By Christian Dustmann, Mikkel Mertz and Anna Okatenko 

The effects of neighbourhood characteristics on the development of children and adolescents is a key area of research in the social sciences literature. Early papers such as Brooks-Gunn et al. (1993) document strong associations between children’s outcomes and the characteristics of the neighbourhoods they live in. More recent work finds evidence that the neighbourhood children grow up in a↵ects their earnings, college attendance, marriage, fertility (Chetty et al., 2016; Chetty and Hendren, 2018a,b; Chyn, 2018; Deutscher, 2020), and school performance (˚Aslund et al., 2011; Galster et al., 2016). One particular concern is the e↵ect of neighbourhood characteristics on adolescents’ criminal, delinquent, and health-compromising activities (for a review, see Leventhal and Brooks-Gunn (2000)), in particular the potential negative impacts of gangs, drugs and violence on children and young teenagers (Jencks and Mayer, 1990; Popkin et al., 2002). A small literature investigates the impact of exposure to crime on the criminal behaviour of young men and women, but little is known about which type of criminal activity in the neighbourhood may lead to spillovers, how this compares with the impact other neighbourhood characteristics have on later outcomes, how exposure to crime affects other dimensions of risky behaviour in particular for girls, and what the longer-term economic consequences of exposure to crime for males and females are….

Bonn: IZA  Institute of Labor Economics .2023. 76p.

By  Anne-Marie Day, Tim Bateman and John Pitts

  It is well documented that children in care – those looked-after by the local authority – are over-represented in the youth justice system.1 In recent years, the relationship between care and crime has begun to receive increasing academic and policy attention, culminating, in 2018, in the government publishing a national protocol to reduce unnecessary criminalisation of children in care and improve the criminal justice responses when they do enter the youth justice system. The use of child imprisonment has fallen dramatically over the past decade, but the experiences of children confined in the secure estate has worsened, leading to widespread acknowledgement that the incarceration of children is damaging and counterproductive and that existing provision is not fit for purpose. Looked-after children who come into contact with the justice system are seven times more likely to be detained than their non-care equivalents, but little is known about the factors leading to such over-representation or the differential experiences of children in care while in detention. This report bridges that evidence gap by considering the relationship between care and imprisonment. The research on which it draws, across the nine local authorities in the South and West Yorkshire Resettlement Consortium (SWYC) area, explored the pathways of looked-after children into, through and out of the custodial estate. A comparative approach allowed the identification of the extent to which those pathways differ for children in care and those who are not.

Bedminster, UK: University of Bedminster, 2020. 79p.

By Craig Haney ;· Frank R. Baumgartner; · Karen Steele3   

In Roper v. Simmons (2005), the US Supreme Court raised the minimum age at which someone could be subjected to capital punishment, ruling that no one under the age of 18 at the time of their crime could be sentenced to death. The present article discusses the legal context and rationale by which the Court established the current age-based limit on death penalty eligibility as well as the scientific basis for a recent American Psychological Association Resolution that recommended extending that limit to include members of the “late adolescent class” (i.e., persons from 18 to 20 years old). In addition, we present new data that address the little-discussed but important racial/ethnic implications of these age-based limits to capital punishment, both for the already established Roper exclusion and the APA-proposed exclusion for the late adolescent class. In fact, a much higher percentage of persons in the late adolescent class who were sentenced to death in the post-Roper era were non-White, suggesting that their age-based exclusion would help to remedy this problematic pattern. 

 Journal of Pediatric Neuropsychology (2022) 8:168–177

By Josh Rovner

The Sentencing Project, in its national survey of life and virtual life sentences in the United States found 1,465 people serving JLWOP sentences at the start of 2020. This number reflects a 38% drop in the population of people serving JLWOP since our 2016 count and a 44% drop since the peak count of JLWOP figures in 2012.1 This count continues to decline as more states eliminate JLWOP. In five decisions – Roper v. Simmons (2005), Graham v. Florida (2010), Miller v. Alabama (2012), Montgomery v. Louisiana (2016), and Jones v. Mississippi (2021) – the Supreme Court of the United States establishes and upholds the fact that “children are constitutionally different from adults in their levels of culpability”2 when it comes to sentencing. Differences in maturity and accountability informs the protections of the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment that limits sentencing a child to die in prison. Research on adolescent brain development confirms the commonsense understanding that children are different from adults in ways that are critical to identifying age-appropriate criminal sentences. This understanding – Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy called it what “any parent knows”3 – was central to the recent Supreme Court decisions excluding people under 18 from the harshest sentencing practices. Starting in 2005, Roper struck down the death penalty for people under 18…...  

Washington DC: The Sentencing Project, 2023.  6p.

By Andrea R. Coleman  
Involvement with the juvenile justice system may result in collateral consequences—sanctions and disqualifications that can place an unanticipated burden on rehabilitated youth transitioning back to their communities following out-of-home placement. Collateral consequences can negatively impact a youth’s access to higher education, employment, housing, and ability to serve in the military. Although states continue to pass new laws and increase public awareness efforts, expunging juvenile records is still a complicated process. State laws vary widely and it is not always clear exactly what expungement, sealing, or confidentiality covers. Fortunately, there are emerging practices that are helping youth, families, and professionals expunge juvenile records. Successful reentry reduces recidivism and increases public safety. It is our hope that the information contained in this bulletin will help court personnel, service providers, and youth advocates mitigate the effects of collateral consequences. Balancing public safety with the needs of juvenile offenders seeking to lead productive lives without unnecessary encumbrances is a challenge.

Washington, DC: Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, 2020. 12p.

By Christina A. Sorenson

Screaming Into The Void: Youth Voice in Institutional Placements is a report written by 2019 Soros Justice Fellow Christina K. Sorenson. This comprehensive report includes a personal anthology, a historical analysis, a review of the current state of affairs, an in-depth look at Pennsylvania, and a 51- jurisdictional research survey of youth grievance protections in institutional placements across the dependency and delinquency systems. The historical analysis is limited but essential to understanding the current system's failures and the need for system re-imagining.

The regularity of out-of-state placement necessitates a national perspective. The complicated intersection of federal and state laws exists ostensibly to protect the children we incarcerate. However, the research in this report unequivocally proves that nationwide, our oversight systems systematically dis-empower youth, hide abuses and limit liability.

Organized around three core components: See Youth, Hear Youth, and Protect Youth, this report weaves an existing analysis of protections across the county with multi-disciplinary recommendations and approaches. Finally, there is a curriculum developed by expert Antonio Thomas, to help jurisdictions work directly in partnership with youth to develop youth-centered grievance protections.

The purpose of this report is not to offer an answer, a model, or a template for grievance protection. Instead, the history, state statutory and regulatory review, and curriculum aim to supply the resources necessary for policy-makers and advocates to empower and include local youth with lived experience in imagining and implementing effective youth-centered grievance protections.
Philadelphia: Juvenile Law Center, 2023. 108p.

By Patricia Soung

The dramatic growth of prison populations in the United States during the latter half of the twentieth century, as well as the problems of over-policing and police misconduct, have been well documented and decried.1 But the related expansion and problems of community supervision receive far less attention. Across the nation, reform efforts have increasingly included a focus on probation, especially juvenile probation, as an actor that both jails and polices youth in the community while also trying to rehabilitate them and promote their well-being. This Article studies the juvenile probation system, with a focus on California as one important system aiming to both surveil and care for individuals. It draws together two frameworks: 1) law and policy which describe the juvenile probation system as intended, and 2) juvenile probation practices and attitudes which reveal the day-to-day translation of the system’s formal intentions. Ultimately, where a system’s approach to rehabilitation and accountability become synonymous with or too reflexively able to adopt surveillance, containment, and punishment orientations, its ability to deliver meaningful help and support through that same system is improbable. Thus, this Article discusses the need in the United States to reform, dismantle, or replace probation with youth development-focused systems and uses Los Angeles as an example of a government already doing this important work

.112 J. Crim. L. & Criminology 549 (2022).

By Ben Finholt, Brandon L. Garrett, Karima Modjadidi, and Kristen M. Renberg 

Life without parole (LWOP) is “an especially harsh punishment for a juvenile,” as the U.S. Supreme Court noted in Graham v. Florida. The United States is the only country in the world that imposes juvenile life without parole (JLWOP) sentences. Many of these individuals were sentenced during a surge in LWOP sentencing in the 1990s. In the past decade, following several Supreme Court rulings eliminating mandatory sentences of LWOP for juvenile offenders, such sentencing has declined. This Article aims to empirically assess the rise and then the fall in JLWOP sentencing in a leading sentencing state, North Carolina, to better understand these trends and their implications.

We examine the cases of ninety-four North Carolina juveniles, aged thirteen to seventeen at the time of their offenses, who were sentenced to JLWOP. Of those, forty-nine are currently serving LWOP sentences. In North Carolina, JLWOP sentencing has markedly declined. Since 2011, there have been only five of such sentences. Of the group of ninety-four juvenile offenders, forty-four have so far been resentenced to non-LWOP sentences—largely pursuant to the post-Miller v. Alabama legislation passed in North Carolina. These JLWOP sentences are primarily concentrated in a small group of counties. A total of 61% (fifty-seven of the ninety-four) JLWOP sentences in North Carolina were entered in one of the eleven counties that have imposed more than three JLWOP sentences. We find a path dependency to these sentences: once a county has imposed a JLWOP sentence, it has a higher probability of imposing a JLWOP sentence again in the future. In contrast, homicide rates are not predictive of JLWOP sentences. We question what goals JLWOP serves, given what an inconsistently used, uncommon, geographically limited, and costly sentence it has been in practice. In conclusion, we describe alternatives to JLWOP, including the model adopted in states such as California and Wyoming, in which there is periodic review of lengthy sentences imposed on juvenile offenders.

110 J. Crim. L. & Criminology 141 (2020).

By Ashley Nellis and Niki Monazzam

  Beginning at age 18, U.S. laws typically require persons charged with a crime to have their case heard in criminal rather than juvenile court, where penalties are more severe.1 The justification for this is that people are essentially adults by age 18, yet this conceptualization of adulthood is flawed. The identification of full criminal accountability at age 18 ignores the important, distinct phase of human development referred to as emerging adulthood, also known as late adolescence or young adulthood.2 Compelling evidence shows that most adolescents are not fully matured into adulthood until their mid-twenties.3 The legal demarcation of 18 as adulthood rests on outdated notions of adolescence. Based on the best scientific understanding of human development, ages 18 to 25 mark a unique stage of life between childhood and adulthood which is recognized within the fields of neuroscience, sociology, and psychology. Thus, there is growing support for providing incarcerated people who were young at the time of their offense a second look at their original sentence to account for their diminished capacity. A 2022 study found similar levels of public support for providing a second look at prison sentences for crimes committed under age 18 as for those committed under age 25.4 This brief proceeds in three sections: • Analysis based on a newly compiled nationally representative dataset of nearly 30,000 individuals sentenced to life without parole (LWOP) between 1995 and 2017. • Research review on adolescent brain development revealing that emerging adults share more characteristics with youth than adults. • Judicial, legislative, and administrative reform updates in nine jurisdictions: California, Connecticut, Florida, Massachusetts, Michigan, Vermont, Washington, Washington, DC, and Wyoming.

Washington, DC: The Sentencing Project, 2023. 22p.  

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 Amanda B. Gilman , Sarah Cusworth Walker , Kristin Vick, and Rachael Sanford  

  While there is ample research examining the short- and long-term effects of juvenile incarceration (broadly defined), less is known about the specific consequences of the most common form of youth incarceration, juvenile detention. We conducted a Rapid Evidence Review (RER), limiting our search to the past 10 years to include studies that captured modern juvenile justice practices, to assess the body of literature evaluating the effects of juvenile detention on youth outcomes. Our initial search yielded over 1,800 articles, but only three ultimately met criteria for inclusion in our review. We conclude that there is a profound lack of research regarding the consequences of juvenile detention, an issue that affects a large number of youth in the United States.

Crime and Delinquency, 67(11) : 1792-1813, 2021

By Vicky Kemp, Nicola Carr, Hope Kent and Stephen Farrall

  The criminal law is supposed to treat children, being those aged under 18 years, less harshly than it treats adults because of their developmental differences. Children also have particular legal rights due to their age, needs and circumstances. While the number of children arrested by the police has fallen by two-thirds over the past ten years, there were just under 53,000 people under 18 years old brought into police custody in England and Wales during the year ending March 2022. For children who come into conflict with the law, particularly those detained and questioned by the police, special protections are required to ensure that their legal rights are protected. In addition to legal safeguards under the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984 (PACE), children arrested and detained by the police have legal protections under the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child. Within the secure environment of police custody, however, children’s experiences are rarely heard, making them almost invisible during these early stages in the criminal process. This study, funded by the Nuffield Foundation, explores the impact of PACE on the detention and questioning of child suspects. For the first time in England and Wales, this included researchers engaging with child suspects about their legal rights while detained. Talking to children about their experiences in police custody provided researchers with greater insight into the processing of child suspects by the police.  

Nottingham, UK: University of Nottingham, 2023. 121p

By Josh Rovner

 Youth arrests and incarceration increased in the closing decades of the 20th century but have fallen sharply since that time. Public opinion often lags behind these realities, wrongly assuming both that crime is perpetually increasing and that youth offending is routinely violent. In fact, youth offending is predominantly low-level, and the 21st century has seen significant declines in youth arrests and incarceration. Between 2000 and 2020, the number of youth held in juvenile justice facilities fell from 109,000 to 25,000—a 77% decline.  

Washington, DC: The Sentencing Project, 2023. 9p.

By Richard Mendel

Though the number of youth confined nationwide has declined significantly over the past two decades, our country still incarcerates far too many young people.

It does so despite overwhelming evidence showing that incarceration is an ineffective strategy for steering youth away from delinquent behavior and that high rates of youth incarceration do not improve public safety. Incarceration harms young people’s physical and mental health, impedes their educational and career success, and often exposes them to abuse. And the use of confinement is plagued by severe racial and ethnic disparities.

This publication summarizes the evidence documenting the serious problems associated with the youth justice system’s continuing heavy reliance on incarceration and makes recommendations for reducing the use of confinement. It begins by describing recent incarceration trends in the youth justice system. This assessment finds that the sizable drop in juvenile facility populations since 2000 is due largely to a substantial decline in youth arrests nationwide, not to any shift toward other approaches by juvenile courts or corrections agencies once youth enter the justice system. Most youth who are incarcerated in juvenile facilities are not charged with serious violent offenses, yet the United States continues to confine youth at many times the rates of other nations. And it continues to inflict the harms of incarceration disproportionately on Black youth and other youth of color – despite well-established alternatives that produce better outcomes for youth and community safety.

Washington, DC: Sentencing Project, 2022. 34p.

By Barbara Bloom and David Steinhart

In I978,The National council on Crime and Delinquency (NCCD) published a study entitledWhy Punish the Children? The study JL offered a comprehensive and critical view of the nation's treatment of children whose mothers were incarcerated in the nation's jails and prisons. It documented a neglected and forgotten class of young people whose lives were disrupted and often damaged by the experience of isolation from their imprisoned mothers. Recommendations presented in the study were intended to focus attention on these children and their needs. The present work is a reassessment of the study published in I978. The need for a current appraisal is sharpened by the fact that the incarceration rate for female offenders has skyrocketed in recent years. This has spurred unwelcome growth of the invisible class of infants, children and teenagers who find themselves without a mother at home. While new legions of children are growing up separated from their mothers, government agencies appear more powerless than ever to attend to the needs of the children, their mothers and their caregivers. Now more than ever, we must renew our concern and define our commitment to these children. This report offers an appraisal of their needs and a current agenda for reform.

San Francisco: National Council on Crime and Delinquency, 1993. 86p.

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 Scott H. Decker and David C. Pyrooz

Pulling together the most salient, current issues in the field today, The Handbook of Gangs provides a significant assessment by leading scholars of key topics related to gangs, gang members, and responses to gangs.

• Chapters cover a wide array of the most prominent issues in the field of gangs, written by scholars who have been leaders in developing new ways of thinking about the topics

• Delivers cutting-edge reviews of the current state of research and practice and addresses where the field has been, where it is today and where it should go in the future

• Includes extensive coverage of the individual theories of delinquency and provides special emphasis on policy and prevention program implications in the study of gangs

Chichester, West Sussex:Wiley Blackwell, 2015. 592p

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.

• More.....

  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 Ko-lin Chin

In Chinatown Gangs, Ko-lin Chin penetrates a closed society and presents a rare portrait of the underworld of New York City's Chinatown. Based on first-hand accounts from gang members, gang victims, community leaders, and law enforcement authorities, this pioneering study reveals the pervasiveness, the muscle, the longevity, and the institutionalization of Chinatown gangs. Chin reveals the fear gangs instill in the Chinese community. At the same time, he shows how the economic viability of the community is sapped, and how gangs encourage lawlessness, making a mockery of law enforcement agencies.Ko-lin Chin makes clear that gang crime is inexorably linked to Chinatown's political economy and social history. He shows how gangs are formed to become "equalizers" within a social environment where individual and group conflicts, whether social, political, or economic, are unlikely to be solved in American courts. Moreover, Chin argues that Chinatown's informal economy provides yet another opportunity for street gangs to become "providers" or "protectors" of illegal services. These gangs, therefore, are the pathological manifestation of a closed community, one whose problems are not easily seen--and less easily understood--by outsiders.Chin's concrete data on gang characteristics, activities, methods of operation and violence make him uniquely qualified to propose ways to restrain gang violence, and Chinatown Gangs closes with his specific policy suggestions. It is the definitive study of gangs in an American Chinatown.

New York: Oxford University Press, 1996. 248p.