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 Samantha Buckingham

Rehabilitation is a paramount consideration in abolishing police interrogation of youth. Interrogation is one of the first interactions young people have with the criminal legal system. Unfortunately, the most common methods of interrogation are coercive rather than consensual. Youth are uniquely vulnerable to coercive methods, especially in conjunction with racial, socioeconomic, and ableist hierarchies. Youth vulnerability requires more protective legal standards than those applied to mature adults. Current police practices, permitted by the very structure of the law, harm youth at a critical stage of their development and legal socialization. Interrogation is a missed opportunity to consider how every legal actor can incentivize youth to respect and follow the law. Reforms and scholarly proposals focused on adjusting police behavior or changing the circumstances of youth interrogation fail to ameliorate harm to youth. This Article examines how police interrogation of a youthful suspect may undercut rehabilitation by damaging that young person’s sense of belonging and desire to behave as society hopes. This Article concludes that the most appropriate and practicable solution is a categorical ban on officer-initiated interrogation of youth

North Carolina Law Review, 2023. 62p.

By Magnus Lofstrom, Brandon Martin, and Deepak Premkumar, with research support from Andrew Skelton

California has seen increases in some crime over the last decade, including notable jumps in homicides, auto theft, and most recently retail theft, as well as a slow gradual uptick in aggravated assaults. While these recent increases have dominated headlines, longer-term trends in fact point toward significant overall decreases in crime since the 1990s that appear to be concentrated among juveniles and young adults.

In this report, we examine these long-term changes, focusing specifically on whether younger generations are less likely to be criminally active, as measured by violent crimes, than past generations—or if drops in offending have affected all age groups. One of the most robust relationships in criminology is between age and crime: criminal offending increases in adolescence, peaks in the late teens or early 20s, and then continually decreases. This relationship is the foundation for the well-known “age-crime curve,” which underlies predictions and risk assessments about future offending.

Drawing from unique, individual-level data on arrests in California between 1980 and 2020, we use arrests for violent felonies as our measure of criminal offending because these offenses have not been directly targeted by the numerous reforms implemented in the state over the past several decades and arrests for these crimes are subject to less law enforcement discretion.

Between 1990 and 2010, the age-crime curve in California generally follows historical patterns, with peaks in crime during the late teen years or early 20s; these curves follow these patterns but have gradually shifted downward, reflecting declines in violent crime during this period. However, the most recent age-crime curves differ from earlier, well-established state and national patterns in ways that are consistent with generational shifts in criminal offending. →

The violent felony arrest rate for young adults (ages 18–22) dropped by more than 50 percent over the last 25 years, from 1,712 per 100,000 residents in 1994 to 840 in 2019. The drop is even more notable as the rate for adults in their late 30s and older increased over the same period. This steep decline is the driving factor behind the most recent shift in the age-crime curve. After representing about 25 percent of violent felony arrests among adults for decades, young adults now account for 16 percent of these arrests. →

We see reductions in violent criminal offending beginning with individuals born in the early 1990s. For those born in 1993 and later, the violent felony arrest rate is 20 to 25 percent lower than in previous generations. →

The decrease in violent criminal offending among younger generations is driven by fewer individuals arrested for violent felonies. However, the number of offenses each individual is arrested for in a year has increased by about 5 percent, a notable deviation from decades-long levels. This increase has not been limited to any single generation but represents a broader increase over the last decade. →

While our study does not aim to identify the reasons behind these shifts, nor the extent to which they apply to other offenses, the decrease in criminal offending coincides with changes in some teen behavior; for example, measures of risky behavior, like alcohol consumption and drug use, have declined among more recent generations. Future work to determine specific contributing factors and whether the changes are persistent would have great value and policy relevance.

Even without knowing the root causes, several policy implications follow from our findings. The decrease in crime among younger generations suggests the possibility of lower future capacity needs for the criminal justice system. But although there has been a drop in the number of offenders arrested, the frequency of offending is up somewhat, pointing toward the potential need for new and/or alternative approaches to reduce crime among a plausibly more challenging-to-rehabilitate offender population. Lastly, but importantly, our results also suggest that risk assessment tools—which are widely used by criminal justice agencies—need to be adjusted to account for declines in offending among younger generations to reduce inaccurate predictions.

San Francisco: Public Policy Institute of California 2023. 27p.

By M e g h a n R . O g l e

The Center for Juvenile Justice Reform, in partnership with Stoneleigh Foundation, presents, “Advancing Racial Equity in Pennsylvania’s Youth Legal System.” Authored by Stoneleigh Emerging Leader, Dr. Meghan Ogle, this report details the work of seven county-based teams (representing Allegheny, Chester, Lancaster, Lehigh, Montgomery, Philadelphia, and York Counties) and one state-based team in Pennsylvania who participated in CJJR’s Advancing Racial Equity and Justice in Youth Legal Systems Certificate Program in September of 2021. After engaging in the weeklong Certificate Program in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, these multi-disciplinary teams of youth legal system officials and partners developed Capstone Projects designed to advance racial equity and reduce disparities faced by youth of color involved in the youth legal system. This report details the Capstone Projects developed by each of the teams, baseline data analyzed, implementation progress, and initial outcome measures. It also highlights lessons learned in the process, including common challenges faced by the participating sites, as well as promising strategies.

Washington, DC: Center for Juvenile Justice Reform Georgetown University, 2023. 37p.

By Lisa Pilnik, Amber Farn, and Michael Umpierre

Through YAP’s Safely Home Initiative, six jurisdictions implemented YAP in their communities, including Yavapai County, Arizona; Alameda County, California; Fulton County, Georgia; Mecklenburg County, North Carolina; Hamilton County, Ohio, and the state of Illinois. The publication details the strategies, impact, and outcomes resulting from the implementation of the YAP Safely Home Initiative in these six communities. Policymakers, youth justice agency leaders, and others interested in supporting community-based services and alternatives to youth incarceration are encouraged to read this new resource for the field.

Center for Juvenile Justice Reform, Georgetown University, 2023. 41p.

By Allex R. Piquero, Michael T. Baglivio and Kevin T Wolff

There has long been a concern about the imposition of monetary sanctions on the risk of recidivism, but much of this work has been conducted among adults, and very little among youth. Moreover, virtually no work has considered this issue across race and ethnicity. This study uses both quantitative and qualitative data to examine this issue. Several key findings emerged from our work. First, while there were no race/ethnic differences in the proportion of youth receiving fines, when fines were administered both black and Hispanic youth were administered significantly higher fees. Second, youth residing in areas with greater concentrated disadvantage had higher amounts of fees assigned (when assigned fees). Third, after youth were matched, analyses indicated fees increased the likelihood of recidivism, as did being black or Hispanic. Fourth, when we considered the interaction between race/ethnicity and both fees and restitution, results showed two race/ethnic differences: whereas Hispanic youth with fees were less likely to recidivate, black youth with restitution had a higher risk of recidivism. Finally, the qualitative data pointed to some startling findings, namely that youth did not understand the full impact of fines on both their families and themselves and a non-significant percentage reported that they would have to resort to criminal activity in order to pay fines.

Youth Violence and Juvenile Justice, 2023.

By Tirion Havard

This briefing focuses on serious youth violence within the context of organised crime groups involved in county lines drug dealing. The Government has made “rolling up county lines” a priority for the police in recent years. What is county lines drug dealing? County lines drug dealing describes organised crime groups (OCGs) who supply drugs to suburban areas including market and coastal towns. County lines drug dealers use dedicated mobile phones or “deal lines” to assist in the transport of drugs. This type of drug dealing is strongly associated with the coercion of children and vulnerable people. The dealers uses children and vulnerable people to move drugs, money and sometimes weapons between their hometown and the costal and market towns they are dealing in. In 2020 the NCA said exploitation in county lines drug dealing was “the most frequently identified form of coerced criminality, with children representing the vast majority of victims”. In 2021 they said that “at least 14.5%” of modern slavery referrals were related to county lines activity. The NCA says “violence at street level is often linked to drugs supply” and “continues to be associated” with county lines drug dealing. The Government has concluded that “changes to the drugs market, like the (emergence of the) county lines model of exploitation, is partly fuelling” serious violence.

London: UK Parliament, House of Commons Library, 2022/ 27p.

By Amber Farn and Michael Umpierre

Authored in partnership with the Council of Juvenile Justice Administrators (CJJA) and with support from The Pew Charitable Trusts (Pew), this publication provides an overview of research related to length of stay and lessons learned from the Length of Stay Policy Academy hosted by CJJR and CJJA in 2020 with support from Pew. The report features length of stay efforts from the jurisdictions that participated in the Academy, including Bexar County, Texas; Idaho; Maryland; New York City, New York; and Oklahoma, as well as other states that have led related initiatives such as Arkansas, Illinois, and Utah. Policymakers.

Washington, DC: Center for Juvenile Justice Reform, McCourt School of Public Policy, Georgetown University, 2023. 33p.

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.

Edited By Frank J. Cohen

FROM THE FOREWORD: “This publication is a report of the proceedings of the Law Enforcement Institute on Youth and Crime held at New York University, July 18-21, 1955, in the Vanderbilt Auditorium, Washington Square South. It was jointly sponsored by Attorney General of the State of New York, Honorable Jacob K. Javits, and Chairman, New York State Youth Commission, Honorable Mark A. McCloskey, in cooperation with the New York University Graduate School of Public Administration and Social Service.

The purpose of this Institute was that of determining how to prevent and reduce juvenile delinquency, a problem that occupies increasingly the attention of national, state, and local officials and citizens today. Figures released by the United States Children's Bureau show that delinquency has risen 28 per cent in the past four years. It is estimated that about 2 per cent of all children in the United States between the ages of ten to seventeen years were dealt with by juvenile courts in delinquency cases. Approximately a million children are picked up by the police in a year; 100,000 are held in jail and sore 40,000 are sent to training schools.

NY. International Universities Press. 1954. 269p.

By Hazel Kemshall

HM Inspectorate of Probation is committed to reviewing, developing and promoting the evidence base for high-quality probation and youth offending services. Academic Insights are aimed at all those with an interest in the evidence base. We commission leading academics to present their views on specific topics, assisting with informed debate and aiding understanding of what helps and what hinders probation and youth offending services. This report was kindly produced by Professor Hazel Kemshall, summarising key learning for practitioners and organisations in relation to risk management. Practitioners are often required to make decisions in challenging situations with incomplete information, and it is thus important to pay attention to the potential influence of subjective biases and individual emotions and values. To minimise error and ensure that decisions are balanced, reasoned and well-evidenced, practitioners need to seek and critically appraise information, and adopt an open, honest and reflective approach….

Manchester: HM Inspectorate of Probation, 2021. 16p.

By W. Dyer Halpern

In 2018, New York State enacted its “Raise the Age” (RTA) legislation, which raised the age of criminal responsibility from 16 to 18 years old. Under RTA, 16- and 17-year-olds accused of misdemeanors go to family court, where they can be adjudicated as juvenile delinquents. A 16- or 17-year-old accused of committing felonies is considered an “adolescent offender” (AO). When an AO is arrested for a felony-level crime, his case is initially heard in the “youth part” of the criminal/supreme/superior court system (what we’ll call “adult court” going forward). But most of these cases are quickly “removed”—that is, transferred—to family court or even directly to family court probation. Under RTA, in order for a prosecutor to keep an AO in adult court, he must prove by a preponderance of the evidence that: 1. the defendant caused significant physical injury to a person other than a participant in the offense; or 2. the defendant displayed a firearm, shotgun, rifle, or deadly weapon, as defined in the penal law in furtherance of such offense; or 3. the defendant unlawfully engaged in sexual intercourse, oral sexual conduct, anal sexual conduct, or sexual contact.1 But these factors are harder to satisfy than they might seem…..

New York: The Manhattan Institute, 2023. 23p.

By Judd B. Kessler. Sarah Tahamont. Alexander Gelber, Adam Isen

AbstractRecent policy discussions have proposed government-guaranteed jobs, including for youth. One key potential benefit of youth employment is a reduction in criminal justice contact. Prior work on summer youth employment programs has documented little-to-no effect of the program on crime during the program but has found decreases in violent and other serious crimes among “at-risk” youth in the year or two after the program.We add to this picture by studying randomized lotteries for access to the New YorkCity Summer Youth Employment Program (SYEP), the largest such program in theUnited States. We link SYEP data to New York State criminal records data to inves-tigate outcomes of 163,447 youth who participated in a SYEP lottery between 2005and 2008. We find evidence that SYEP participation decreases arrests and convictions during the program summer, effects that are driven by the small fraction (3 percent)of SYEP youth who are at-risk, as defined by having been arrested before the start of the program. We conclude that an important benefit of SYEPs is the contemporaneous effect during the program summer and that the effect is concentrated among individu-als with prior contact with the criminal justice system

Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, Volume41, Issue3. Summer 2022. Pages 710-730

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 Florian Kaiser

To explore why system contact often has no crime-preventative effect, the current study examined the effects of juvenile justice contact on Situational Action Theory's (SAT) causes of crime, including personal morals, deviant peer associations, and detection risk perceptions. The analysis is based on a sample of English (Peterborough Adolescent and Young Adult Development Study) and German (Crime in the modern City study) juveniles. Propensity score matching was applied to estimate whether the lenient system contacts influenced the causes of crime in the year after the contact. The treatment effect estimates are mostly insignificant and relatively small. The few significant estimates in the English sample suggest that official contact slightly increased deviant peer associations and decreased feelings of moral guilt. Overall, the findings suggest that system contact may often have no crime-preventative effect as it does not (Germany), or only slightly (England) affect SAT's causes of crime. Previous studies, primarily based on the U.S. data, often reported more substantial effects that mostly operated in a crime-amplifying direction. It is speculated whether the less substantial impact in the current study can be attributed to the overall more lenient, diversion-oriented handling of the examined English and German offenders.

International Criminal Justice ReviewVolume 33, Issue 3 Sep 2023 Pages 225-342

By Chris Trotter and Phillipa Evans

A number of studies have found that when probation officers, and others who supervise young people and adults on community based orders, have good intervention skills their clients are more likely to be engaged in supervision and to have low recidivism rates. The skills include, role clarification, pro-social modelling, problem solving, cognitive and relationship skills. Little research has been done, however, on the development of these skills across whole organisations. This study aimed to examine the extent to which training and coaching of probation officers, across two state youth justice departments in Australia, improved the use of workers’ skills. Audio-tapes of worker/client interviews were provided to research staff before and after training and coaching. Analysis of the audio-tapes found a significant increase in the overall use of worker skills following the training and coaching. However, the increases in the skills applied largely to role clarification, rather than pro-social modelling, problem solving and cognitive skills.

European Journal of Probation. Volume 15, Issue 2Aug 2023Pages97-170

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 Christoph Engel

Objectives: Peer effects on the decision to commit a crime have often been documented. But how little does it take to trigger the effect? Method: A fully incentivized, anonymous experiment in the tradition of experimental law and economics provides fully internally valid causal evidence. A companion vignette study with members of the general public extends external validity. Results: (a) the more of their peers violate an arbitrary rule, the more participants do; (b) a minority has a threshold and switches from rule-abiding to violation once a sufficient number of their peers violate the rule; (c) the more the rule is constraining, the more participants are sensitive to the number of others who violate the rule; (d) if participants do not have explicit information about the incidence of rule violations in their community, they rely on their beliefs. Conclusion: In terms of substance, the paper shows that mere social information is the core of peer effects. In terms of methodology, the paper demonstrates the power of incentivized, decontextualized lab experiments for isolating mental building blocks of the decision to commit a crime.

Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency 2023, Vol. 60(4) 455–492

By Katie Hunter

This thesis is concerned with the overrepresentation of black and minority ethnic (BME) children and looked after children, in the youth justice system in general and the secure state in particular, in England and Wales. In the period 1993 to 2008, youth justice was characterised by a process of extensive penal expansion. Since 2008, however, the child prison population has fallen dramatically. The decline has been linked to pragmatic cost reduction as well as an increase in diversionary measures which keep children out of the system altogether. However, BME children and looked after children have not benefited from this decline to the same extent as white children and non-looked after children. The contraction in the system has served to intensify existing inequalities. This thesis interrogates the nature and extent of the overrepresentation of these groups. It employs a mixed-methods approach which involves analyses of secondary data and in-depth interviews with 27 national youth justice and children’s services professionals. This thesis builds upon and extends previous research, it determines that BME children are criminalised through ‘institutional racialisation’ which operates on micro, meso and macro levels. The thesis signals policing as having a particularly powerful influence on the levels of BME children in the system. The weight of these findings lie precisely in the fact that they are so longstanding. …

Liverpool: University of Liverpool, 2019. 307p.

By Tim Bateman, Anne-Marie Day and John Pitts

Although there are some important limitations with the data, the available evidence demonstrates conclusively that children who are in the care of the local authority are consistently over-represented among those who come to the attention of the youth justice system. A similar disproportionality is also evident within the children’s custodial estate. While it appears that the relationship is long-standing, it has only recently become the focus of policy attention which has begun to explore some of the reasons for the patterns discernible in the figures (see, for example, Schofield et al, 2012: Laming, 2016). In particular, an independent review of the relationship between the care system and the criminal justice system, led by Lord Laming, commissioned an extensive exploration of the available literature that provides a useful baseline for future research (Staines, 2016). The current review aims to provide a context for research, funded by the Nuffield Foundation, that aims to identity the particular pathways of looked after children into, through and leaving custody and to establish in what ways, and to what extent, these might differ from those of children who do not have care experience. It does not accordingly aim to replicate the earlier work identified in the previous paragraph; instead the intention is to draw on previous reviews, and relevant additional material, through a lens that focuses on the existing evidence base as it relates specifically to the likelihood of children being incarcerated, to their subsequent custodial experience and to the provision of effective resettlement once they have been released.

Luton: University of Bedfordshire, 2018. 37p.