Juvenile Justice Reform Research Articles

Juvenile Justice Reform in New York State

ABSTRACTThis article describes the work at the Division of Criminal Justice Services of New York State, in collaboration with other state partners, integrating developments in neuroscience, in particularly the understanding of the adolescent brain, into practical, well informed changes to the juvenile justice system in New York State. The process started in earnest in 2010 with a statewide collective impact planning process that included data-driven analysis, extensive interviews with juvenile justice stakeholders, and an analysis of effective practices in New York State and across the nation. This process resulted in the implementation of action steps outlined in a strategic plan for juvenile justice reform entitled Safe Communities, Successful Youth: A Shared Vision for the New York State Juvenile Justice System, released in July 2011. Since that time, we have developed a sophisticated network of juvenile justice stakeholders to come together to work on implementing effective strategies to promote youth success and ensure public safety. Specifically, we have developed statewide metrics and county profiles that allow us to track 235 data points across the juvenile justice system over time so we can get a sense of system effectiveness and pinpoint potential areas of focus. We have also established nine Regional Youth Justice Teams across the State to bring system stakeholders together on a regional basis so that we can more effectively impact change based on the needs of different communities. Finally, we are excited that we will soon be launching a new best practices institute, which will help us to develop and share model interventions for our most vulnerable youth.

Reflections from Inside

Excerpts from an autobiographical essay by Carlos Adrian Vazquez, an 18 year old serving an 11-year sentence for involuntary manslaughter. While in juvenile hall, Carlos benefited from a stream of volunteers among whom were some of California’s leading juvenile justice reform advocates—Scott Budnick of the Anti-Recidivism Coalition and Javier Stauring among them. Rev. Michael Kennedy with the Jesuit Restorative Justice Initiative encouraged Carlos through Jesuit meditation practices, which helped Carlos begin to transform his life. Through these things, and by taking responsibility for pain he caused, Carlos began actively seeking forgiveness from a number of places—society, his family, the family of his victim, God, and even Pope Francis, to whom Carlos wrote after encouragement from Kennedy. To Carlos’s surprise, on 21 January 2016, the Pope wrote him back.

Black Youth Activism and the Reconstruction of America: Leaders, Organizations, and Tactics in the Twentieth Century and Beyond

BLACK HISTORY BULLETIN VOL. 79, NO. 1 | 5 79 No.1 BLACK YOUTH ACTIVISM AND THE RECONSTRUCTION OF AMERICA: LEADERS, ORGANIZATIONS, AND TACTICS IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY AND BEYOND By Sekou Franklin Since the early twentieth century, young people have been instrumental in reconstructing American political culture and the social and political life of African Americans.1 From the NAACP Youth Council and the Southern Negro Youth Congress in the 1930s and 1940s to the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and Student Organization for Black Unity in the 1960s and 1970s, young people were the frontline activists during the two major protest waves of the twentieth century. Young Blacks then helped to propel the Pan-African and Black feminist movements of the 1970s, as well as the Free South Africa Movement/Student Divestment Movement of the 1980s. The Black Student Leadership Network was another group that set up dozens of freedom schools in ORZLQFRPHFRPPXQLWLHVGXULQJWKH¿UVWKDOIRIWKHV ,Q WKH VHFRQG GHFDGH RI WKH WZHQW\¿UVW FHQWXU\ \RXQJ SHRSOHDI¿OLDWHGZLWKWKH0RYHPHQWIRU%ODFN/LYHV0DWWHU protested racialized violence and police killings of African Americans. This article provides an overview of Black youth DFWLYLVP IURP WKH V WR WKH WZHQW\¿UVW FHQWXU\ ,W gives special attention to four periods of Black youth activism: Black youth activism from the 1930s-1940s; the modern Civil Rights Movement and Black Power Movement between the 1950s-1970s; the Free South Africa Movement/Student Divestment Movement in the 1980s, followed by Black Student Leadership Network and other youth-oriented movements; and grassroots youth activism LQWKHWZHQW\¿UVWFHQWXU\VXFKDVWKH0RYHPHQWIRU%ODFN Lives Matter. Through a diverse array of organizations and movement networks, young Blacks have immersed 6 | BLACK HISTORY BULLETIN VOL. 79, NO. 1 79 No.1 themselves in or launched numerous social movement campaigns since the 1930s. As indicated in Table 1, some initiatives were spearheaded by independent formations such as the economic justice campaigns led by the Southern Negro Youth Congress; the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee’s efforts to form the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party; the Student Organization for Black Unity’s mobilization campaign in support of historically Black colleges and universities; and the Black Student Leadership Network’s freedom schools. Other groups such as the NAACP Youth Council and the AFL-CIO’s Union Summer program operated under the umbrella of its national organization. Still, a loose network of activists coordinated other initiatives such as the Youth Marches for Integrated Schools, Freedom Rides of 1961, Free South Africa Movement/Student Divestment Movement, and Juvenile Justice Reform Movement activities. Table 1. Black Youth-Oriented Movement-Building Initiatives, 1930s-2015 Organizations/Movements/Networks Year(s) Sample of Activities/Initiatives NAACP Youth Council 1936-present • voting rights • anti-poll tax campaign • boycotts, sit-ins, marches Southern Negro Youth Congress 1937-1949 • tobacco workers’ strike • labor schools, citizenship schools • Right to Vote Campaign • Abolish the Poll Tax Week • youth legislatures Youth March for Integrated Schools (Organized by national civil rights leaders) 1958 & 1959 • school desegregation rallies Student Sit-In Movement 1960 • 50,000 students protesting segregated businesses & public accommodations Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee 1960-early 1970s • local community organizing • voting rights initiatives • desegregation campaigns • freedom schools • Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party Freedom Rides (Organized by the Congress of Racial Equality, Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, & Nashville Students) 1961 • protests of segregated bus stations and transportation facilities Student Organization for Black Unity 1969-1975 • Black People’s Union Party • North Carolina Black Political Assembly • clothing centers & food buying clubs • campaign to save historically Black colleges and universities Free South Africa Movement/ Student Divestment Movement/ 1980s • shantytowns, boycott & protests at more than 100 colleges and universities Black Student Leadership Network 1991-1996 • freedom schools • National Day of Action Against Violence • anti-childhood hunger initiatives AFL-CIO’s Union Summer Program 1996-present • local unionization & economic justice campaigns Juvenile Justice Reform Movement 1990s-mid 2000s • advocacy initiatives to close youth prisons • opposed zero-tolerance policies, organized anti-violence/mentoring programs Black Lives Matter/ Movement for Black Lives Matter 2013-present • protest state violence & police killing of Blacks • organize “die-ins” & sit-ins • promote restorative justice initiatives and criminal justice reforms BLACK HISTORY BULLETIN VOL...

Fresh air funds and functional families: The enduring politics of race, family and place in juvenile justice reform

This article examines the enduring ways that racial politics are masked by discourses of place and family in the history of juvenile justice in the USA. The tropes of place and family have been invoked since the inception of the USA’s juvenile justice system and have influenced the processes of policing, removal, and return, even as the latest incarnation of reforms focus on building juvenile justice facilities and alternatives to incarceration within urban areas. By pointing to recent manifestations of this rhetoric in New York, the article identifies the thread that links these claims together: the desire by social control agents for submission by the primarily impoverished and young people of color who defy legal authority.

Effects of Work Environment and Resilience on Job Satisfaction and Organisational commitment of Social Workers in Juvenile Reformatory Schools

With a consistent increase of juvenile criminal recidivism, restorative justice tends to emerge as a new paradigm in juvenile justice reform for preventing juvenile criminal recidivism and improving juvenile delinquency treatment. Restorative justice emphasises re-socialisation at the community, shifting from existing facility-centered, public-centered juvenile justice to local community centered, public-private cooperated rehabilitation to juvenile offenders. Thus, it is needed to change the function of juvenile reformatory schools and to assign appropriate profession. In Korea, social workers have newly assigned to juvenile reformatory school with introduction of restorative justice to Juvenile in 2010. This study aims to analyse the characteristics of the work environment and resilience of social workers in juvenile reformatory schools and to identify influencing factors on their job satisfaction and organisational commitment. For this purpose, data were collected by a survey with all 72 social workers at juvenile reformatory schools nationwide, and for the analysis, hierarchical regression was applied. As a result of the analysis, as for work environment factor, organisational work environment had significant effects on job satisfaction and organisational commitment of social workers but role work environment did not have any significant impacts on them. As for resilience, the more resilient of social workers, the higher job satisfaction and organisational commitment. Based on the findings of study, suggestions are discussed for organisational environment and policy implications in order to improve job satisfaction and organisational performance of social worker in the correctional area.

Outliers in American juvenile justice: the need for statutory reform in North Carolina and New York.

There is a well-established and growing body of evidence from research that adolescents who commit crimes differ in many regards from their adult counterparts and are more susceptible to the negative effects of adjudication and incarceration in adult criminal justice systems. The age of criminal court jurisdiction in the United States has varied throughout history; yet, there are only two remaining states, New York and North Carolina, that continue to automatically charge 16 year olds as adults. This review traces the statutory history of juvenile justice in these two states with an emphasis on political and social factors that have contributed to their outlier status related to the age of criminal court jurisdiction. The neurobiological, psychological, and developmental aspects of the adolescent brain and personality, and how those issues relate both to a greater likelihood of rehabilitation in appropriate settings and to greater vulnerability in adult correctional facilities, are also reviewed. The importance of raising the age in New York and North Carolina not only lies in protecting incarcerated youths but also in preventing the associated stigma following release. Mental health practitioners are vital to the process of local and national juvenile justice reform. They can serve as experts on and advocates for appropriate mental health care and as experts on the adverse effects of the adult criminal justice system on adolescents.

A Historical Perspective on Juvenile Justice Reform in Queensland

The Queensland government has recently implemented a substantial package of juvenile justice reforms designed to deal with “a generation of arrogant recidivist young offenders”. These reforms, which have sought to sharpen the blade of the criminal law and strengthen the power to enforce it, have been heavily and almost uniformly criticised by the profession, the judiciary, and the academy. This article places the reforms in a historical context to illustrate that not only do they make undesirable policy, but that each is a step backwards which together unravel centuries of gradually calculated reform to improve the state of human rights in juvenile criminal justice.

Thomas Grisso: Award for Distinguished Professional Contributions to Applied Research.

The Award for Distinguished Professional Contributions to Applied Research is given to a psychologist whose research has led to important discoveries or developments in the field of applied psychology. To be eligible, this research should have led to innovative applications in an area of psychological practice, including but not limited to assessment, consultation, instruction, or intervention (either direct or indirect). The 2014 recipient is Thomas Grisso. Grisso "has made seminal contributions to the field of forensic psychology and psychiatry through his internationally renowned program of research, which has directly impacted juvenile justice reform worldwide." Grisso's award citation, biography, and a selected bibliography are presented here.

Juvenile Justice at a Crossroads: Science, Evidence, and Twenty-First Century Reform

AbstractOver a century after its founding, the juvenile justice system sits at an important historical juncture. Mounting concern that the juvenile justice system has strayed from its mission of rehabilitation has catalyzed a vocal campaign for large-scale policy reforms. The current reform movement invokes an abundance of scientific discourses, including neuroscience and evidence-based practice, to situate their arguments for a more humane, cost-effective, and youth-specific system. This article situates the contemporary discussion concerning juvenile justice reform in relation to the historical uses of science in debates concerning the optimal way to contend with youth crime. The author suggests that social workers ought to play a more visible role in decisions concerning juvenile justice law, policy, and practice, given the ethical dilemmas involved in these new scientific discourses and the important changes likely to emerge from the current systems change movement.

The ‘beyond parental control’ label in Nigeria

Recent reports in Nigeria indicate a geometric rise in incarcerated adolescents, with an overwhelming majority of this increase being attributed to adolescents being declared ‘beyond parental control’. There is a nagging suspicion that the Nigerian juvenile justice system has over criminalised adolescents by declaring them ‘beyond control’ when behavioural problems have actually resulted from child abuse/neglect and family disruption. A study was undertaken in a juvenile justice institution in Nigeria to assess the adequacy of pre-incarceration parental care among adolescents that had been declared as ‘beyond parental control’. The study included 75 adolescent boys that had been declared as ‘beyond parental control’ and a comparison group of 144 matched school going boys. It examined self-reports received from the adolescent boys regarding their pre-incarceration family life and social circumstances, as well as the behavioural problems they had experienced. The findings indicate that adolescent boys who were declared as ‘beyond parental control’ had a significantly higher lifetime history of behavioural problems than the comparison group, and they also had significantly higher indicators of pre-incarceration child abuse/neglect and problems with stability and consistency of primary support. These findings pose questions regarding the presumption of adequate parental care prior to the declaration of ‘beyond parental control’. It also raises questions about child rights protection and juvenile justice reform in Nigeria.

Advancing Evidence-Based Practices for Juvenile Justice Reform Through Community Development

There is a general agreement in the literature concerning what works and what does not work in reducing delinquent behavior with juvenile offenders in communities; however, this knowledge has had limited penetration into general public, political, and policymaking venues, as it is reported that less than 10% of juvenile offenders are afforded evidence-based community services. This article describes how Louisiana, through a combination of state, local, university, and national partnerships, adopted a community development model that has led to a 27% increase in juvenile-justice-involved youth having access to evidence-based services while the state witnessed a simultaneous 46% drop in juvenile arrests between 2006 and 2010.

Connecticut's Comprehensive Approach to Reducing In‐School Arrests: Changes in Statewide Policy, Systems Coordination and School Practices

Despite decreases in school violence over the past two decades, in‐school arrest rates are on the rise. This growing trend of school arrests is attributed in part to an increase in zero‐tolerance policies for disruptive behavior and exclusionary discipline practices such as suspensions, expulsions, and the involvement of law enforcement in school discipline matters. This article describes recent advancements made toward reducing the rates of in‐school arrests in the state of Connecticut through juvenile justice policy reform, advocacy and systems coordination efforts, and changes to school practice and policy from an interdisciplinary collaborative approach.Keypoints Change happened because stakeholders were able to work together across systems. Getting solid data was essential to defining the problem and to showing results. Model memoranda of agreement helped define the role of police in schools. The Judicial Branch began using discretion to push back unnecessary arrests. Mental health professionals offered teachers training on behavioral health and connected schools to community resources. The effort to reduce student arrests gained traction in Connecticut coming on the heels of other successful juvenile justice reforms. Whenever we get a “win,” we should look for an opportunity to build on it.

Multi-Systemic Model of Juvenile Justice Reform: Adopting the Missouri Model in California

The juvenile justice system serves a marginalized and vulnerable population of high-risk youth who have been convicted of committing crimes. This system uses substantial state budgets for housing, staffing, and programming for the youth offender population. As states look to reform their juvenile justice systems, one specific model they should consider implementing is the Multi-Systemic Treatment (MST) approach, an intensive residential-based intervention for chronic, violent, or substance abusing juvenile offenders, ages 12 to 18, that uses trained therapists to work in small facilities with the youth and his or her family. This study examines the Missouri Model, an MST program that was successfully implemented statewide. This paper provides a cost-benefit analysis of a proposed transformation of California’s juvenile justice system by implementing the MST model at a statewide level.

The Dualistic Model of Juvenile Justice System in China: In & Beyond Criminal Justice

SummaryIn October 1984, Shanghai Changning district people's court established the first collegial panel of our country specializing in juvenile criminal cases; and it marks the beginning of the juvenile justice reform in China. After 30 years of development, the philosophy of juvenile justice has changed; juvenile judicial institutions are growing and juvenile justice system has gradually formed. Different from the practices of juvenile court in Western countries such as the U. S., Japan, and Germany, juvenile delinquency or deviant behavior that does not violate the criminal law would not enter the judicial process, but rather, would be handled by administrative agencies such as the police, and subject to coercive measures including educational measures, protective measures, and punitive measures in China. Among these measures, education through Custody as a strict administrative punishment can deprive the personal liberty of the juvenile delinquents for as long as four years. Instead of ruling by court through the due process in accordance with the law, decisions of education through custody are made by the administrative organs in practice. This practice is probably unique in the world.

Childhood without Life, Life without Childhood: Theological and Legal Critiques of Current Juvenile Justice Policies

Mutually critical conversations between theology, ethics, and law have been underdeveloped with respect to juvenile justice. I appropriate recent theological work on the rights and agency of children to critique adultcentric approaches to juvenile justice. I focus on recent trends in juvenile justice, including sentencing juveniles to life without the possibility of parole. In developing my polemic against such policies, I analyze Graham v. Florida and the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child and their implications for juvenile justice. The final section constructively proposes juvenile justice reforms and advocates for the elimination of juvenile life sentences without parole. Language: en

Criminalizing Normal Adolescent Behavior in Communities of Color: The Role of Prosecutors in Juvenile Justice Reform

There is little dispute that racial disparities pervade the contemporary American juvenile justice system. The persistent over representation of youth of color in the system suggests that scientifically supported notions of diminished culpability of youth are not applied consistently across races. Drawing from recent studies on implicit bias and the impact of race on perceptions of adolescent culpability, Professor Henning contends that contemporary narratives portraying black and Hispanic youth as dangerous and irredeemable lead prosecutors to disproportionately reject youth as a mitigating factor for their behavior. Although racial disparities begin at arrest and persist through every stage of the juvenile justice process, this Article focuses specifically on the unique opportunity and obligation that prosecutors have to address those disparities at the charging phase of the juvenile case.Professor Henning implores juvenile prosecutors to resist external pressures to respond punitively and symbolically to exaggerated perceptions of threat by youth of color and envisions a path toward structured decision making at the charging phase that is informed by research in adolescent development, challenges distorted notions of race and maturity, and holds prosecutors accountable for equitable decision making across race. While fully embracing legitimate prosecutorial concerns about victims’ rights and public safety, Professor Henning frames the charging decision as one requiring fairness, equity, and efficacy. Fairness requires that prosecutors evaluate juvenile culpability in light of the now well-documented features of adolescent offending. Equity demands an impartial application of the developmental research to all youth, regardless of race and socioeconomic status. Efficacy asks prosecutors to rely on scientifically validated best practices for ensuring positive youth development and achieving public safety. Thus, even when neighborhood effects and social structures produce opportunities for more serious and more frequent crime among youth of color, prosecutors have a duty to evaluate that behavior in light of the current developmental research and respond to that conduct with the same developmentally appropriate options that are so often available to white youth.As the gatekeepers of juvenile court jurisdiction, prosecutors should work with developmental experts, school officials, and other community representatives to develop and publish juvenile charging standards that reflect these goals. To increase transparency and encourage buy-in from the public, Professor Henning recommends that prosecutors track charging decisions according to race and geographic neighborhood and provide community representatives and other stakeholders with an opportunity to review those decisions for disparate impact. Finally, to ensure that communities of color are able to respond to adolescent offending without state intervention, Professor Henning contemplates a more expansive role for prosecutors who will engage and encourage school officials and community representatives to identify and develop adequate community-based, adolescent-appropriate alternatives to prosecution.

What’s Beneath the Graham Cracker?: The Potential Impact of Comparative Law on the Future of Juvenile Justice Reform After Graham v. Florida

This article examines the Supreme Court’s application of international law in its Eighth Amendment jurisprudence and argues that reformers should look beyond the Court’s analysis and use comparative law to obtain their goals of juvenile sentencing and policy reform.

Reclaiming Futures: Using communication to drive community and systems change

Reclaiming Futures is a national juvenile justice reform initiative of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. During its 11 years of demonstration and expansion phases, Reclaiming Futures has used a variety of communications strategies, tools, and techniques to achieve its objectives. This paper describes the literature relevant to contemporary use of communications tools to achieve social change, and presents a brief history of how communications contributed to the development of Reclaiming Futures and how communications strategies were implemented at key points. A focus on communication principles and tools in practical terms is highlighted, including strategies for empowering project leaders to be effective messengers and for conducting outreach to community members, professional stakeholders, and elected officials, as well as examples of creative projects developed to advance program goals. Use of techniques such as branding, messaging, and integration of social media are also presented. Implications for other system change efforts are explored.

Evaluating systems change in a juvenile justice reform initiative

Evaluating comprehensive, interagency initiatives to reform human services systems presents substantial challenges to traditional research models. Outcomes are observed at the system level rather than the individual level, and the validity of study results may be challenged on a variety of dimensions, particularly small sample sizes and measurement error. We report the results of a cross-site evaluation of the first phase of Reclaiming Futures, a five-year effort to improve services and interventions for justice-involved youth in 10 communities across the United States. We present the evaluation findings and discuss implications for similar research endeavors. The methods used in this study may be useful for other system-level evaluation efforts. A social network analysis analyzes changes in the size, density, and cohesiveness of stakeholder networks. Bivariate models test for associations between Reclaiming Futures implementation and key stakeholder perceptions of effective system change. Multivariate models are used to explore selection effects on item response. In general, we find positive correlations between successful implementation of Reclaiming Futures and indicators of effective and efficient system change.

Community-directed engagement and positive youth development: Developing positive and progressive pathways between youth and their communities in Reclaiming Futures

Reclaiming Futures is an innovative juvenile justice reform initiative focused on improving the quality, quantity, and effectiveness of alcohol and drug treatment interventions for juvenile offenders. An important element of the Reclaiming Futures strategy has been the consistent and intentional involvement of community members as part of the systemic reforms and interventions in a way that attempts to share access to power and build agency for authentic community-anchored solutions. The purpose of these efforts is to assist young people to build positive and enduring connections that they can rely upon as a strong recovery network for ongoing support after their formal engagement with justice and treatment services is concluded. This paper describes relevant literature on positive youth development and community-directed engagement, the underlying philosophy of the approach, examples of how the Reclaiming Futures initiative has incorporated these ideas, discussion of barriers and supports to effectiveness, and implications for others wishing to implement similar strategies.