The Search for Social Justice in School-Based Crime and Delinquency Prevention

[Editor's Note] No criminologist today would deny the importance of public participation in crime control. Public involvement—through the family, neighborhood, schools, private businesses and public agencies—are potential assets in curbing rising crime and delinquency rates. In this article the basic concerns are two in nature: 1) how to best utilize community resources, including meaningful participation of citizens; and, 2) how public and community organizations can effectively participate in preventing, treating and controlling offenders on parole or probation. In all these endeavors, public support—moral, financial and otherwise are necessary for success. What is more important is to achieve the most salutary form of public participation, and to obtain the most beneficial balance between local participation and the actions of many government agencies involved. Not all pure local participation is at all times positive, as is illustrated by the actions of a lynch mob. It is also true that the closer one is to local institutions, the more difficult it is to achieve any degree of impartiality. On the other hand, highly centralized judicial and law enforcement structure often tends to be arbitrary and impersonal. This balance although essential, is difficult to achieve. The community agency (welfare boards, citizen's groups, parole boards), independent of the judicial and law enforcement institutions, plays an increasing role in enlightened public participation. Other important factors include education for crime prevention and reporting of offenses, and the relative closeness individuals feel toward their local groups (family, clan, school, neighborhood), as well as the efficiency of the police and judicial organs. No effective public participation in crime control programs can be achieved when there is a wide divergence between the value systems of local and national groups, and when there are great differences of opinions as to exactly what the public can do to prevent crime. Broadly speaking, there are four ways in which community groups can participate in crime prevention: 1) political support for social defense programs; 2) public co-operation with social defense programs; 3) delegation to community groups of elements of social defense programs; and 4) provision by community groups of autonomous social defense programs. Much more work must be done to collect reliable data and make significant critical analyses and evaluations of the myriad ways of public participation in crime prevention throughout the world. [Source: “Participation of the Public in the Prevention and Control of Crime and Delinquency,” Fourth United Nations Congress on the Prevention of Crime and the Treatment of Offenders (Tokyo, Japan, 17–26 August 1970)]

The paper advances considerably our knowledge of comparative mobility patterns and particularly of how inequalities are perceived, though it is unclear just what causal influences are at work. While study of the two Germanies is an interesting area of comparative study and does have some advantages over other bi-national work, I would caution against seeing the outcomes as being determined solely by the policies of the two states. In making a comparative analysis of the two Germanies, one must not assume that we are studying how two identical entities vary when affected by two different stimuli; in this case two originally identical Germanies, one being infused with 'the capitalist route to economic prosperity' and the other with 'a communist path in its search for social justice' p. 398). 'At the outset', Eastern Germany was by far the poorer country being in 1939 mainly agricultural and rural with the major industrial and commercial areas being in the West. After 1945, the East was small and economically and culturally cut off from its hinterland. In addition to the massive emigration to the West, these economic and geographical factors had implications for the kind of population stock in each society. Each also was embedded in a different world order which influenced the possibilities for wealth creation and the provision of social justice and each was subject to external demands which shaped their internal trajectories. Hence, to paraphrase Hayek, the outcomes may be determined not by desert but by Western Germany's good luck and Eastern Germany's bad. To make conclusions about the effectiveness of how the 'social institutions [of capitalism and communism] operate[d] under varying circumstances' one would need to control for many other factors and to create a more even playing field. If one poses the question: what would have been the outcomes if the communists had come to power in West Germany and the capitalists in East Germany?, one's answer would be quite different to what has happened and, I suspect, detellllined largely by the different endowments of the West and East and their respective global linkages. It is also important to disentangle the features which were common to both societies and continued after Germany was divided. I have in mind here the cultural system and the ways that values, beliefs, rule application

The overall aim of this chapter is to apply situational action theory (SAT) to the problem of crime prevention. We will briefly highlight some key shortcomings of contemporary crime prevention (e.g., problems with risk-focused prevention and the weak evidence-base), present the basic assumptions and explanatory propositions of SAT (Wikstrom in The explanation of crime: context, mechanisms and development, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, pp 61–107, 2006, When crime appears: the role of emergence, Routledge, New York, pp 53–72, 2011a, Analytical sociology: actions and networks, Wiley, West Sussex, pp 74–94, 2014), and apply the theory to the problem of creating a foundation for the development of effective crime prevention policies and practices. The purpose is not to produce a ‘what works’ publication, listing purported ‘risk factors’ (e.g., Welsh and Farrington in Preventing crime: what works for children, offenders, victims and places, Springer, Netherlands, pp 1–17, 2006) and discussing one by one their evidence-base (e.g., Sherman et al. in Evidence-based crime prevention. Revised edition, Routledge, London, 2006; Greenwood in Changing lives: delinquency prevention as crime-control policy, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 2006), or suggesting a ‘toolkit’ of different techniques to address particular crime problems (e.g., Smith and Clarke in The oxford handbook of crime prevention. Oxford University Press, Oxford, pp 291–315, 2012). There are already plenty of important publications of this kind. Instead the objective is to present a knowledge-based theoretical frame of reference that can underpin and guide the development and organization of crime prevention practise. We propose moving towards a more analytical approach, using SAT as a guiding framework for understanding which factors exert a causal influence on crime involvement and, importantly how they do so—the causal mechanism. We propose that using this framework policy makers and practitioners can better assess which of all suggested risk factors are implicated in crime causation (and how) and, building on this, devise policies and interventions based on how we can stop those factors from causing crime (intervene in the causal mechanism). We suggest that a more analytical, mechanism-based approach to crime prevention can help advance prevention science beyond risk factors and better guide the development and implementation of effective crime prevention practices.

Research SummaryThis article compares the criteria and methods applied by three registries designed to identify what works in crime and delinquency prevention. We discuss and demonstrate how variation in the methodological rigor of these processes affects the number of interventions identified as “evidence based” and provide recommendations for future list‐making to help increase the dissemination of effective crime prevention programs and practices.Policy ImplicationsAs support for evidence‐based crime prevention grows, so too will reliance on what works registries. We contend that these lists must employ scientifically rigorous review criteria and systematic review processes to protect public resources and ensure interventions recommended for dissemination do not risk harming participants. Lists must also be constructed and findings communicated in ways that are responsive to community needs. Ensuring this balance will help increase public confidence in scientific methods and ensure greater diffusion of evidence‐based interventions.

Counselor educators in CACREP programs are mandated to include social justice in their training of counseling students. However, counseling preparation programs have failed to adequately train counseling professionals to understand and implement social justice frameworks. Using an exploratory mixed methods design, we explored counselor educators’ educational and training background in social justice concepts as well as their teaching experiences infusing social justice throughout CACREP core curriculum. Strategies counselor educators use to seek knowledge about and incorporate social justice in their praxis are presented. Furthermore, we explored the relationship between counselor educators’ racial identity and their practice of implementing social justice frameworks into their teaching.

Relevance. The relevance of the study is due to the need to develop theoretical ideas about the role of traditions and customs in the prevention of juvenile delinquency in Kazakhstan, which is only growing every year. This paper presents a general characteristic of juvenile delinquency in the Republic of Kazakhstan. It is based on the analysis of data related to the prevention of youth crime in Kazakhstan using various approaches and tools.Purpose. The purpose of this study was to provide a general picture of juvenile delinquency in Kazakhstan and identify the importance of religious, spiritual, family, moral, cultural, and national traditions and customs in the fight against this phenomenon.Methodology. The study uses methods of statistical analysis, analogy and generalisation, and formal-legal and formal-logical approaches.Results. The study identified the features and importance of the introduction of religious, spiritual, family, moral, cultural, and national traditions and customs in the prevention of juvenile delinquency. Special attention is paid to how these factors can influence the formation of positive values, ethical principles, and norms of behaviour among young people. The study also describes the role of the state and society in the prevention of juvenile delinquency in the Republic of Kazakhstan. Various strategies and measures taken by the state and the contribution of public organisations and other social institutions in the process of preventing and combating crime among young people are considered.Conclusions. The results of the study can be useful for the development of effective strategies and programmes for the prevention of crime among young people in Kazakhstan, based on the cultural and social characteristics of this country.

Twentieth century America has seen several delinquency prevention programs come into vogue and then collapse under the pressure of ever increasing rates of delinquency; pressuring policy makers to continue their search for new and better programs. Yet, new prevention programs are not pulled out of a hat. Because these programs are based on certain assumptions about human behavior they are, for the most part, derived from theories of crime and delinquency causation. Pursuing this relationship between theory and practice, this paper grounds the emergence of delinquency prevention with the development of positivist criminology, identifies the conceptual and practical deficiencies of positivist theories of crime and subsequent prevention strategies and presents the prevention directive of contemporary Marxist “Critical Criminology.”

<p>The 1960s and 1970s were an important time in the history of legal education in India, when the legal aid movement and various legal aid committees’ reports started to draw attention to the importance of experiential learning, or learning on the job, in legal education. The main aim of involving law students in the national legal aid movement was to make them feel more responsible for the considerable part of the Indian population who, because of their socio-economic status, couldn’t access justice. The history of how India’s clinical programs were introduced has a lot in common with the history of clinical programs in other parts of the world. There was a desire to create a pool of lawyers, who would serve as soldiers in the fight for social justice for underprivileged groups in the country.</p><p>While some prestigious universities started their clinical programs in the 1970s, most of the regulators of legal education took a long time to include clinical papers in the curriculum. In 1997 the Bar Council of India introduced four practical papers in the curriculum. The spirit of public service, and the widespread poverty in a country, has always been central to the push for clinical programs everywhere. But in India, the legal aid committees’ and other statutory bodies’ reports calling for clinical programs to support social justice, were always ignored. The National Knowledge Commission’s working group on legal education specifically mentioned the need to introduce students to issues relating to poverty, social change and social exclusion, through clinical legal education.</p><p>After the introductory section, the second section discusses the introduction of clinical programs with their roots in the search for social justice in the United States and India. The third section discusses the continuous deliberation by various bodies, commissions and committees about the need to introduce clinical programs with a social justice perspective in India. The fourth section discusses the social justice-based clinical programs in China and South Africa. This section tries to highlight some of the clinical models focused on serving underprivileged groups, that have been introduced and implemented in these two countries and which ~ after local modifications ~ could serve as a template for programs in Indian law schools. The fifth section tries to search for clinical models best suited to India with reference to clinical programs in China and South Africa. Several examples of clinical activities in a few Indian law schools have been highlighted in this chapter to explain these models’ effectiveness and suitability for Indian circumstances. The sixth section sets out some suggestions for law schools and stakeholders of legal education in India as to how to further the country’s social justice mission of clinical legal education.</p>

As part of a larger study on crime and delinquency prevention programs in North America, the authors visited four European countries, Belgium, France, Germany and Switzerland in order to compare prevention programs and their evaluation. The authors found that the systematic study of the programmatic effectiveness and efficiency of crime and delinquency prevention is unknown to European practitioners and researchers. The authors describe in this article six European crime and delinquency prevention programs: family case-work, leisure activities, community organization, crisis intervention centers, information for victims and prevention police activities.

The prevention of crime and juvenile delinquency, like the prevention of any other undesirable and damaging occurrence, is manifestly superior to their subsequent control. It is possible to prevent crime or delinquency in a variety of ways and settings. When a criminal is incarcerated or given the death penalty, he is prevented from committing other crimes for the duration of his sentence or forever, as appropriate. In reality, the purpose of all forms of punishment is to deter both present and potential criminals from committing crimes. In the current situation, however, criminologists employ the term prevention in a restricted sense, i.e., to forestall criminal behaviour through the proactive person and environmental alterations. In other words, prevention in this context includes attempts to strengthen family relationships, encourage better school adjustments, provide education and enjoyment geared to generate helpful and upright citizens, and utilise aids in the disciplines of social work, medicine, and psychiatry. Clearly, these programmes can be executed in civilizations that are at least moderately prosperous. In countries affected with widespread poverty, such as India, it is inevitable that the limitations of preventive programmes encountered elsewhere will present themselves more strongly. It follows from the explanation of the concept of crime prevention that programmes for the prevention of crime and delinquency should be directed not only to those who have already engaged in criminal behaviour sufficient to warrant the attention of law enforcement authorities, but also to those who have either exhibited some tendency to suggest possible delinquency in the future or who may be otherwise normal but due to individual or environmental factors are at risk of engaging in criminal behaviour. Though preventive programmes are not limited to juvenile delinquents, they are obviously more relevant and useful in the context of young people, given that the likelihood of a person becoming a criminal after a certain age, when values and attitudes are more or less set, is somewhat lower than in the case of individuals of immature age and comprehension.

Social work is often referred to as a human rights and social justice profession (International Federation of Social Workers, 2014). The chapter explores the meaning of human rights for older people, and for the social workers who work with them in their search for social justice. It takes the position that human rights are not fixed but are both dynamic and complex. It follows that they pose complicated and difficult questions rather than providing answers. The challenge to social work is to address this complexity. The chapter begins with a discussion of how human rights instruments have failed to serve older people and their agency well. Instead, they substitute a rhetoric of rights. It considers the reasons for the limited progress of ongoing international efforts to address this failure. It argues that the dominance of the biomedical model of ageing, and constraints on old age identities, are central to this status quo. It concludes that the task for critical gerontological social workers is to respect the agency and support the abilities of the older people with whom they work, to demand their human rights, and to achieve social justice.

This title was first published in 2000: The papers in this volume are concerned with the prevention of crime. Like other books in the International Library, the text is intended primarily for reference by those who need to reflect upon what criminology has had to say about important, contemporary concerns of criminal policy. The papers present a kind of history of ideas which together trace the emergence of some key components of contemporary thinking about reducing crime.

Voluntary, non-state and nonprofit organizations are commonplace in many regions as principal deliverers of services and programs to solve an array of social problems. From homelessness and poverty to human trafficking and youth and gang violence, voluntary organizations’ contribution is part of a broader ethos of “communities” and market-based solutions to urgent public problems. Often referred to as community-based organizations in the US-context, these voluntary agencies address people’s individual needs by developing services and increasing social, human, economic, and political capital (see “Community” in Oxford Bibliographies in Social Work). They consist of nongovernmental assemblages, foundations, charity groups, practitioners, and volunteers. A principal modality of community-based initiatives is to promote collective action against identified needs that replace, supplement, or extend functions of what had been the jurisdiction or obligation of the state. While serving this role, organizations often challenge, resist, or revise state policies, programs, or practices. In crime control and prevention, voluntary organizations are instrumental to justice system practices (see “Community-Based Justice Systems” in Oxford Bibliographies in Criminology). A frequent objective of voluntary organizations is preventing crime and delinquency (see “Delinquency and Crime Prevention” in Oxford Bibliographies in Criminology). Community-based groups work alongside or directly under government agencies through multi-agency partnerships, police-community collaborations, community courts, or several other collaborative ways. A feature of voluntary groups and organizations is that they are tailored to local conditions and local capacities. In some instances, they operate separately or in opposition to the state. Activists and those advocating for criminal justice reforms frequently work through or within voluntary organizations. Regardless of the political alignment, in this shift away from a moderately robust public sector to a nonprofit, nongovernmental, community-based voluntary sector, these organizations are where much of this occurs. As the state increasingly retreats from directly working against social problems, voluntary or community-based organizations have become vital to patching up the frayed social fabric of neglected neighborhoods in late modern neoliberal times.

This reflection article derives from the discussions and argumentative sessions that took place at the heart of a doctoral seminar on Decolonial Theories. With this paper, the author intends a twofold purpose: on the one hand, to present his perceptions about the literature analyzed and discussed along the seminar, and on the other, to shed light on how such literature can have a positive impact on the curricula of Foreign Language Teacher Education Programs. The ideas that the author puts forward are the product of discussions with colleagues and teachers; in that sense, the arguments presented here are open to further scrutiny and academic dialogue with other scholars. It is hoped that this article contributes to the current discussions on the construction of curricula, the teaching of foreign languages from an emancipatory perspective, and the search for social justice in education.

The call for social justice in education has been echoed across the globe for many decades. However, the dual hatchets of racial and social-class segregation have refused to be buried in the 21st century. Inequalities within and across nations remain pervasive and conspicuous. Tapping into the framework of policy genealogy, this theoretical qualitative historiography teases the evolution of curriculum reform in three post-colonial states – Lesotho, Zimbabwe and South Africa. These three nations share a common legacy of British colonialism and unequal access to education anchored in race, social class, gender and other manifestations of injustice. Using primary and secondary documents available in the public domain, the paper traces and juxtaposes post-colonial curriculum policies initiated in search for social justice and how these policies were implemented at school and classroom levels. The grounded theory emerging from this policy historiography is that the genealogy of curriculum reform policies was dictated by historical circumstances and the unique context of each country, rather than deliberate policy sharing among decision-makers in the three post-colonial states. Although reform policy espouses equitable education, the attainment of social justice in the three nations remains largely a mirage. Only children of the new Black elite are enjoying the fruits of post-colonial curriculum reform by attending expensive and generously resourced former White-only schools, but the poor majority remain marginalised in poorly resourced schools. This study recommends collaboration among policy makers in the three nations so that policy talk may be translated into policy action.