WHAT'S GOOD FOR THE GAYS IS GOOD FOR THE GANDER: MAKING HOMELESS YOUTH HOUSING SAFER FOR LESBIAN,GAY, BISEXUAL,AND TRANSGENDER YOUTH

Across the United States, lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) youth are grossly overrepresented in the homeless youth population. These youth are at an increased risk of being victims of violence in homeless youth housing facilities. This Note examines the causes of the overrepresentation of LGBT youth in the homeless youth population. Additionally, this Note suggests the following changes to the regulation of homeless youth housing programs to make them safer for these youth: (1) placing low maximum limits on the occupancy capacity at which these programs may operate, (2) requiring that all showering facilities provide individual privacy, (3) prohibiting anti‐LGBT discrimination in the provision of services, (4) requiring nondiscrimination and sensitivity training, and (5) promoting the creation of LGBT‐specific homeless youth housing programs.     

Long-term effects of the Moving to Opportunity residential mobility experiment on crime and delinquency

Objectives

Using data from a randomized experiment, to examine whether moving youth out of areas of concentrated poverty, where a disproportionate amount of crime occurs, prevents involvement in crime.

Methods

We draw on new administrative data from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s Moving to Opportunity (MTO) experiment. MTO families were randomized into an experimental group offered a housing voucher that could only be used to move to a low-poverty neighborhood, a Section 8 housing group offered a standard housing voucher, and a control group. This paper focuses on MTO youth ages 15–25 in 2001 (n = 4,643) and analyzes intention to treat effects on neighborhood characteristics and criminal behavior (number of violent- and property-crime arrests) through 10 years after randomization.

Results

We find the offer of a housing voucher generates large improvements in neighborhood conditions that attenuate over time and initially generates substantial reductions in violent-crime arrests and sizable increases in property-crime arrests for experimental group males. The crime effects attenuate over time along with differences in neighborhood conditions.

Conclusions

Our findings suggest that criminal behavior is more strongly related to current neighborhood conditions (situational neighborhood effects) than to past neighborhood conditions (developmental neighborhood effects). The MTO design makes it difficult to determine which specific neighborhood characteristics are most important for criminal behavior. Our administrative data analyses could be affected by differences across areas in the likelihood that a crime results in an arrest.     

HELPING CLIENTS TRANSITION TO INDEPENDENT LIVING

There is growing recognition and concern that too many of the 20,000 foster youth who age out of the child welfare system each year 1 in this country do so without the basic necessities of housing, education, employment, and health care. The purpose of this article is to outline the problems facing foster youth as they leave care and to detail, as a case study, the steps taken by KidsVoice, a Pittsburgh legal services organization representing almost 5,000 dependent children each year, to help youth in foster and substitute care transition more successfully to adulthood and independent living.     

The Managed Growth Trickle-Up Theory

My title is designed to elicit warm vibes from the free marketeers as well as from the public controllers. For when devising programs to relate the interests of the poor and the environment, it is as necessary to seek consensus in order to progress as it is in other contexts². The managed growth trickle-up theory is designed to be a response by local and regional governments to move with alacrity in the provision of racially and economically integrated housing. Surely, now that Title I of the Housing and Community Development Act of 1974⁴ is law, localities and regions can no longer blame their segregative practices on bureaucratic HUD bungling. The locus of blame is now not only clearer; failure to integrate housing is also more expensive.     

MEGA ♪: A New Paradigm in Risk Assessment Tools for Sexually Abusive Youth

Prognostic utility of MEGA ^? was evaluated on a sample of 969 male and female youth without history of sexually-related probation or parole violation. Six month follow-up of 334 (34 %) found a new sexually-related probation or parole violation occurred in 28 (8.4 %). ROC findings showed Risk Scale significantly (p?<?.001) predictive of a new violation (AUC?=?.71 [95 % CI?=?.62 to .80]). MEGA ^? Risk Scale scores added incremental prognostic utility over demographic variables (p?<?0.001) and resulted in a net reclassification improvement of 31.5 %. Contravention for youth ages 4 to 12 was defined as new reports of sexually abusive behaviors in three or more different locations, or sexual behaviors that included oral, anal, vaginal, direct skin to skin contact, and/or penetration. Post-hoc analysis found 8 youth (21 %) experienced these outcomes. Risk Scale was significantly predictive (AUC?=?.77 [95 % C.I. = .60 to .96; p?=?0.016]).     

Ten Ways to Reduce Detention Population

“Juvenile detention is regularly overlooked, maligned, and misunderstood. Its embattled condition is best described as severely abused and neglected. It is underfunded, understaffed, crowded and largely ignored.”¹ “Detention caseloads increased 38 percent between 1987 and 1996. The increase in the number of delinquency cases handled by the courts has driven the growth in the number of juveniles in the detention system. In 1987, 1.2 million delinquency cases were disposed of in juvenile courts. By 1996, this number had risen 49 percent, to almost 1.8 million. This increase in the volume of juveniles in the justice system resulted in a 38 percent increase in the number of delinquency cases that involved the use of detention. The number of juvenile delinquency cases detained in 1996 was 89,000 more than in 1987. This has resulted in increased demand for juvenile detention bed space across the country.”² “Changes in statutes allowing more detainable offenses have significantly increased the number of youths admitted to regional detention centers.”³ “Although minority youth constituted about 32 percent of the youth population in the country in 1995, they represented 68 percent of the juvenile population in secure detention…⁴     

Crime victimization, alcohol consumption, and drug use in Canadian public housing

This exploratory study attempted to deal with the surprisingly small amount of scientific study of crime victimization specifically on public housing estates, particularly in Canada. In this study, 325 public housing residents in six estates in an Eastern Ontario urban center filled out survey questionnaires, while fifty-one were interviewed. Compared to the United States, there were significantly fewer single mothers and significantly more Whites. Predatory crime victimization was reported by these residents at a much higher level than for the general population in other Canadian or U.S. surveys. Still, males and youth were the residents most at risk for predatory crime victimization and substance abuse.     

"Bad" News and "Good" News

Youth are known to be that part of the population that are most receptive to things new. The current preferences of youth very frequently become the standards of tomorrow. On the basis of this fact alone, we can say that the study of youth's tastes has prognostic significance. This also applies to tastes in music.¹     

Trauma,Psychiatric, Substance Use,and Thought Disorders Among Youth in the Juvenile Justice System and How to Deal with Them

The personal stories that youth in juvenile facilities report to their counselors are heartbreaking because they are filled with accounts of excessive trauma resulting from neglect, physical, sexual, and emotional violence perpetrated on these children. Perry found that trauma develops from severe neglect, abuse, and living in terrorizing environments. Trauma changes the neural processing ability within the child's developing brain which can lead to hypervigilance and dysfunctional behavior. ¹ Widom found that children who had been abused or neglected as children have 30% higher arrests as a juvenile and as an adult for a violent offense. ²      

A Study of the Impact of Diversion and Community-Based Treatment on the Bucks County Juvenile Justice System, 1974–1979

This study examines the changes in three variables associated with the processing of delinquent youth by the Juvenile Court from 1974 through 1979. The data on numbers of youth referred to court, on adjudicatory probation and committed to public and private institutions is examined for a three-year period prior to significant court diversion and community-based treatment (1974–1976), and compared with a three-year period during which many diversionary services and treatments occurred (1977–1979). Data is also studied from two counties similar to Bucks in youth population-Delaware and Montgomery counties. The results show significant changes within Bucks County: a 9 percent decrease in total court referrals while Delaware experienced a 63 percent increase and Montgomery a 28 percent increase; significant reduction of probation in Bucks, a slight reduction in Montgomery and a 28 percent increase in Delaware County; and most importantly in terms of service costs, institutional commitments increased only 17 percent in Bucks, while increasing 63 percent in Montgomery and 208 percent in Delaware. Data on total reported offenses (crime rates) does not indicate major differences among the three counties; rather there seems to be variation in the types of services and processing of troubled youth which have resulted in 45 percent lower costs for the juvenile probation services in Bucks County.     

Assessing the Prevention of Juvenile Delinquency: An Evaluation of a Court‐Based Delinquency Prevention Program

In 2002, the State of Ohio mandated juvenile courts to provide prevention for at‐risk youth. This study examined official court records to evaluate the effectiveness of a prevention program administered by the Greene County Juvenile Court. A sample of 362 youth referred to the program for the years 2002 to 2009 by concerned caretakers, teachers, and police was analyzed. Consistent with intake goals, 81.7% of clients were referred for at‐risk but not actually delinquent behaviors. Completion of the prevention program did not predict future court referrals, but neither did seriousness of referral behavior. Children with two biological parents were significantly more likely to complete the program, whereas referrals to Strengthening Families Program and substance abuse screening significantly predicted program noncompletion. Implications for policy and research are discussed.

Key Points for the Family Court Community:
• This article highlights efforts by county juvenile court to implement a secondary prevention program for at‐risk but not officially court‐referred youth.
• Delinquency prevention research depends on good juvenile court data and adequate comparison groups.
• Evidence‐based predelinquent interventions with external process and outcome evaluations should be the standard.

     

Preventing Homelessness for System‐Involved Youth

Too many youth and young adults find themselves on the streets, couch‐surfing with friends, in emergency shelters or worse, after exiting the child welfare and juvenile justice systems. In some circumstances, youth have had court hearings until their exit from the legal system, but those hearings have not focused on long‐range plans of youth and emergencies youth may encounter. In other circumstances, there has been little or no planning prior to discharge, especially for young people who leave the juvenile justice system. Courts can and should prevent, alleviate or end youth homelessness for youth who appear before them through strategies that are enumerated in the recently‐passed NCJFCJ resolution. This article expounds on three of these strategies – coordinating transition and re‐entry plans, insisting on effective legal representation of youth, and utilizing sound judicial leadership. It also describes the concurrent efforts of the Coalition for Juvenile Justice and the American Bar Association's Homeless Youth Legal Network to remove legal barriers and improve outcomes for youth and young adults experiencing homelessness.     

THE “TRUE” JUVENILE OFFENDER: AGE EFFECTS AND JUVENILE COURT SANCTIONING

Age is the only factor used to demarcate the boundary between juvenile and adult justice. However, little research has examined how age guides the juvenile court in determining which youth within the juvenile justice system merit particular dispositions, especially those that reflect the court's emphasis on rehabilitation. Drawing on scholarship on the court's origins, attribution theory, and cognitive heuristics, we hypothesize that the court focuses on youth in the middle of the range of the court's age of jurisdiction—characterized in this article as “true” juveniles—who may be viewed as meriting more specialized intervention. We use data from Florida for court referrals in 2008 (N = 71,388) to examine the decision to proceed formally or informally and, in turn, to examine formally processed youth dispositions (dismissal, diversion, probation, commitment, and transfer) and informally processed youth dispositions (dismissal, diversion, and probation). The analyses provide partial support for the hypothesis. The very young were more likely to be informally processed; however, among the informally processed youth, the youngest, not “true” juveniles, were most likely to be diverted or placed on probation. By contrast, among formally processed youth, “true” juveniles were most likely to receive traditional juvenile court responses, such as diversion or probation.     

Assessing callous–unemotional traits in adolescent offenders: Validation of the Inventory of Callous–Unemotional Traits

The presence of callous–unemotional (CU) traits designates an important subgroup of antisocial youth. To improve upon existing measures, the Inventory of Callous–Unemotional Traits (ICU) was developed to provide an efficient, reliable, and valid assessment of CU traits in samples of youth. The current study tests the factor structure and correlates of the ICU scale in a sample (n = 248) of juvenile offenders (188 boys, 60 girls) between the ages of 12 and 20 (M = 15.47, SD = 1.37). Confirmatory factor analyses are consistent with the presence of three independent factors (i.e., Uncaring, Callousness, and Unemotional) that relate to a higher-order callous–unemotional dimension. Also, CU traits overall showed associations with aggression, delinquency, and both psychophysiological and self-report indices of emotional reactivity. There were some important differences across the three facets of the ICU in their associations with these key external criteria.     

“I didn't Know You were Fighting So Hard for me”: Attorneys' Perceptions of Youth Participation in Child Dependency Proceedings

This study examined attorneys' perceptions of youth participation in child dependency proceedings. Surveys and semi‐structured interviews were conducted with attorneys who represent adolescents in child dependency proceedings. Three dimensions of participation were identified: receiving information, providing information, and self‐advocacy. Barriers to youth participation included individual‐level factors, such as the youth or the attorney not wanting the youth to attend, and system‐level factors, such as the scheduling of court hearings, large caseloads, long waits, and cases being adjourned multiple times. Recommendations for enhancing youth participation in child dependency proceedings are presented.     

A Pilot Assessment of a School‐Based Youth Court in a Resource‐Poor African‐American Urban School District: Lessons Learned From Youth Court Volunteers

This study assesses the benefits of youth court participation for volunteers (N = 14) serving as jurors in an urban school‐based youth court. Focus group and questionnaire data indicate that volunteers are capable of providing more effective sanctioning decisions than adults. Volunteers reported developing citizenship skills including learning about the law and decision‐making skills. The youth court leaders developed self‐confidence and maturity while learning the conflict resolution skills necessary for rendering dispositions and conducting trials. We interpret our findings within the context of the youth court literature, the issue of the school‐to‐prison pipeline, and Elijah Anderson's analysis of the Code of the Street.     

Youth offending and youth transitions: the power of capital in influencing change

Neither the literature on offending nor that on desistance adequately explains the short-term nature of youth offending, young people’s propensity to desist from offending as they reach early adulthood and the importance of youth transitions in helping or hindering young people’s access to legitimate and conventional opportunities and responsibilities. It is suggested in this article that the three phases of offending—onset, maintenance and desistance—run parallel courses with the three phases of youth transitions—childhood, youth and adulthood and that both these processes are influenced by discrepancies in levels of capital for young people at each stage. In a recent Scottish study of desistance, Bourdieu’s concepts of capital are used to demonstrate the commonalities between youth offending and youth transitions and to better understand young people’s search for integration and recognition—whether this be through offending or conventionality. The article concludes that the concepts of capital and youth transitions could both be employed more usefully in the field of criminology to explain the transient nature of offending in youth and the greater likelihood of desistance once legitimate and sustainable opportunities are found to spend as well as to accumulate capital in early adulthood.

“AGING OUT: DON'T MISS OUT”—A MODEL OF COMMUNITY LEGAL EDUCATION

Typically, community legal education projects are ad hoc efforts where attorneys, law students, paralegals, or community organizers present how‐to workshops, develop manuals, or lead informational or training sessions for other attorneys, advocates, or members of the community. However, community education efforts can also promote and encourage public awareness, community engagement, and advocacy. This essay explores why community legal education efforts are needed and particularly well suited for youth transitioning out of foster care, and examines a specific community legal education effort that is being implemented with and on behalf of foster youth transitioning out of New Jersey's foster care system. The hope is that by studying this example, others may learn from it and be inspired to replicate it, as part of a state's or a community's overall effort to aid, empower, and engage foster youth.