By Richard Mendel

As The Sentencing Project documented in Why Youth Incarceration Fails: An Updated Review of the Evidence, compelling research proves that incarceration is not necessary or effective in the vast majority of delinquency cases. Rather, incarceration most often increases young people’s likelihood of returning to the justice system. Incarceration also damages young people’s future success in education and employment. Further, it exposes young people, many of whom are already traumatized, to abuse, and it contradicts the clear lessons of adolescent development research. These harms of incarceration are inflicted disproportionately on Black youth and other youth of color. Reversing America’s continuing overreliance on incarceration will require two sets of complementary reforms. First, it will require far greater use of effective alternative-to-incarceration programs for youth who have committed serious offenses and might otherwise face incarceration. Second, it will require extensive reforms to state and local youth justice systems, most of which continue to employ problematic policies and practices that can undermine the success of alternative programs and often lead to incarceration of youth who pose minimal risk to public safety. This report addresses the first challenge: What kinds of interventions can youth justice systems offer in lieu of incarceration for youth who pose a significant risk to public safety?1 Specifically, it identifies six program models that consistently produce better results than incarceration, and it details the essential characteristics required for any alternative-to-incarceration program – including homegrown programs developed by local justice system leaders and community partners – to reduce young people’s likelihood of reoffending and steer them to success.

Washington, DC: The Sentencing Project, 2023. 33p.

By Frederic M. Thrasher

While gangs and gang culture have been around for countless centuries, The Gang is one of the first academic studies of the phenomenon. Originally published in 1927, Frederic Milton Thrasher’s magnum opus offers a profound and careful analysis of hundreds of gangs in Chicago in the early part of the twentieth century. With rich prose and an eye for detail, Thrasher looked specifically at the way in which urban geography shaped gangs, and posited the thesis that neighborhoods in flux were more likely to produce gangs. Moreover, he traced gang culture back to feudal and medieval power systems and linked tribal ethos in other societies to codes of honor and glory found in American gangs

Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1973. 214p.

Edited by Finn-Aage Esbensen and Cheryl L. Maxson

As a steady source of juvenile delinquents and an incubator for future adult offenders, the youth gang has long been a focus of attention, from their origins and prevalence to intervention and prevention strategies. But while delinquent youth form gangs worldwide, youth gang research has generally focused on the U.S.

Youth Gangs in International Perspective provides a needed corrective by offering significant studies from across Europe, as well as Trinidad-Tobago and Israel. The book spans the diversity of the field in the cultural and scholarly traditions represented and methods used, analyzing not only the social processes under which gangs operate and cohere, but also the evolution of the research base, starting with the Eurogang Program’s definition of the term youth gang. Cross-national and gender issues are discussed, as are measurement concerns and the possibility that the American conception of the youth gang is impeding European understanding of these groups.

New York Dordrecht: Springer, 2012. 322p.

Edited by Malcolm W. Klein, Hans-Jürgen Kerner, Cheryl L. Maxson and Elmar G. M. Weitekamp

The Eurogang Paradox is the first comprehensive collection of original research reports on the status of street gangs and problematic youth groups in Europe, as well as a set of special, state-of-the-art reports on the current status of American street gang research and its implications for the European gang situation. Seven American papers are joined with reports from England, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Germany, Russia, Holland, Belgium, France, and Slovenia. Summary chapters by the American and European editors provide overviews of the street gang picture: the associated issues and problems of definition, community context, comparative research procedures, and implications for prevention and intervention. Professionals and students will find these papers easy to comprehend yet fully informative on comparative street gang studies.

Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic, 2001. 335p.

By Irving A. Spergel

Every day there are new stories of gang-related crime: from the proliferation of illegal weapons in the streets and children dealing drugs in their schools, to innocent bystanders caught in the crossfire of never-ending gang wars. Once considered an urban phenomenon, gang violence is permeating American life, spreading to the suburbs and bringing the problem closer to home for much of America. The government, schools, social agencies, and the justice system are conspicuous by their sporadic interest in the subject and have failed to develop effective policies and programs. Existing social support mechanisms and strategies for suppressing violence have often been unsuccessful. And, state and federal policy is largely nonexistent.In The Youth Gang Problem: A Community Approach, Irving Spergel provides a systematic analysis of youth gangs in the United States. Based on research, historical and comparative analysis, and agency documents and the author's extensive first-hand experience, the work explores the gang problem from the perspective of community disorganization, especially population movement, and the plight of the underclass. It examines the factors of gang member personality, gang dynamics, criminal organization, and the influence of family, school, prisons, and politics, as well as the response of criminal justice agencies and community groups.

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  Spergel describes techniques used by social agencies, schools, employment programs, criminal justice agencies, and grass-roots organizations for dealing with gangs, and recommends strategies that emphasize the use of local resources, planning, and collaborative procedures.There is no single strategy and no easy solution to the youth gang problem in the United States. There are, however, substantial steps we can take, and they must be honestly and systematically tested. Offering a practical and alternative approach to a serious social problem, The Youth Gang Problem: A Community Approach is a major and long-awaited contribution to this dilemma. It is required reading for criminal justice personnel, school staff, social workers, policy makers, students and scholars of urban and organizational sociology, and the general reader concerned with the youth gang problem and how to control, intervene, and prevent it.

Oxford, UK; New York: Oxford University Press, 1995. 368p.

By Kyung-Seok Choo

Choo explores group delinquency in the Asian American community. His primary focus is two youth groups, a Korean affiliated Chinese youth gang and a Korean delinquent group. The two groups have evolved through different processes and under different community circumstances. Both manifest differing patterns of delinquent activities and require different approaches to their problems. By analyzing the demographic, socioeconomic, and cultural characteristics of the Korean immigrant community, the book discusses the unique lifestyle of Korean-American immigrants in relation to their youth and group delinquency problem. Choo also explains the phenomenon of gangs and immigrant youth by detailed comparison of the emergence, development, persistence and change of theser two distinctive groups.

New York: LFB Scholarly Publishing, 2007. 215p.

By James Diego Vigil

The Pico Gardens housing development in East Los Angeles has a high percentage of resident families with a history of persistent poverty, gang involvement, and crime. In some families, members of three generations have belonged to gangs. Many other Pico Gardens families, however, have managed to avoid the cycle of gang involvement.In this work, Vigil adds to the tradition of poverty research and elaborates on the association of family dynamics and gang membership. The main objective of his research was to discover what factors make some families more vulnerable to gang membership, and why gang resistance was evidenced in similarly situated non-gang-involved families. Providing rich, in-depth interviews and observations, Vigil examines the wide variations in income and social capital that exist among the ostensibly poor, mostly Mexican American residents. Vigil documents how families connect and interact with social agencies in greater East Los Angeles to help chart the routines and rhythms of the lives of public housing residents. He presents family life histories to augment and provide texture to the quantitative information.By studying life in Pico Gardens, Vigil feels we can better understand how human agency interacts with structural factors to produce the reality that families living in all public housing developments must contend with daily.

Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 2007. 256p.

By Frederic M. Thrasher

While gangs and gang culture have been around for countless centuries, The Gang is one of the first academic studies of the phenomenon. Originally published in 1927, Frederic Milton Thrasher’s magnum opus offers a profound and careful analysis of hundreds of gangs in Chicago in the early part of the twentieth century. With rich prose and an eye for detail, Thrasher looked specifically at the way in which urban geography shaped gangs, and posited the thesis that neighborhoods in flux were more likely to produce gangs. Moreover, he traced gang culture back to feudal and medieval power systems and linked tribal ethos in other societies to codes of honor and glory found in American gangs

Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1973. 214p.

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 Richard A Mendel

Diverting youth from juvenile court involvement should be a central focus in efforts to reduce racial and ethnic disparities and improve outcomes in our nation’s youth justice systems. Clear evidence shows that getting arrested in adolescence or having a delinquency case filed in juvenile court damages young people’s futures and increases their subsequent involvement in the justice system. Compared with youth who are diverted, youth who are arrested and formally petitioned in court have far higher likelihood of subsequent arrests and school failure. Pre-arrest and pre-court diversion can avert these bad outcomes. Research shows that Black youth are far more likely to be arrested than their white peers and far less likely to be diverted from court following arrest. Other youth of color – including Latinx youth, Tribal youth, and Asian/Pacific Islander youth – are also less likely than their white peers to be diverted. The lack of diversion opportunities for youth of color is pivotal, because greater likelihood of formal processing in court means that youth of color accumulate longer court histories, leading to harsher consequences for any subsequent arrest. Expanding diversion opportunities for youth of color therefore represents a crucial, untapped opportunity to address continuing disproportionality in juvenile justice.

Washington, DC: The Sentencing Project, 2022. 38p.

By Liz Kroboth, Sukhdip Purewal Boparai and Jonathan Heller

In 2017, Los Angeles County established an Office of Youth Diversion and Development to advance a collaboratively designed pre-booking diversion initiative that prevents youth from getting formally arrested or referred to probation during encounters with law enforcement. Human Impact Partners and the Los Angeles (LA) County Office of Youth Diversion and Development (YDD) partnered to develop this evaluation framework to assess and prevent racial inequities in this program. LA County’s pre-booking diversion program is part of a broader effort to reduce mass incarceration of Black and Brown youth . In LA County and across the US, Black and Brown youth are arrested and detained by law enforcement at disproportionately greater rates compared to White youth. Organizing by local youth advocates and policy changes at the local, state, and national level have created opportunities for community-based pre-booking diversion in LA County to reduce the excessive and unfair criminalization and incarceration of Black and Brown youth and equitably improve outcomes for youth.

Oakland, CA: Human Impact Partners, 2019. 54p.

By Josh Rovner

The United States incarcerates an alarming number of children and adolescents every year. Disproportionately, they are youth of color. Given the short- and long-term damages stemming from youth out of home placement, it is vital to understand its true scope. In 2019, there were more than 240,000 instances of a young person detained, committed, or both in the juvenile justice system.1 However, youth incarceration is typically measured via a one-day count taken in late October.2 This metric vastly understates its footprint: at least 80% of incarcerated youth are excluded from the one-day count. This undercount is most prevalent for detained youth, all of whom have been arrested but have yet to face a court hearing.

Washington, DC: The Sentencing Project, 2022. 27p.

By G.K. Lieten , Talinay Strehl

This brief studies the phenomenon of street children in two cities in Peru. It looks at some of the conceptual issues and, after analysing why children are in the street and what behaviour and which aspirations they exhibit, deals with the policy issues and lessons to be learned. This brief investigates when and why the transition from children on the street (street-working children) to children of the street (street living children) takes place and elucidates how they survive. It explains the fluidity and the risks involved in any type of child street life.

Cham: Springer, 2015. 66p.

By Michael W. Flamm

In the mid-1960s, amid a pervasive sense that American society was coming apart at the seams, a new issue known as 'law and order' emerged at the forefront of national politics. First introduced by Barry Goldwater in his ill-fated run for president in 1964, it eventually punished Lyndon Johnson and the Democrats and propelled Richard Nixon and the Republicans to the White House in 1968. In this thought-provoking study, Michael W. Flamm examines how conservatives successfully blamed liberals for the rapid rise in street crime and then skillfully used law and order to link the understandable fears of white voters to growing unease about changing moral values, the civil rights movement, urban disorder, and antiwar protests. Liberals, Flamm argues, were by contrast unable to craft a compelling message for anxious voters. Instead, they either ignored the crime crisis, claimed that law and order was a racist ruse, or maintained that social programs would solve the "root causes" of civil unrest. By 1968, this seemed increasingly unlikely and contributed to a loss of faith in the ability of the government to do what it was above all sworn to do-protect personal security and private property.

New York: Columbia University Press, 2007. 294p.

By Antoinette Davis, Andrea Gentile and Caroline Glesmann

Over the past three decades, States have enacted legislation making it easier to transfer youth to the adult criminal justice system. Although the process occurs with male and female youth, this document specifically addresses the challenges of transferring girls to adult court and correctional systems. Mechanisms developed to move youth into adult systems include Judicial Waiver/Transfer Laws, Prosecutorial Direct Filing, Statutory Exclusion Provisions, the “Once an Adult, Always an Adult” Provisions and Age of Jurisdiction Laws. When making those transfer decisions, less consideration may be given to the idea that adult jails and prisons are not designed for the confinement of youth, and as a result most are not equipped to meet the inherent and specific needs of adolescents.

While not intended as a research document, this bulletin highlights challenges when transferring juveniles to the adult criminal justice system for administrators and the individual justice involved girls. It is hoped that the audience for this document will extend beyond that of adult and juvenile correctional administrators and reach other related stakeholders who are involved in the decision-making regarding the transfer of juveniles to the adult criminal justice system

Washington, DC: National Institute of Corrections, 2016. 16p.

By The Pew Charitable Trusts

A growing body of research demonstrates that for many juvenile offenders, lengthy out-of-home placements in secure corrections or other residential facilities fail to produce better outcomes than alternative sanctions. In certain instances, they can be counterproductive. Seeking to reduce recidivism and achieve better returns on their juvenile justice spending, several states have recently enacted laws that limit which youth can be committed to these facilities and moderates the length of time they can spend there. These changes prioritize the use of costly facilities and intensive programming for serious offenders who present a higher risk of reoffending, while supporting effective community-based programs for others.

Philadelphia, PA: The Pew Charitable Trusts, 2015. 8p.

By Richard A. Mendel

Backed with an array of research, the case against America’s youth prisons and correctional training schools can be neatly summarized in five words: dangerous, ineffective, unnecessary, wasteful and inadequate. This report highlights successful reform efforts from several states and provides recommendations for how states can reduce juvenile incarceration rates and redesign their juvenile correction systems to better serve young people and the public.

Baltimore, MD: Annie B. Casey Foundation, 2011. 51p.

By Peter Greenwood

Over the past 15 years, evidence-based practice in juvenile justice has moved from a concept to a full blown practice in a number of states. They have used research based principles and programs to: - completely reorganize their system for treating juveniles -reduce crime and recidivism -and saved money in the process. Evidence-Based Practice in Juvenile Justice describes the major players in this transformative process, the particular role they play in moving research to practice, and provides recommendations for applying this research in other locations. It will be of key interest to researchers in Criminology and Criminal Justice with a focus on Juvenile Justice or Juvenile Delinquency, or related fields such as Public Policy and Social Work, as well as policy-makers, and practitioners working in the juvenile justice system.

Cham: Springer Nature, 2014. 118p.

By Cara H. Drinan

In 2003, when Terrence Graham was sixteen, he and three other teens attempted to rob a barbeque restaurant in Jacksonville, Florida. Though they left with no money, and no one was seriously injured, Terrence was sentenced to die in prison for his involvement in that crime.

As shocking as Terrence's sentence sounds, it is merely a symptom of contemporary American juvenile justice practices. In the United States, adolescents are routinely transferred out of juvenile court and into adult criminal court without any judicial oversight. Once in adult court, children can be sentenced without regard for their youth. Juveniles are housed in adult correctional facilities, they may be held in solitary confinement, and they experience the highest rates of sexual and physical assault among inmates. Until 2005, children convicted in America's courts were subject to the death penalty; today, they still may be sentenced to die in prison-no matter what efforts they make to rehabilitate themselves. America has waged a war on kids.

New York: Oxford University Press, 2017. 241p.,

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.