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 Texas Center for Justice and Equity

During Youth Justice Action Month, we launched a new campaign focused on closing Texas’s 5 remaining prisons and investing in kids instead. After reports revealed dangerous and inhumane conditions in the Texas Juvenile Justice Department (TJJD), the “solution” has been to raise employee salaries. We know this will not fix the systemic abuse and neglect of incarcerated youth, and we demand something better for Texas kids. Along with the release of a policy brief and webpage explaining our policy goals, we’re convening the Finish the 5 Coalition — a group of advocates, organizations, impacted people, and other individuals. 

Austin, TX: TCJE, 2022. 9p.

By Emily A. Vogels

Nearly half of U.S. teens have been bullied or harassed online, with physical appearance being seen as a relatively common reason why. Older teen girls are especially likely to report being targeted by online abuse overall and because of their appearance

Washington, DC: Pew Research Center, 2022. 24p

By The National Governors Association

Youth involved in the juvenile justice system routinely face a variety of repercussions beyond detention. Although some of these may be directly related to the violation that occurred, there are many other secondary effects that can result from their system involvement. These secondary repercussions, or collateral consequences, can negatively impact youth and their families upon even the lowest level of engagement with the juvenile justice system. Such side effects can restrict a youth’s ability to recover and develop into a productive and self-sustaining adult citizen.

To better understand the range of collateral consequences youth may face, NGA conducted a series of learning calls and hosted a virtual roundtable titled “Strategies to Address the Needs of Juveniles Impacted by Collateral Consequences” during the fall of 2022. This roundtable convened national, state, and local subject-matter experts to explore the breadth of collateral consequences faced by justice-involved youth, the challenges and barriers policymakers face when addressing these consequences and policy options state leaders may consider to mitigate the negative effects that may result when youth interact with the juvenile justice system. This publication documents these high-level discussions and highlights key policy strategies for Governors’ offices to consider addressing this issue.  

Washington, DC: NGA, 2023. 12p.

By The National Juvenile Justice Network

Realizing true youth justice means ensuring youth live in a well-resourced ecosystem of community-based, trauma-informed and healing-centered responses to youth needs that create a pathway to opportunity, success and thriving for young people. An integral part of that ecosystem is a positive school environment that honors who young people are, pushes them to do their best, helps them when they encounter challenges, and extends grace when they miss the mark. When young people have access to positive school environments, they are better equipped to come to school with enthusiasm for learning, discover their dreams and passions, find ways to positively impact their school environment and learn from mistakes when they arise.
Unfortunately, a “surveillance” culture permeates too many of today's schools where students are penalized instead of encouraged to achieve their highest goals. Black, Brown, Indigenous, LGBTQIA+, and disabled students more often experience these types of surveillance school environments, which cause young people stress, trauma, and alienation and detract from their ability to learn and grow. Ultimately, it can lead students to become so disaffected that they drop out of school or are forced out through suspension, expulsion, or arrest.

Washington DC: NJJN, 2022. 45p.

By The Strathmore Law Clinic

Socially and economically vulnerable girls in Kenya are at heightened risk of being ensnared by the juvenile detention system. Facing extreme poverty, these girls are often arrested and detained for petty offences that arise from socioeconomic disadvantage. Girls are often subjected to abuses at all levels of the juvenile detention system, including violations of their rights during arrest, remand, and trial; abusive or inadequate conditions of post-sentencing detention; and stigmatization and lack of support upon release from detention. This report chronicles the experiences of girls during all phases of the criminal detention system in Kenya and advocates for abolition and reform of the juvenile detention system.

In November 2019, following weeks of desk research on the experiences of juveniles in Kenya’s criminal detention system, the Leitner Clinic, Strathmore Law Clinic, Wakilisha Initiative and Clean Start convened in Nairobi to conduct fact-finding interviews for the report. We conducted a site visit to the Kamae Girls Borstal Institution (“Kamae”), the only girls Borstal institution in Kenya, and interviewed the Head Officer and 10 of the 37 girls currently detained at Kamae to discuss their experiences at all levels of the juvenile detention system. We also interviewed Hon. Jacqueline Kibosia, a Kenyan children’s court magistrate; Irene Ndegwa, a pro bono attorney who represents children in the juvenile detention system; and representatives of Wakilisha Initiative (“Wakilisha”), Clean Start, Nafisika Trust (“Nafisika”) and NGOs that assist incarcerated and formerly incarcerated children.

Nairobi, Kenya: Strathmore Law Clinic, 2022. 38p.

By José Miguel Cruz, Ph.D. Andi Coombes, M.S.c. Yemile Mizrahi , et al.

Can a gang member in Honduras leave the gang, abandon criminal activities, and rehabilitate? What factors facilitate the process of disengagement from gangs in Honduras? To answer these questions, the American Institutes for Research (AIR), the Kimberly Green Latin American and Caribbean Center at Florida International University (LACC-FIU), and Democracy International (DI) conducted a study with Honduran gang members and former gang members across the country. The study is based on a survey with a sample of 1,021 respondents with a record of gang membership and 38 in-depth interviews with former gang members and other community members. Active gang members do disengage from the gang and its activities, but this disengagement depends on a myriad of factors, including the types of social relationships which the individual establishes outside the gang, the type of gang organization, and the availability of faith-based programs willing to reach out to the individual. This study, funded through the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) Latin America and Caribbean Youth Violence Prevention project, builds on previous academic scholarship on gangs in Honduras and Central America. We conducted the survey interviews in three adult penitentiaries, three juvenile detention centers, two juvenile parole programs, and several faith-based centers which work with former gang members in Tegucigalpa and San Pedro Sula. We complemented the information with semistructured interviews with 14 former gang members in the metropolitan areas of San Pedro and La Ceiba. We also interviewed 24 subject-matter experts and community members in Tegucigalpa, San Pedro Sula, and La Ceiba. We contracted a local firm, ANED, to conduct the survey interviews and trained a local team of interviewers, who collected the information under our direct supervision. For the in-depth interviews, we contracted and trained two local specialists. Data collection was conducted between October and December 2019.

Washington, DC: American Institutes for Research & Florida International University , 2020. 91p.

By Save the Children - Australia

At its best, the youth justice system has the potential to turn around lives, be responsive to the needs of children and young people, provide the supports they need to thrive, and thereby keep communities safer. In recent years, numerous reports and inquiries across Australia and internationally have detailed the negative impacts that contact with the justice system can have on children and young people. This is particularly the case for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children and young people, who are overrepresented across all youth justice systems in Australia and are detained in youth detention facilities at unacceptably high rates. Despite some recent gains and efforts in certain jurisdictions to better utilise prevention and early intervention across the system and support culturally safe practices, youth justice systems in Australia persistently violate child rights. Our youth justice systems are also often not fit-for-purpose to support the needs of children and young people and divert them out of the system for good. Punitive and incarceration-focused policies and practices directly undermine the key outcomes that governments are seeking to achieve through these policies, including to reduce recidivism and improve community safety. This report comes at a time when there has been significant youth justice reform across a number of states and territories in Australia, and a strengthened political imperative at the national level to raise the age of criminal responsibility and ameliorate the ongoing legacy of racial injustice. Right now, more than ever, there is also a heightened public consciousness that demands a new and better approach to youth justice. The report aims to highlight why child rights are important, how these rights are relevant across youth justice systems, where child rights are being undermined in youth justice today and where the greatest opportunities are for reform.

Save the Children - Australia: 2023. 109p.

By InSight Crime

President Maduro’s plan to help governors fund their states by gifting them each a gold mine soon ran into trouble. In the sprawling state of Bolívar, this led to immediate conflict. The criminal gangs that ran Venezuela’s mining heartland would never surrender. One group, in particular, has led the resistance. On November 5, 2019, threatening pamphlets appeared on the streets of El Callao, a mining town in Venezuela›s eastern state of Bolívar. The town was already on edge. A week before, a severed head was found on a road in El Callao. The pamphlets contained a message from a local gang leader, Alejandro Rafael Ochoa Sequea, alias “Toto,” to the municipal mayor, Alberto Hurtado. “You handed over your land to the government,” they read. “Resign, you have 48 hours to pack your bags because there is going to be more death, and if you don’t go, I’m coming for your head.” That night, armed men on motorbikes raced around the streets, firing off their weapons and setting off a grenade. This investigation exposes how the Maduro regime’s attempts to control Venezuela’s mining heartland in the state of Bolívar has led to criminal chaos, as guerrilla groups, heavily armed gangs and corrupt state elements battle over the country’s gold. Toto’s message and his gang’s terror campaign came shortly after President Nicolás Maduro had announced an unusual new policy: He would give each state governor a gold mine to help fund their administrations. There was one problem. Bolívar’s gold mines were controlled by brutal criminal gangs known as sindicatos (unions). And the sindicatos such as Toto’s had no intention of giving up the mines without a fight.

Washington, DC: InSight Crime, 2021. 31p.

By Miroslava Chavez-Garcia

This unique analysis of the rise of the juvenile justice system from the nineteenth to twentieth centuries uses one of the harshest states—California—as a case study for examining racism in the treatment of incarcerated young people of color. Using rich new untapped archives, States of Delinquency is the first book to explore the experiences of young Mexican Americans, African Americans, and ethnic Euro-Americans in California correctional facilities including Whittier State School for Boys and the Preston School of Industry. Miroslava Chávez-García examines the ideologies and practices used by state institutions as they began to replace families and communities in punishing youth, and explores the application of science and pseudo-scientific research in the disproportionate classification of youths of color as degenerate. She also shows how these boys and girls, and their families, resisted increasingly harsh treatment and various kinds of abuse, including sterilization.

California. University of California Press. 2012. 292p.

By Emer Smyth and 

Merike Darmody

New research, published by the ESRI and produced in partnership with the Department of Children, Equality, Disability, Inclusion and Youth (DCEDIY), shows that schools are more important than neighbourhoods in influencing adolescent behaviour. Using data from the Growing Up in Ireland study, the findings show that most 17-year-olds have no behaviour difficulties and few consistently ‘act out’ at home, at school, and in the community.
 

Dublin: The Economic and Social Research Institute. 2021. 147p.

By Maria Jerram

This fieldwork for this inspection took place between April and June 2021. The trial for the murder of George Floyd ran alongside it and concluded during this time. The impact of this case and the rise and influence of the Black Lives Matter movement were strongly felt in almost every service we visited during this inspection. It was clear that these events have reignited overdue discussion about racial discrimination and its impact. Over the course of six weeks, we inspected nine different youth offending services (YOSs). We reviewed comprehensive evidence in advance from each area and in total examined 173 cases of black and mixed heritage boys (59 out-of-court disposal cases and 114 cases dealt with by the courts). We commissioned the services of ‘User Voice’ 1 to obtain the views of 38 boys who had been supervised by the different services. They told us about the support they had received and the challenges they face. Prior to this thematic inspection, we analysed our own core inspection data from a 12-month period and found that the quality of service delivery to black and mixed heritage boys tended to be poorer than that of work delivered to their peers. This was especially evident in the out-of-court disposal cases. We were concerned in this inspection to find that when we looked at this type of work, with an increased focus on ethnicity and experiences of discrimination, we found an even greater disparity. The boys whose cases we looked at had complex needs, and opportunities to support them earlier, outside of the youth justice system, had often been missed. It was therefore concerning to find that, when they came to the attention of the criminal justice system, the quality of services they received at this critical moment in their life was insufficient. 60 percent of the boys subject to court orders had been excluded from education, most of them permanently, and the impact of this on their life chances was significant. Black and mixed heritage boys were consistently over-represented in custodial cohorts. In one service every child in custody was a black or mixed heritage boy and this is deeply worrying. Addressing ‘disproportionality’ has been a longstanding objective in most youth justice plans, but our evidence indicates that little progress has been made in terms of the quality of practice. At a strategic partnership level there is a lack of clarity and curiosity about what is causing the disparity and what needs to be done to bring about an improvement. Partners are not collating data and using it effectively to analyse and address the barriers that contribute to the over-representation of black and mixed heritage boys in the criminal justice system. Most services recognised that things have not been done well enough and stated their commitment to improve. In the last 12 months some YOSs have developed focused strategies and plans to address disproportionality and support anti-racist practice; however, any impact of this is yet to be reflected in the quality of casework. This current impetus must now be used to urgently improve practice, service delivery and outcomes for black and mixed heritage boys. To be effective, there must be a clear vision, strategy and plan that is embraced by all partner agencies and understood by all those working with this group of boys. Training, support, direction and guidance for staff are critical, as is the ongoing monitoring and reviewing of progress and improvement. We will also introduce a more robust set of standards around this issue for our core youth inspections.  

Manchester, UK: HM Inspectorate of Probation, 2021. 71p

Out of Harm's Way:  A new care system to protect vulnerable teenagers at risk of exploitation and crime 

By The Commission on Young Lives

  There is an ongoing epidemic of drug-running, grooming and serious youth violence in England. Harmful criminal exploitation is now an ever-present reality of some childhoods. It involves tens of thousands of marginalised and vulnerable young people, brings misery and destroys lives and prospects. Recent government statistics show that last year almost 13,000 children in England were identified by social services as being involved with gangs, thousands more sexually exploited. Yet this is just the tip of the iceberg, the children who we know about. There are many thousands of others growing up surrounded by addiction issues, domestic violence, serious parental mental ill health, or poverty. Frequently they go unsupported and invisible to the agencies who should be able to protect them. They are the children most likely to fall through gaps in the education or care systems, and who can end up exploited by the ruthless organised criminals or abusers who have such a talent for spotting the most vulnerable.  

London: The Commission on Young Lives, 2021. 63p.

By The Commission on Young Lives  (UK)

Hidden in Plain Sight’ was published in November 2022. It sets out our recommendations for fighting back against those who groom and exploit children and how we can provide the right support to vulnerable teenagers to help them to thrive and succeed in life.

Its recommendations include:

• A new ‘invest to save’ “Sure Start Plus” programme. Part-financed by the millions of pounds recovered from the proceeds of crime every year, this ‘Sure Start for Teenagers’ network would bring health and education together to lead the local fight back against those who exploit children, through coordinating services and support in local disadvantaged areas and ensuring that young people at risk get help early when problems occur.

• A one-off £1billion children and young people’s mental health recovery programme, part-financed by a levy on social media companies and mobile phone providers.

• A new army of youth practitioners to identify struggling youngsters, build positive relationships and guide young people away from harm and towards success. 

London: The Commission on Young Lives, 2022. 90p.

By Youth Endowment Fund and Crest Advisory

The Youth Endowment Fund’s mission is to find out what works to prevent children from becoming involved in violence. To do that, we need to understand young people’s lives. That’s why we’ve created a Youth Advisory Board, so that we’re giving young people, including those with experience of violence, a stake in our decision-making. We’ve invested in the Peer Action Collective, to develop young people-led approaches to research. And it’s why we’ve written this report, which uses a survey of over 2,000 teenage children and official statistics to present an overview of young people’s experiences today. We also interviewed young people and youth offending team workers, to see how the data matches their experiences (and will be publishing more details on what they said in the coming months). We’ll repeat this research every year, so we can track trends and changes. This is a summary of our first year’s findings.  

Youth Endowment Fund and Crest Advisory,2022. 99p.

The latest findings from the Edinburgh Study are presented.  The report is based on the latest phase of fieldwork, which involved interviews with cohort members, an online survey, and analysis of criminal records data.

Amongst the findings are that experiences of poverty and trauma in childhood were strongly associated with offending behaviour in adolescence and also going on to offend into early adulthood.  Nevertheless, many of those who were involved in serious offending were not known to the children’s hearings system or the adult criminal justice system. While trauma in childhood was damaging, many of those who continued offending beyond age 25 had also experienced significant trauma in adulthood.

We recommend that policies need to be focused on prevention and early intervention, with specific strategies to tackle poverty and adversity. 

Edinburgh: University of Edinburgh, School of Law, 2022. 46p.

By 

Charles Puzzanchera; Sarah Hockenberry; 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. 

Pittsburg: National Center for Juvenile Justice, 2022. 226p.

By Beatriz Magaloni and Veriene Melo, With contributions from Sara Rizzo,  and Sofia Mac Gregor Oettler

This study is the result of over four years of active collaboration between the Poverty, Violence and Governance Lab (PovGov) and the Rio-based NGO Agency for Youth Networks (hereafter, Agency). What began in 2012 as an informal conversation between PovGov researchers and the program’s founder and director, Marcus Faustini, led to a solid partnership that has produced not only this research but also opportunities for engagement through events both in California and in Rio de Janeiro. A central objective of PovGov’s research agenda is to assess and disseminate knowledge about initiatives and policies seeking to benefit socially vulnerable populations throughout Latin America. Agency’s target population – namely, young people from the favelas and peripheries of Rio de Janeiro who often find themselves unemployed, out of school, and exposed to high levels of violence – being of great relevance to PovGov’s work. During a 2015 conference hosted by PovGov at the Stanford Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law (CDDRL) entitled “Educational and Entrepreneurial Initiatives to Support Youth in Places of Violence,” several Agency educators and participants shared their experiences in the program. They expanded on its mission, challenges, and relevance considering the scenario of vulnerability and limited opportunities that young people face not only in Rio de Janeiro but throughout Brazil. It became clear then that the approach, experience, and impact of the Agency's innovative methodology – which engages young people in marginalized communities as protagonists in the creation and implementation of projects with a potential for social impact – should be analyzed in-depth, with the work beginning promptly after. Employing a mixed-method strategy based on quasi-experimental and non-experimental designs, to build our program impact evaluation, we drew from survey responses from 500 people, as well as interviews, observations, and informational documents of various kinds. The results, culminated in this report, come down to four learning summaries which speak to methodology and curriculum (Agency’s methodology promotes active learning for project creation while strengthening pathways for individual empowerment and community engagement); the profile of program participants (Agency is engaging some of the most vulnerable – but also resilient and hopeful – youth groups in Rio de Janeiro); participant experience (Agency provides participants with tools to increase their life-skills, networks, urban mobility, community engagement, and entrepreneurial competencies); and impact evaluation (participation in the Agency program has a positive impact on several dimensions of employment, business development, social engagement, and individual empowerment). Ultimately, our study has demonstrated that Agency’s youth-inclusive methodology is successful in deepening reflection and facilitating action for meaningful youth-led processes of community change to take place, while promoting mechanisms and pathways for young people to learn, reflect on their experiences, express themselves, amplify their voices, and become protagonists of the changes they want to see.   

Stanford, CA: Stanford University, The Poverty, Violence and Governance Lab (PovGov), 2019. 96p.

By John Hagedorn, et al

  The nature of gang violence in Chicago has been changing, but policies and practices toward it have not. This was the main conclusion of “The Fracturing of Gangs Conference,” held at the Great Cities Institute in Spring 2018. This report shares insights from that conference along with an array of conversations since then. The conference presenters urged that it is time to move on from the narrative of Chicago as a “city of gangs.” Chicago has always been a “city of neighborhoods,” and the violence that has resulted from the fragmentation of traditional gangs into new horizontal gangs and cliques should be addressed within a comprehensive neighborhood policy. The decline of the traditional leadership and structure of African American gangs presents Chicago with an unprecedented opportunity to redirect youth away from gangs and into jobs and movements for social justice. Data from the conference presentations show that Chicago’s high levels of violence are persisting, suggesting that current approaches need to be readjusted. Homicide levels and trends in Chicago are more similar to Rust Belt cities like Cleveland and Milwaukee than to “global cities” such as New York City or Los Angeles. The homicide rate is strongly correlated with race and concentrated poverty, with 75% of all homicides in Chicago taking place between African Americans, despite the fact that the city’s population comprises a relatively equal number of Blacks, Latinos, and whites. Long-term approaches to Chicago’s persistent homicide problem must address the city’s deep-seated issues of racism, disinvestment, and concentrated poverty, as well as the more recent issue of the changing nature of gangs. The conference presenters call for a new anti-violence policy that de-emphasizes gangs and instead emphasizes conflict resolution among youth in a context of significantly increased employment and neighborhood economic development. While drug- and gang-related violence still plagues our city, the conference found that much violence today is the product of interpersonal disputes and retaliation, unrelated to traditional gang rivalries or drug markets. The fracturing of traditional vertically organized gangs into horizontally organized cliques is most pronounced among South Side African American gangs, which were affected the most both by the demolition of Chicago Housing Authority projects and subsequent diffusion of residents and by the displacement of young, African American men from Chicago public high schools via Chicago Public Schools’ Renaissance 2010 plan.   

 Chicago: Great Cities Institute University of Illinois at Chicago. 2019.  28p.