Quality youth justice systems (a) limit the use of confinement to cases where it is objectively necessary, (b) ensure the health and safety of all confined youth, (c) provide effective treatments and developmentally appropriate programming, and (d) continually monitor and evaluate their effectiveness. These goals apply to all forms of secure confinement regardless of financing or organizational configuration.
Experiments are also rarely able to reliably measure and isolate the effects of very complex justice interventions. Policymakers and practitioners in the justice sector should consider evaluation research as a portfolio of strategic investments in knowledge development. Randomized controlled trials are merely one asset in a broader investment strategy.
[I]mproving the effectiveness of diversion will require a sincere effort to leverage the best research knowledge about juvenile justice interventions. Research-based practices, however, must include interventions addressing the full range of factors that lead young people to become involved in the justice system, including not yet tested. [I]mproving the effectiveness of diversion will require a sincere effort to leverage the best research knowledge about juvenile justice interventions. Research-based practices, however, must include interventions addressing the full range of factors that lead young people to become involved in the justice system, including not yet tested.
The Cure Violence model is a public health approach to gun violence reduction that seeks to change individual and community attitudes and norms about gun violence. It considers gun violence to be analogous to a communicable disease that passes from person to person when left untreated.
In an evaluation of inter-agency initiatives to reform human services systems, outcomes are observed at the system level rather than the individual level. The Reclaiming Futures initiative is designed to improve services and interventions for justice-involved youth.
Drawing on a national survey of juvenile court practitioners, this study investigates key questions about the effectiveness of juvenile justice and discusses the implications of the findings for research, policy, and practice.
The juvenile justice system has been transformed in recent years with a range of policies designed to hold youth accountable, but how does society hold this system accountable?
Reclaiming Futures (RF) relies on community partnerships to improve treatment quality, strengthen local leadership, expand inter-organizational collaboration, and create systems of shared performance management. The initial findings of a cross-site evaluation suggest that Reclaiming Futures is yielding important and positive change.
State and local jurisdictions throughout the United States enacted a wide array of new juvenile justice policies in recent years. Many of these policies were intended to make the juvenile justice system tougher, but others improved prevention, increased rehabilitation, and enhanced the restorative features of the juvenile justice system.
Problem-solving courts have become a significant feature of the U.S. justice system, and their popularity appears to be growing internationally with courts underway or in development in counties such as Australia and Great Britain.
Youth charged with delinquency offenses in U.S. juvenile courts cannot assert a right to speedy trial. As with several other rights enjoyed exclusively by adults (e.g., trial by jury, consideration of bail), a federal right to speedy trial is not provided for juveniles.
Young offenders have not been provided with a Constitutional right to speedy trial. Yet, concerns about timeliness are often equally pressing in the juvenile court. This study examines the timing of juvenile justice by analyzing delinquency case processing in nearly 400 jurisdictions.
