By Miroslava Chavez-Garcia

This unique analysis of the rise of the juvenile justice system from the nineteenth to twentieth centuries uses one of the harshest states—California—as a case study for examining racism in the treatment of incarcerated young people of color. Using rich new untapped archives, States of Delinquency is the first book to explore the experiences of young Mexican Americans, African Americans, and ethnic Euro-Americans in California correctional facilities including Whittier State School for Boys and the Preston School of Industry. Miroslava Chávez-García examines the ideologies and practices used by state institutions as they began to replace families and communities in punishing youth, and explores the application of science and pseudo-scientific research in the disproportionate classification of youths of color as degenerate. She also shows how these boys and girls, and their families, resisted increasingly harsh treatment and various kinds of abuse, including sterilization.

California. University of California Press. 2012. 292p.

By Maria Jerram

This fieldwork for this inspection took place between April and June 2021. The trial for the murder of George Floyd ran alongside it and concluded during this time. The impact of this case and the rise and influence of the Black Lives Matter movement were strongly felt in almost every service we visited during this inspection. It was clear that these events have reignited overdue discussion about racial discrimination and its impact. Over the course of six weeks, we inspected nine different youth offending services (YOSs). We reviewed comprehensive evidence in advance from each area and in total examined 173 cases of black and mixed heritage boys (59 out-of-court disposal cases and 114 cases dealt with by the courts). We commissioned the services of ‘User Voice’ 1 to obtain the views of 38 boys who had been supervised by the different services. They told us about the support they had received and the challenges they face. Prior to this thematic inspection, we analysed our own core inspection data from a 12-month period and found that the quality of service delivery to black and mixed heritage boys tended to be poorer than that of work delivered to their peers. This was especially evident in the out-of-court disposal cases. We were concerned in this inspection to find that when we looked at this type of work, with an increased focus on ethnicity and experiences of discrimination, we found an even greater disparity. The boys whose cases we looked at had complex needs, and opportunities to support them earlier, outside of the youth justice system, had often been missed. It was therefore concerning to find that, when they came to the attention of the criminal justice system, the quality of services they received at this critical moment in their life was insufficient. 60 percent of the boys subject to court orders had been excluded from education, most of them permanently, and the impact of this on their life chances was significant. Black and mixed heritage boys were consistently over-represented in custodial cohorts. In one service every child in custody was a black or mixed heritage boy and this is deeply worrying. Addressing ‘disproportionality’ has been a longstanding objective in most youth justice plans, but our evidence indicates that little progress has been made in terms of the quality of practice. At a strategic partnership level there is a lack of clarity and curiosity about what is causing the disparity and what needs to be done to bring about an improvement. Partners are not collating data and using it effectively to analyse and address the barriers that contribute to the over-representation of black and mixed heritage boys in the criminal justice system. Most services recognised that things have not been done well enough and stated their commitment to improve. In the last 12 months some YOSs have developed focused strategies and plans to address disproportionality and support anti-racist practice; however, any impact of this is yet to be reflected in the quality of casework. This current impetus must now be used to urgently improve practice, service delivery and outcomes for black and mixed heritage boys. To be effective, there must be a clear vision, strategy and plan that is embraced by all partner agencies and understood by all those working with this group of boys. Training, support, direction and guidance for staff are critical, as is the ongoing monitoring and reviewing of progress and improvement. We will also introduce a more robust set of standards around this issue for our core youth inspections.  

Manchester, UK: HM Inspectorate of Probation, 2021. 71p

Out of Harm's Way:  A new care system to protect vulnerable teenagers at risk of exploitation and crime 

By The Commission on Young Lives

  There is an ongoing epidemic of drug-running, grooming and serious youth violence in England. Harmful criminal exploitation is now an ever-present reality of some childhoods. It involves tens of thousands of marginalised and vulnerable young people, brings misery and destroys lives and prospects. Recent government statistics show that last year almost 13,000 children in England were identified by social services as being involved with gangs, thousands more sexually exploited. Yet this is just the tip of the iceberg, the children who we know about. There are many thousands of others growing up surrounded by addiction issues, domestic violence, serious parental mental ill health, or poverty. Frequently they go unsupported and invisible to the agencies who should be able to protect them. They are the children most likely to fall through gaps in the education or care systems, and who can end up exploited by the ruthless organised criminals or abusers who have such a talent for spotting the most vulnerable.  

London: The Commission on Young Lives, 2021. 63p.

By The Commission on Young Lives  (UK)

Hidden in Plain Sight’ was published in November 2022. It sets out our recommendations for fighting back against those who groom and exploit children and how we can provide the right support to vulnerable teenagers to help them to thrive and succeed in life.

Its recommendations include:

• A new ‘invest to save’ “Sure Start Plus” programme. Part-financed by the millions of pounds recovered from the proceeds of crime every year, this ‘Sure Start for Teenagers’ network would bring health and education together to lead the local fight back against those who exploit children, through coordinating services and support in local disadvantaged areas and ensuring that young people at risk get help early when problems occur.

• A one-off £1billion children and young people’s mental health recovery programme, part-financed by a levy on social media companies and mobile phone providers.

• A new army of youth practitioners to identify struggling youngsters, build positive relationships and guide young people away from harm and towards success. 

London: The Commission on Young Lives, 2022. 90p.

By Youth Endowment Fund and Crest Advisory

The Youth Endowment Fund’s mission is to find out what works to prevent children from becoming involved in violence. To do that, we need to understand young people’s lives. That’s why we’ve created a Youth Advisory Board, so that we’re giving young people, including those with experience of violence, a stake in our decision-making. We’ve invested in the Peer Action Collective, to develop young people-led approaches to research. And it’s why we’ve written this report, which uses a survey of over 2,000 teenage children and official statistics to present an overview of young people’s experiences today. We also interviewed young people and youth offending team workers, to see how the data matches their experiences (and will be publishing more details on what they said in the coming months). We’ll repeat this research every year, so we can track trends and changes. This is a summary of our first year’s findings.  

Youth Endowment Fund and Crest Advisory,2022. 99p.

The latest findings from the Edinburgh Study are presented.  The report is based on the latest phase of fieldwork, which involved interviews with cohort members, an online survey, and analysis of criminal records data.

Amongst the findings are that experiences of poverty and trauma in childhood were strongly associated with offending behaviour in adolescence and also going on to offend into early adulthood.  Nevertheless, many of those who were involved in serious offending were not known to the children’s hearings system or the adult criminal justice system. While trauma in childhood was damaging, many of those who continued offending beyond age 25 had also experienced significant trauma in adulthood.

We recommend that policies need to be focused on prevention and early intervention, with specific strategies to tackle poverty and adversity. 

Edinburgh: University of Edinburgh, School of Law, 2022. 46p.

By 

Charles Puzzanchera; Sarah Hockenberry; Melissa Sickmund

Youth and the Juvenile Justice System: 2022 National Report is the fifth edition of a comprehensive report on youth victimization, offending by youth, and the juvenile justice system. With this release, the report series has adopted a new name (the series was previously known as "Juvenile Offenders and Victims"), but the focus of the report remains unchanged: the report consists of the most requested information on youth and the juvenile justice system in the United States. Developed by the National Center for Juvenile Justice (NCJJ) for the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention and the National Institute of Justice, the report draws on reliable data and relevant research to provide a comprehensive and insightful view of youth victims and offending by youth, and what happens to youth when they enter the juvenile justice system in the U.S. 

Pittsburg: National Center for Juvenile Justice, 2022. 226p.

By Beatriz Magaloni and Veriene Melo, With contributions from Sara Rizzo,  and Sofia Mac Gregor Oettler

This study is the result of over four years of active collaboration between the Poverty, Violence and Governance Lab (PovGov) and the Rio-based NGO Agency for Youth Networks (hereafter, Agency). What began in 2012 as an informal conversation between PovGov researchers and the program’s founder and director, Marcus Faustini, led to a solid partnership that has produced not only this research but also opportunities for engagement through events both in California and in Rio de Janeiro. A central objective of PovGov’s research agenda is to assess and disseminate knowledge about initiatives and policies seeking to benefit socially vulnerable populations throughout Latin America. Agency’s target population – namely, young people from the favelas and peripheries of Rio de Janeiro who often find themselves unemployed, out of school, and exposed to high levels of violence – being of great relevance to PovGov’s work. During a 2015 conference hosted by PovGov at the Stanford Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law (CDDRL) entitled “Educational and Entrepreneurial Initiatives to Support Youth in Places of Violence,” several Agency educators and participants shared their experiences in the program. They expanded on its mission, challenges, and relevance considering the scenario of vulnerability and limited opportunities that young people face not only in Rio de Janeiro but throughout Brazil. It became clear then that the approach, experience, and impact of the Agency's innovative methodology – which engages young people in marginalized communities as protagonists in the creation and implementation of projects with a potential for social impact – should be analyzed in-depth, with the work beginning promptly after. Employing a mixed-method strategy based on quasi-experimental and non-experimental designs, to build our program impact evaluation, we drew from survey responses from 500 people, as well as interviews, observations, and informational documents of various kinds. The results, culminated in this report, come down to four learning summaries which speak to methodology and curriculum (Agency’s methodology promotes active learning for project creation while strengthening pathways for individual empowerment and community engagement); the profile of program participants (Agency is engaging some of the most vulnerable – but also resilient and hopeful – youth groups in Rio de Janeiro); participant experience (Agency provides participants with tools to increase their life-skills, networks, urban mobility, community engagement, and entrepreneurial competencies); and impact evaluation (participation in the Agency program has a positive impact on several dimensions of employment, business development, social engagement, and individual empowerment). Ultimately, our study has demonstrated that Agency’s youth-inclusive methodology is successful in deepening reflection and facilitating action for meaningful youth-led processes of community change to take place, while promoting mechanisms and pathways for young people to learn, reflect on their experiences, express themselves, amplify their voices, and become protagonists of the changes they want to see.   

Stanford, CA: Stanford University, The Poverty, Violence and Governance Lab (PovGov), 2019. 96p.