Edited by Richard Rosenfeld, Mark Edberg, Xiangming Fang, and Curtis S. Florence

How do economic conditions such as poverty, unemployment, inflation, and economic growth impact youth violence? Economics and Youth Violence provides a much-needed new perspective on this crucial issue. Pinpointing the economic factors that are most important, the editors and contributors in this volume explore how different kinds of economic issues impact children, adolescents, and their families, schools, and communities. Offering new and important insights regarding the relationship between macroeconomic conditions and youth violence across a variety of times and places, chapters cover such issues as the effect of inflation on youth violence; new quantitative analysis of the connection between race, economic opportunity, and violence; and the cyclical nature of criminal backgrounds and economic disadvantage among families. Highlighting the complexities in the relationship between economic conditions, juvenile offenses, and the community and situational contexts in which their connections are forged, Economics and Youth Violence prompts important questions that will guide future research on the causes and prevention of youth violence. Contributors: Sarah Beth Barnett, Eric P. Baumer, Philippe Bourgois, Shawn Bushway, Philip J. Cook, Robert D. Crutchfield, Linda L. Dahlberg, Mark Edberg, Jeffrey Fagan, Xiangming Fang, Curtis S. Florence, Ekaterina Gorislavsky, Nancy G. Guerra, Karen Heimer, Janet L. Lauritsen, Jennifer L. Matjasko, James A. Mercy, Matthew Phillips, Richard Rosenfeld, Tim Wadsworth, Valerie West, Kevin T. Wolff Richard 

New York: London: New York University Press, 2013. 341p.

By Tim Bateman 

The National Association for Youth Justice (NAYJ) campaigns for the rights of, and justice for, children in trouble. It seeks to promote the welfare of children in the youth justice system and to advocate for child friendly responses where children infringe the law (NAYJ, 2019). The Association has, more recently, endorsed the Youth Justice Board’s adoption of a ‘child first’ model, first articulated in its Strategic Plan, published in 2018 (Youth Justice Board, 2018). The subsequent revised edition of National Standards for children in the youth justice system, published in 2019, is intended to provide a framework to support agencies in delivering a child first provision, by ensuring that they: • ‘Prioritise the best interests of children, recognising their needs, capacities, rights and potential; • Build on children’s individual strengths and capabilities as a means of developing a prosocial identity for sustainable desistance from crime. This leads to safer communities and fewer victims. All work is constructive and future-focused, built on supportive relationships that empower children to fulfil their potential and make positive contributions to society; • Encourage children’s active participation, engagement and wider social inclusion. All work is a meaningful collaboration with children and their carers • Promote a childhood removed from the justice system, using prevention, diversion and minimal intervention. All work minimises criminogenic stigma from contact with the system’ 

London: Ministry of Justice/Youth Justice Board, 2019: 6)

By  Laceé N. Pappas &  Amy L. Dent 

By Todd Honeycutt, Janine M. Zweig, Megan Hague Angus, Sino Esthappan, Johanna Lacoe, Leah Sakala, and Douglas Young

Funded and supported by the Annie E. Casey Foundation, several communities across the US have undertaken deep-end reform designed to safely and significantly reduce juvenile out-of-home placement, especially for youth of color. From 2013 through 2018, the Foundation funded a developmental evaluation of this reform to better understand what worked well, what could be improved, and lessons for the field. During the evaluation period, 12 local jurisdictions across the US pursued deep-end reform, receiving grants and tailored, technical assistance from the Foundation. They pursued a range of deep-end reform activities including improving probation practices, enhancing decisionmaking throughout the juvenile justice (JJ) system, expanding diversion and service options, and increasing youth and family engagement.

The Foundation funded a six-year evaluation to understand what worked well and what could be improved and to identify lessons for the field. Researchers from the Urban Institute and Mathematica collaborated on the evaluation and worked closely with Foundation staff to develop and answer questions about the reform using a comprehensive qualitative and quantitative data collection approach. The Foundation began deep-end reform knowing the work would evolve, and it wanted the evaluation to inform and strengthen the reform, track the changes it effected, and document sites’ successes and challenges.

The evaluation team documented its findings in this summary report, four briefs (one each on improving data capacity, advancing probation reform, engaging youth and families, and pursuing racial and ethnic equity and inclusion), a journal article (published in Youth Violence and Juvenile Justice) on transforming juvenile probation through culture change, and technical appendixes documenting sites’ deep-end reform activities and describing the evaluation’s methods.

The evaluation produced the following key findings:

• The communities that engaged in deep-end reform conducted multiple activities to reduce out-of-home placements and improve racial and ethnic equity and inclusion in their juvenile justice practices.

• Diversion (both before and after adjudication) was an important component of the work that sites pursued.

• Probation-specific activities addressed three core areas: (1) improving or expanding case planning (such as through teaming or case reviews); (2) expanding services (for example, diversion activities or wraparound services); and (3) establishing standard processes (as with probation agreements or early termination).

• In addition to activities addressing youth’s specific needs, many sites pursued broad activities to improve the capacity of the JJ system (such as developing resource directories or training probation staff) or engage youth and families (such as providing information or developing family councils).

• Most probation staff report always or very often focusing on youth’s strengths and assets to motivate change. This focus includes working closely with their parents and caregivers to achieve desired outcomes, individualizing service plans based on their unique needs, and talking directly to youth about their probation terms and conditions. From 2016 and 2018, probation staff in sites implementing deep-end reforms reported more frequent use of practices and principles addressing community engagement and racial and ethnic equity and inclusion.

• Although sites shared no single characteristic that appeared linked to the success of deep-end activities, five particular characteristics were common and were therefore considered assets to implementing reform: (1) deep-end reform leaders with positional power, (2) deep-end reform leaders committed to reform, (3) strong community partnerships, (4) stakeholder and site staff buy-in, and (5) substantial data capacity.

• The evaluation yielded two lessons about engaging youth and families. First, involving youth and families at the individual level (for example, including them in case planning) might be less difficult than engaging them at the system level (such as on a family council to advise JJ leaders). Second, external resources (such as technical assistance and collaborations with community organizations) can facilitate activities related to youth and family engagement.

• Racial and ethnic equity and inclusion does not have a one-size-fits-all approach; stakeholders must consider their unique challenges and opportunities and apply strategies that fit their needs. Collaborating with youth, families, community members, and organizations outside the JJ system is essential for advancing equity and inclusion goals.

• Sustaining changes to deep-end policy and practice related to probation required buy-in from frontline probation staff and a shared understanding of the purposes of probation. Almost every site engaged in discussions to understand deep-end staff and stakeholders’ views about the purposes of probation through technical assistance that the Foundation sponsored.

• Certain key factors can help a jurisdiction use data to inform its reforms and decisions. These factors include staff buy-in, expertise in analytical methods and the JJ system, staff capacity to gather data, data collection system capacity, and cross-system coordination and information sharing.

• When asked about the benefits of participating in deep-end work, stakeholders identified overarching examples across five categories: (1) focusing more strongly on JJ practices, especially on understanding and addressing racial and ethnic disparities and on engaging youth, families, and communities; (2) using data more to drive reductions in placements and racial disparities; (3) leveraging additional resources, such as finding additional funding to sustain reform efforts; (4) reducing out-of-home placements and safely meeting the needs of youth and families in the community; and (5) benefiting from training and technical assistance and learning about elements of the deep-end vision and key activities.

• As with many complex initiatives, deep-end reform involves challenges. Culture change, particularly toward addressing racial disparities and increasing inclusion, can be difficult to achieve at all levels of the JJ system. Partnerships, particularly with community organizations and youth and families, can require significant time, energy, and dollars to be successful. Multiple sites struggled with collecting and analyzing the data needed for reforms. Though stakeholders often overcame these challenges, doing so was not easy, even with a committed team and Foundation assistance.

Washington, DC: Urban Institute, 2020. 44p.

By Nicholas M. Pace, Dulani Woods, Roberto Guevara, Chau Pham, Shamena Anwar

In 2019, the Utah Indigent Defense Commission (IDC) asked the RAND Corporation for assistance in determining maximum caseload standards for providers of indigent legal representation to defendants in trial-level courts and to minors in juvenile courts of the state of Utah. Maximum caseload standards, typically expressed in terms of the number of cases of a particular type that can be reasonably handled by an attorney over the course of a specific time period, are a useful tool for determining both when caseloads are in danger of being excessive and the number of attorneys that may be needed to handle expected demand.

Similar to previous studies in other states that have also addressed the question of reasonable caseloads, this project conducted three data collection efforts to provide the empirical foundation for the Utah standards: an analysis of attorney time records maintained by two large public defender offices in Salt Lake County, a survey of indigent defenders practicing in Utah, and the convening of a panel of experts to reach consensus on recommended average time expenditures for counsel representing indigent defendants in various categories of criminal matters in Utah trial courts. The authors present for the IDC's consideration recommended caseload standards based on analysis of the collected data.

Key Findings

Adoption of the expert panel's recommendations would require a sharp increase in the supply of annual attorney hours available for indigent defense

The panel of experts, drawing on their own expertise and the data from the analysis of indigent defender time records and the survey of indigent defenders practicing in Utah, recommended average hours that were significantly greater than the results of the time analysis or attorney survey.

The minimum increase beyond reported average attorney hours was 46 percent, and, depending on the category, the expert recommendations actually doubled, tripled, and even quadrupled what were reported as average time expenditures.

Santa Monica CA: Rand, 2022. 107p.

By Jeffrey Selbin

Maria Rivera was raising two boys on her own in Orange County, California, when her youngest son got into trouble. Although court records for youth are typically sealed, we know that in 2008 Ms. Rivera’s son became one of tens of thousands of young people referred annually to the state’s juvenile legal system, resulting in his detention for almost two years. Then came the bills. The county charged Ms. Rivera $23.90 for every day her son was detained and $2200 for his court-appointed lawyer. All told, Orange County said she owed more than $16,000. Until recently, California law authorized counties to charge administrative fees to parents and guardians for their children’s detention, lawyers, electronic monitoring, probation supervision, and drug testing. By statute, the fees were supposed to help counties recoup “the reasonable costs of support of the minor,” but the law also required counties to determine whether families could afford to pay the fees. Ms. Rivera was unemployed and unable to make payments, so Orange County should have waived her fees. But California’s “ability to pay” provisions, in fact, put the burden on families to appear before a financial evaluation officer to prove their inability to pay. Like many families with youth in the juvenile legal system, Ms. Rivera was unable to meet the county’s demands to make such a showing. To deal with the mounting bills, Ms. Rivera sold her house and paid the county more than $9500. The county did not consider the judgment fully satisfied, so it obtained a court order against Ms. Rivera for almost $10,000. On top of what she had already paid and for reasons the county never explained, the court order exceeded what the county originally billed Ms. Rivera by more than $3000. Once a court orders juvenile fees to be paid, the debt becomes a civil judgment enforceable against the parent or guardian. Unlike most other civil judgments, juvenile fee debt lasts forever. If families fail to repay the debt, counties refer their accounts to the state’s Franchise Tax Board to intercept their tax refunds and garnish their wages. Unable to pay the civil judgment, Ms. Rivera filed for chapter 7 bankruptcy. When the bankruptcy court discharged her fee debt, Ms. Rivera may have thought the matter was resolved. But Orange County would not relent, eventually persuading the bankruptcy court to reinstate the debt on the grounds that it was not dischargeable under chapter 7. I

98 N.C. L. Rev. 401 (2020)

By Maria Jerram, and Tammie Burroughs

Based on effective practice identified during our thematic inspection of the experiences of black and mixed heritage boys in the youth justice system (2021). The guide explains why it is important to consider ethnicity in practice. We provide an overview of our standards and expectations in this area around leadership and case supervision.

Following this, we reflect on the learning from black and mixed heritage boys interviewed for the thematic inspection, including a video of the main themes.

There is also a focus on leadership and working in partnership. Examples of effectiveness are shared from the following: Haringey’s disproportionality project and systemic leadership, Hackney tackling disproportionality in stop and searches and out-of-court disposals (supported by two videos), Lewisham’s anti-racist strategy (including a video), Lewisham’s specialist services provided by the YOS family therapy team (LYFT) including videos sharing the teams insight into engagement, the importance of working with carers/parents and the systemic approach.

There is then a focus on case supervision, we share key themes practitioners should consider in their work, and interview two culturally competent practitioners to share practical tips from their work and identify key learning.

We conclude with overall key takeaways, further reading and resources for those wishing to explore this area further.

Manchester, UK: Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Probation , 2021. 46p.

By Joshua Rovner

This commentary discusses the evolution of youth justice policies in the United States and offers valuable insights into the successes and failures of these approaches. The report advocates for a more enlightened approach to criminal legal reform, backed by the successes of progressive approaches taken to the juvenile legal system.

Washington, DC: The Sentencing Project, 2023. 5p.

By Andrea R. Coleman

This bulletin discusses common misconceptions surrounding expungement. It also provides information about the collateral consequences of juvenile records as well as federal, state, and local emerging practices. The key information and findings include the following: • Expungement, sealing, and confidentiality are three legally distinct methods for destroying or limiting access to juvenile records. However, these methods may permit police, courts, or the public access to juvenile records, depending on state laws. • The public and impacted youth often erroneously believe that once police and courts expunge juvenile records they no longer exist. The handling of expunged juvenile records varies widely from state to state. • Youth with juvenile records frequently experience collateral consequences of their arrest or adjudication, which may include difficulty accessing educational services, obtaining employment, serving in the military, and finding and maintaining housing. • States, localities, and the federal government have implemented promising practices to decrease collateral consequences, including “ban the box” legislation and expungement clinics (Avery and Hernandez, 2018; Radice, 2017; Shah, Fine, and Gullen, 2014; Shah and Strout, 2016).

Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Justice Office of Justice Programs Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, 2020. 12p.

By HM Inspectorate of Probation (UK)

The use of out-of-court disposals (OOCDs) with young people who break the law is increasing. One OOCD is a community resolution (CR) which allows the police to deal with less serious offences in an informal way, providing a diversionary approach without formal court proceedings. This can allow young people to avoid having a criminal conviction on their record, give victims the opportunity to have their say, and provide a more efficient resolution than pursuing a criminal conviction. Youth Offending Teams (YOTs) perform a key role in the delivery of CRs, yet there remains a significant gap in knowledge about how CRs are delivered with young people. This bulletin focuses on findings from research which explored how youth offending services implement and deliver CRs in England and Wales, documenting working practices as well as key enablers and barriers to effective practice.

Research & Analysis Bulletin 2023/01 . Manchester: HM Inspectorate of Probation, 2023. 40p.

By The Youth Justice Legal Centre (YJLC)

Children need and must be entitled to specialist legal representation. This has long been obvious. This new research adds to a growing body of evidence but for the first time highlights the extent to which solicitors are themselves seeking to address this training need. However, without clear guidance they are falling short, and children are being failed. There is no requirement for solicitors representing children in the criminal justice system to have any specialist training before entering a youth court or representing children at a police station. It therefore falls to individual solicitors to identify their training needs. Children end up with worse outcomes than they should as a direct result of lawyers being unaware of guidance and special protections available to children. This is confirmed by the research findings. The situation would be significantly improved if solicitors who represent children undertook regular training on key youth justice topics. More children would be diverted away from formal criminal justice processes, they would be better supported through legal processes and the risk of reoffending reduced. Put simply, children must have better.

London: YJLC, 2023. 8p.

By Lauren Knoth; Paige Wanner; Lijian He

This document reports on an outcome evaluation of the Washington State Aggression Replacement Training (WSART) program, conducted by the Washington State Institute for Public Policy (WSIPP), to evaluate recidivism outcomes for juvenile court youth. WSART is a group-based intervention for moderate- and high-risk youth with criminal charges filed in juvenile courts. The program uses cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) techniques to teach youth three core components: anger control, moral reasoning, and social skills. The authors evaluated the effects of WSART in Washington State courts from 2005 to 2016. They found that, on average, WSART participants were more likely to recidivate than similar youth who did not participate in the WSART program. The authors note that differences in recidivism for WSART versus non-WSART youth were evident in nearly all subpopulations of males, including White youth, Black youth, Hispanic youth, younger youth, high-risk youth, moderate-risk youth, youth assessed using the Back On Track risk (BOT) assessment, and youth assessed with the Positive Achievement Change Tool (PACT) assessment; however, results indicated that WSART participation did reduce recidivism for females. The authors also state that they found that youth who completed the entire WSART curriculum were significantly less likely to recidivate than youth who participated but did not complete the WSART program.

Olympia, WA: Washington State Institute for Public Policy, 2019. 70p.

By Carlene Firmin, Hannah King, Molly Manister and Vanessa Bradbury

Contextual Safeguarding (CS) has developed as a safeguarding approach for practitioners to recognise contextual dynamics and children’s exposure to extra-familial harm (EFH). Within CS, practitioners (and the systems in which they work) assess neighbourhood, schools or peer groups to understand the contextual factors that are contributing to the harm and abuse of the young people who are associated with it. Interventions are then developed within the contexts where that harm has occurred, through relationships building, advocacy, training, policy and practical action, alongside support to the affected young people. Initially focused on and piloted within children’s social care, the approach has generated much interest from youth justice services (YJSs) across the country. It is evident that EFH crosses into YJS boundaries and collaborative work through the CS approach that is already underway within some local service areas across England. Safeguarding responsibilities are currently overseen by multi-agency Safeguarding Partnerships made up of three statutory partners – police, health and local authorities. These partners are free to arrange their local provision and to involve other agencies as they see fit. Probation and YJSs are frequently invited to attend and have a duty to cooperate.

Research & Analysis Bulletin 2023/02 . Manchester, UK: HM Inspectorate of Probation, 2023. 44p.

By the National Center for Juvenile Justice

The National Center for Juvenile Justice has released "Juvenile Court Statistics 2020." This report describes delinquency and status offense cases handled between 2005 and 2020 by U.S. courts with jurisdiction over juvenile populations. National estimates are presented on 508,400 delinquency cases and 57,700 petitioned status offense cases handled in 2020. The report also tracks caseload trends from 2005 to 2020. Data include case counts and rates, juvenile demographics, and offenses charged. This report draws on data from the National Juvenile Court Data Archive, funded by the National Institute of Justice with support from OJJDP.

Pittsburgh, PA: National Center for Juvenile Justice, 2023. 114p.

By  Aisha Ofori, Carmen Robin-D’Cruz, Bami Jolaoso and Stephen Whitehead

  Youth diversion is a set of informal, non-statutory practices in which children and young people are provided the opportunity to avoid a statutory out of court disposal or a court prosecution if they complete community-based interventions. It offers children and young people a crucial alternative, allowing them to avoid the damaging consequences of formal justice processing and the likelihood of becoming deeper entrenched into the youth justice system. However, at present, there are concerns that diversion is not equally available to all, potentially exacerbating the racial disparities that already mar the system. As the House of Commons Justice Select Committee reported, ‘race disproportionality is significant and fundamental, visible in every part of the youth justice system’.  Given the significant and potentially life-long harms which come with unnecessary involvement in the justice system, ensuring equal access to diversion is essential. This project explores the experiences of children and young people, some of whom had been diverted and some of whom had not, with a particular focus on how they perceived their ethnicity to have impacted the youth justice process and outcomes. Eleven children and young people currently in the youth justice system participated in face-to-face interviews about their experiences with the police, solicitors and youth justice services, and how they perceived these experiences to have been influenced by their ethnic background. This research, funded by the Esmée Fairbairn Foundation, follows on from our previous project ‘Equal diversion? Racial disproportionality in youth diversion’ and is a crucial step towards expanding the limited evidence base on youth diversion in England and Wales.  

London: The Centre for Justice Innovation, 2022. 21p.

By Charles Puzzanchera, Sarah Hockenberry, and 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. The report offers—to Congress, state legislators, other state and local policymakers, educators, juvenile justice professionals, and concerned citizens— empirically based answers to frequently asked questions about the nature of youth victimization and offending and the justice system’s response. The juvenile justice system must react to the law-violating behaviors of youth in a manner that not only protects the community and holds youth accountable but also enhances youth’s ability to live productively and responsibly in the community. The system must also intervene in the lives of abused and neglected children who lack safe and nurturing environments. To respond to these complex issues, juvenile justice practitioners, policymakers, and the public must have access to useful and accurate information about the system and the youth it serves. At times, such information is not available or, when it does exist, it is often too scattered or inaccessible to be useful. This report bridges that gap by pulling together the most requested information on youth and the juvenile justice system in the United States. The report draws on numerous national data collections to address the specific information needs of those involved with the juvenile justice system. The report presents important and, at times, complex information using clear, nontechnical writing and easy to-understand graphics and tables. It is structured as a series of briefing papers on specific topics, short sections that can be read independently   

 Pittsburgh, PA:  National Center for Juvenile Justice, 2022. 226p.

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 Moriah Taylor, Jeremy Bilfield, Zoe Livengood, Melissa Sickmund

This study examined factors influencing decisions that lead from a school-based incident to exclusionary discipline, an arrest, and a referral to the juvenile court. Phase 1 involved interviewing groups of key stakeholders including school administrators, district administrators, discipline coordinators, juvenile court judges and other staff, law enforcement officers, Positive Behavior Intervention Support coordinators, and child welfare agencies to understand their approaches to behavior management. For each set of interviews, researchers used the information from the structured interviews to create diagrams outlining the sequence of potential decisions involved in responding to behavior incidents. This report presents the qualitative analysis resulting from Phase 1.

Pittsburgh, PA:  National Center for Juvenile Justice, 2019. 45p. 

By Charles Puzzanchera and Sarah Hockenberry

This bulletin describes the official juvenile court referral histories of more than 160,000 youth born in 2000 from 903 selected United States counties. Using data from the National Juvenile Court Data Archive, this bulletin focuses on the demographic and case processing characteristics of youth referred to juvenile court and the proportion of the cohort that was referred to juvenile court more than once, as well as histories defined as serious, violent, and chronic.

Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Justice Office of Justice Programs , 2022. 24p.

By Christopher Slobogin and Mark R. Fondacaro

In this book, Slobogin and Fondacaro present their vision for a new juvenile justice system, founded on the evidence at hand and promoting the principles of rehabilitation and reintegration into society. The authors develop their juvenile justice policy proposals effectively by carefully addressing the problems with past policy approaches.

New York: Oxford University Press, 2011. 224p.