Holistic Representation: A Randomized Pilot Study of Wraparound Services for First‐Time Juvenile Offenders to Improve Functioning,Decrease Motions for Review,and Lower Recidivism

Mental health diagnoses, substance abuse issues, and school problems are often cited as contributors to adolescents’ involvement with the juvenile justice system. Yet, few youth receive assessment, evaluation, or intervention prior to their involvement with the juvenile courts. This pilot study evaluated whether providing a randomized trial of wraparound forensic social work services in addition to court‐appointed legal services would improve functioning, decrease motions for review, and lower recidivism for first‐time juvenile offenders. Findings indicate statistically significant improvement for youth receiving wraparound services on six out of eight measures. A case study example is provided and implications for service provision are explored.     

美国少年司法的新近发展

作为世界上第一个少年司法制度的诞生地———美国 ,它的少年司法体系的改革令人关注。本文回顾了美国少年司法政策的发展历史 ,并系统地检验了美国少年司法体制 ,总结了美国少年司法的历史 ,阐述了美国少年司法近年来的发展状况 ,这些发展推动了学者们对美国少年司法的深入研究 ,从而为处理青少年偏差行为指明了合理、有效的策略。本文还涉及到意识形态、政治策略和媒体对少年司法的公共政策的影响问题 ,最后探讨了将来美国少年司法领域中可能出现的争议。     

Informing Juvenile Justice Policy: Directions for Behavioral Science Research

Recent policy initiatives threaten to reduce the rehabilitative mission of the juvenile court or eliminate the court entirely. This article lays out a framework for an empirical assessment of these developments. It first evaluates the available and potential empirical support for three hypotheses about juveniles that might justify maintaining a separate, rehabilitation-oriented juvenile justice system: the hypotheses that, compared to adults, juveniles are more treatable, less culpable, and less deterrable. On the assumption that the continued existence of a rehabilitation-oriented juvenile court can be justified, it then provides suggestions as to how existing intervention strategies for juveniles could benefit from research attention to several substantive and methodological issues. These include refining outcome criteria and sampling strategies, matching offender and program characteristics, reexamining intervention efficacy, and focusing on decision makers and resource allocations.     

THE CONCEPTUALIZATION OF DISCRIMINATION IN THE JUVENILE JUSTICE PROCESS: THE IMPACT OF ADMINISTRATIVE FACTORS AND SCREENING DECISIONS ON JUVENILE COURT DISPOSITIONS

Research on race, sex, and social class discrimination in the juvenile justice process has yielded mixed results. These conflicting findings have been attributed to the use of diverse research strategies and various methodological shortcomings. There are, however, two potentially important issues that have not been previously addressed: the need to examine the juvenile justice system as a process, rather than as a series of separate and unrelated decision points, and the failure to control for the impact of administrative factors such as pretrial detention. The purpose of the research reported here is to examine the impact of race, sex, and social class on juvenile court dispositions while controlling for pretrial detention and appropriate legal factors. The analytical strategy employed permits an examination of the impact of these factors over three stages of the juvenile justice process: referral, adjudication, and disposition.
Findings indicate that while legal factors and pretrial detention decline in importance as predictors of disposition as one moves from an examination of all referred to adjudicated youth, race and social class become more important. These results are discussed in terms of their methodological significance and their implications for the conceptualization of discrimination in the juvenile justice process.     

Socializing Distrust of the Justice System through the Family in Juvenile Delinquency Court

Juvenile delinquency courts in the United States generally require parents to attend all court hearings, but little is known about how parents' experiences in the court process affect their discussions of the justice system with their court‐involved children. Using multiperspectival and longitudinal data combining observations with interviews of parents and youth in two courts, this research finds that many parents discuss the legal process in negative terms with their children when parents are outside the presence of legal authorities. This research adds to the literature on legal socialization by examining how parents' perceptions of law and their experiences with the court become part of the socializing content provided by parents to their court‐involved children. Creating a more meaningful role for parents in the juvenile justice process may potentially lead to more positive discussions of the court process between parents and juvenile defendants.     

Do legal variables predict police decisions regarding the prosecution of juvenile offenders?

This study investigated whether legal variables predict police dispositions as regards the prosecution of juveniles. For this purpose first apprehensions of a sample of 479 Israeli adolescents (aged 13.5–15.5) in a one-year period were analyzed. The association between the legal variables and police dispositions was analyzed separately within four hierarchical stages of involvement with the juvenile justice system. Previous referral to court and previous court appearance were found to be excellent predictors of police decision to prosecute. However, in the earlier stages of involvement with the juvenile justice system, (i.e., when juveniles had no previous court referrals or appearances), the predicting power of the few available legal variables (type and seriousness of offense and number of previous police apprehensions) was found to be negligible. In the discussion of the findings, the contradicting labeling and deterrence theories are applied to the functioning of the juvenile units within the police: The present study has empirically identified the specific point where police decision-making reflects a switch-over from the labeling to the deterrence approach. Some suggestions for future research are put forward in order to improve the predictability of police dispositions at the early stages of the juvenile's involvement with the criminal justice system.     

An Evaluation of Teen Court as a Juvenile Crime Diversion Program

Theories of procedural justice support the American legal system's search for a fair and effective means of diverting offenders from the juvenile court system. Teen Court programs, in which juvenile offenders are tried and sentenced by a jury of peers, are one of the latest developments in attempts to positively influence offenders and direct them free of crime. The present research found that participation in Teen Court increased offenders' legal knowledge and enhanced their attitudes toward some authority figures (i.e., the judge) and themselves to a greater extent than non‐offending juveniles. In addition, only 12.6 percent of juvenile offenders re‐offended within five months of their initial Teen Court involvement. Improved attitudes toward authority and self were associated with a lower incidence of recidivism. Overall, these results contribute to the growing literature indicating that Teen Court can be an effective juvenile crime diversion program. This article also discusses methodological issues for future program evaluations.     

Statewide Recommendations for Improving Juvenile Justice: The Louisiana Experience

The results contained herein reflect a statewide process of bringing together practitioners and citizens from all aspects of the juvenile justice system in the State of Louisiana to identify issues and recommendations to improve the lives of Louisiana's children. The results of the process indicate that participants are more interested in prevention and early intervention than incarceration and control methods of overcoming delinquency. The four main areas of concern are: (1) a fragmented juvenile justice system; (2) education; (3) family; and (4) youth empowerment. These results were presented statewide to policy makers through conference presentations. The results of the Think Tank indicate that participants favor expanding services, better use of available resources, and focusing on prevention. Participants hope that the results of this event will serve as a catalyst for change in Louisiana.     

Punishment,Accountability, and the New Juvenile Justice

The juvenile justice system has undergone radical change in the past three decades. The procedural revolution that began at the end of the 1960s with the Gault decision has more recently evolved into a substantive revolution. The changes in juvenile justice have been many and in some instances drastic, particularly in the apparent demise of the rehabilitative ideal. New theories or models have emerged, incorporating terminology such as punishment, justice, and accountability into the vocabulary of juvenile justice practitioners and the lexicon of state juvenile codes. The transformation in the philosophy and underlying goals of the system has been well-documented over the past decade or so. It is now time to ask critical questions about the significance and meaning of this transformation and to bring attention to unresolved issues. This article suggests the issues that need to be addressed in order to make both practical and philosophical sense out of the changes in the mission of “juvenile justice.”     

“She's Nobody's Child/the Law Can't Touch Her at All”: Seeking to Bring Dignity to Legal Proceedings Involving Juveniles

Inquiries into a range of issues involving juveniles in the psychiatric hospitalization and criminal trial process reveal that, regularly, juveniles are subject to shame and humiliation in all aspects of the legal system that relate to arrest, trial, conviction, and institutionalization, shame and humiliation that are often exacerbated in cases involving racial minorities and those who are economically impoverished. We contextualize them into the juvenile justice system, and look specifically at how this is reflected in the case law. We then consider these findings through the filters of therapeutic jurisprudence and international human rights laws, concluding that these approaches best remediate the current state of affairs and infuse this system with badly‐needed dignity.     

Systemic Self-Regulation: A Framework for Trauma-Informed Services in Residential Juvenile Justice Programs

Most youth detained in juvenile justice facilities have extensive histories of exposure to psychological trauma. Traumatic stress plays a key role in their mental health and behavioral problems and needs, and in their safety and rehabilitation and the security and effectiveness of detention facilities. We provide an overview of the barriers to successful provision of mental health services for youths in juvenile justice facilities, including those involving youth, parents, and juvenile justice residential facility staff and administrators. Next, we discuss the relevance and potential utility of approaching mental health needs using posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and more broadly posttraumatic dysregulation, as an organizing framework. Examples of how a posttraumatic dysregulation perspective can enhance juvenile justice residential facility milieus and services are presented, with an overview of traumatic stress intervention models that have shown promise, or potentially could be deployed, in developing and sustaining trauma-informed juvenile justice facilities.     

Perceptions of police-juvenile contact predicts self-reported offending in adolescent males

ABSTRACT

Evidence suggests that positive experiences with the police can foster attitudes of respect towards the justice system that can reduce an adolescents’ propensity to commit later illegal behaviors. To advance prior work, we tested whether this association might be stronger for those adolescents who associate with deviant peers. Additionally, we tested whether the link between attitudes towards police and the justice system, and the influence of peer delinquency, would be weaker for those with elevated callous–unemotional (CU) traits. These predictions were examined in a prospective study using a sample (N?=?1,216) of adolescent males who were followed prospectively for 2 years following their first official contact with the juvenile justice system. Positive experiences with the police following the youth’s first arrest were associated with less self-reported delinquency 2 years later, which was partially mediated by reductions in adolescents’ cynicism about the legal system. However, this link was only significant for youth with low levels of peer delinquency. Although CU traits were related to less positive perceptions of experiences with the police and greater cynicism about the justice system, CU traits did not moderate the associations among experiences, attitudes, and later illegal behavior nor did they moderate the influence of peer delinquency.     

美国少年司法严罚刑事政策的形成、实践与未来

建立独立的少年司法制度，在保护主义的理念下处理少年犯罪，曾经是美国的骄傲，也是其他国家效仿的范本。但自20世纪70年代后期开始，严罚刑事政策开始逐步占据美国少年司法刑事政策的主流，呈现出逐步背弃福利型少年司法传统的趋势。这种转变是在少年犯罪恶化与古典犯罪学派复兴的社会背景与理论背景下发生的，也是对少年司法理念的歪曲。少年司法严罚刑事政策的推行激化了少年法院存废的争论，也遭到了激烈的批评和日益深入的反思。     

Role of voice in the legal process*

As communities face unrest and protest because of perceived racial bias and decreased trust and confidence in the criminal justice system, it is critical to explore mechanisms that foster institutional legitimacy. Voice is a central element in the procedural justice framework because it is anticipated to promote process control as well as a shared understanding between institutions and communities. As a concept, however, voice is undertheorized. Measures of voice used in legitimacy research may result in oversimplification of the concept, not fully capturing the struggles disadvantaged people face in trying to exercise influence in the court system. Through the use of rich data from qualitative interviews with youth and families involved in the juvenile justice system and in‐depth observations of juvenile court events, we explore what voice is, the mechanisms through which people try to assert voice, and how voice matters in the legal process. Respondents sought voice for many reasons, including to validate their experiences, to affirm their membership in a community, and to assert concerns about perceived police misconduct. Contrary to traditional conceptualizations of voice as a static event (e.g., having voice or not having voice), voice was a process of negotiating dialogue between court officials and court participants throughout the legal process.     

What's “New” About the Balanced Approach?

Over the past decade, many juvenile justice professionals became familiar with the “Balanced Approach as a new mission for juvenile probation. In recent months, a number of jurisdictions have adopted the Balanced Approach, by statute or policy, as the mission for their juvenile courts and juvenile justice systems. However, a great deal of misunderstanding persists about the meaning and practical differences between the Balanced Approach and other intervention models. While both quality and consistency of implementation of “balanced” policy and practice vary widely, some juvenile justice managers are using this new mission as a tool or “roadmap” for comprehensive re-structuring of juvenile justice systems and agencies. This paper argues that when viewed as a guide to systemic, rather than programmatic, reform, the Balanced Approach can be clearly distinguished from both the traditional individual treatment and the new retributive/punitive juvenile justice missions. Six critical differences between the Balanced Approach and these missions are described.     

RANDOM ASSIGNMENT IN CRIMINAL JUSTICE RESEARCH Some Ethical and Legal Issues

Randomization techniques entail sound methodological means to assign participants to groups for experimental purposes. However, prior to applying this technique to criminal justice research, several ethical and legal issues must be considered. For example, in a legal context, the objectivity afforded by the randomization process may be interpreted as “arbitrary.” Similarly, depriving control group participants of the presumed benefits of a newly launched program may be regarded as unethical. It may be possible to adapt the randomization procedure to experimental contingencies. However, caution must then be taken in carrying out the adaptation, as the methodological rigor and hence the interpretability of the results may be affected.     

Overview of: “Getting the Law Involved a Quasi-Experiment in Early Intervention Involving Collaboration Between Schools and the District Attorney's Office”

Research Summary Precursors to serious and chronic delinquency often emerge in childhood, stimulating calls for early interventions. Most intervention efforts rely solely on social service programs—often to the exclusion of the juvenile justice system. The juvenile justice system has been reluctant to become involved in the lives of relatively young children fearing net widening or further straining resources that could be used for older youth with documented delinquency histories. We report here the results of an early intervention program sponsored by and housed in a district attorney's office in Louisiana. Using a quasi-experimental design, we examined outcomes associated with program involvement as well as whether the obvious involvement of the prosecutor's office was associated with further reductions in problem behavior.

• 1 : The results revealed that significant reductions in problem behaviors of young children could be attributed to program participation.
• 2 : The obvious involvement of the district attorney's office, however, was associated with limited, albeit significant, reductions in specific problem behaviors.
• 3 : These findings show that successful early intervention efforts can be made part of the juvenile justice system and that in some limited situations prosecutorial involvement can result in positive outcomes.

Policy Implications The expansion of early intervention programming into the juvenile justice system offers opportunities to address early problem behavior. Our study and its results have the following policy implications.

• 1 : Closely coupled partnerships between schools and the juvenile justice system can effectively address, mitigate, and perhaps prevent an early onset of antisocial behavior.
• 2 : Even so, coupling early intervention efforts to the mission of the juvenile justice system warrants debate. Net-widening, resource diffusion, and the potential for officials to rely too heavily on the deterrent characteristics of the justice system represent serious threats to the integrity of effective early intervention programs.
• 3 : We suggest substantial debate and consideration is given before coupling early intervention efforts to the juvenile justice system.

     

Modeling the longitudinal impact of legal sanctions on narcotics use and property crime

Structural equation models are used to confirm the suppressive effects of legal sanctions, e.g., probation and parole, on narcotics use and property crime. Both concurrent and longitudinal effects of legal sanctions are tested within two different models, which together span the entire addiction career. The findings indicate that (1) the suppressive effects of legal sanctions are evident only when legal sanctions are operationalized as parole or probation officer contact where urine monitoring is utilized; (2) only concurrent suppressive effects are statistically significant, and longitudinal suppressive effects are not; (3) both narcotics use and property crime are suppressed by legal sanctions, although the latter is less responsive than the former to intervention by the criminal justice system; and (4) suppressive effects tend to be more pronounced later in the addiction career. The significance of the findings and the implications for criminological theory related to issues regarding surveillance effects are emphasized.     

The questionable advantage of defense counsel in juvenile court

This article examines the issue of legal representation in serious juvenile delinquency matters in three diverse juvenile courts. The prevalence of legal counsel varied among felony referrals. Out-of-home placement was more likely to occur if a youth had an attorney, even when other relevant legal and individual factors were the same. Within each court, the results showed more likely of placement corresponding to seriousness of the case. Although this escalation was evident among cases with attorneys and those without, placement was more apt to occur when there was legal counsel. Given these findings, we offer recommendations for issues that should be considered and possible policy actions.