By Caitlin Cavanagh

Adolescents are developmentally distinct from adults in ways that merit a tailored response to juvenile crime. Normative adolescent brain development is associated with increases in risk taking, which may include criminal behavior. Juvenile delinquency peaks during the adolescent years and declines in concert with psychosocial maturation. However, current U.S. approaches to juvenile justice are misaligned with youth's developmental needs and may undermine the very psychosocial development necessary for youth to transition out of crime and lead healthy adult lives. In this article, I discuss empirically supported and efficacious responses to juvenile crime in the United States, as well as opportunities for further developmental reform of the juvenile justice system. Developmentally appropriate responses to juvenile crime prioritize community-based corrections and engage youth's social context in the rehabilitative process. The juvenile justice system shares the responsibility to prepare youth to live fulfilling, productive adult lives; that responsibility can be achieved by partnering with developmental scientists to inform juvenile justice practice and policy.

Child Development Perspectives, Volume 16, Issue 3 Sept. 2022 pages 125-187

By Barry Goldson

This article analytically excavates youth justice reform (in England and Wales) by situating it in historical context, critically reviewing the competing rationales that underpin it and exploring the overarching social, economic, and political conditions within which it is framed. It advances an argument that the foundations of a recognisably modern youth justice system had been laid by the opening decade of the 20th Century and that youth justice reform in the post-Second World War period has broadly been structured over four key phases. The core contention is that historical mapping facilitates an understanding of the unreconciled rationales and incoherent nature of youth justice reform to date, while also providing a speculative sense of future prospects.

Howard Journal of Criminal Justice 59(3): 317-334, 2020

A report from the Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice provides a comprehensive review of conditions at the Division of Juvenile Justice (DJJ) — California’s state-run youth correctional system— and finds a return to its historically grievous conditions that isolate and traumatize youth.

The report finds:

• Youth live in a climate of fear: Violence and use-of-force rates have increased in nearly all DJJ facilities in recent years. Staff abet violence, reinforce racial and ethnic conflicts, and legitimize institutional gangs.

• Youths’ health suffers due to trauma and violence: A recent spike in attempted suicides and high rates of youth injuries raise concerns for youths’ safety in DJJ facilities

• Education and programs are rendered less effective by violence and prison-like setting: DJJ’s schools and programs fail to provide meaningful rehabilitative opportunities and leave youth subject to substantial time in locked cells.

• DJJ facilities are outdated and costly: DJJ’s aging and poorly-maintained facilities were built according to an archaic institutional design that is out of step with juvenile justice standards.

Remote, restrictive facilities keep families apart: Youth confined at DJJ are unable to maintain close bonds with family and community members due to restrictive policies and far distances from home.

DJJ fails to prepare youth for their release: Youth released from DJJ experience high rates of recidivism and low levels of employment or education after release as they struggle to adjust to life outside of a traumatic institution. This report includes accounts of youth who have experienced life at DJJ directly. Their insights contribute to the report’s findings, alongside information from interviews with family members and facility staff, research, and recent tours of DJJ correctional facilities.

San Francisco: Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice, 2019. 102p.

By Grecia Reséndez and Maureen Washburn

California’s Division of Juvenile Justice (DJJ), the state’s youth correctional system , is endangering youth by subjecting them to life-threatening drug overdoses and excessive use of force by staff. Meanwhile, youth must fend for themselves amid staff shortages and a lack of programming in a highly volatile and violent environment. DJJ will close on June 30, 2023, bringing an end to its long and troubled history. However, DJJ’s long-standing dysfunction coupled with poorly developed transitional plans are undermining this transition and placing youth at great risk. On September 30, 2020, Governor Gavin Newsom signed into law Senate Bill (SB) 823 requiring California's state youth prisons to close by June 2023 (State of CA, 2020). SB 823 ushers in a new era of localized juvenile justice that is founded on community-based services and incarceration alternatives. These alternatives allow youth to complete juvenile court sentences in their community instead of in state-run correctional facilities. They include intensive family interventions, case management with support services, reentry housing and employment services, and graduated transition from high security to low security facilities. Youth at DJJ and their families are facing an uncertain future. Community-based organizations serving our state’s most vulnerable youth, many of which operate at the county level, offer crucial guidance and financial resources to those impacted by DJJ. Yet the state is failing to fully collaborate with these organizations as part of the upcoming transition to a county-based system. By closing DJJ, California can adopt a behavioral health approach that focuses on community and family support. However, this realignment to local control raises many concerns. Can California leaders and county probation departments adopt a new and broader vision? Regrettably, many counties are replicating DJJ’s harmful practices at the local level, with an emphasis on locking youth in detention centers. Youth justice organizations have worked tirelessly to improve this process. These groups prepare support services for youth transitioning from DJJ to their home counties. They also advocate for humane alternatives to confinement. Unfortunately, DJJ lacks a clear transition plan and refuses to work with entities outside of the county probation system. This failure will leave hundreds of youth without needed support when DJJ closes. Until then, DJJ remains a hazardous place where the threat of violence and callous treatment is ever present. The approaching closure and a dwindling youth population are fostering complacency. State officials are focusing less attention on operations and show little concern for youth safety. Only continued vigorous independent oversight offers partial protection as conditions deteriorate.

San Francisco: Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice, 2023. 15p.

By Jessica K. Heldman

In 2019, the Governor of California vowed to fundamentally transform the state’s youth justice system. The legislature endorsed this commitment by enacting SB 823, which began a phased closure of state-run youth prisons in 2021. California is not the first state—nor will it be the last—to close facilities in light of decreased youth crime and greater awareness of the harms associated with incarceration. Although a welcomed development, the closure of youth prisons should not be viewed as the culmination of reform; rather, it is only the beginning. To achieve far more impactful change, state and local jurisdictions must confront the long-standing punitive culture within youth justice systems that persists both inside and outside the walls of youth prisons. This Article argues that the science of adolescent development embraced by the U.S. Supreme Court and the substantial evidence regarding what works to prevent youth reoffending provides states with the tools to transform the culture of youth justice. A proposed legislative agenda includes updating statutory purpose clauses and enacting statewide policies rooted in the lessons of history and the findings of contemporary research. With the novel concerns raised by a global pandemic and a renewed focus on racial injustice, this is an opportune time for California and other states to revisit and rebuild their systems to ensure they promote the well-being and safety of all children and their communities.

Lewis & Clark Law Review Volume 26 2022 Number

By Daniel Macallair | Grecia Reséndez | Maureen Washburn|

California’s state-run youth correctional system, the Division of Juvenile Justice (DJJ), is set to close at the end of June 2023, bringing an end to the state’s 132-year history of systemic abuse. To mark this historic moment, our report details DJJ’s shameful past and examines its lessons for the future. "Violence is heavy in there and it keeps the whole place bound." - Youth formerly committed to DJJ Young children who were confined in California's state institutions The centerpiece of this report is the stories of those who were once confined in California’s youth correctional facilities. Although their time at DJJ (formerly the California Youth Authority, or CYA) spans decades, their recollections are disturbingly similar. Our interviewees recount widespread abuse within a culture that normalized violence and left them with lasting trauma. Despite numerous feeble attempts over the decades to reform this abusive system, life inside of the facilities remained unchanged. It is a system that, for more than a century, has operated on deception—offering the promise of rehabilitation while functioning as little more than a prison. In tracing the history of DJJ and California’s path forward, we aim to: 1) Pay tribute to the thousands of people confined in these state-run institutions who suffered throughout history, 2) Highlight the lessons of DJJ’s closure for other states and jurisdictions, and 3) Ensure that California counties not replicate past failures.

San Francisco: Center for Juvenile and Criminal Justice, 2023. 40p.

By Maureen Washburn | Renee Menart

California's youth correctional institutions are failing young people and their communities. The system--currently known as the Division of Juvenile Justice (DJJ)--exposes youth to a violent, prison-like environment that should shock the consciences of California lawmakers, advocates, and residents. Since the 1890s, the state's youth correctional institutions have undergone numerous reorganizations, name changes, and renovations in a futile attempt to improve the treatment of youth under state care. Yet for as long as youth have been confined in California, the state has cycled continuously between reform and scandal, unable to overcome the cruel realities of its youth correctional model (Macallair, 2015). Young people, their families, and even staff describe DJJ as dangerous and ineffective--a finding that is supported by the agency's own statistics (CJCJ, 2019). Despite per capita expenditures of more than $300,000 per year, most youth return to the justice system within three years of their release from DJJ, a clear indicator of the state's failure to prepare young people for their transition back into the community (CDCR, 2019; CJCJ, 2020a). This research finds: (1) Fights, riots, and beatings are a part of daily life at DJJ; (2) Staff routinely use pepper spray, batons, and rubber bullets as methods of control; (3) Many youth contemplate or attempt suicide during their confinement; and (4) Young people are commonly placed more than 100 miles from their homes and loved ones. In early 2019, the Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice (CJCJ) released "Unmet Promises: Continued Violence and Neglect in California's Division of Juvenile Justice," which uncovered appalling conditions and an overall climate of fear at DJJ (CJCJ, 2019). This publication is a companion to "Unmet Promises," offering a brief update on current conditions and outlining a set of policy recommendations that spring from CJCJ's years of research on youth confinement in California. This report also presents four key policy recommendations to address this historic failure. These are presented chronologically, beginning with those that offer immediate protections to youth in the facilities, followed by recommendations aimed at building up alternatives in local communities, and concluding with a proposal to close DJJ in favor of small, close-to-home programs and facilities.

San Francisco: Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice 2020. 24p.

Edited by Gordon Bazemore and Mara Schiff

This book, based on a large-scale research project funded by the National Institute of Justice and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, provides an overview of the restorative justice conferencing programs currently in operation in the United States, paying particular attention to the qualitative dimensions of this, based on interviews, focus groups and ethnographic observation. It provides an unrivalled view of restorative justice conferencing in practice, and what the people involved felt and thought about it. The book looks at four structural variations in the face-to-face form of restorative decision making: family group conferences, victim-offender mediation/dialogue, neighborhood accountability boards, peacemaking circles. The authors address two issues that have received limited research emphasis in restorative justice: the lack of clear and consistent standards, and the absence of testable theories of intervention that reflect what has become a rather diverse practice. In response the authors conclude with a proposed structure for principle-based evaluation designed to test emerging theories of restorative decision making.

Cullompton, UK: Willan Publishing, 2005. 400p.

By Simon I. Singer

Recriminalizing Delinquency presents a case study of legislation that redefines previous acts of delinquency as crimes, and delinquents as juvenile offenders. It examines one state's response to violent juvenile crime through waiver legislation that transfers jurisdiction over juveniles from juvenile court to criminal court. It focuses on the creation, implementation, and effects of waiver legislation that lowered the eligible age of criminal responsibility to thirteen for murder and fourteen for other violent offenses.

New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996. 243p.