By Helen Christensen, Aimy Slade, Alexis Whitton

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

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

Recommendations

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

• Assess alternative explanations for youth self-harm trends.

• Mitigate artificial intelligence (AI)-related risks.

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

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

By the Vera Institute of Justice and Young Women’s Freedom Center

This report is the product of a two-year, multidisciplinary, mixed methods study by Young Women’s Freedom Center (YWFC) and the Vera Institute of Justice (Vera). The work leading to this report was a community-based research project that included outreach, quantitative data collection, collaborative analysis, and original qualitative data collection in the form of interviews with 50 system-involved women, girls, and gender-expansive young people across the state. The report offers policymakers, funders, advocates, and communities the data and evidence they need to understand the scope of girls’ incarceration in California. The report › provides background on the history and context of girls’ incarceration, › lays out the key findings from quantitative and qualitative analyses, and › provides a roadmap of how communities and state leaders can work together to end the incarceration and criminalization of girls and gender-expansive youth. This analysis shows that it is possible for every county in California to end girls’ incarceration with bold and decisive action.

New York: Vera Institute of Justice, 2024. 89p.

MAY CONTAIN MARKUP

August Aichhorn

Wayward Youth by August Aichhorn delves into the complexities of working with troubled youth in a compassionate and insightful manner. Aichhorn, a renowned Austrian psychoanalyst, draws from his extensive experience to explore the psychological roots of delinquent behavior in adolescents. Through compelling case studies and thoughtful analysis, he sheds light on the inner struggles of young individuals caught in the throes of rebellion and defiance.

With empathy and wisdom, Aichhorn navigates the turbulent waters of adolescence, offering a fresh perspective on how society can better understand and support its wayward youth. Wayward Youth is a compelling read for anyone interested in the intersection of psychology, social work, and juvenile delinquency.

NY. Meridian Books. 1931. 193p

By Charlotte Gill, David Weisburd, Denise Nazaire, Heather Prince, Claudia Gross Shader

Research Summary

This paper describes Rainier Beach: A Beautiful Safe Place for Youth (ABSPY), a community-led, place-based, data-driven initiative to improve community safety and reduce crime involving young people at hot spots in Seattle, Washington. The ABSPY model puts crime prevention into the hands of the community, compared to traditional problem-solving approaches that may involve community stakeholders but are led by the police. We evaluated the initiative using a quasi-experimental research design comparing the five hot spots in the Rainier Beach neighborhood, where ABSPY was implemented, to five similarly situated hot spots elsewhere in the city. We used 9 years of police calls for service and offense reports, from 2011 to 2019, to assess ABSPY's effects on crime and a five-wave community survey conducted pre- and 4 years post-implementation to examine community perceptions. Although there were no significant effects on calls for service or crime, ABSPY significantly improved community members’ perceptions of serious crime and the police in the short and medium term.

Policy Implications

Our results show positive changes in community perceptions that offer a foundation for relationship and capacity building in problem-solving efforts. Although ABSPY is not associated with reductions in crime, our results suggest that even communities with entrenched crime problems can leverage this capacity to reduce crime in the longer term. Community coalitions also offer some benefits relative to police-led efforts, such as shared culture and values; stability; and consistency. However, community coalitions must build capacity for action as well as community engagement, and consider if and how the police should be involved, ensuring that the specific expertise of each coalition member is leveraged. Furthermore, our study highlights the importance of identifying measures of crime that are not affected by increased trust and collaboration between the police and the community.

Criminology & Public Policy Early View, 2024.

By The Juvenile Law Center

The United States incarcerates youth at more than double the rate of any other country in the world. On any given day, almost 50,000 young people are locked up in juvenile facilities across the country. Although overall juvenile incarceration rates have been falling, Black youth are still over five times more likely than their white peers to be detained or committed to an institution.

We know these institutions—many of which are over 100 years old—are part of a punitive corrections-oriented approach that does not work for youth. Research shows that institutional settings harm young people developmentally, psychologically, and—far too often—physically. Yet our country continues to rely on this outdated model as the backbone of its juvenile justice system.

Philadelphia: Juvenile Law Center, 2018. 31p.

By Lisa Pilnik, Robert G. Schwartz, Karen Lindell, Jessica Feierman and Christina Sorenson

There is broad consensus that incarcerating youth in the juvenile justice system is both dangerous and ineffective. Secure facilities and other juvenile justice placements pose a high risk of short- and long-term harm to children. Placing young people outside their homes disrupts family ties, undermines educational continuity and developmental trajectory, and can cause trauma and undermine a child’s developmental trajectory. Recent research has shown that placement also leads to long-term mental and physical health consequences. Moreover, far too many youth sent to “treatment” facilities experience abuse or neglect and fail to receive needed behavioral health services. Pennsylvania stakeholders have taken important steps to decrease placement rates and improve outcomes for youth—and local and state leadership is already engaged in continuing the reform efforts. At the same time, the need to dramatically change our responses to young people in the justice system is obvious. Where Pennsylvania was widely recognized as a leader in the 1990’s and early 2000’s, we now lag behind other states in the extent to which we use placement and the extent of our racial disparities. Wordsworth. VisionQuest. Glen Mills. Luzerne. Year after year, facilities in Pennsylvania are sued or shut down after the horrific treatment of youth in their care comes to light. Each time, children are removed from the placement and additional oversight is imposed to try to prevent a recurrence, and then it happens again. Oversight isn’t enough. To meet its obligations to our children, Pennsylvania must re-examine its reliance on juvenile placements. Working in collaboration with youth in the system and their families, we must create a system that stresses high-quality community-based solutions that are safer for children, promote public safety, and more effectively and efficiently use our resources.

Philadelphia: Juvenile Law Center, 2019. 44p.

By Juanjo Medina, Andreas Cebulla, Andy Ross, Jon Shute, and Judith Aldridge

Youth gangs have received widespread political and media attention in the last decade. Gang membership has been linked to violent crime among young people, particularly in cases of gun and knife crime. More recently, this focus on gang membership among young people has been amplified by the rioting in some UK cities in summer 2011. Based on the suspected link between gangs and violent crime, government and different agencies have begun to develop policy responses to gangs. In November 2011, the government published its cross-government strategy to combat gang and youth violence. Alongside this, police forces and local authorities are drawing on US models to tackle gangs, including the formation of dedicated units and multi-agency teams. This study aims to enhance the evidence base for the developing policy context. We have used data from the Offending, Crime and Justice Survey (OCJS) to explore the circumstances that lead to young people joining, remaining, and leaving gangs in England and Wales. The OCJS provides the best nationally representative data available on young people’s victimisation and offending in the UK. Our findings, which are discussed in more detail in this briefing paper, are that gang membership increases the chances of offending, antisocial behaviour, and drug use among young people. This finding vindicates the current policy approach of treating gang membership as a distinct part of crime prevention and youth policy.

Manchester, UK: Centre for Criminology and Criminal Justice at the University of Manchester and NatCen Social Research,, 2013? 13p.

By Kara Apland, Hannah Lawrence, Jeff Mesie and Elizabeth Yarrow

This paper reports the findings from an evidence review ofthe views, perspectives and experiences of children in involved in gangs, on matters related to their subjective wellbeing. The report forms part of a series of studies examining the subjective wellbeing of vulnerable groups of children in England. This series was produced as part of a larger project focused on improving evidence about childhood vulnerability. Objectives of the review The main objectives of the review were:  to identify, appraise and synthesize published qualitative evidence on the subjective wellbeing of children in detention in England  to draw out key findings and conclusions from the evidence, as well as identifying any important gaps.

London: Children’s Commissioner for England, 2017. 39p.

By Children’s Commissioner for England

This report investigates what it means to be a child gang member in England. It estimates how many children in England are in gangs, and looks at the risks factors which make it more likely for a child to end up being groomed for gang membership. Finally, it questions whether those responsible for safeguarding children are responding adequately to the rise in gang violence and how children can better be kept safe. I have been shocked to discover that many of those responsible for the protection of children in their local areas seem to have no idea where to start, despite hundreds of thousands of children being at risk. In this, I draw parallels with CSE a decade ago – before children being sexually exploited were recognised as victims and not perpetrators, and the adults supposed to protect them stopped turning a blind eye to widescale abuse. Our research presented here estimates there are 27,000 children in England who identify as a gang member, only a fraction of whom are known to children’s services. Their experiences vary widely. For some, being in a gang entails little more than putting a hashtag on social media. For others it can be far more serious and dangerous. Many of the children who identify as gang members feel they have no choice or no better options. Some are groomed and exploited by gangs but never identify as members. Often it is these children, described to me once as ‘collateral’, who are the most vulnerable and at risk.

London: Children’s Commissioner for England, 2019. 39p.

By Tom Clarke

This analysis aims to provide information on the scale of gang associated children and young people (CYP) identified by statutory services and their characteristics, with a particular focus on overlaps with other vulnerable groups. To do this we present analysis of two groups of CYP:  CYP assessed by children’s services during the year to March 2018. This is taken from the Children in Need Census (CIN) collected by the Department for Education and is matched where possible to the National Pupil Database (NPD).  CYP receiving an Asset Plus assessment in the 12 months to September 2018. This is a bespoke collection from Youth Offending Teams (YOT) in England and received responses from 130 out of 137 areas. Both of these data sources have extensive information on the characteristics of the CYP assessed, including practitioner assessed markers of whether a child is gang associated or not. This allows us to examine the scale of children marked as being gang associated in both data sources and to examine differences between these gang associated CYP and other CYP assessed on other characteristics recorded in the datasets.

London: Children’s Commissioner for England, 2019, 39p.

By Marc Sommers

Most youth are peaceful. Even if the field known as “countering violent extremism” (CVE) did not exist, most young people still would not join a violent extremist organization (VEO). At the same time, the overwhelming majority of people who become violent extremists are youth — most of whom are male. The challenge at the center of CVE is thus an unusual one: identifying the fraction of youth populations most likely to enter a VEO and thwarting that option. This paper investigates that challenge, with analysis featuring interviews with 21 experts and over 400 publications on violent extremism, CVE, and youth. Two correlations inform this work: the direct relationship between nations with “youth bulge” populations and state repression, and the connection between state repression and increased violent extremism, with repressive states usually targeting male youth.

Washington, DC: Promundo-US. 2019. 50p.

By Saša Milojević, Branislav Simonović, Bojan Janković, Božidar Otašević, and Veljko Turanjanin

Violence and supporters’ behaviour at sports events in the region have been subject to innumerable newspaper articles, TV reports, including several sociological studies. Despite this, public hunger for information about extreme supporters and their behaviour (considered provocative by the public) and numerous explanations of the phenomenon are certainly not definitive. Each new fan incident only further amplifies the interest in this matter and replicates attempts to finally answer numerous intriguing questions raised in this regard. Over the past years, the Republic of Serbia has doubtless faced hooliganism at sports events. This phenomenon is developing both in qualitative and quantitative terms, and will persist in future as well. In addition to poor quality of the game and the visibly lower standard of living, the fact that fan incidents have become much more frequent and serious has also affected the diminished interest in sports and dissuaded many fans from visiting sports arenas. In contrast, it seems at first sight that the crisis of the sports public has affected the least the grandstands reserved for extreme fans. Some young people, who otherwise would not be directly interested in watching matches, consider the behaviour of extreme fan groups attractive and exciting. It is exactly such behaviour that attracts them to sports premises. All this has brought about the formation of an aggressive subculture of violent fan groups and constant provocation of incidents as the arrival at a sports event is not motivated by club support, but by the desire to manifest violence and vent negative emotions. Solving the problem of hooliganism at sports events is not an easy and simple task. Hooliganism at sports events may be reduced to a socially acceptable degree with the implementation of quality security assessments of the risk of incidents, by monitoring extreme fans and pre-empting their intentions, isolating them, performing efficient intervention, and by ensuring coordinated cooperation among government authorities, sports organisations and clubs, educational institutions and the media. In tackling violence at sports events, repressive measures should not be entirely disregarded, on the contrary. However, a proactive police approach and preventive measures should be given priority. Such an approach enables mingling of different, opposing fan groups, and need not result in conflicts and violence. Namely, fans may together support their favourite club and establish good, or at least satisfactory mutual relations.

Belgrade: ОSCE Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe, 2013. 264p.

By Franklin Chase Hoyt.

“This is a book of stories telling of Youth's encounter with the law. It does not pretend to cover any particular phase of child psychology nor is it written with the slightest idea of serving as a manual on juvenile-court work in general. It merely seeks to present, in narrative form, a number of incidents from the records of our Children's Court, and to include only such comments as seem appropriate and necessary to bind these sketches together into one consecutive whole. If this little volume serves, in some slight measure, to stimulate popular interest in the problems of delinquency and neglect, if it leads to a clearer understanding of what can be done to-day to develop and elevate our citizens of to-morrow, and if it helps to suggest a possible improvement in the methods and spirit of modern justice, it will more than achieve the objects for which it has been written. All of these stories are true and all are based upon actual facts and occurrences.”

New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1921. 264p.

By G. J. Abbink and W.M.J. van Kesse.

This volume contains a range of original studies on the controversial role of youth in politics, conflicts and rebellious movements in Africa. A common aim of the studies is to try and explain why patterns of generational conflict and violent response among younger age groups in Africa are showing such a remarkably uneven spread across the continent. An introduction by Jon Abbink (Being young in Africa: the politics of despair and renewal) is follwed by three parts: 1. Historical perspectives on youth as agents of change (Murray Last on youth in Muslim northern Nigeria, 1750-2000; G. Thomas Burgess on youth in revolutionary Zanzibar); 2. State, crisis and the mobilization of youth (Peter Mwangi Kagwanja on youth identity and the politics of transition in Kenya, 1997-2002; Karel Arnaut on youth and the politics of history in Côte d'Ivoire; Jok Madut Jok on the position of youth in South Sudan; Piet Konings on anglophone university students and anglophone nationalist struggles in Cameroon; and Sara Rich Dorman on youth and politics in Eritrea); 3. Interventions: dealing with youth in crisis (Yves Marguerat on street children in Lom‚, Togo; Angela McIntyre on the phenomenon of child soldiers in Africa; Simon Simonse on failed Statehood and the violence of young male pastoralists in the Horn of Africa; and Krijn Peters on the reintegration of young ex-combatants in Sierra Leone).

Leiden: Brill, 2005. 311p.

By Claudia Wallner.

This paper examines the key limitations of youth empowerment interventions in preventing and countering violent extremism, and identifies potential solutions to overcome these. Age is frequently identified as a risk factor or a predictor for engagement in violent extremism. Indeed, certain factors associated with youth – such as changes in social identity, weakened social control and the intensified influence of peer groups – can make individuals more susceptible to violent extremist influences. Yet, using age as a predictor for engagement in such behaviour does not account for the vast majority of young people who do not engage in violent extremism. It also does little for identifying the minority who do engage in it. Youth programmes are often based on a simplistic understanding of the reasons why some young people engage in violent extremism. Consequently, they struggle with targeting their activities and fail to address the complex factors that drive young people to violent extremism. The programmatic focus on youth as a potential extremist threat and the lack of clear criteria to decide which young people to focus the attention of P/CVE work on can lead to the securitisation of everyday, youth-related activities and the framing of youth as a ‘suspect community’.

Key findings and recommendations. Narrow, age-based definitions of youth are not applicable in areas where achieving adulthood does not depend on reaching a certain age. In order to be relevant to the contexts in which they are implemented, interventions should work with regional and national definitions of youth that typically take locally relevant factors into account. Better targeting strategies that are based on evidence about risk and resilience factors and their cumulative impacts are needed to allocate resources efficiently and avoid the marginalisation of already vulnerable groups. This underscores the need for a better understanding of youth motivations and a move away from viewing the entire ‘youth’ segment of the population as a potential terror threat. Youth agendas tend to adopt a highly securitised view of young people, particularly young males, that perceives them as a threat to peace and stability. An improved and context-specific understanding of gender with regard to youth could help tailor interventions to the intended target audiences.

London: Royal United Services Institute, 2021. 73p.