Juvenile Delinquency

What does “It’s F**ing Chaos” tell us aboutt the current state of juvenile justice efforts in light of the COVID-19 pandemic? How does this relate to our conceptual understanding of delinquency and the purpose of the juvenile justice system?

-This phrase suggests a state of disorder and confusion within juvenile justice efforts due to the pandemic, highlighting challenges such as disrupted rehabilitation programs, and a struggle to adapt legal responses to youth behavior in a shifting societal context.

-Juvenile Justice System in Chaos

• Fatigue and Disruption: frontline, direct care staff working with juveniles reported amplified fatigue among themselves and their juvenile clientele

• Compounding Trauma: There are limited options for quarantining without mimicking conditions of solitary confinement; such isolation is known to have long-lasting deleterious effects on anyone, especially higher-risk youths

• Staffing Challenges

• Education and Visitation Disruptions: Teachers and formal learning opportunities were suspended indefinitely & also suspended visitation with family, loved ones, mentors, and advocates

-Mid Pandemic and JJS

• Reduced number of arrests: superiors ordering arrest be used only “as a last resort”

• Reduced confined population: many states, administrators, and agencies have ramped up efforts to process juveniles swiftly and to divert them away from confinement

• Authority of Release

-Less restrictive, more rehabilitative, trauma-informed approaches work

• We know less punitive, more rehabilitative, trauma-informed approaches work

-There are confounding factors that lead to delinquent behavior (trauma, poverty, circumstances) highlighted by the pandemic

Youth

Is synonymous with juvenile or “young person”, which refers to those between ages 10 and 17, because those under age 10 are seldom arrested

Adolescent

The science of adolescence refers to a phase in development between childhood and adulthood beginning at puberty, typically about 12 or 13, and ending in the late teens or early 20s (12-20 years old)

Delinquent

Is used to describe the individual who has been found by the juvenile court to have committed a juvenile crime

What is a status offender?

-Is a noncriminal act that is considered a law violation only because of a youth’s status as a minor

• a status offender is a minor whose behavior is considered illegal only because of their age

What are some examples of status offenses

• truancy

• running away from home

• incorrigibility

• liquor law violations

What does the heterogeneity of juvenile offending mean?

Heterogeneity of juvenile offending means that at one extreme, some youth commit only a few trivial offenses; at the other extreme, some youth commit many offenses, some of which are quite serious and violent.

Does the heterogeneity make it easier or more challenging to develop juvenile justice policy?

Makes developing juvenile justice policy more difficult as cases should be individualized as much as possible due to the varied nature and severity of offenses among youth.

Different levels of offenders may need different resources or types of guidance to effectively address their needs (i.e., a teen who who was a truant vs. a violent chronic offender)

The diversity in juvenile offending makes it difficult for a policy to apply to every youth; so everything must be dealt case by case.

Makes it more challenging to develop juvenile justice policy because each youth has different circumstances that has led them to commit the crime and addressing these needs requires a tailored approach that considers individual backgrounds and offenses.

Legal Definition of Delinquency

Refers to acts by a juvenile that would be considered a crime if committed by an adult, as well as to actions that are illegal only because of the age of the offender

Sociological Definition of Delinquency

Any behavior by a minor that violates laws or social norms and standards of conduct (that deviates from societal norms and expectations)

What types of offenses and/or crimes do juvenile delinquents engage in? Do juveniles engage in certain offenses and/or crimes more than others?

• typically engage in truancy, running away from home, incorrigibility (i.e., habitually disobeying reasonable and lawful commands of a parent, guardian, or custodian; also referred to in various status as unruly, uncontrollable, or ungovernable behavior), and liquor law violations

• as well as drug use, property offenses, public order offenses, drug law offenses, and person offenses

• person offenses accounted for the largest proportion of the delinquency caseload, followed by property offenses (delinquency cases 2019)

What is the process juvenile delinquents go through in the juvenile justice system? Why is the terminology different from the adult criminal justice system?

• The process typically involves arrest, detention, intake, adjudication, and disposition. Juveniles may go through a series of hearings and services tailored to rehabilitation rather than punitive measures.

• JJS should be designed not only to hold youth accountable but also to address the cause of their misbehavior, reduce reoffending, and facilitate positive & healthy adolescent development

• JJS aims to rehabilitate young offenders rather than punish

• Judge, not jury, decides the case

• Difference in terminology indicates that juvenile offenders are often treated more leniently

What is the California minimum age of jurisdiction?

12 years old

In what ways are official records data beneficial and problematic for research?

-Problems

• Unreported “Dark Figure” of Crime: most youth crime is concealed (e.g. drug use) or unreported (e.g., theft)

• Biases over Time and Space)

  • changing norms (marijuana; prostitution)

  • changes in police priorities or “crackdowns”

  • errors at the local level

  • individual biases (implicit and explicit)

• Data Limitations

  • Unit is individual, not groups

  • Arrest stage is only stage

  • Report only most serious crime

-Beneficial

• Provide us with more insight into arrests and comes from a reliable source

In what ways are self-report data beneficial and problematic for research?

-Problems

• Is able to reach 50,000 students in 400 schools each year since 1975

• Asks questions regarding drug use, delinquency, and attitudes from youth firsthand

-Limitations

• Dishonesty

• Limited to only those attending the school when drug use typically occurs outside of this boundary

According to the video, Social media’s role in the rise of youth violence, what role did social media play in delinquent behavior?

• Social media incites violence/delinquent behavior

• Juveniles are committing crimes so they can post it and get likes and gain street cred

• Anonymity of online interactions often leads to riskier decisions and actions

• Ease of contact/planning attacks

• Larger reach for gangs/other delinquency groups

According to the video, The juvenile justice system is broken. Here is what actually works, what are the failures of the juvenile justice system? What is the school to prison pipeline? What interventions have positive results?

• School to prison pipeline: whereby school systems address young people through discipline & criminalization & effectively place them on a pipeline to continuing & more extensive contact with the criminal or juvenile juvenile justice systems, and off of the pipeline to further educational advancement

• Failures of the juvenile justice systems:

  • Incarceration can negatively affect the education of those who were arrested

  • They have lesser odds of getting their high school diploma

  • Unable to compete in a job market that needs skilled workers

• Interventions with positive results:

  • Children who attend school while incarcerated have lower recidivism rates

• Dominant policy behind prosecuting children should be that of rehabilitation and not a punitive one

Parens Patriae

• The court (judge) will be the ultimate parent

• Signifies the state’s role as a guardian for individuals, particularly children, who are unable to care for themselves or are deemed incompetent

• State intervention in cases of delinquency

• Roman times when the father was the head of the house, reminiscent of Kings who had full control of their subjects

Common Law

• Idea that a child under 7 could not form criminal intent and thus could not be held responsible

• Provides the foundational principles for the JJS, including concepts like parents patriae & age-based presumptions of criminal responsibility, which will allow the judge to administer a fairer sanction

Poor Laws

• Problem with unsupervised youth among the poor

• Remove them from the home and place them out as apprentices of some trade

• Poor Law Act of 1601

Historical Evolution of the JJS

• Common Law

• Poor Laws

• Poor Law Act of 1601

  • Involuntary separation of children from impoverished parents’ children were then placed in bondage to local residents as apprentices

• “City Custom of Apprentices” in London

  • Later a system was established to settle disputes involving apprentices who were unruly or abused by their masters

• Throughout 1600s & 1700s, juveniles were sent to adult prisons

• Mid-1800s, adopted more therapeutic approaches for youth

  • Youth taught a trade so they would be better equipped to avoid crime

• 1824: NY House of Refuge

• 1899: First Juvenile Court established

What is the NY House of Refuge - 1824?

• First juvenile reformatory in the United States

• Beginning of the Child Saving Movement (foster care, regulate child labor, fight child abuse)

• Initially focused on rehabilitating and reforming juvenile delinquents, separating them from adult prisoners

Where and when was the first juvenile court created?

In 1899 in Cook County, Illinois

What were the goals of the first juvenile court?

• State acts as ultimate parent

• Nonpunitive efforts to save the child

  • shifting away from the punitive approach of adult criminal courts

• Nurture/prevent stigmatization of formal court processing

• Individualized justice

• Not punish but help and rehabilitate

Kent v. US (1966) (due process reform)

Right to transfer hearing, right to an attorney, access to files, and judge in writing must state why being transferred to an adult court

In re Gault (1967) (due process reform)

• Juveniles have the right to be given notice of charges, the right to an attorney, and the right to confront and cross examine witnesses like adults

• The Court in In re Gault held that youth in delinquency proceedings faced a serious loss of liberty and therefore were entitled to protection under the due process clause of the 14th Amendment of the Constitution

In re Winship (1970)

From “preponderance of evidence” to “beyond a reasonable doubt”

McKeiver v. Pennsylvania (1971)

The US Supreme Court ruled that juveniles in delinquency proceedings do not have a constitutional right to a jury trial

Breed v. Jones (1975)

Juveniles are protected from double jeopardy and transfers to adult court must be made prior to being found guilty in juvenile court

Roper v. Simmons (2005)

Death penalty for a crime committed by a juvenile is cruel and unusual punishment under the 8th Amendment

Graham v. Florida (2010)

Life without parole for a non-homicide offense is unconsitituonal

Miller v. Alabama (2012)

Life without parole for a homicide is unconstitutional

What are some important delinquency correlates that we know? What proportion of chronic offenders make up what proportion of crime?

• Age: Property offenders peak at 18; Violent offenders peak at 23

• Sex: Males are 82% of violet index crime; 71% total

• Race: Black people comprise 51% of violent index crime

• Age, Sex, Race: Black males between 14-24 make up 15% of homicide victims and 27% of offenders. This group is 1% of the population

• Ethnicity: Latino rates often fall between those of Black & White (e.g., homicide), but data is limited

• Class: youth from low-income census tracts comprise most arrested

• Chronic Offenders: 6% of male population responsible for 50% of arrests

What are the main findings of the National Survey of Children’s Exposure to Violence? What are the four types of delinquency measures used in much of the delinquency literature? How do the findings differ across gender and age? What kinds of delinquency measurse do they look at?

• The delinquent-victim group among boys is larger overall and increases substantially between ages 13 and 14

  • May reflect an increase in delinquent activities around the time they enter high school among those who had previously been primarily victims

• For girls, the pattern change appears to occur earlier (between ages 11 and 12) and is associated with an increase in both victimization and delinquency, but particularly victimization

  • This is likely related to the onset of pubertal changes in girls and shows up in the data as a particularly marked increase in sexual harassment

• Among both boys and girls, delinquent-victims tended to experience more life adversaries and mental health symptoms than other groups

• Four types of delinquency measures used in much of delinquency literature are:

  • Uniform Crime Reporting Program (UCR)

  • National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS)

  • Developmental Victimization Survey (DVS)

  • Self-Report Data

  • National Survey of Children’s Exposure to Violence

What are the main findings of the article “Delinquency Cases in Juvenile Court, 2019” (2022)? For example, how many delinquency cases were processed by the juvenile courts in 2019? Are there disparities in these official records? Did all cases result in a petition or adjudication? What were the outcomes? Explain.

• There were 722,600 delinquent cases in 2019

• 386,600 cases were petitioned 

• 336,000 were not petitioned 

• 203,600 cases were adjudicated (53%)

  • Those who were adjudicated 27% of them were imprisoned, 65% of them were put on probation, while 8% were transferred to another sanction

• 54% petitioned filed; 19% dismissed; 28% handled informally

• Waivers to adult court: 1% of all delinquency cases

• Gender: 28% females

• Race: 43% of referrals were White; 35% Black, 19% Hispanic; 2; Am. Indian, 1% Asian

What role do schools play in juvenile delinquency? Are SROs beneficial to school settings? Explain.

• Attention to schools post Columbine High School and Sandy Hook Elementary shootings

• The focus today is to increase school safety and prevention of school violence

• SROs (school resource officers) are not beneficial to school settings

  • They are there more for the parents ease of mind

  • Research has shown that equipping a school with an SRO does not lead to a decreased amount of aggression or violence

There are significant gaps in mental health treatment for youth. What contributes to these gaps? How many confined youth have at least one diagnosable health disorder?

• limited access to services, financial barriers, cultural stigma, systemic issues, workforce shortages, and lack of awareness & education

• 65-70% of confined youth have at least one diagnosable mental health disorder

• The failure of states/juvenile justice system to provide adequate mental health services for youth may have contributed to these high numbers

According to the video, Juvenile Justice and Childhood Trauma, what issues did South Dakota face regarding difficult childhood behavior? How did family members, legislatures, and professionals attempt to address these behaviors?

• Kids were exhibiting violent behavior starting as early as preschool

  • These children were throwing tantrums, attcking their teachers, and throwing chairs

• Because of COVID there has been an increase in mood disorders among children and behavioral outbursts

• Statistics have shown that once a kid goes into the criminal justice system, they usually don’t get out of it

• Attempted to address these behaviors through diversion programs

  • Diversion is this special opportunity that makes sure that only kids that really need to go into the criminal justice system go into it

  • Diversion will often include some kind of counseling or class instruction to address the root cause of the behavior

  • Successful diversion programs can mean a child never encounters the system again

  • More money would be spent putting an adult in prison compared to the money that would be spent referring an adolescent to a diversion program

    • These is a need for more funding for these programs

  • Averts adolescents from committing a crime as an adult

Describe science’s role in death penalty cases involving adolescents.

• They have abolished the death penalty for crimes committed during adolescence

  • A significant part of the argument for these decisions included an understanding of adolescent brain development

• Science acknowledges that adolescents have poor self-control, are easily influenced by their peers, and do not think through the consequences of some of their actions

• Adolescents are less capable than adults of envisioing the longer term consequences of their decisions and actions

• When lawyers learns about adolescent brain development, they argue that young people are different and should be treated differently

  • This difference in adolescent brain development is one factor that led to the abolishment of the death penalty for cases involving adolescents

How do behavioral, psychological, and neuroscience research demonstrate adolescence as a period of human development that differs from childhood and adulthood? In particular, how does brain development, self-control, and puberty intersect to affect development and decision-making?

• Adolescents differ from adults and children in three important ways that lead to differences in behavior

  • 1) adolescents lack mature capacity for self-regulation in emotionally charged contexts, relative to adults and children

  • 2) adolescents have a heightened sensitivity to proximal external influences, such as peer pressure and immediate incentives, relative to adults

  • 3) adolescents show less ability to make judgments and decisions that require future orientation

  • The combination of these three cognitive patterns accounts for the tendency of adolescents to prefer and to engage in risky behaviors that have a high probability of immediate reward but in parallel can lead to harm to self or to others

• Adolescent Brain Development

  • Brain imaging findings suggest that adolescents lack these abilities because of biological immaturity of the brain

  • Adolescents lack mature capacity for self-regulation because the brain system that influences pleasure-seeking and emotional reactivity develops more rapidly than the brain system that supports self-control

• Self-Control

  • Lack of self-control, that is, the inability to control one’s behavior and emotions in order to optimize future gains, is the central hypothesized psychological process related to criminal behavior

  • Sensitivity to Social Influences

    • Incentives - immediate incentives can alter both desirable and undesirable behavior in adolescents

    • Peer Influences - more oriented toward peers and conforming to peer views

  • Future Orientation and Reasoning

    • Youth lack ability to consider the long-term consequences of actions

    • Decision-making must include the examination of social and emotional influences on the cognitive abilities 

• Puberty

  • Early puberty has been associated with poor outcomes in both sexes

    • These outcomes include earlier use of alcohol and illegal substances, earlier sexual behavior, higher risk for mental health problems, and increased risk for delinquency

• Pleasure seeking and emotional reactivity develops more rapidly than self-control and rational thought

• More emotional, short term judgements are made

What are external influences on adolescents? How do these influences affect adolescent development?

• External influences on adolescents are peer pressure and immediate incentives

• Peer pressure

  • Teens are more oriented toward peers and conforming to peer views than are either adults or younger children

  • Adolescents are more likely than adults to engage in reckless driving, substance abuse, and criminal offenses in groups

  • Adolescence is a transient stage of development during which peer psychosocial influences have powerful effects that can contribute to risk taking

• Immediate incentives

  • During adolescence, motivational cues of potential reward are particularly salient and can lead to risk taking and otherwise suboptimal choices

  • Immediate incentives can alter both desirable and undesirable behavior in adolescents and may be used to positively alter behavior

• Parenting

  • They provide guidance, modeling, communication, supervision

What are the different units of analysis in the study of delinquency and provide examples of each?

• Individual

  • Example: Youth

• Group:

  • Example: Peers

• Community

  • Example: City

• Time of Day

  • Example: Morning

• Situation or Event

  • Example: drive-by shooting

What are the key assumptions of differential association?

• Assumptions

  • Cultural relativism

    • Culture is highly varied in our communities

    • “Cultural relativis is the view that concepts and moral values must be understood in their own cultural context and not judged according to the standards of a different culture.” 

  • Change and flexibility in humans

    • People change how they think and how they view the world

    • Humans aren’t stagnant in their beliefs; they want to navigate the world, especially young people

What is the role of culture and subculture in differential association?

• Culture

  • Knowledge, beliefs, norms, practices, and “shared understandings”

• Subculture 

  • Group with norms, values, and beliefs distinct/different from dominant culture

  • Adolescents are more entrenched in subcultures

  • Learn from our subculture

• Normative Conflict

  • Culture conflict and law

    • We may not all agree with the laws that limit behavior

    • There is culture conflict in how we view laws

    • Young people may not see these as violations

• Behavior

  • Delinquency is learned

  • Delinquency is group behavior

• Delinquent acts that could be explained by Differential Association

  • Shoplifting

  • Smoking

  • Carjacking

Among social control theories, what are social bonds?

Social Control or “Bond” Theory

• This is the most tested theory with the deepest evidence based

• Social bonds: this theory is all about a juveniles connection to other people and institutions

What are the elements of social bonds?

• Four elements of social bonds

  • Attachment (to others)

  • Commitment (to conventional activities)

    • Example: going to school, a church

  • Involvement (in conventional activities)

  • Belief (in the moral order)

Travis Hirschi

• Hirschi’s social control theory asserts that ties to family, school and other aspects of society serve to diminish one’s propensity for deviant behavior. As such, social control theory posits that crime occurs when such bonds are weakened or are not well established 

• Assumptions

  • Tendency to commit crime is “natural”

  • Absence of controls causes delinquency

• Young people engage in delinquuent behavior because of lack of or weak bonds in their lives

• He is interested in why people don’t engage in delinquent behavior

  • And he bets it’s because of those bonds

• Parents create “reciprocal bond”

  • If parents feel a strong bond/attachment towards their child, young people will reciprocate and vice versa

• Bond to peers (birds of a feather/selection versus learning & imitation in DA theory)

  • We have been rejected by some peers and now we are hanging out with others who have also been rejected

  • OR came together because of shared/common beliefs

Describe Gottfredson’s (2017) aims and conclusion in his article.

• Those who develop high levels of self-control in childhood will be less likely to be delinquent as adolescents and less likely to be arrested or convicted as adults

• Given opportunity and age, delinquency MAY arise

• Self-control can be very beneficial in life

  • Education, interpersonal life (marriage, employment, health

• His big objective is “what good is theory if you don’t apply it”

  • Can we link theory and policy?

    • His hypothesis: they can be linked

Conclusions

• Deterrence theory: the CJS (policing and imprisonment) won’t be effective in altering behavior when there are bonds/controls in our life

• Early prevention - parent training and child socialization are KEY

• Early prevention can reduce crime, but it MUST be done early, bonds will be increased as young people grow IF done early

Primary Deviance

• Original act of nonconformity (first criminal act)

  • Example: Shoplifting

Secondary Deviance

• Secondary Deviance

  • Results from label and identity

  • Crimes that are committed because of the identity they assumed because of the given labels

  • Shift and assume identity that was given to them by police officers

  • Labeling can’t explain the first primary deviant act, only subsequent acts

• Examples of labels

  • “Troubled youth”, “rebellious youth”, “difficult”, “at-risk youth”

Life-course Persistent

youth who engage in delinquent behavior throughout entire lifetime

Adolescent-limited

engaging in delinquent behavior only peaks in adolescence

Life-course desisters

• Life-course desisters

  • “We offer the concept of life-course desisters as a cornerstone for this effort, accounting for the apparent fact that all offenders desist but at time-varying points across the life course”

  • These youths will eventually stop committing crime 

  • Although peak ages of offending vary by crime type, we found that all offenses decline systematically in the middle adult years

  • Youth will desist

What is the ecological fallacy as it relates to social disorganization theory?

Social Disorganization Theory

• Social disorganizations (of communities) leads to self perpetuating criminal values and traditions

• Example

  • Communities are segregated

  • Broken windows/grafitti

  • Seeing people engage in crime

• Ecological fallacy (the error of attributing the characteristics of a population to an individual)

  • Assumes that “disorganization” = crime

  • We make the assumption that people who live in these types of neighborhoods will go on to commit crimes

  • Can’t assum it’s just the physical environment (or how the community looks like) that can cause crime

• “Latino Paradox” - communities with high proportion of Latinos

  • Higher perceptions of disorder, but lower crime

What are the key assumptions of general strain theory?

• Assumptions

  • The disadvantaged are motivated to commit crime (since they don’t have the means to achieve their goals)

  • This motivation stems from a poor balance between social structure and cultural definitions of success

    • The social structure prevents them from achieving their goals so they adapt and rebel (through crime)

What are the key assumptions of general strain theory? What is Merton’s contribution to this theory?

• • Cultural goals vs. institutional means

  • Argues that people want a nice life (nice car/house), but the means of achieving that goal isn’t the same for everyone

    • If they don’t have the means, they will find a means even if it is rebellion

What are the key assumptions of general strain theory? How did Thaxton and Agnew test this theory?

• Crime due to strain & stress

  • Expands Merton’s theory to include many strains (e.g., parental rejection; abuse; unemployment; bad jobs; victimization; homelessness; discrimination)

• Strain → negative emotions (e.g., anger, fear) → crime

• Criminal coping (because of low attachment to mom; poor parental monitoring, impulsivity, risk-seeking, neutralizations, low guilt, low school commitment, delinquency peer commitment)

• Strains - crime relationship is conditioned by criminal propensity and gang membership

• People who experience these strains are more likely to commit crimes

• Connects the strain (caused by society’s structure) to the emotions of people

 Can general theories of crime explain female delinquency? Why or why not?

• No, general theories of crime can’t explain female delinquency

  • General theories were created by men and population studied was typically white boys; female delinquency was not thought of during creation of general theories

• “Just Add Girls and Mix” Approach (Meda Chesney-Lind)

  • Context of male domination

    • Studies were created primarily by men and study primarily men

  • Moral code of society, enforcement of gender, and sexual double standard (e.g., men rewarded or praised vs. woman stigmatized)

• Chesney-Lind’s feminist model

  • Girls as likely victims of physical and sexual abuse

  • Victimizers use juvenile justice to control girls

  • Runaways commit theft and prostitution to survive

  • Sexuality as one of few (if not only) resources

  • There should be gender based intervention

What do critical theories of crime focus on?

• Assumptions

  • Value conflict

  • Capitalism is tied to delinquency production

    • Capitalism drives crime

• Crimes of domination and oppression by agents of capitalism

• Crimes of accommodation by working class to survive

  • Crimes are committed in order to survive since capitalism does not allow everyone to thrive

• Crimes of resistance by working class

• Social Threat (Liska 1992)

  • Social control responds to threat, not deviance (race and fear, punishment)

    • We as a society use the law or social control when we feel threatened by certain groups

    • By managing, they mean arresting and sending people to prison

• Critical Race Theory (CRT)

  • Critiques the social construction of race and institutionalized racism

  • Race intersects with other identities, including sexuality, gender, identity, and other

  • Acknowledges the legacy of slavery, segregation, and the imposition of second-class citizenship on Black Americans and other people of color

What is the relationship between victimization and offending as described in the podcast (Caught)?

• Kids who become violent and wind up in juvenile detention - are much more likely than other kids to have been victims of all kinds of abuse: physical, emotional, and sexual

• Willie Bosket murdered two people in New York when he was a juvenile but growing up his life was shaped by violence before he was born

  • Before he was born his father had murdered two people and was in prison but his mom had lied to him and said that he was actually in the military

    • To Willie this seemed like a good thing because it showed that his father was very tough

      • He wanted to be just like his father

  • He grew up in one of the most violent blocks in New York City

  • He had been raped by his paternal grandfather four different times when he was as young as 9

• There is growing evidence that very early intervention can help

  • The focus is on building warm and positive relationships between the child and their parent or even their teachers

  • Early intervention, such as teaching parents how to parent

    • Model for the parent how to display warmth

• Victimization in adolescence is strong predictor of offending

  • Youth are vulnerable to different types of victimization at different stages

What are the main recommendations Greenwood (2008) proposes?

• Juvenile delinquency prevention should be a priority

  • If you know why young people are committing crimes then you should use that research to try to prevent them from committing crimes

• Focus on the risks of deliquency AND proven effective strategies 

• We need guidance for jurisdictions attempting to curb delinquency

• The most successful programs are those that pevent youth from engaging in delinquent behavior in the first place

 What are some effective programs for preventing youth from engaging in delinqeuncy? (Greenwood)

• Effective programs

  • Promising programs

    • Home Nurse Visit Programs

    • Bullying Prevention Programs

    • Life Skills Training

    • Status 

    • STEP

  • Community-based Programs

    • Functional Family Therapy (FFT)

    • Multisystemic Therapy (MST)

    • Intensive Protectice Supervision (IPS)

What are some ineffective programs for delinquency prevention?

• Ineffective programs

  • DARE

  • Boot Camps

  • Scared Straight

  • Transferring juveniles to adult courts

 According to the podcast (Caught), what does “take a moment to breathe” mean? In particular, what does this mean in practice?

• “Take a moment to breathe” refers to the fact that everyone should take a moment to breathe before deciding our approach to punishing juveniles

• The question that this imposes is if the system is about vengeance or justice

  • Those words aren’t synonyms and a way to keep those from becoming synonyms is to institutionalize a moment to breathe

  • Shouldn’t be imposing harsh punishments/sentences on juveniles because of vengeance 

• In practice it means that judges in the juvenile courts should take a moment and breath before handing out sentences to kids

  • The judges shouldn’t subject juveniles to the ultimate penalty

Are programs created and run by private organizations always effective in reducing reoffending? Explain.

• No, programs created and run by private organizations are not always proven to be effective methods of reducing reoffending. 

• Programs such as DARE, Boot Camps, wilderness programs, and Scared Straight are all private organizations attempting to reform adolescents utilizing a wide variety of strategies

• These programs tend to be expensive and they have only proved themselves to be ineffective in the long run

  • There isn’t much scientific research on whether wilderness is effective

According to Elliot et. al (2020), what are the four basic set of standards for evaluating the effectiveness of program and practice approaches?

• First

  • How extensive and robust is the evidence base for each?

  • This includes questions about the quality, quantity, and level of evidence established and the scientific standards used in each approach for determining whether a program or practice is “evidence-based”

• Second

  • How extensive and sound is the research evidence for the claim that specific programs or a set of practices are effective in reducing juvenile reoffending when scaled up and implemented as routine practice in the juvenile justice system?

• Third

  • What is the expected impact of each approach on the population of juvenile offenders in the justice system?

  • How soundly can that impact be inferred?

  • Should programs or practices with larger effect sizes or serving a larger segment of offenders be given funding priority?

  • What policy implications follow from the findings about each approach?

• Fourth

  • What does the existing evidence say about likely juvenile justice system adoption rates and factors influencing adoption decisions? These include factors like fidelity requirements and differences in costs and benefits.

In the video, A Million Dollar Cage, what was Kent’s story and how did he overcome past challenges? Who are “credible messengers”?

• Kent immigrated to the United States from Mexico

• Was incarcerated where he wasn’t presented with a lot of resources or resources that would help him move forward in a positive way

  • Corruption with juvenile detention facilities

  • Were treated like “monsters” 

  • Was traumatic for these youths

  • Led to recidivism

• System is dehumanizing youth

• He is now an adovacate for system-impacted youth, fighting for alternatives to incarceration and ensuring they have the resources he lacked

• Was able to change because of his mentors, who supported him and motivated him to change

• “Credible messengers”

  • Having lived in a million dollar cage, dehumanized and thrown away, they are now leading the movement to ultimately dismantle this harmful system and move the county toward a more holistic approach, focused on the healing, development, and empowerment of our youth”

  • The best people to tell you about the system and why people commit delinquency are people who have been convicted and know what it is like

    • Convict criminology

  • Youth who were delinquents who transformed and changed and are now advocates

What are the important lessons we need to consider when creating a framework for prevention?

• This developmental model of juvenile justice rejects many of the punitive law reforms of the late 20th century as often excessively harsh and therefore unfair to young offenders and as likely to increase rather than decrease the threat they pose to public safety

• Although some juvenile offendres pose such a grave threat to public safety that trial as adults and length incarceration may be regarded as necessary, the policies introduced in the 1980s and 1990s have resulted in the confinement of many youth whose lives and developmental trajectories have probably been harmed, with little compensating public safety benefit

• Psychosocial factors matter

• Age out of crime

  • Youth will desist

• Juvenile Justice System should help youth develop skills for productive, pro-social lives

  • We want young people to develop skills and be crime-free

• Fairness

The operation of legal mechanisms of prevention at what two levels? Describe both types of prevention and its goals.

• The two levels are: 

  • Population level (general population)

  • Individual level (specific prevention)

• Population level (general population)

  • There are two basic legal tools of prevention:

    • 1) declarative or expressive strategies, which aim to inculcate norms of conduct by expressing social disapproval and punishing violators

    • 2) deterrent strategies, which attempt to discourage the target population from engaging in the prohibited activity by threatening to impose sanctions if they do

  • This can be accomplished by a variety of legal mechanisms, including intimidation by threat of future penalties (sometimes called specific deterrence), incapacitation, or rehabilitation

  • Modern policy makers, guided by the scientific knowledge of adolescence, seek to prevent juvenile offenders from reoffending not only through specific rehabilitative programs, but also by fostering a healthy social environment 

• Individual level

  • Mechanisms of specific prevention operate at the individual level after an offender is apprehended, with the goal of preventing that particular person from committing future crimes

What are delinquency dispositions in prevention? What are some important aspects youth need in order to prevent delinquency?

• The most important lesson of the developmental research for designing delinquency dispositions that are likely to reduce reoffending juvenile crime is that the social context plays a critical role in psychological development during the formative stage of adolescence

  • A youth’s social setting (family, peer group, school, and community) can inhibit or facilitate healthy development

• Parens patriae - importance of parents/guardians

  • Multisystemic therapy, functional family therapy, and multidimensional treatment foster care all put parents and the parent-child relationship at the center of their treatment programs

  • Several justice system programs most effective at reducing recidivism involve an emphasis either on parental involvement or on providing a parent-like alternative when parents are unable or unwilling to assume a positive parental role

How are adolescent offenders and adult offenders different in terms of culpability?

• An expanding body of developmental science supports the traditional supposition that adolescent offenders (as a class) are less culpable than adult offenders because their choices are influenced by psychosocial factors that are integral to adolescence as a developmental stage and are strongly shaped by still-developing brain systems

  • Susceptibility to peer influence, deficiencies in risk perception, sensation-seeking, the tendency to discount future consequences, and weak impulse control are likely to play an important role in shaping adolescent choices that lead to offending

• Adolescent criminal activity may represent the risky experimentation that is part of the developmental process of identity formation for many adolescents

• Juvenile offenders are appropriately seen as less culpable than their adult counterparts

• Modern science says that adolescence is different from both childhood and adulthood in ways that mitigate the criminal blame-worthiness of adolescents

  • Developmental knowledge challenges the fairness of subjecting juvenile offenders to the same punishment as their adult counterparts

The committee concludes that science on adolescence and juvenile crime is likely to result in policies and practices that are effective and fair. Is there evidence of this in the juvenile justice system? Explain your answer.

• Yes, there tends to be more policies and practices that are effective and fair in terms of juvenile delinquency. They are held accountable but not with excessive sanctions, proportionality, procedural, and perceived fairness

  • US Supreme Court rulings such as Roper v. Simmons (2005), Graham v. Florida (2010), and Miller v. Alabama (2012) explicitly cited developmental science. These decisions recognized that juveniles are less culpable than adults due to their still-developing brains, leading to the banning of the death penalty for minors and limiting life-without-parole sentences.