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 New Ageism

This article takes issue with the apparently entrenched political narrative about ageing and older people which is routinely expressed in both ministerial rhetoric and media headlines warning of the ‘burden’ of dependency and intergenerational strife. It argues that this narrative is rooted in the potent combination of ageism and neoliberalism and is being ramped‐up by the Coalition Government's austerity fixation. The social and political risks of this omnipresent narrative are discussed as is the persistence of the case that generational conflict is inevitable, in both the UK and US, despite the complete absence of any evidence supporting it. The article finishes by urging action to alter the course of both individual and societal ageing and so avoid future spending demands as well as improving the quality of life of current and future generations of older people.