The Justice Model in the Juvenile Justice System: Washington State's Experience

In 1977, the Washington State Legislature enacted radical modifications of its juvenile justice code. Explicitly abandoning the parens patriae philosophy of the juvenile justice system, a "justice" philosophy was adopted. Provisions of the law include a determinate sentencing structure, the divestiture of status offenses, greater due process rights for juveniles, and a formalized diversion process which emphasizes accountability rather than treatment. This paper brings together the available research on the implementation of the law to assess how the introduction of a justice approach has influenced equality, fairness, and punishment levels in Washington State's juvenile justice system.     

Legal,Psychological, and Behavioral Outcomes

States have responded to the public's outrage at rising juvenile crime by revising their transfer statutes to make it easier to transfer juvenile offenders for trial and sentencing in criminal court and possible incarceration in adult prisons. These changing trends in juvenile justice raise three questions about what actually happens to juveniles once they are in the adult criminal justice system. To what extent does trial in adult court and/or incarceration in adult prisons promote or retard community protection, juvenile offenders' accountability, and the development of competencies in juvenile offenders? This article discusses state transfer laws and the legal consequences of criminal court prosecution, and analyzes current research on deterrence effects of transfer laws, conviction and sentencing in juvenile versus criminal court, recidivism rates in juvenile versus criminal court, and conditions and programming in juvenile versus adult correctional facilities. The research findings have two important implications for juvenile justice policy: the number of juvenile cases transferred to criminal court should be minimized, and imprisonment of juveniles in adult facilities should be avoided whenever possible. These implications are discussed, and directions for future research are identified.     

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.”     

The Evolution of Balanced and Restorative Justice

Maloney, Armstrong, and Romig presented a portrait of “Joey,” who was the exemplar of what was wrong with the juvenile justice system, in 1988 when they published The Balanced Approach in this Journal. In response, they reimagined a juvenile justice system predicated on balancing three fundamental goals—protection of community, accountability to victims, and development of competencies to prepare juvenile court‐involved youth for productive roles in their communities. The authors examine the evolution of balanced and restorative justice and re‐imagine how Joey's life may have been different at critical junctures of his juvenile court involvement.     

Improving criminal justice through better decision making: Lessons from the medical system

Against a backdrop of unprecedented growth in the criminal justice system stand calls for increased government accountability, yet substantial gaps between ideal and actual practice remain. Many observers have pointed to the problem and some of its causes and solutions, including the need for performance monitoring and evidence-based practices. Less attention has been paid to how decision-making errors influence effective criminal justice practice. This article draws on examples from medicine, where decision making has been examined in more depth, and applies them to criminal justice. Its goals are to identify the types of decision-making errors that can undermine effective practice and policy in the criminal justice system, illustrate how systemic factors influence everyday decision making, and draw attention to the benefits of decision making-focused monitoring and assessment. The article concludes by discussing the implications for performance monitoring and improving the criminal justice system.     

Bureaucracy, managerial disorganization, and administrative breakdown in criminal justice agencies

This article presents a novel way to explain managerial collapse in criminal justice agencies by analyzing traditional organizational perspectives. While recognizing the advances of human relations and contingency management theories, most criminal justice agencies in the twenty-first century remain hierarchical Weberian organizations characterized by mechanistic and formalistic operations, with specialized tasks and division of labor that create a narrow range of duties. Along with Weber, Fayol, and more recently, DiIulio and Wilson have argued that managerial quality determines organizational performance. This article extends that focus by using the theoretical perspective called managerial disorganization and administrative breakdown, hypothesizing that management is responsible for well-functioning and/or dysfunctional organizations. Through a series of examples from case studies where criminal justice agencies have failed, the article concludes that agencies experiencing administrative breakdown and managerial disorganization are not implementing their basic mission and inappropriately utilizing the organizational principles of division of labor, unity of command, span of control, accountability, hierarchy of authority, and communication.     

Science cannot fix this: the limitations of evidence-based practice

The use of evidence-based practice as a guide for correctional investment is widely lauded as a positive shift away from punitive approaches to criminal justice. The value-neutral language of science, however, supplants a more fundamental and necessary dialog about core principles of our justice system. We raise concern that the discourse of evidence-based practice serves to avoid accountability for the dominant correctional regime which remains overwhelmingly invested in the imposition of punishment. Furthermore, evidence-based practice privileges academic expertise and de-legitimizes the knowledge base within affected communities stifling grassroots innovation and creativity.     

Integrated Administrative Data & Criminal Justice Research

Using integrated administrative data from criminal justice and social service systems can harness information in meaningful ways that transcend traditional “silos” and allow communities to focus collective attention on important social issues that cross systemic boundaries. Despite recent advances in use of integrated administrative data, practical information to promote adoption by new users is lacking. Here we provide an introduction to potential uses of integrated administrative data for criminal justice researchers, including general benefits of using integrated data as well as implications for innovative research design. We describe a case example of data integration through a state data warehouse for a federally funded project on impact of incarceration on families. The project utilizes data from eight agencies (corrections, juvenile justice, mental health, substance use, social services, health, education, and environmental control) and includes development of an Online Analytical Processing cube. We draw from lessons learned to provide specific recommendations for developing researcher-practitioner partnerships that use integrated administrative data to improve translational criminal justice research and evidence-based practice and policy.     

Advancing Accountability: Moving Toward Victim Restoration

One of the goals of Pennsylvania's juvenile justice system is the “imposition of accountability” for offenses committed. This White Paper, originally published in 2006, takes the position that true accountability requires juvenile offenders to repair the harm caused by their offending behavior and to understand and acknowledge the wrongfulness of their actions, their responsibility for causing harm, and the impact of the crime on the crime victim and community. It identifies system responsibilities, restorative practices, and outcomes relative to accountability. This White Paper was the result of debate among focus group participants under the auspices of the State Advisory Group.     

Trauma‐Informed Approaches to Juvenile Justice: A Critical Race Perspective

Youth of color experience disproportionate juvenile justice contact and recidivism. Trauma‐informed approaches may provide important support to these youth and improve their future outcomes. This paper describes dynamics of the various levels of the juvenile justice system (i.e., police contact, courts, correctional placement, aftercare) that perpetuate psychological trauma among adjudicated youth of color. This paper explores trauma‐informed approaches from a critical race theory perspective to address issues of systemic racial injustice in the juvenile justice system. Current and emerging models for trauma‐informed juvenile justice and implications for practice, policy, and research are discussed.     

A Practical Approach to Evaluating and Improving Juvenile Justice Programs

For more than a decade, the juvenile justice field in the United States has been dominated by the seventh “moral panic” over juvenile delinquency. This panic led to an overreaction to juvenile delinquency by legislators and juvenile justice officials. The main consequence is a “crisis of overload” in many state and local juvenile justice systems across the country. Tools are available to help juvenile courts effectively manage the overload of court clients. Most important, a new method has been developed for evaluating existing programs against research‐based standards that have been synthesized from juvenile justice program evaluations. This tool enables states and localities to take a practical approach to improving juvenile justice system programs.     

THE SENSE OF INJUSTICE? An Analysis of Juveniles' Reactions to the Justice System

The paper analyzes three juvenile justice organizations- the police, Abstract juvenile probation, and juvenile court-from the point of View of the clients of the justice system. While much of the delinquency literature (in particular David Matza's notion of the sense of injustice) suggests a rlegntive response by youths who have been in contact with the system, the present resenrch found that youths with greater system contact actually expressed more positive attitudes t o w d probation officers and court judges than did their less experienced counterparts At the same time. a negative correlation was found between experience in the system and youths' evaluations of these agencies in terms of their effectiveness in performing important agency tasks.     

An Implementation and Process Evaluation of the Louisiana 22nd Judicial District’s Behavioral Health Court

The national offender reentry movement, Second Chance Act, and the widespread transfer of offender programming to community corrections have coalesced to substantially increase treatment for mental health and substance disorders within the criminal justice system. Intervention commonly entails program evaluation for accountability and empirical evidence by which to specify what works. Though mixed methods evaluation is preferable to a singular qualitative or quantitative approach, process steps are commonly overlooked. This paper relates an implementation and process design and evaluation midpoint findings for the Louisiana 22nd Judicial District’s Behavioral Health Court program, a post-conviction treatment initiative for mental health offenders. Interview guides and a fidelity instrument facilitated site visit data collection. Findings inform program implementation intensity, performance, improvement opportunities, and related fidelity research.     

Juvenile Justice in Oregon: Balanced and Restorative Justice in Action

The goals of Balanced and Restorative Justice (BARJ) are to hold juvenile offenders meaningfully accountable, hear and empower crime victims and engage communities both as stakeholders who have been negatively impacted and as advocates to make things right for the crime victim, offender, and community. This article examines how several Oregon juvenile justice agencies have put BARJ into action over the last 25 years, highlighting specific examples of how several agencies have made this the philosophical underpinning of their work. An overview of the philosophical principles, values, and goals that drive this approach is also discussed.     

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。     

Evidence on the Effectiveness of Juvenile Court Sanctions

Purpose

The past decade has been witness to a proliferation of calls for evidence-based juvenile court sanctions—including various programs, interventions, services, and strategies or approaches—that reduce recidivism and improve mental health, drug dependency, and education outcomes. At the same time, an emerging body of work has identified “proven,” “evidence-based,” “best practice,” or, more generally, “effective” efforts to achieve these outcomes. Even so, grounds for concern exist regarding the evidence-base for these and other sanctions.

Methods

This paper describes the heterogeneity of sanctioning within juvenile justice and argues that, despite substantial advances in research, the heterogeneity severely delimits the generalizability of evaluations to date. It also raises questions about how much is in fact known about the effectiveness of many juvenile justice sanctions.

Conclusion

Extant research offers grounds for optimism. Even so, explicit articulation of the limitations of this research and the need for studies that examine external validity is important for developing evidence about “what works” in juvenile justice. Implications for research and policy are discussed.     

Disproportionate minority contact in juvenile justice: today’s,and yesterdays,problems

Disproportionate minority contact (DMC) has been a perplexing problem for the juvenile justice system, and recognized as a national priority since the 1980s. The over-representation of minority youthful offenders throughout juvenile court processing, from arrests to dispositions, has not changed even though significant federal and state efforts have been employed. This paper reviews these racial and ethnic disparity problems, and investigates the history of the juvenile justice system and courts, from the eighteenth century to today’s reformation movement, identifying that DMC is not a recent phenomenon. The history of slavery and the Jim Crow Era greatly impacted the establishment of the juvenile courts and child-centered justice efforts, finding disparities at all historical markers where records are available. When reviewing DMC as we know it today through this context, an argument can be made that limited progress has been made over the past 200 years.     

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.