Juvenile Crime, Juvenile Justice


Book Description

Even though youth crime rates have fallen since the mid-1990s, public fear and political rhetoric over the issue have heightened. The Columbine shootings and other sensational incidents add to the furor. Often overlooked are the underlying problems of child poverty, social disadvantage, and the pitfalls inherent to adolescent decisionmaking that contribute to youth crime. From a policy standpoint, adolescent offenders are caught in the crossfire between nurturance of youth and punishment of criminals, between rehabilitation and "get tough" pronouncements. In the midst of this emotional debate, the National Research Council's Panel on Juvenile Crime steps forward with an authoritative review of the best available data and analysis. Juvenile Crime, Juvenile Justice presents recommendations for addressing the many aspects of America's youth crime problem. This timely release discusses patterns and trends in crimes by children and adolescentsâ€"trends revealed by arrest data, victim reports, and other sources; youth crime within general crime; and race and sex disparities. The book explores desistanceâ€"the probability that delinquency or criminal activities decrease with ageâ€"and evaluates different approaches to predicting future crime rates. Why do young people turn to delinquency? Juvenile Crime, Juvenile Justice presents what we know and what we urgently need to find out about contributing factors, ranging from prenatal care, differences in temperament, and family influences to the role of peer relationships, the impact of the school policies toward delinquency, and the broader influences of the neighborhood and community. Equally important, this book examines a range of solutions: Prevention and intervention efforts directed to individuals, peer groups, and families, as well as day care-, school- and community-based initiatives. Intervention within the juvenile justice system. Role of the police. Processing and detention of youth offenders. Transferring youths to the adult judicial system. Residential placement of juveniles. The book includes background on the American juvenile court system, useful comparisons with the juvenile justice systems of other nations, and other important information for assessing this problem.




Texas Juvenile Law


Book Description




Reforming Juvenile Justice


Book Description

Adolescence is a distinct, yet transient, period of development between childhood and adulthood characterized by increased experimentation and risk-taking, a tendency to discount long-term consequences, and heightened sensitivity to peers and other social influences. A key function of adolescence is developing an integrated sense of self, including individualization, separation from parents, and personal identity. Experimentation and novelty-seeking behavior, such as alcohol and drug use, unsafe sex, and reckless driving, are thought to serve a number of adaptive functions despite their risks. Research indicates that for most youth, the period of risky experimentation does not extend beyond adolescence, ceasing as identity becomes settled with maturity. Much adolescent involvement in criminal activity is part of the normal developmental process of identity formation and most adolescents will mature out of these tendencies. Evidence of significant changes in brain structure and function during adolescence strongly suggests that these cognitive tendencies characteristic of adolescents are associated with biological immaturity of the brain and with an imbalance among developing brain systems. This imbalance model implies dual systems: one involved in cognitive and behavioral control and one involved in socio-emotional processes. Accordingly adolescents lack mature capacity for self-regulations because the brain system that influences pleasure-seeking and emotional reactivity develops more rapidly than the brain system that supports self-control. This knowledge of adolescent development has underscored important differences between adults and adolescents with direct bearing on the design and operation of the justice system, raising doubts about the core assumptions driving the criminalization of juvenile justice policy in the late decades of the 20th century. It was in this context that the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP) asked the National Research Council to convene a committee to conduct a study of juvenile justice reform. The goal of Reforming Juvenile Justice: A Developmental Approach was to review recent advances in behavioral and neuroscience research and draw out the implications of this knowledge for juvenile justice reform, to assess the new generation of reform activities occurring in the United States, and to assess the performance of OJJDP in carrying out its statutory mission as well as its potential role in supporting scientifically based reform efforts.




ABA Standards for Criminal Justice


Book Description

"Project of the American Bar Association, Criminal Justice Standards Committee, Criminal Justice Section"--T.p. verso.




The Black Child-Savers


Book Description

During the Progressive Era, a rehabilitative agenda took hold of American juvenile justice, materializing as a citizen-and-state-building project and mirroring the unequal racial politics of American democracy itself. Alongside this liberal "manufactory of citizens,” a parallel structure was enacted: a Jim Crow juvenile justice system that endured across the nation for most of the twentieth century. In The Black Child Savers, the first study of the rise and fall of Jim Crow juvenile justice, Geoff Ward examines the origins and organization of this separate and unequal juvenile justice system. Ward explores how generations of “black child-savers” mobilized to challenge the threat to black youth and community interests and how this struggle grew aligned with a wider civil rights movement, eventually forcing the formal integration of American juvenile justice. Ward’s book reveals nearly a century of struggle to build a more democratic model of juvenile justice—an effort that succeeded in part, but ultimately failed to deliver black youth and community to liberal rehabilitative ideals. At once an inspiring story about the shifting boundaries of race, citizenship, and democracy in America and a crucial look at the nature of racial inequality, The Black Child Savers is a stirring account of the stakes and meaning of social justice.




The War on Kids


Book Description

Despite inventing the juvenile court a little more than a century ago, the United States has become an international outlier in its juvenile sentencing practices. The War on Kids explains how that happened and how policymakers can correct the course of juvenile justice today.




Juvenile Justice


Book Description

"The lessons in this book remind us that we can and that we must do better, for the sake of our children, their futures, and the sake of our nation. . . . This volume is a call to action, and I encourage everyone who reads it to take steps to ensure that all America's children are given an equal chance to succeed. We must all work together to replace the cradle-to-prison pipeline with a pipeline to responsible, productive adulthood." From the Foreword by Marian Wright Edelman, JD, President and founder, Children's Defense Fund, Washington, DC "Juvenile Justice: Advancing Research, Policy, and Practice appears at a critical time, when promising juvenile justice reforms are underway in so many jurisdictions across the United States. Sherman and Jacobs, and their impressive array of expert authors, fill a significant gap in the literature, making the current body of juvenile justice research and experience accessible to policy makers, researchers, and funders, and doing so through a practical and positive lens." Patrick McCarthy, President and Chief Executive Officer, Annie E. Casey Foundation, Baltimore, MD "Most people have narrow views of what it means to be a delinquent youth. In Juvenile Justice: Advancing Research, Policy, and Practice, Sherman and Jacobs have diligently collected essays from the top experts in the juvenile justice field who tell an empirically based and powerful narrative of who is really in the delinquency system. As this book makes clear, until we ask and answer the right questions, we will remain unable to help the youth most in need." Alexander Busansky, President, The National Council on Crime and Delinquency, Oakland, CA A comprehensive reference presenting a rehabilitative, youth- and community-centered vision of juvenile justice Juvenile Justice: Advancing Research, Policy, and Practice brings together experts in juvenile justice, child development, and public health to explore the intersections between juvenile justice and needed development of programs and policies that look out for the health and well-being of the youth who enter this system. This timely book provides a usable framework for imagining juvenile justice systems that emphasize the welfare of juveniles, achieved primarily through connections within their communities. A must-read for professionals working in juvenile courts and within juvenile justice agencies, Juvenile Justice: Advancing Research, Policy, and Practice reflects both the considerable advances and the challenges currently evident in the juvenile justice system, with an emphasis on the development and implementation of policies that can succeed in building a new generation of educated young people able to embrace their potential and build successful futures.




The Rage of Innocence


Book Description

A brilliant analysis of the foundations of racist policing in America: the day-to-day brutalities, largely hidden from public view, endured by Black youth growing up under constant police surveillance and the persistent threat of physical and psychological abuse "Storytelling that can make people understand the racial inequities of the legal system, and...restore the humanity this system has cruelly stripped from its victims.” —New York Times Book Review Drawing upon twenty-five years of experience rep­resenting Black youth in Washington, D.C.’s juve­nile courts, Kristin Henning confronts America’s irrational, manufactured fears of these young peo­ple and makes a powerfully compelling case that the crisis in racist American policing begins with its relationship to Black children. Henning explains how discriminatory and aggressive policing has socialized a generation of Black teenagers to fear, resent, and resist the police, and she details the long-term consequences of rac­ism that they experience at the hands of the police and their vigilante surrogates. She makes clear that unlike White youth, who are afforded the freedom to test boundaries, experiment with sex and drugs, and figure out who they are and who they want to be, Black youth are seen as a threat to White Amer­ica and are denied healthy adolescent development. She examines the criminalization of Black adoles­cent play and sexuality, and of Black fashion, hair, and music. She limns the effects of police presence in schools and the depth of police-induced trauma in Black adolescents. Especially in the wake of the recent unprece­dented, worldwide outrage at racial injustice and inequality, The Rage of Innocence is an essential book for our moment.




The Juvenile Law Study Commission


Book Description




Juvenile Justice


Book Description

Juvenile justice policies have historically been built on a foundation of myths and misconceptions. Fear of young, drug-addled superpredators, concerns about immigrants and gangs, claims of gender biases, and race hostilities have influenced the public′s views and, consequently, the evolution of juvenile justice. These myths have repeatedly confused the process of rational policy development for the juvenile justice system. Juvenile Justice: Redeeming Our Children debunks myths about juvenile justice in order to achieve an ideal system that would protect vulnerable children and help build safer communities. Author Barry Krisberg assembles broad and up-to-date research, statistical data, and theories on the U.S. juvenile justice system to encourage effective responses to youth crime. This text gives a historical context to the ongoing quest for the juvenile justice ideal and examines how the current system of laws, policies, and practices came into place.Juvenile Justice reviews the best research-based knowledge on what works and what does not work in the current system. The book also examines failed juvenile justice policies and applies high standards of scientific evidence to seek new resolutions. This text helps students embrace the value of redemptive justice and serves as a springboard for the current generation to implement sounder social policies. Juvenile Justice is an ideal textbook for undergraduate and graduate students studying juvenile justice in Criminology, Criminal Justice, and Sociology. The book is also an excellent supplemental text for juvenile delinquency courses. About the AuthorBarry Krisberg, PhD has been President of the National Council on Crime and Delinquency (NCCD) since 1983. Dr. Krisberg received both his master′s degree in Criminology and his doctorate in Sociology from the University of Pennsylvania. He is currently Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at the University of Hawaii and has held previous faculty positions at the University of California at Berkeley and the University of Minnesota. Dr. Krisberg was appointed by the legislature to serve on the California Blue Ribbon Commission on Inmate Population Management. He has several books and articles to his credit, is known nationally for his research and expertise on juvenile justice issues, and is called upon as a resource for professionals and the media.