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

Research Summary

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

Policy Implications

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

Criminology & Public Policy Early View, 2024.

By Tyson Whitten, Jesse Cale, Russell Brewer, Katie Logos, Thomas J. Holt and Andrew Goldsmith

A disproportionally large number of adolescents engage in cyber-deviance. However, it is unclear if distinct patterns of adolescent cyber-deviance are evident, and if so, whether and to what extent low self-control is associated with different patterns of cyber-deviance. The current study addressed this research gap by examining the relationship between self-control and distinct latent classes of adolescent cyber-deviance net of potential confounders among a cross-sectional sample of 1793 South Australian adolescents. Four latent classes were identified, each characterized by varying probabilities of involvement in six types of cyber-deviance that were measured. The versatile class (n = 413) had the lowest average level of self-control, followed by the harmful content users (n = 439) and digital piracy (n = 356) classes, with the abstainer class (n = 585) characterized by the highest self-control. Analysis of covariance indicated that the abstainer group had significantly higher self-control than other classes of cyber-deviance. Although the versatile class had noticeably lower average self-control scores than the harmful content users and digital piracy groups, this difference was not significant after correcting for multiple comparisons. Collectively, these findings suggest that self-control appears to distinguish between those who do and do not engage in cyber-deviance but may not distinguish between distinct patterns of cyber-deviance net of other factors.

International Journal of Offender Therapy and Comparative Criminology Volume 0: Ahead of Print, 2024.

By Millie Harris and Mia Edwards  

This evidence review, part of a funded by Barrow Cadbury Trust, summarises the policy context and existing evidence on young people turning 18 in the criminal justice system.

The review sets out available data on the numbers and characteristics of young people in transition in the criminal justice system. It examines young people’s experiences of transition between Youth Offending Team and adult Probation; from the children’s secure estate to adult prison; the experiences of young people at risk of harm, particularly criminal exploitation; and disparities in transition and the support available to racially minoritised young people. The review considers the multiple other transitions outside of the criminal justice system impacting young people as they turn 18.

This evidence base will inform the project’s research priorities and the development of thematic policy briefings and recommendations across the project’s three thematic focuses: custody, safeguarding young people at risk, and racial injustice.

London: Alliance for Youth Justice, 2023. 54p.

By Alliance for Youth Justice  

This briefing explores how racially minoritised young people experience particularly destabilising transitions due to deficits in support before and after turning 18. It highlights the crucial role the ‘by and for’ voluntary and community sector plays in addressing these shortfalls, arguing for reforms to better facilitate and fund the sector’s involvement in racially minoritised young people’s lives.

London: Alliance for Youth Justice, 2024. 53p.

By Anna Laura Baraldi, Erasmo Papagni and Marco Stimolo 

Organised crime tightens its corrupting influence on politics through violent intimidation. Anti-crime measures that increase the cost of corruption but not of the exercise of violence might accordingly lead mafia-style organizations to retaliate by resorting to violence in lieu of bribery. On the other hand, this kind of anti-crime measure might also induce criminal clans to go inactive, owing to the lower expected payoff from the "business" of influencing politics, which would reduce violence. To determine which of these possible effects is prevalent, we undertake an empirical assessment of the impact of city council dissolution for mafia influence in Italy as prescribed by Decree Law 164/1991 in discouraging violence against politicians in the period 2010-2019. Our difference-in-differences analysis shows that in the dissolved municipalities the enforcement of the Law reduces violence and that the effect persists (at least) for two electoral rounds. The most likely driving channel of this result is the renewed pool of politicians elected after compulsory administration. These findings are robust to a series of endogeneity tests.

Working Paper No. 010.2023

Publisher: 

Fondazione Eni Enrico Mattei (FEEM), Milano

By Soeren C. Schwuchow

We study a model that establishes a novel theoretical rationale for the empirically well-documented relation between inequality and corruption. According to our model, inequality can nurture corruption by empowering organized crime because collusion between local police forces and criminal organizations is more likely in societies characterized by high inequality or weak security forces. Law enforcement and organized crime have a strong incentive to collude due to efficiency gains from specialization. However, their agreement breaks down when the mobsters can no longer credibly commit to joint rent maximization and thus start to compete with law enforcement for citizens’ wealth. The mobsters then non-violently monopolize the market for extortion by undercutting the police forces, similar to a strategy of predatory pricing. Criminal collusion is thus not very different from its corporate equivalent; hence, similar policy measures should be promising. In addition, our model also suggests that the criminal organization’s higher efficiency in extracting rents has a greater impact when the relative power between law enforcement and organized crime is rather balanced. Accordingly, when violent conflict becomes less predictable, non-violent elements of relative power become more relevant. Our model also allows for the interpretation that in the absence of strong social norms against corruption, organized crime is more difficult to challenge.

Eur J Law Econ 55, 469–509 (2023).

By Jamie Bergin  

Various customs administrations have reported that their officials are physically threatened by organised criminal groups to abuse their power and facilitate illicit activities, such as drug trafficking. This Helpdesk Answer conceptually analyses how organised criminal groups use corruption and physical threats to influence customs officials and enable their profit-making activities, before describing how applying certain integrity measures could potentially prevent and counter the emergence of such threats.

Berlin: U4 Helpdesk Answer. U4 Anti-Corruption Resource Centre and Transparency International , 2023. 18p.

By Michelle Jeanis, Meng Ru Shih, Bryanna Fox

Background: Studies have shown that Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) greatly effect negative life outcomes, especially delinquency. However, some variables and their roles remain elusive, and pathways to delinquency have not been fully explored.

Objective: The study proposes to (1) identify whether running away is an initial delinquency or a result of ACEs, (2) examine the similarities and differences of chronic and one-time ACEs on gender and delinquency and (3) further examine the role of exposure to violence by gender.

Participants and Setting: The study uses the public accessible data in the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health (Add Health).

Methods: The study used factorial logistic regression models to analyze the ACEs and their influence on juvenile behavior.

Results: Chronic neglect (Female: β=.74; Male: β=.43) and multiple exposures to violence (ETV) (Female: β=1.43; Male: β=.94) were significantly related to reporting property crime in both genders. Gender differences are apparent. Girls who reported single-time physical abuse (β=1.93) and multiple ETVs (β=3.19) are more likely to commit violent offenses. Also, multiple ETVs (three types: β=2.123; four types: β=3.38; five types: β=3.90) are most significant for explaining violent offending among boys. Runaway behavior functions as a condition to the occurrence of juvenile offending, rather than a predictor.

Conclusions: ACEs typically affect boys and girls differently. Running away appears to shape the delinquency experience but does not fully mediate it. Policy implications are discussed.

Unpublished paper, 2024.

By Barry Goldson

This article analytically excavates youth justice reform (in England and Wales) by situating it in historical context, critically reviewing the competing rationales that underpin it and exploring the overarching social, economic, and political conditions within which it is framed. It advances an argument that the foundations of a recognisably modern youth justice system had been laid by the opening decade of the 20th Century and that youth justice reform in the post-Second World War period has broadly been structured over four key phases. The core contention is that historical mapping facilitates an understanding of the unreconciled rationales and incoherent nature of youth justice reform to date, while also providing a speculative sense of future prospects.

Howard Journal of Criminal Justice 59(3): 317-334, 2020

By Aaron Brown and Nina Vaswani

The Glasgow Youth Court is a judicially-led initiative which has been supported by Glasgow City Health and Social Care Partnership (GCHSCP) and which has been operational since June 2021. Functioning within the Glasgow Sheriff Court, it operates on a problem-solving basis, covering those aged between 16 and 24-years-old. Where the presiding Sheriff is satisfied, the Glasgow Youth Court caters for the use of Structured Deferred Sentencing (SDS), which combines multi-disciplinary intervention and support in the community, with regular court reviews to monitor and encourage young people’s progress. The Children and Young People’s Centre for Justice (CYCJ) was commissioned by GCHSCP in late 2021 to undertake research into the Glasgow Youth Court, with the purpose of: 

Documenting the implementation, design and operation of the Youth Court; Evaluating data relating to Youth Court outcomes; Evidencing how the Youth Court is experienced by a range of key stakeholders. 

This report, through examination of the above themes, provides insight into how the Youth Court has been operationalised, how it has been experienced, and its key outcomes.    

Glasgow: Children and Young People's Centre for Justice,  2023. 56p.

By Tim Bateman 

The National Association for Youth Justice (NAYJ) campaigns for the rights of, and justice for, children in trouble. It seeks to promote the welfare of children in the youth justice system and to advocate for child friendly responses where children infringe the law (NAYJ, 2019). The Association has, more recently, endorsed the Youth Justice Board’s adoption of a ‘child first’ model, first articulated in its Strategic Plan, published in 2018 (Youth Justice Board, 2018). The subsequent revised edition of National Standards for children in the youth justice system, published in 2019, is intended to provide a framework to support agencies in delivering a child first provision, by ensuring that they: • ‘Prioritise the best interests of children, recognising their needs, capacities, rights and potential; • Build on children’s individual strengths and capabilities as a means of developing a prosocial identity for sustainable desistance from crime. This leads to safer communities and fewer victims. All work is constructive and future-focused, built on supportive relationships that empower children to fulfil their potential and make positive contributions to society; • Encourage children’s active participation, engagement and wider social inclusion. All work is a meaningful collaboration with children and their carers • Promote a childhood removed from the justice system, using prevention, diversion and minimal intervention. All work minimises criminogenic stigma from contact with the system’ 

London: Ministry of Justice/Youth Justice Board, 2019: 6)

By Holly Maclean, Fiona Dyer, Nina Vaswani, Deena Haydon, Maria Galli, Anthony Charles, Tim Bateman, & Ursula Kilkelly 

In 2021, in light of the commitment made by the Scottish Government to incorporate UNCRC into Scots Law, CYCJ convened a group of children’s rights experts from across England, Ireland, Jersey, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales to consider the implications and challenges of UNCRC incorporation across their separate jurisdictions. 

‘Rights Respecting Justice for Children in Conflict with the Law’ shines a light on the discussions that took place within this forum. This briefing paper provides an overview of talking points within the group across the period May 2021 – September 2023, highlighting both the most pressing concerns for children’s rights across the nations, and the similarities and differences in policy and practice.

Glasgow: Children and Young People's Centre for Justice, 2024. 17p.

By  Laceé N. Pappas &  Amy L. Dent 

By Amber Krushas , Zachary Hamilton, Alex Kigerl , Xiaohan Mei  

Purpose: While risk instruments are consistently used to aid classification and supervision decisions, needs as sessments guide intervention efforts for individuals under supervision. At the core of the Risk-Needs-Responsivity (RNR) model and the General Personality and Cognitive Social Learning (GPCSL) theory, dynamic needs scoring allows agencies to identify change in needs over time. Yet, few studies have assessed the potential impact of changes among needs items. To overcome this limitation, the current study assesses how needs score change may influence recidivism propensity among youth. Methods: Using multi-level frailty models, the current study examines how changes in youth needs assessment scores influence time-to-recidivism among a large (N = 42,922), multi-state sample of justice-involved youth assessed with the Modified Positive Achievement Change Tool (MPACT). Results: Findings demonstrate that youth with increased needs scores and those that remained the same at reassessment had a greater propensity for recidivism, compared to those that decreased scores. Conclusions: Policy implications identify the effectiveness of the MPACT in measuring youth change, its utility for case management, and the needs domains most associated with recidivism reductions.   

Journal of Criminal Justice 90 (2024) 102146 

By Carlene Firmin, et al.

During adolescence, young people are exposed to a range of risks beyond their family homes including sexual and criminal exploitation, peer-on-peer abuse and gang-related violence. However, it has only been over the past two decades that the critical safeguarding implications of these harms have started to be recognised. Social care organisations are increasingly experimenting with new approaches but continue to experience challenges in supporting affected young people and their families. This book analyses the results of the first rapid evidence assessment of social care organisations’ responses to risks and harms outside the home across 10 countries. The authors highlight key areas for service development, give insights into how these risks and harms can be understood, and consider wider implications for policy and practice.

Bristol, UK: Bristol University Press, 2022. 146p.

By Colleen Sbeglia, Imani Randolph, Caitlin Cavanagh, and Elizabeth Cauffman

When youth commit crimes, their parents may be held legally responsible for their actions. Parental legal culpability laws were developed to ensure justice for victims of crime but also deter juvenile delinquency. However, it is unclear if parental culpability has these desired effects or if it instead contributes to disparities that already exist in the justice system. This review provides a psychological perspective on parental legal culpability, highlighting the different types of offenses that parents may be held responsible for, including vicarious tort liability, status offenses, and criminal responsibility. Given the significant public discourse around certain types of crime, we also include focused discussions about parental culpability for youth violence and cybercrimes. We then consider the unintended consequences that may arise as a result of parental sanctions, from exacerbating racial and ethnic inequalities to imposing financial burdens that may put families at risk for further justice involvement. Finally, we discuss challenges to the efficacy of parental culpability laws, with recommendations for areas of continued research.

Annual Review of Criminology, Volume 7, Page 403 - 416

By Wren Collective

 Sixty years ago, the Supreme Court held that Clarence Earl Gideon, a man accused of a felony, had the right to an attorney, despite not being able to afford one. Since then, the constitutional right to counsel has continued to expand—to those facing incarceration for any criminal offense, to children facing delinquency charges, and to all critical stages of representation. As part of our research into whether, across the country, we are meeting Gideon's lofty promise, the Wren Collective examined the provision of indigent defense in Cuyahoga County. We chose to specifically focus on the representation Cuyahoga’s children were receiving for two reasons. First, the juvenile court and its assignment of counsel received media attention in early 2023, highlighting a unique characteristic about the county’s public defender. Unlike many offices across the country, the public defender was seeking more, rather than fewer, cases. Instead of an “overworked and underpaid” office, Cuyahoga appeared to have a reasonably compensated, skilled set of attorneys who wanted to provide representation to more kids. Second, throughout our initial interviews, we heard concerns about the representation children receive, especially when it comes to bindovers—transfers of juvenile cases to adult court. Cuyahoga sends more kids to adult court than any other county in Ohio, and the overwhelming majority of those kids are Black. As we looked closer at the system, we learned that the concerns people shared were justified. Cuyahoga’s juvenile court judges are under utilizing the county public defender, an office of trained and dedicated attorneys, social workers, investigators, paralegals, and clerks. Though the office can take more cases and is set up to provide the robust support that children often need, judges assign private attorneys over public defenders to the majority of the cases in the county. But those private attorneys are generally not providing similarly robust representation, and many do not appear to be qualified to take on the most serious cases in the county. That means that the majority of kids in Cuyahoga are losing out on representation that would likely serve them better. We also found that Cuyahoga’s assigned counsel system suffers both from too much interference and not enough oversight. Judges routinely pick attorneys to assign to cases, yet the court does little to ensure that those attorneys are meeting state education and experience requirements to serve as appointed counsel in those cases. The good news is Cuyahoga can fix these problems. We recommend that the Cuyahoga County Juvenile Court appoint the public defender to represent all children facing delinquency charges, and that the public defender, rather than the court, determine when assigned counsel is needed. We also recommend the county establish an independent assignment process that adheres to a rotary system for attorney assignments, and that the attorneys who are on the assignment list be trained and their qualifications verified. We recognize our recommendations will take effort, political will, and commitment from multiple stakeholders to implement, but we are confident this is a place that is up to the challenge. Cuyahoga County bursts with possibility. It has the potential to do what seems impossible in other places—make real and lasting change. We hope that this report, with its focus on key problems and specific ways to solve them, will help it do so.   

By Marian Gewirtz and  Bosco Villavicencio, Jr

This report describes the processing of 16- and 17-year-old arrestees during the third year of New York State’s Raise the Age (RTA) Law. The law, which went into effect for 16-year-olds on October 1, 2018, and for 17-year-olds on October 1, 2019, raised the age of criminal responsibility in the State and changed how these Adolescent Offenders (AOs) are processed. Arrests from October 2020 through September 2021 are compared with arrests from October 2019 through September 2020 (year 2), October 2018 through September 2019 (year 1, the first year of the implementation of RTA for 16-year-olds and the year prior to implementation for 17-year-olds. Data is also presented for October 2017 through September 2018 (pre-RTA). RTA Arrests ● There were 1,364 arrests of 16-year-olds and 2,002 arrests of 17-year-olds in the third year of RTA. The number of arrests was lower in year 3 than in year 2, especially for 16-yearolds. ● The volume of arrests of 16- and 17-year-olds decreased markedly when they became eligible for RTA. The number of arrests continued to decline for both age groups and for VFO (violent felony offenses), non-VFO felony offenses and especially for misdemeanors. Prosecution ● The percentage of felony arrests prosecuted as felonies declined for both age groups and both VFO and non-VFO charges since implementation of RTA. However, the decrease was greater for 16-year-olds and for cases with non-VFO charges. ● There were far fewer cases for 16- and 17-year-olds prosecuted in adult court with felony charges after RTA was implemented. The decrease was steeper for 16-year-olds than for 17-year-olds. The number decreased from 1,111 in year 1 to 863 in year 2 and 668 in year 3 for 16-year-olds but declined from a high of 992 down to 894 for 17-year-olds. Arraignment ● About half of AO cases were removed to Family Court at arraignment in year 3, up from 44% for both age groups in year 2 and only 25% at arraignments for 16-year-olds in year 1 (17-year-olds were not yet eligible). The rate of removal was higher for cases with nonVFO charges than for those with VFO offenses. ● In the third year of RTA, youths were released at arraignment (ROR, under supervision or with other non-monetary conditions) in more than nine of every ten non-VFO cases but in little more than seven of every ten VFO cases. Adult Court Outcomes ● Most RTA case for both ages were removed to Family Court (84% to 90% across the ages and time periods), but the rates were higher for non-VFO cases (91% to 97%) than for cases with VFO charges (79% to 86%). ● In year 3, more than six of every ten VFO cases were removed at arraignment or the following day as were nearly nine of every ten non-VFO cases. Yet a month or more elapsed from arraignment to removal for one in ten AO cases.  Sentencing ● More than half of the sentences in AO cases included jail or prison time (55%) ranging from time already served pretrial (6% of sentences) to four years or more (10% of sentences).  

New York: New York City Criminal Justice Agency 2023. 44p.

By Keith Finlay, Michael Mueller-Smith, Brittany Stree

Children’s indirect exposure to the justice system through biological parents or coresident adults is both a marker of their own vulnerability and a measure of the justice system’s expansive reach in society. Estimating the size of this population for the United States has historically been hampered by inadequate data resources, including the inability to observe nonincarceration events, follow children throughout their childhood, and measure adult nonbiological parent cohabitants. To overcome these challenges, we leverage billions of restricted administrative and survey records linked with Criminal Justice Administrative Records System data and find substantially larger exposure rates than previously reported: prison, 9% of children born between 1999–2005; felony conviction, 18%; and any criminal charge, 39%. Charge exposure rates exceed 60% for Black, American Indian, and low-income children. While broader definitions reach a more expansive population, strong and consistently negative correlations with childhood well-being suggest that these remain valuable predictors of vulnerability. Finally, we document substantial geographic variation in exposure, which we leverage in a movers design to estimate the effect of living in a high-exposure county during childhood. We find that children moving into high-exposure counties are more likely to experience post-move exposure events and exhibit significantly worse outcomes by age 26 on multiple dimensions (earnings, criminal activity, teen parenthood, mortality); effects are strongest for those who moved at earlier ages

The Quarterly Journal of Economics, Volume 138, Issue 4, November 2023, Pages 2181–2224, https://doi.org/10.1093/qje/qjad021

By Pamela D Schulz

The language in media stories surrounding the high drama of juvenile and youth crime is very alarmist and continues to fuel political debates and demands for tougher penalties rather than the proverbial slap on the wrist for young offenders. Further there are fear discourse elements that suggest that for some politicians cited in the daily news cycle as being “out of control”. In opposition to this fear and alarmist discourse in the notion that the media news cycle highlights youth crime for its sensationalist perspectives and poor reporting of youth courts and their judgments in such matters. A comprehensive discourse analysis of youth crime reporting may suggest that media must take the blame for some of the inappropriate focus on youth crime as being selective. This yearlong study suggests that the public need more information to see for themselves whether the current moves and political debates need to be reviewed and refreshed. In addition, family supports are a signal to consider as presented by expert authorities involved in decision making and reporting.

Children and Teenagers, Vol. 6, No. 4, 2023, http://dx.doi.org/10.22158/ct.v6n4p1