivism, but much of this work has been conducted among adults, and very little among youth. Moreover, virtually no work has considered this issue across race and ethnicity. This study uses both quantitative and qualitative data to examine this issue. Several key findings emerged from our work. First, while there were no race/ethnic differences in the proportion of youth receiving fines, when fines were administered both black and Hispanic youth were administered significantly higher fees. Second, youth residing in areas with greater concentrated disadvantage had higher amounts of fees assigned (when assigned fees). Third, after youth were matched, analyses indicated fees increased the likelihood of recidivism, as did being black or Hispanic. Fourth, when we considered the interaction between race/ethnicity and both fees and restitution, results showed two race/ethnic differences: whereas Hispanic youth with fees were less likely to recidivate, black youth with restitution had a higher risk of recidivism. Finally, the qualitative data pointed to some startling findings, namely that youth did not understand the full impact of fines on both their families and themselves and a non-significant percentage reported that they would have to resort to criminal activity in order to pay fines.

Philadelphia: Juvenile Law Center, 2023. 50p.

By Jessica Feierman

Youth justice advocates, including lawyers, organizers, and other youth and adult movement builders, want to replace the current damaging, discriminatory, and ineffective juvenile and criminal legal systems1 with better approaches. We envision approaches that support children, help them flourish, and contribute to a safe, equitable, and healthy community. How do we do it? And what role can the law – with its history of and ongoing role in racial oppression – play in realizing our shared goals? This publication suggests that lawyers must work hand in hand with leaders in the field with direct experience in juvenile or criminal court — those who have appeared as defendants, witnesses, or survivors or who have been incarcerated or had family members incarcerated. People with these lived experiences know better than anyone where it falls short, and what not to do. These leaders have also begun creating something new – a system that works by building, not destroying. Even as other institutions falter, this community - centered work creates cause for hope. The current system’s problems are deeply rooted in its history. Despite a valid goal of treating children differently from adults, the U.S. youth “justice” system carries with it the imprint of cruel and discriminatory practices that date back to slavery and have been reinforced decade after decade.2 The juvenile legal system purports to offer rehabilitation and support adolescent development. The constitution establishes unique procedural protections for youth. Ultimately, however, both systems disproportionately pull Black, Indigenous, and Latine young people and other youth of color, as well as LGBTQIA+ youth, young people with disabilities, and youth living in poverty from their families3 and expose them to abuse and other damaging conditions of confinement. While teenagers are highly resilient, the juvenile and criminal legal systems interfere at a moment of important brain development and, rather than playing to youth strengths, they cause physical and emotional distress, interrupt education, take resources away from communities, and silence youth voices.4 The system also overwhelmingly fails to meet the needs of victims and survivors.5 Legal advocacy to date has curtailed some of the worst abuses of the juvenile and criminal legal systems, but it has also fallen short of creating an equitable and restorative approach. The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that children cannot be punished with the death penalty or certain life without parole sentences,6 and that children deserve some unique procedural protections during police interrogations7 and a right to an attorney and other due process protections in juvenile delinquency proceedings.8 Federal district courts have limited the use of solitary confinement and other harsh conditions for youth, in at least some circumstances.9 While these cases have conferred significant practical benefits, they have tempered the harshest treatment in the system rather than promoting transformation. Even these holdings, however, are now at risk with a new U.S. Supreme Court focused on interpretations of the Constitution based on narrow, and sometimes incorrect,10 historical interpretation of constitutional rights.11 Amidst this legal backlash, leaders who have survived these failed systems are shaping advocacy to focus on equitable and restorative responses to youth, responses that protect and value young people’s childhood, bodies, communities, voices, and resources.12 These insights can play a key role in shaping the transformation of the system The vision of justice set forth in this publication emerged at a convening on Weaving Life and Law hosted by Juvenile Law Center. The convening centered the insights and vision of a powerful group of transformative leaders: Jeannette Bocanegra, the Executive Director of Justice for Families, an expert in transforming the system so that it is driven by the insights and input of youth and families; Hernan Carvente, the Founder and CEO of Healing Ninjas and Executive Director of Alianza for Opportunity; Johnny Perez, Director of U.S. Prison Program for the National Religious Campaign Against Torture, and a leading voice against solitary confinement; Amir Whitaker, Senior Policy Counsel at the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California and author of Project Knucklehead. Juvenile Law Center staff, fellows, and alums also contributed their leadership to this project: Anahi Figueroa, who was serving as a Youth Advocacy Program Fellow; Marcus Jarvis, who was serving as the Debt Free Justice Communications and Outreach Associate; and current Juvenile Law Center Stoneleigh Youth Advocacy Fellows Aqilah David and Jihid. This publication relies heavily on this group’s discussion at the convening as well as each member’s previous writing, interviews, and other contributions. The insights of these leaders are not meant to be broadly representative. They do, however, offer crucial insights to inform the work. The ideas in this publication also build upon the expertise of abolitionist leaders, movement lawyers, and youth justice advocates who have been crafting alternatives for years. They borrow from the vision, inspiration, and hard work of abolitionist movements, largely led by Black, Latine, and Indigenous community members who have long recognized the failings of our existing legal system and the need for alternatives.13 While inspired by the actions of movements, this publication seeks to develop litigation strategies that support transformation of the system and to clarify when and how lawyers need to step up and when we should step back or offer our support for organizing, policy advocacy, and other social change strategies. The questions about the role of litigation are rooted in the work of movement and community lawyers who have pressed the legal field to recognize our place in larger efforts for liberation, and in the insights of scholars who pose questions about whether and how a legal system, built on racial oppression, can be used as a tool for liberation. The approaches highlighted here also expand upon the movement for a developmental jurisprudence – a history of legal advocacy and resulting case law that recognizes the importance of childhood and adolescent development to youth culpability and capacity, and on key legal advocacy for civil rights and racial justice.14 Section II of this report, co-authored with Mustafa Ali-Smith, provides a brief overview of the history of our juvenile legal system, recognizing that without a clear-eyed understanding of the roots of the system, our reforms may miss the mark. Section III highlights the harms of the system. Section IV, co-authored with the transformative leaders mentioned above, sets forth a shared vision of fairness and dignity. Section V highlights concrete legal strategies, focused on new approaches to advocating against harsh conditions of confinement that can ultimately contribute to divestment from the current system and investment in youth and families. The report aims to set the stage for legal advocacy to support restorative, equitable, and effective responses to youth.   

Philadelphia: Juvenile Law Center, 2025. 49p.

By Felicity Stewart,  Dennis Byles, Melanie Hull

This report examines cases sentenced or diverted in Victoria involving offences committed by children aged 10 to 13 at their offending, including their demographics, offending profiles and sentencing outcomes. 

The report follows the introduction of numerous reforms in the new Youth Justice Act 2024, such as raising the age of criminal responsibility to 12, and various measures for children aged 12 and 13 aimed at addressing the causes of their offending. The report is intended to assist with the implementation and monitoring of the new Youth Justice Act by providing information about the age and gender of young children who offend, the offences they commit and the sentencing outcomes they receive. 

Key findings

• Very few cases sentenced in Victoria involve an offence committed by a child aged 10 to 13 (less than 1 in 300 cases).

• Most offences committed by sentenced younger children were committed when the child was aged 13 and most children were male.

• Children from regional Victoria are overrepresented among young children in the justice system.

• Aboriginal children are also overrepresented.

• The most common offence by children aged 10 to 13 was theft, accounting for 30% of offences by children aged 10 to 13, with property damage accounting for a further 14%.

• Younger children tended to receive less severe sentencing outcomes than older children.

State of Victoria, Sentencing Advisory Council, 2025. 88p.

By Gayaa Dhuwi (Proud Spirit) Australia

Across Australia, children as young as ten can be arrested, charged and detained under criminal law. This approach disregards current understanding of child development, trauma, healing and wellbeing, and continues to disproportionately affect Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children. This position paper argues that raising the minimum age of criminal responsibility is a necessary shift toward justice systems that respect community-led ways of caring for children. Social and emotional wellbeing is defined not just by individual mental health, but by a child’s connection to family, community, culture, spirituality and Country. When these connections are disrupted, and when services respond with punishment instead of care, these children are pulled further from what keeps them grounded and well. Raising the age of criminal responsibility is one action that helps shift systems back toward connection, community and support. Despite a growing national consensus that the minimum age of criminal responsibility should be raised, implementation has been inconsistent and slow. The continued criminalization of 10- to 13-year-olds in most jurisdictions is in direct contradiction to the commitments made under the National Agreement on Closing the Gap.

Recommendations

1. All jurisdictions raise the minimum age of criminal responsibility to 14 years, without exception.

2. Children under 14 no longer be subject to detention or prosecution, and instead be offered culturally safe, community-led responses.

3. Governments invest in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander-led social and emotional wellbeing programs and initiatives for children.

4. All reforms have Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander governance mechanisms and are co-designed with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities, including children, families and Elders.

5. A nationally consistent approach be implemented, to ensure fairness across jurisdictions.

6. Governments improve data transparency and collection, particularly relating to social and emotional wellbeing, disability and diversion outcomes.

7. All reforms reflect Australia’s human rights obligations under the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) and the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP).

Turner, AUS: Gayaa Dhuwi (Proud Spirit) Australia, 2025. 9p

Editors: Alexandra Wigzell, Claire Paterson-Young, and Tim Bateman

‘Desistance’ - understanding how people move away from offending – has become a significant policy focus in recent years, with desistance thinking transplanted from the adult to the youth justice system in England and Wales. This book is the first to critique this approach to justice-involved children.

Bristol, UK: Policy Press, 2025.

By Fiona Allison

This article introduces the concept of justice reinvestment (JR) as defined and applied in Australia by First Nations people, including as a mechanism with potential to reduce over-representation of young First Nations people in the justice system.

Justice reinvestment is a framework that emerged in the early 2000s to tackle high rates of incarceration in the United States. JR is commonly referred to not as a program but as a different way of working. It wraps together, as a framework, approaches known to be effective for progressing First Nations-identified priorities and improving First Nations outcomes, including those centred on self-determination and culture, prevention and government accountability.

The article considers how Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples are using JR to improve justice and other outcomes for children and young people, with discussion of how these might be further built upon as the justice reinvestment movement continues to grow across Australia. It draws primarily on specific examples from longer-standing JR initiatives and their implementation of the JR elements.

Children Australia, 47(1), 3034,

By Allyson L. Dir, Lauren A. Magee, Richelle L. Clifton, Fangqian Ouyang, Wanzhu Tu, Sarah E. Wiehe, Matthew C. Aalsma

Abstract Technical probation violations are common among probation-involved youth, and across many jurisdictions, may result in detention or residential placement. The current study examined prevalence of technical violations occurring during one’s first probation period, the average time to technical violation, and individual-level and justice-related factors related to technical violations among probation-involved youth in a juvenile justice system. We analyzed electronic criminal records of 18,289 probation-involved youth following their first arrest (68.7% male, 53.9% Black, Mage=15.2). Technical violation was defined as a violation resulting from a non-criminal incident. We examined effects of charge severity, probation conditions (e.g., electronic monitoring) and program referrals (e.g., mental health) on likelihood of technical violation utilizing survival analysis stratified by race. Across 18,289 youth, 15.3% received a technical violation during their first probation; Black youth violated more quickly compared to White youth (log-rank test p<.001). In multivariate survival analyses, the hazard for time to technical violation was higher for Black youth compared to white youth (p<.001), males (p=.04), and younger youth (p<.001). Youth assigned to more probation requirements violated more quickly. Electronic monitoring and education, mental health, and drug programs were associated with shorter time to violation, controlling for race, ethnicity, and charge severity. Black youth violate more quickly compared to White youth. Across all youth, assignment to more probation requirements increased risk of technical violation and shorter time to violation. Despite the benefit of probation interventions, system-level efforts are needed to help youth adhere to probation requirements and successfully complete probation

Psychol Public Policy Law. 2021 May ; 72(2): 283–291.

By Kathryn N. Stump; Janis B. Kupersmidt

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

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

By Samantha Harvell, Teresa Derrick-Mills, Constance Hull

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

Why This Matters

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

What We Found

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

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

• Implementation science offers a helpful framework for promoting change.

• Effective leadership is essential.

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

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

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

• Centering community is essential.

• Expanding funding structures can support transformative change.

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

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

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

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

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

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

By Andreea Matei

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

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

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

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

  IZA DP No. 17772

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

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

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

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

By Jamie J. Fader & Dijonée Talley

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

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

By Lael Chester, Soraya Shri-Pathman, Maya Sussman

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

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

Collect data on this distinct population and establish data transparency;

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

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

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

By Noor Toraif and Lael E. H. Chester

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

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

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

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

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

By Kristin M. Lloyd, Brae Youn

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

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