Jjt Juvenile Justice in the United States

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DRAFT-NOT FOR CITATION

Juvenile Justice in the United States:A Review of Policies, Programs and Trends

Prepared for the European Working Group on Juvenile JusticeJosine Junger-Tas, Convener

Donna BishopCollege of Criminal Justice

Northeastern University360 Huntington Avenue

421 Churchill HallBoston, MA 02115(617) 373-3362

[email protected]

Scott DeckerDepartment of Criminology and Criminal Justice

UM-St. Louis8001 Natural Bridge RoadSt. Louis, MO 63121-4499

(314) 516-5038

[email protected]


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I. Main Policies for Prevention Treatment and

Procedural/Individual Rights

Context for Understanding Policy

No policy or policies can be understood outside of the context in which they aremade and must operate. Thus we provide a brief set of background or contextual issuesthat provide an important framework for understanding the Juvenile Justice system in theUnited States and its policies. 1

Historical Context

Twenty years ago, Carter (1984: 36) noted that in order to comprehend juvenilejustice in the United States, it was essential to understand three points. First, the size of

the system(s) is/are enormous. All fifty states, the District of Columbia and to someextent the federal government have separate systems of juvenile justice. Second, thesystems are extremely complex internally and externally. This is especially true of theinteraction of the system with other public and private forms of control, includingschools, mental health, public health, and agencies of government. Third, Carterunderscores the dynamic character of the system(s), noting the significance of payingclose attention to trends in those systems.

Social and Demographic Context

A key to understanding the main policies of prevention, treatment and

procedural/individual rights is to understand some of the context of the juvenilepopulation, juvenile crime, and the juvenile justice system.2 There are approximately 70million people under the age of eighteen in the United States, a figure projected toincrease to over 80 million by the year 2030. This projected increase represents anincrease of twenty-one percent from 1995 to 2030. The population of 15-17 year olds,the primary population served by the juvenile court, is increasing at a similarlydramatic pace. By 2007 it is projected that there will be roughly 13 million juveniles inthis age range, a number similar to that recorded at its peak in the 1970s during the midstof the post World War II baby boom. This increase is projected to be dramatically higheramong minorities, particularly Asian/Pacific Islanders (65%) and Hispanics (60%).Complicating this picture is the fact that a large fraction of juveniles live in poverty in the

1 It is important to observe at the outset of this essay, that the use of the word system isa misnomer. There is no juvenile justice system in the United States. Indeed, some arguethat it was not possible to speak of n adult criminal justice system in the United Statesuntil the 1960s (Klein, 1984).2 An excellent website that maintains much of these data, that allows for individualqueries of the data can be found at http://ojjdp.ncjrs.org/ojstatbb/index.html. The data forthis section of the paper is drawn from Snyder and Sickmund, 1999.

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United States (roughly twenty percent), and that the child poverty rate is increasing fasterthan that for adults or the elderly. There is good news in that the poverty rates of Blackand Hispanic youth are at their lowest period in the past decade. Family structure haschanged for juveniles living in the US, with many fewer juveniles living in a home withtwo parents. In 1997, three-quarters of White children lived with two parents, sixty-four

percent of Hispanic children lived with both parents, but only thirty-five percent ofAfrican-American children lived with both parents. While the birth rate among teenagedgirls in the United States has declined steadily through the 1990s, it remains higher thanin the 1980s. In addition, the teenage birth rate of 57 per 1,000 teenaged girls issignificantly higher than in other industrialized democracies such as Canada (32),England (26), Australia (22), the Netherlands (6), Norway (15), and Japan (4). HighSchool completion rates have increased for all race/ethnic groups, and roughly 88% of18-24 year olds have completed high school.

Crime

These data describe some of the challenges facing juvenile justice in the United

States, both in the contemporary setting as well as for future generations. Further contextfor the juvenile justice system can be found in data regarding juvenile victimization. Thejuvenile homicide peak in the US occurred in the early 1990s but has declinedsignificantly since then. Black teenaged males are disproportionately represented inhomicide victimization statistics. Juvenile homicides (15-17 years old) are more likely toinvolve a firearm than any other age group. Juvenile suicide rates are just as important asjuvenile homicide victimization rates, and suicide rates for juveniles are roughly half oftheir homicide victimization rates. It is important to note in this comparative context, thatboth homicide and suicide victimization rates in the US are consistently higher than thosefor other industrialized countries. Juveniles experience other forms of violentvictimization in addition to homicide. Data drawn from the National Crime

Victimization Survey (NCVS) indicate that juveniles are at especially high risk for beingvictims of violent crime. Indeed, 12-17 year olds represent roughly twenty percent of allvictims of serious criminal violence. Juveniles are particularly likely to be victims ofassault, twice as likely adults. Males, racial and ethnic minorities, and residents of citiesare most likely to be victims of these crimes. Juvenile victimization occurs in a patternedmanner with regard to time of day, with the highest risk period being just after the end ofthe school day. Consistent with a growing body of research about juvenile victimization(Lauritsen, Sampson and Laub, 1991), juveniles who engage in delinquent offending putthemselves at increased risk for victimization. This is particularly true for drug useamong juveniles in the U.S. That is, juveniles who engage in drug use are at highlyelevated risk for victimization, particularly of violent crimes.

Unlike the issue of victimization, there are multiple data sources available toassess the extent of offending by juveniles. These include primarily self-report studiesand official crime statistics, and to a lesser extent, the NCVS. Official crime statistics(the Uniform Crime Reports compiled by the Federal Bureau of Investigation based onreports from local police jurisdictions) documented just fewer than 1500 homicidesinvolving juveniles as offenders in 1997, a decline from the peak of 2300 in 1994.Juveniles involved in homicide are spatially concentrated. Indeed, eight of the nationsmore than 3,000 counties accounted for twenty-five percent of all juvenile homicide

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offenders. This illustrates the highly concentrated and urban nature of homicidesperpetrated by juveniles. Juveniles are over-represented in a number of offense types.

A large proportion of juveniles have engaged in delinquent behaviors, accordingto self-report data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth. Some of the moreprevalent juvenile offenses include: using alcohol (39%), using marijuana (21%),

engaging in property destruction (28%), carrying a gun (19%), belonging to a gang (5%),and stealing something valued at more than $500 (8%). In addition, eight percent ofjuveniles report ever being arrested in their lifetime. Males report more involvement indelinquent activities, and race/ethnic minorities report greater involvement in offensessuch as assault and gang membership.

Serious juvenile violence declined by one-third between 1993 and 1997, a greaterrate of decline than for adults. Juvenile assaults were more likely to occur in the after-school hours. This pattern is similar to that for victimization reported above, andsuggests policy implications discussed below.

The majority of juveniles who enter the juvenile justice system make oneappearance never to return again. For boys, this is the pattern for fifty-four percent of all

referrals; for girls it is the case for seventy-three of all referrals. This has importantimplications for prevention and intervention strategies and we discuss this at some lengthlater in this paper. Estimates of the cost of a lifetime of juvenile offending are of coursebased on several assumptions the validity of which cannot be fully assessed. However,the best estimates indicate that a juvenile who drops out of high school and engages in alifetime of offending and drug use generates a cost to society between $1.7 and $2.3million.

Another part of the picture of juvenile offending is revealed by arrest statisticscollected by local law enforcement and compiled by the F.B.I. as part of the UniformCrime Reporting program. For calendar year 1997, just over 2.8 million juveniles werearrested. More than four-fifths of these were for four offense types, larceny-theft, simpleassault, drug abuse violations and disorderly conduct. This suggests that a substantialnumber of juveniles are arrested each year, the majority for minor offense categories.Five percent of arrests for that year were for crimes of violence (murder, rape, robbery oraggravated assault). These arrests accounted for nearly twenty percent of all juvenilearrests that the police made in that year. There were more arrests for crimes of violence,weapons, drugs and curfew violations than other offense types. Overall, arrests ofjuveniles increased dramatically from 1988 to 1994, but since then, there has been asteady decline in juvenile arrests. Interestingly, there is little correspondence across thefifty states in the juvenile property and violent crime arrest rates. In other words, stateswith high rates of violence committed by juveniles are not likely to have high rates ofproperty crime committed by juveniles. In addition, property crime arrests of juvenileshave been relatively flat since the early 1980s, with notable declines in burglary.Juvenile females have seen increased arrest rates compared to juvenile males, a patternthat is particularly strong for assault, burglary, larceny-theft and motor vehicle theft.

The juvenile courts process a large number of cases annually, but still only afraction of all juvenile arrests3. Eighty-six percent of delinquency arrests and forty-eightpercent of status offense are referred to the court by the police. Not surprisingly, within

3 For an excellent description of the juvenile justice system in the United States and thenumbers of case processed at each step of the system, see Lundman, 2001, p. 24.

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each category of offense type (delinquency and status) the seriousness of the offense hasa strong bearing on the decision by law enforcement to bring the case to the attention ofthe juvenile court. In 1986, a total of 1.76 million cases were handled by the juvenilecourts of the United States, representing about 1.2 million juveniles. This is more thanfour times as many cases as juvenile courts handled in 1960. There was an increase in

juvenile court cases compared to 1987 (49%), a figure greater than the growth in thejuvenile population during that time (35%). These increases were not confined to certainage categories or offense types, as increases were observed across most age groups andoffense types. The increase in court cases was most pronounced for drug and personoffense cases. As noted above in comparing arrests patterns for juvenile males andfemales, increases for female referrals to the juvenile court have been sharper than formales from 1986 to 1997. The rate of referral for Black juveniles to the juvenile court ismore than twice that experienced by White youths. And there is some evidence that theover-representation of Black youth in the juvenile court is increasing rather thandeclining.

The second step in the juvenile justice process after referral to the court is the

detention decision. In 1996, nationally eighteen percent of youth referred to the juvenilecourt were held in detention. Juveniles held on charges of drug or personal crimes werethe most likely to receive detention, with public order and property crimes less likely toreceive detention. In 1996, more than 640,000 youth were held in detention after theirreferral to the court. Males were much more likely to be detained than females, andBlacks were more likely to be detained than Whites or members of any other race. Justas the use of detention has increased over time, informal adjustment of cases has declinedover time, and formal hearings now account for the process in more than half of alldelinquency cases. These two trends reflect the increasing formality of juvenile justicesystem responses. When cases are adjudicated in the juvenile court, the majority result ineither placement in a residential facility or probation (82%).

One interesting way to assess what the juvenile court does with cases is toexamine the outcome for every 1,000 delinquency cases (Snyder and Sickmund, 1999).For every 1,000 delinquency cases referred to the juvenile court, 441 are not petitioned.Of this group, 197 are dismissed, 140 receive probation, 100 receive another sanction and4 are placed in a residential facility. Of the 550 cases that are petitioned, 6 are waived toadult court, 230 are non-adjudicated and 323 are adjudicated. Of the non-adjudicatedcases, the majority (138) are dismissed, forty-six receive probation, forty-one receiveother sanctions and five are placed. Of the adjudicated cases, the majority (175) receiveprobation, ninety-one are placed, forty-three receive other sanctions and the remainderare released.

In 1997, just over 106,000 juvenile offenders were held in residential placementfacilities. The majority of these juveniles were held on a delinquency offense (77%),though seven percent were held on status offenses and sixteen percent were non-offenders4. Roughly three-quarters of these juveniles were held in public facilities,private facilities accounted for the balance. The detention rate (the custody rate per100,000 juveniles) varied widely across the states, illustrating the difficulty incharacterizing a US juvenile justice system, rather than a collection of fifty-one separatesystems. Hawaii held 13 youths per 100,000 in custody, while the District of Columbia

4 These include juveniles held on abuse or neglect or voluntarily admitted youth.

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(332/100,000) and Georgia (172/100,000) represented the highest figures. Some statesare much more likely to use private facilities than others for the placement of adjudicatedjuveniles. Massachusetts (64%) and Iowa (60%) use private facilities more often thanother states, while Mississippi (0%) and Nevada (3%) use private facilities rarely if at all.As noted above for the arrest and court appearance stages of the juvenile justice system,

Black youth are over-represented in custody. Nationally Blacks are five times morelikely than Whites, and twice as likely as Hispanics to be held in custody. Femalesaccount for a small proportion of juveniles in custody (21% of 13 year olds, the peak agegroup for females in custody), but present their own special challenges for managementof residential facilities. In 1996, forty percent of juveniles were being held in facilitiesthat were operating above their capacity level. Imposition of the death penalty forjuveniles has been rare, but there are currently 164 offenders on death row whose capitaloffense was committed while a juvenile.

We offer a diagram below (Figure 1) taken from Snyder and Sickmund (1997, 98)that identifies the major decision making steps in the juvenile justice system. Thisdiagram should be contrasted to that offered by Carter, 1984, 18) for the increased role of

waiver and other more formal means of disposing of cases. The differences illustratechanges that have taken place in American juvenile justice in the past two decades.

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Key Policy Areas

Here we borrow from the framework identified by Klein (1984) in hisintroduction to an edited volume describing western systems of juvenile justice, just twodecades ago. At that time, Carter identified seven key policy areas that must be

understood to fully appreciate juvenile justice systems in the United States: age, statusoffenses, discretion, other systems of control, diversion, demographic bias and trends.We deal with the first six here, policy trends are dealt with separately. It is important toobserve that a recent report published by the U.S. Justice Department (Snyder andSickmund, 1999, 89) concluded that from 1992 through 1997, legislatures in 47 statesand the District of Columbia enacted law that made their juvenile justice systems morepunitive.

Age

There continues to be considerable variation across the states regarding the age ofjurisdiction for the juvenile court. In the U.S. the states set these age limits. This

variation occurs at both the minimum age of responsibility, the age at which waiver to theadult court is possible, the age at which a juvenile is eligible for a capital trial, as well asthe upper age limit of jurisdiction. The trend across the states has been to lower each ofthese ages, and in some cases the lower age limit for juvenile court jurisdiction has beendropped considerably. North Carolina uses the age of 6 as the minimum age to considera case for a delinquency hearing. Three states use the age of seven, one uses eight, andeleven states use the age of ten. At the upper end of jurisdiction, the majority of statesuse the age of seventeen (38 states), while three states use the age of fifteen as the upperlimit for jurisdiction over delinquency cases. It is also possible for states to extendjurisdiction over juveniles who are already under juvenile court supervision well intotheir twenties. Clearly, the age jurisdiction policies of American states have attempted to

have it both ways, arguing that responsibility begins early (age 6 in North Carolina), butends late (24 in California, Montana, Oregon and Wisconsin).

Status Offenses

Status offenses continue to be an important avenue for referral to the juvenilecourt. Status offenses are acts that if committed by an adult would not be consideredviolations of the law. Thus due to their age, juveniles can be brought under thejurisdiction of the juvenile court for violating curfews, being beyond the control of theparents (incorrigibility), and being truant from school. Despite legislation in the 1970s toattempt to curb court jurisdiction over Children in Need of Supervision, and regulate theirconfinement, there has not been significant progress on these issues. Some states have

moved to handle status offenses in a manner similar to neglect or dependency cases asindicators of social problems rather than delinquency. Status offenders continue to beamong the most difficult challenges for most juvenile court jurisdictions.

Discretion

Klein observed in 1984 that, with regard to discretion in the juvenile justicesystem, the United States was one of two nations that exercised the greatest amount ofdiscretion. Little has changed to alter that perspective, except at the punitive end of

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discretion. The significant changes in discretion that have occurred over the past twodecades, particularly since the early 1990s, have all served to reduce discretion in waysthat increase punitiveness. That is, punishment grids, waiver decisions, and supervisionhave been increased by the reduction of discretion. Rather than move toward a systemwhere judges and decision-makers consider the individual circumstances behind the

actions of a juvenile, those decision-makers find their hands increasingly tied bypunishment grids, mandatory minimums, and other forms of increased punishment. It isimportant to note that at the critical stage of intake (i.e., decisions made by the police andprosecutors) discretion remains high, and largely is not reviewed by higher authorities.

Other Systems

The juvenile justice system in the United States has long relied on other, relatedsystems of treatment, intervention and punishment. In many European countries, this hasmeant the use of other governmental functions outside the juvenile justice system(Carlsson and Decker, 2005). In the United States the use of such other systems haslargely meant the use of systems from the private sector. Such states as Florida rely

almost exclusively on private systems of control for secure commitment functions,particularly at the more secure levels of confinement for juveniles.

Diversion

The trend in the 1970s and 1980s in America to attempt to use diversion haslargely been sidetracked by the reliance on punitive responses of the past decade. It isnot an overstatement to observe that diversion was one of the key policy initiatives injuvenile justice in American twenty years ago. However, diversion remains an importantfunction in American juvenile justice, particularly for prevention efforts and first-time orminor offenders.

Demographic BiasAs will be documented below, juvenile justice in the United States

continues to include disproportionate proportions of minority youth at every decision-making stage. Whether one examines police referral patterns, court intake, detention,secure detention or length of confinement issues, minority youth, and particularlyAfrican-American males are over-represented. There have been a number of policyinitiatives that have attempted to address this reality; to date none have been verysuccessful. In some jurisdictions, the over-representation is so severe that the majority ofBlack teenaged males will appear in juvenile court.5 The federal government, severalstates, local juvenile court jurisdictions and private foundations have engaged in efforts toreduce disproportionate minority confinement, and found these to be tough policy and

program choices. Such efforts have been complicated by the increases in youth violencein the early 1990s.

5 Decker and Curry (2002) report that in St. Louis, Missouri more than half of all fifteenand sixteen year olds black males will be referred to the juvenile court and have an intakehearing.

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II. Trends in Policies and III. Practical Outcomes of

Present Policies

In the last 15 years, a vast array of new juvenile justice policies and programs hasbeen introduced in the United States. Reforms have taken place at the local, state, and

federal levels and have concentrated primarily on three fronts. The first, which hasattracted a great deal of media attention both at home and abroad, involves a movementto crack down or get tough on serious and chronic offenders. The spirit of thismovement is captured in the slogan adult crime, adult time, and has affected the natureof American juvenile justice in a number of important ways. At the extreme, theSupreme Court in 1989 upheld the constitutionality of the death penalty for crimescommitted by persons as young as 16 (Stanford v. Kentucky). Seventeen of the 50 statesnow permit the execution of 16-year olds convicted of murder. Although only a smallnumber of individuals who committed crimes as juveniles currently await execution, thatany do constitutes a violation of international law6 and reflects the exceedingly punitiveclimate that exists in the United States. Also representative of the get tough movement,nearly every state and the federal jurisdiction amended its juvenile codes in the 1990s totransfer greater numbers of juveniles to criminal court for prosecution and punishment asadults. Many have, in addition, instituted blended sentencing, a curious andunprecedented mix of both juvenile and adult sanctions applied to the same individual.These reforms, which have occurred in rapid-fire fashion, have blurred the traditionalboundary that separates juvenile from criminal court jurisdiction (in most states, the 18thbirthday) and generated a crisis in the juvenile court.

If the first front is aimed at serious, chronic and violent offenders, the second isdirected toward the other end of the spectrum, i.e., toward children and youth who are at-risk for delinquency. In the past 10-15 years, governmental support for policies andprograms of delinquency prevention and early intervention has grown. Although someprevention programs are delivered to the youth population at large, most are moreselective, targeting those who exhibit empirically identified risk factors for delinquency.The contexts in which at-risk children livetheir families, schools, and communitieshavealso become foci of intervention. Prevention programs cover a broad spectrum: Theyrange from efforts to prevent risk factors from developing among children who are yet inutero to efforts to divert from the juvenile court first-offenders arrested for non-seriouscrimes.

A third front, which is still taking shape, is aimed at the very large group of mid-range offenders who are formally processed in the juvenile courts. The U.S. approach tothese offenders is very much in transition, and philosophies and practices aimed at thisgroup show tremendous variation across jurisdictions. The general trend over the pasttwo decades has been to engraft punitive (deterrent, retributive, and incapacitative)objectives onto the traditional treatment mission that has so uniquely characterizedAmerican juvenile courts. While some commentators contend that the rehabilitativemission of the juvenile court has been thoroughly supplanted by these other objectives(see, e.g., Feld, 1999), others maintain that it remains, for the most part, alive and well

6 The United States is one of only two nations in the world thathas not ratified the United Nations Convention on the Rights of theChild (1989).

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(see, e.g., Butts and Mears, 2001; Howell, 2003; Sanborn and Salerno, in press). New,innovative, and empirically grounded approaches to treatment have been implemented(e.g., multisystemic therapy, teaching family homes) alongside approaches that areunequivocally punitive (e.g., determinate and mandatory minimum sentencing, graduatedsanctions, most boot camps). These conflicting policy and programmatic developments

reflect the juvenile justice systems adaptation to the highly politicized environment ofthe 1980s and 1990s (see Sanborn and Salerno, in press; Butts and Mears, 2001).In the following section, we discuss each of these policy trends in greater detail.

However, it is important to place each of these policy trends in a broader context, as noneis unique to the recent generation of juvenile justice reform in the United States. Theorientations of rehabilitation and punishment have been central themes to the practice andevolution of juvenile justice in the United States since the origins of the system. Platts(1977) work on the origins of the juvenile court in the United States illustrates theconflicting orientations of the juvenile justice system. The Illinois Juvenile Court Act(IJCA) of 1899 is credited with beginning the first organized juvenile court system in theUS. However, there are numerous institutions that preceded the IJCA that laid the

foundation for the Act in Illinois, as well as for juvenile justice practice. Notable amongthese institutions were the New York House of Refuge, an early attempt to separatechildren from adults in confinement. In addition, the reformatory movement attempted tobring a more humane form of incarceration for offenders in the nineteenth century, albeitwith questionable results (Pisciotta, 1994).

The history of juvenile justice and adult criminal justice in the US is replete withexamples of interventions, policies and practices in which the rhetoric and reality differedconsiderably (Rothman, 1971; Platt, 1999; Ainsworth, 1999; Pisciotta, 1991, 1984,1993). This state of affairs has led some to conclude that juvenile justice has resulted inbenevolent repression, in part because of the admixture of rehabilitation andpunishment represented by the court. The two competing ideologies that seem to providea foundation for much of the history of juvenile justice are the welfare of the child andthe safety of the community. These two extremes have led to doing nothing on theone hand, and intervening with harsh penalties on the other. Bernard (1992) captures thebalancing act between these two orientations in his book, The Cycle of Juvenile Justice.Bernard argues that there is a cyclical aspect to juvenile justice policy when it isexamined over time. The cycle is driven by a perception that juvenile crime rates areexcessively high7, and this leads to harsh punishments throughout the juvenile justicesystem. In a dialectic sense, this produces an eventual call for increased leniency, in partbecause the court is faced with a forced choice between doing (little or) nothing andreacting harshly. This leniency is followed by the perception that juvenile crime ratesare out of control, leading again to harsher, more repressive interventions. Bernardargues that images of juvenile delinquency are central to changes in juvenile justicepolicy and reform. Legal philosophers such as Francis Allen (1991) argue effectivelythat the lack of a coherent framework for intervention, policy and legislation leads toirrationalities that undermine the effectiveness of a system and create competing goalsand in the end a somewhat chaotic system. Because of the lack of coherence in juvenile

7 In the 1990s this led to the identification of the young and the ruthless, anew breed of young killers, and super-predators. (Fox, 1992; Bennett, DiIlulio, &Walters, 1996).

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justice in the United State, the system can alternate between harsh punishments andbenevolent social interventions, neither of which has much chance of achieving its goals.Get Tough Reforms for Serious Offenders

Though it is a fact not widely known, since its inception at the end of the 19thcentury the juvenile court in the United States has always maintained a trap door

through which young offenders could be removed to the criminal courts for prosecutionand punishment as adults (Tanenhaus, 2004). Chronic offendersthose who continued toviolate the law despite repeated interventionposed a direct challenge to the effectiveness(and legitimacy) of the new court. A second groupthose who committed truly heinouscrimes that provoked public demands for harsh punishmentssimilarly posed a problemfor the new court. Harsh retributive sanctions were not only contrary to the juvenilecourts social welfare mission but were also beyond the courts capacity to provide.8With little fanfare, the small number of youth who fell into these two categories were sentto criminal court. This action shielded the juvenile court from criticism and allowed it tofunction as intended for the vast majority of young offendersthat is, as a refuge fromharsh criminal punishments and as a welfare agency bent on helping youth make their

way through thesturm and drangof adolescence to productive adult lives.For a very long time, the trap door remained narrow and functioned largelyunnoticed. During the 1980s and 1990s, however, a major shift occurred. Prompted bydramatic increases in youth violence from 1987-1993 that received sensationalized mediacoverage, popular images of delinquent youth changed. The archetypal delinquent of ageneration agothe pot-smoking kid (of any color) who busts school windows and stealscarswas replaced by the menacing image of the Black or Hispanic gunwielding drugdealer who commits random acts of lethal violence. These perceptions of delinquents asdangerous and savvy have prompted a stream of legislation. Nearly every state and thefederal jurisdiction enacted laws that both expanded the pool of transfer-eligibles andexpedited their removal from the juvenile system. During the past 15 years, these andother innovations that blur traditional lines of distinction between juvenile and criminaljustice (e.g., blended jurisdiction statutes, modifications in the age of criminalresponsibility) have generated heated debate in both academic and policy circlesregarding core juvenile justice issues: e.g., Do we need a juvenile court? What is therationale for a juvenile court? Who belongs in juvenile court and who doesnt? Noconsensus has been reached on answers to these critical questions. Change has proceededin a theoretical void, and its end is very much uncertain.

To expedite transfer to criminal court, legislative exclusion and prosecutorialwaiver statutes were passed that circumvented the traditional mode of transfera waiverhearing in juvenile court. InKent v. United States (1966) waiver hearings wereregularized. Recognizing that transfer was a matter of momentous consequence thatsignaled the end of childhood and threatened the juvenile with adult sanctions that mightbe permanently disfiguring, the Supreme Court mandated a formal hearing and athorough investigation into the youths background and circumstances prior to waiver.Statutes in most jurisdictions specified that waiver required a finding that the youth waseither too dangerous to remain in the juvenile system or no longer amenable totreatment in the juvenile system. Applying these criteria, juvenile court judges seldom

8In most states, the juvenile court does not retain continuingjurisdiction over offenders beyond age 18 or 21

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invoked transfer. It was most often applied to repeat offenders who were nearing the ageof majority and who had exhausted the courts treatment resources.

With the advent of legislative exclusion and prosecutorial waiver, theresponsibility for transfer shifted to the legislative and executive branches. Thisaccomplished three things: It expedited the process (no investigations or court hearings

were required), restricted the powers of a judiciary that was perceived as too soft oncrime, and, perhaps most important, removed the offender-focus that had been thehallmark of the transfer decision. Unlike judicial waiver, legislative exclusion andprosecutorial waiver are offense-driven. Exclusion statutes specify narrow offense oroffense/age criteria for automatic transfer to criminal court.9 In many states, theypermit or require the transfer of children as young as 10 who are charged with capitalcrimes or life felonies. Prosecutorial waiver allows prosecutors to choose the forum inwhich cases will be tried, subject to statutory guidelines (age, offense, and prior recordcriteria) that are frequently very broad. For example, in many states the pool of eligiblesincludes young people charged with property crimes and misdemeanors.10

In addition to changes in transfer policy, many states have instituted blended

sentencing, which represents a kind of middle ground between the juvenile and adultsystems. Blended sentencing schemes come in a variety of forms, but manycriminalize the juvenile court, permitting (and sometimes requiring) judges to imposelengthy sentencesserved initially in the juvenile system, then in the adult systemforspecified offenses. (At the extreme, Texas permits its juvenile judges to imposesentences of up to 40 years.) Dawson (1988) has aptly described this as the third justicesystem. Blended sentencing is subject to criticism on a number of grounds. Mostimportantly, it lacks a cogent, underlying rationale and potentially sets up a slipperyslope leading to a poorly planned merger of the juvenile and adult systems.

In some states, these reforms have greatly increased the numbers of youthsentering the criminal courts. However, their impact nationwide has been somewhat lessconsequential than predicted. Although it was believed by some that prescriptive transferstatutes would literally flood adult jails and prisons with adolescent offenders, theincrease in the numbers of youth transferred nationwide has been fairly modest. Onereason is that prosecutors have not invoked the laws nearly as frequently as they mighthave: One recent study found that only 23% of youths eligible for automatic prosecutorialcertification for specified violent felonies were actually transferred (Sridharan,Greenfield, and Blakley, 2004). Another reason is that criminal courts frequentlysentence transferred offenders more leniently than their adult counterparts Theseoutcomes are consistent with Professor Zimrings observation that criminal law reformfrequently serves primarily symbolic functions, allowing politicians to appear tough oncrime while producing only modest systemic changes. New laws tend to bark much

9 Actually, the process is anything but automatic because it isdependent on what charges prosecutors choose to file.

10 For example, in Florida, prosecutors may choose to treat 16year-olds charged with anyfelony as either juveniles or adults. Theycan also transfer youths as young as 10, although the criteria are morerestrictive.

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louder than they bite...[They]...satisfy the need for symbols of denunciation withoutmaking much difference in the penalties meted out to most offenders (Zimring 2001: 5).

If transfer reforms have been underutilized, they have nonetheless had atremendous impact on the kinds of juveniles who are entering adult corrections systems.Because legislative exclusion statutes most often target serious and violent offenders

regardless of their age or offense histories, the proportions of young adolescents, racialminorities, and first-time offenders entering the adult system has increased. The influx ofyoung teens has burdened departments of correction unaccustomed to the special issuesand problems associated with this population (e.g., increased risk of victimization,increased suicide risk, special educational needs). In addition, racial disparities in theapplication of reforms have exacerbated already serious concerns about disproportionateminority confinement and unequal treatment under the law. Finally, it is unfortunatethat, as a result of the reforms, youth who enter the criminal justice system frequentlyhave not had the opportunity to benefit from any sort of rehabilitative intervention (see,Lanza-Kaduce, Frazier, Lane, and Bishop, 2000; Sridharan et al., 2004). Often they arefirst offenders with substance abuse and mental health problems who, under the

traditional waiver system, most likely would have been retained in the juvenile system fortreatment (Sridharan et al., 2004). In the adult system, where the incarcerated populationhas trebled since 1980 to a recent peak of over 2 million inmates, overcrowding andsimple warehousing are the norm. In that system, the treatment needs of juvenileoffenders almost surely remain unmet (Bishop and Frazier, 2000).

Although we could point to numerous other examples of the get tough assaulton serious juvenile offenders (e.g., subjecting them to sex offender registration laws;counting their prior juvenile convictions as strikes for purposes of invoking adulthabitual offender statutes), those we have discussed represent the major reforms in thisarea. We turn now to a discussion of recent trends at the front end of the system.Delinquency Prevention

At the same time that legislatures were passing punitive reforms for the worstoffenders, Congress was authorizing funds for delinquency prevention programs. Someare early intervention initiatives, while others are aimed at youths who have alreadybegun to engage in delinquent behavior.Early Intervention: In the last decade, early intervention has taken on important newemphases and become increasingly research-based. Early intervention programs are notentirely novel. In the 1960s, for example, we saw the development of Head Start, a well-funded pre-school program for young children in disadvantaged neighborhoods in thenations inner cities. But, at that time, such programs for children were generally notimplemented under the umbrella of delinquency prevention. (Head Start was part ofLyndon Johnsons War on Poverty.) Today, that has changed. Influenced by importanttheoretical and research advances in developmental criminology (e.g., Loeber andFarrington, 2000; Patterson and Yoerger, 1993), policy makers have become morecognizant of the connections between the family, school, and neighborhood contexts inwhich young children live and their risk of later delinquency and crime. To anunprecedented degree, research in developmental criminology has played a role inshaping at least one part of the nations prevention policy agenda.

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We see this most clearly in the 1992 reauthorization of the federal Juvenile Justiceand Delinquency Prevention Act of 1974.11 The 1992 law12 created the Title VCommunity Prevention Grants Program, which is based on the premise that effectivedelinquency prevention begins with an understanding of risk and protective factors(Caliber Associates, 2002, p. 4). One of the most exciting aspects of this effort is its

reliance on 1) what we have learned from criminal careers research and epidemiologicalcriminology about the individual, family, school, and community factors that put childrenat risk for serious delinquent involvement, 2) what we have learned from this sameresearch regarding protective factors that buffer the exposure to risk, and 3) what we havelearned from recent advances in evaluation research about intervention strategies that aremost and least promising (e.g., Sherman et al., 1998; Center for the Study and Preventionof Violence, n.d.) Much of the research that prevention efforts are based on includingboth long-term longitudinal studies of the etiology of delinquency and sophisticatedevaluation research has been supported by OJJDP and other federal agencies. It is verysignificant that, in order to be eligible for Title V funding, community-grant recipientsmust conduct a research-based risk assessment and must choose prevention strategies that

have been proven to be effective [e.g., prenatal/postnatal nurse visitation, parent training,anti-bullying programs].The Communities That Care (CTC) program, which has been widely adopted,

illustrates this new emphasis on risk-focused prevention. In CTC, entire communities,rather than individual agencies, receive funding and technical assistance to implementcoordinated systems of delinquency prevention. CTC involves a systematic, multi-stepprocess: 1) rally community leaders to support delinquency prevention; 2) have themappoint a community board comprised of at-risk youth, parents, representatives ofbusiness and industry, and representatives of police, courts, corrections, and public andprivate youth-serving organizations; 3) have the board carry out an assessment of risk andprotective factors in the community, make an inventory of existing community resources,and identify gaps in existing resources; 4) with that empirical base as a foundation,prioritize risks and develop a comprehensive delinquency prevention plan; 5) to addressthe communitys most pressing problems, coordinate existing resources and implementnew programs, selecting from a portfolio of strategies that evaluation research has shownto be effective (Caliber Associates, 2002). The overall goal is to identify children atgreatest risk, then to mobilize the community to reduce risk through well-coordinatedinterventions aimed at families, schools, peer groups, and neighborhoods. Althoughthese are laudable goals, their attainment is hampered by a number of obstacles, of whichwe will mention just two. First, the program is not well funded: 75% of CTCcommunities receive annual grants totaling $52,000 or less (Caliber Associates, 2002, p.19). Second, in the United States, services at the community-level are fragmented. It isextremely difficult to foster communication and coordination among businesses, policedepartments, juvenile courts, child welfare agencies, child protection agencies, schoolboards, health departments, mental health agencies, churches, and private not-for-profityouth-serving agencies. Agencies have domains, many are rule-bound and rigid, and

11 Public Law 93-415: 42 U.S.C. Section 5601 et seq.

12 Public Law 107-273.

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many have neither the time nor the inclination to work together to develop and implementwell-coordinated community prevention plans.

It remains to be seen whether programs funded under Title V, as well as otherprimary prevention programs, will endure and also whether they will be subject torigorous evaluation to assess their long-term effectiveness. In the past, prevention efforts

have been notably difficult either to sustain or to evaluate over the long term. Preventionprograms that focus on the long term, and whose effects are difficult to measure, have, atleast until recently, been a hard sell. Politicians responsible for funding anti-crimeefforts have instead tended to focus on short-term programs that can demonstrate fairlyimmediate and quantifiable results (Lab, 2004). Prevention programs also have had afaddish quality about them, as each new election cycle brings promises of new and betterprograms to replace failed efforts that came before. There is a current focus on faith-based initiatives that is a prime example. In 2001, not long after the inauguration ofPresident George W. Bush, the Justice Department outlined a Plan for Future Fundingthat included special funding opportunities for programs that involve the faith community(e.g., through mentoring of elementary school children), despite any evidence that faith-

based programs are more effective than secular ones. According to Lab (2004, p.__), thisprevention strategy is merely a politically motivated effort to win votes by courting thefaith community.Secondary Prevention: Much more well-funded than primary prevention programs arethose that target youth who have already begun to exhibit problem behaviors, e.g., bybeing expelled from school or arrested for the first time, usually for a non-violent offense.First offenders are frequently diverted from formal juvenile justice processing, continuinga trend that began in the 1960s. The early diversion movement was influenced to nosmall degree by labeling and societal reactions theories that called attention to thepotentially damaging consequences of formal juvenile justice intervention. Although thatdiversion movement was only a partial success,13a number of new diversion programshave emerged in the last decade.

Teen courts (also called youth courts) represent one such innovation. These areinformal courts to which youth are referred in lieu of formal processing. In order to betried in teen court, youths must admit responsibility for the offense with which they arecharged and agree to abide by the teen courts decision. In return, the charges aredismissed.14 Referrals to teen court are most often restricted to young, first-timeoffenders charged with misdemeanor offenses (e.g., vandalism, shoplifting, alcoholpossession, simple assault). In teen court, adolescents serve as jurors, attorneys, andsometimes also as judges. Many court personnel are themselves former teen courtdefendants who come back to serve as jurors and attorneys (Butts, Hoffman, and Buck,1999). The primary underlying premise of the program is that the judgment of a youthspeers may be more persuasive and beneficial than the judgment of adult officials.

13 Its legacy includes net widening, bootstrapping (relabelingstatus offenders as delinquents to render them eligible for formalintervention), and transinstitutionalization (displacement of offendersfrom juvenile correctional institutions to mental health facilities).

14 The only penalty for failure to comply is the reinstatement ofcharges.

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Sanctions imposed by teen courts tend to be more severe than those that would have beenimposed had these same youths opted for formal processing. Typically, the teen courtorders community work service or restitution, and the writing of essays or letters ofapology.

Like most other juvenile justice innovations, teen court caught on in advance of

any empirical research or solid evidence of its long-term effectiveness. Teen courts haveproliferated rapidly--from about 50 in 1991 to about 700 at presentand they currentlyrepresent the fastest growing alternative to formal intervention. It is estimated that teencourts today handle 100,000 youth per year--or about 1 of every 8 court referrals that arenot formally processed. Thus far, there has been only one major evaluation of teen courts(Butts, Buck, and Coggeshall, 2002), which was carried out in four sites. Relative tocomparison groups, teen court participants had significantly lower levels of recidivismover a 6-month follow-up period in two of the four sites.

Other secondary prevention efforts include the many variations on ScaredStraight, a program grounded in deterrence theory that was initiated at Rahway StatePrison in New Jersey in the late 1970s. In this program, teens are taken to prison for a

day and confronted by inmates who intimidate them and relate the horrors of prison life.Although numerous evaluations of Scared Straight and other programs like it haveconsistently shown that they tend to increase rather than reduce recidivism, the popularmyth that threats of punishment are effective deterrents helps to insure their continuation(Finckenauer and Gavin, 1999).

A discussion of recent trends in prevention would be incomplete without somemention of zero tolerance policies. Following upon some tragic shooting incidents insuburban high schools in which teens killed and injured their classmates, schools all overthe country began introducing policies of automatic suspension or expulsion and arrestfor bringing weapons of any type into schools. It was not long before these policies wereexpanded in many school districts to include the imposition of the same harsh penaltiesfor possession of drugs and other forms of contraband (e.g., cigarettes), for fighting, andeven for simple violations of school rules. This approach has been criticized for overbreadth (e.g., students have been expelled from school for giving an aspirin to aclassmate, for having a butter knife in a lunch pail, for swearing at a school official) and,thus far, has shown little if any benefit. It has been linked instead to increased rates ofdropout and delinquency. Because zero tolerance policies have been implementeddisproportionately in inner city schools, they have also had a differentially harsh impacton impoverished minority youths.

Other diversionary reforms flow out of the restorative justice movement, whichwas virtually unknown to all but a small group of academics at the beginning of the1990s (Bazemore and Walgrave, 1999, p.1). Restorative justice programs take a varietyof forms, including victim-offender mediation, community reparation boards, familygroup conferencing, and circle sentencing (Bazemore and Umbreit, 2001). Instead offocusing on the offender, these programs focus on the offense; on its effects on the victimand (with the exception of victim-offender mediation) the larger community of familyand friends that support both victim and offender; and on apology, forgiveness, andreparation of harm. Broadly stated, the goals are to educate participants about the harmsespecially the emotional harms and fracturing of relationshipscaused by the offense; torepair the harms; and to rebuild relationships and strengthen systems of informal social

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control. The establishment of restorative justice programs in the United States has notkept pace with similar developments in Western Europe, Australia and New Zealand, andCanada, though in some jurisdictions substantial progress has been made.15 Bazemoreand Walgrave (1999, p.60) offer the following observations regarding the fact that theseprograms have not been more widely adopted:

[J]uvenile justice administrators today are often overwhelmed with responding topolicy-maker demands that they get tough (while continuing to providetreatment)....In an already overcrowded field where a new program of themonth and a new crisis of the week vie for the attention of juvenile justiceadministrators, it is questionable whether restorative justice practices and policieswill break through as priorities.

Juvenile Court: Processing, Sentencing, and Correctional ReformsFor Middle-RangeOffenders

The third front in American juvenile justice focuses on the very large group ofoffenders who are formally processed in the juvenile court. The number of youth

formally processed in the juvenile courts rose significantly from 1990-1999 (from about650,000 in 1990 to nearly 1 million in 1999 [Puzzanchera et al, 2003]), an increase thatfar outstripped the 3% increase in juvenile arrests over the same time period (Snyder,2002). The reason for the discrepancy is twofold. First, there were changes in the waythat police disposed of juvenile arrests. Over the last 25 years, law enforcement has beencracking down by referring a greater proportion of arrestees to the juvenile court. Theproportion of arrests that were referred to juvenile court rose from 58% to 64% between1980 and 1990, and from 64% to 72% in the following decade (Snyder, 2003). Second,changes have taken place in the way that juvenile courts dispose of referrals. Althoughthe numbers of youth transferred to the adult system has increased, the proportions ofyouth diverted from formal processing have decreased much more significantly (from50% of referrals in 1990 to 43% in 1999). Consequently, the proportion of delinquencycases in which a petition was filed rose from 50% of all referrals in 1990 to 57% in 1999.Although the greatest numerical increases in prosecuted offenses involved drug crimes,16what is perhaps most telling is that the proportion of offenses handled formally increasedmost for the least serious offenses (i.e., disorderly conduct and other public orderoffenses), reflecting the tendency of the court to take even minor offenses moreseriously.17 The proportion of petitioned delinquency cases that resulted in formaladjudications of delinquency (i.e., convictions) also rose over the decade, from 60% of

15 Minnesota and Pennsylvania have emerged as leadersin the use of family group conferencing. The state of Vermonthas made community reparation boards a centerpiece of itsjuvenile justice system for youth who admit guilt. However,Vermonts program has recently been criticized for low levels ofvictim participation, the composition of the boards (i.e., civic andbusiness leaders) and, most important, for the tendency to be morepunitive than reparative.

16 Drug prosecutions increased 152% over the decade,consistent with the war on drugs.

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cases in 1990 to 66% in 1999. These increases occurred across all offense categories(Puzzanchera et al., 2003). Of those adjudicated, a smaller percentage were committed toout-of-home placements (32% in 1990, 24% in 1999). But that may reflect the fact thatinstitutions were already overcrowded. A much greaternumberof delinquents wereincarcerated in 1999 than in 1990 (an additional 30,000 youngsters), and more large

institutions (detention centers and training schools) were built to house them. In sum,what has happened in the 1990s is that a much greater proportions of cases were referredto, prosecuted in, and convicted by the juvenile court, and youth were incarcerated ingreater numbers. In terms of processing in the juvenile court, we see clear indications ofmuch greater formal social control than was the case in decades past.

The juvenile courts orientation toward its youth clientele is far less clear. Thereare many indications that juvenile courts are beginning to converge with the criminalcourts in their emphasis on punishment. In the past two decades, legislatures in 27 stateshave revised their juvenile codes to endorse either punishment or accountability asobjectives of the juvenile court. Twenty-six also endorse protection of the public safetyas an explicit juvenile justice goal. However, contrary to the convergence hypothesis,

legislatures have not abandoned the historical rehabilitative mission that hasdistinguished the juvenile court from its criminal counterpart. A recent review ofjuvenile code purpose clauses carried out by Sanborn and Salerno (2004, pp. 8-11)revealed that all 50 jurisdictions maintain provisions that distinguish juvenile courts fromcriminal courts in ways that are compatible with the juvenile courts traditional mission.Thirty states continue to endorse the view that the court is to act in the best interests ofthe child. Thirty-five states encourage the juvenile court to rehabilitate children at home(Sanborn and Salerno, 2004, p.11). Twenty-four states indicate that the aim of thejuvenile court is to preserve or strengthen the childs family or the childs ties to thefamily (Sanborn and Salerno, 204, p. 10). Thus, the law on the books suggests that moststates are trying to strike a balance between punitive and social welfare objectives. Ofcourse, the law on the books may not match the law in action.

Juvenile code purpose clauses are only one indication of current trends. There areother indications that juvenile courts are beginning to resemble criminal courts. Datingback to the due process revolution of the 1960s and 70s, juveniles were givenimportant procedural rights to which they had not previously been entitled (e.g., right tonotice, right to counsel, right to remain silent, the requirement that the charges be provenbeyond a reasonable doubt) which made court proceedings much more formal andadversarial than they had been previously. Recent changes have not expanded rights, butinstead chipped away at special protections that youth have traditionally enjoyed. Theseinclude the fact that juvenile court proceedings have historically been closed to thepublic, that juvenile records have been confidential and later expunged, and that at leastnon-serious juvenile offenders were not subject to photographing and fingerprinting. Inthe 1990s, 47 states made juvenile records and proceedings more open (Snyder andSickmund, 1999, p. 89), 46 allowed juveniles to be photographed and fingerprinted, and42 allowed the names (and sometimes the photographs and court records) of juveniles tobe released to the media (Snyder and Sickmund, 1999, p. 101).

17 This trend is entirely consistent with adoption of the graduated sanctionsapproach, about which we will have more to say shortly.

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Juvenile courts sentencing policies have also undergone change. Although innearly every jurisdiction sentencing for the vast majority of offenders remainsdiscretionary, state legislatures have also passed determinate sentencing, guidelines-basedsentencing, and mandatory minimum sentencing for some offenses, all of which arecontrary to the offender-focused dispositions that have long been a hallmark of the

juvenile court. These are offense-driven, one size fits all sanctions that are imposedwithout any consideration of individual needs and circumstances. For example,legislatures in 31 jurisdictions have passed mandatory sentencing statutes for someoffenses (Sanborn and Salerno, 2004, p. 377). While most of these mandatory sentencesdo notinvolve incarceration, 26 states have adopted minimum mandatory periods ofincarceration for certain violent crimes, weapons offenses, and repeat felony offenders(Sanborn and Salerno, 2004, pp.377-380). Many of these statutes suffer from overbreadth and are subject to misapplication.18

Nationally, the trend is toward sentencing youth based on notions of punishmentand accountability, rather than rehabilitation. Significantly, the federal government hasendorsed a policy of graduated sanctions under which youth who have been

adjudicated delinquent receive sanctions proportionate to the offense to hold themaccountable for their actions and to prevent further law violations. This approach hasbecome the centerpiece of OJJDPs Juvenile Accountability Incentive Block Grantsprogram (JAIBG)now renamed JABGthe largest single source of federal funding forjuvenile programs in the country.19 The program was revised in 2003, in part to make itsdeterrent objectives more explicit. The new provisions indicate that althoughparticipation in the graduated sanctions approach by individual courts is voluntary, states:

must encourage courts to participate. At a minimum, such systems should imposesanctions for each offense; sanctions should escalate in intensity with eachsubsequent, more serious charge; and the system should be sufficiently flexible toallow for individualized sanctions and services appropriate for each offender(OJJDP, 2003, p.3).

This language surely smacks of the criminalization of the juvenile court. JABG clearlymoves federal policy closer to a pure punishment approach. None of its 16 provisionsmentions rehabilitation. help, development, or skills buildinglanguage that hadbeen used in OJJDP publications describing its JAIBG predecessor (see, e.g., Beyer,

18 In research conducted by one of the authors, a youth arrested for throwing apiece of fruit at another was charged with throwing a deadly missile, another who stolea statue of Ronald McDonald from a restaurant play area was charged with burglary ofan occupied structure, and a youth who took a pickup truck for a brief joyride wascharged with armed burglary because a toolbox containing a hammer and screwdriverswas found in the back of the truck. All of these charged offenses are Class A feloniesthat carry lengthy maximum sentences.

19 Initiated in 1998 (Public Law 105-119), its annual funding levelauthorization is 500 million dollars. (Compare this to the Title Vprevention program discussed earlier, which has an annual fundingallocation of 27 million dollars. Whileprevention is a priority,punishment of past actions clearly takes precedence.

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2003). The only hint of another agenda is found in a provision for Risk and NeedsAssessment that supports programs to conduct risk and needs assessments of juvenileoffenders that facilitate early intervention and the provision of comprehensive services,including mental health screening and treatment and substance abuse testing andtreatment (OJJDP, 2003, p.2).

Other recent developments in the juvenile corrections area similarly suggest that apunishment agenda has taken hold. The 1980s saw the establishment of boot camps, firstin the adult system (1983), then in the juvenile system (1985). Boot camps are short-term(90-120 day) residential programs where inmates are subjected to military-style basictraining, including physical labor, regimented activity, and intense verbal degradation.Some, but not all, include educational and counseling components. OJJDP supported theboot camp initiative and funded an evaluation of three programs in three different statesthat showed that boot camp participants had higher recidivism rates than controls (Peterset al., 1997). Findings of ineffectiveness are consistent with evaluations of boot camps inthe adult system (see MacKenzie, 2000). Despite the negative results, and despiteallegations of staff abuse, boot camps have caught on in the same way that other

deterrence-based programs have. At least two states (Texas and Virginia) haveincorporated them into the continuum of graduated sanctions (Howell, 2003, p. 134).Other trends in juvenile sentencing include electronic monitoring, random drug

testing, a shift in probation that makes it more surveillance- than service-oriented, andsimple incarceration. (Detention centers, which have little in the way of programming,are increasingly being used as places to which youth are sentenced.) These are allexamples of get-tough reforms, and there is little evidence that any of them is effective.

Although it is clear that the United States has embraced retributive and deterrentobjectives for convicted juvenile offenders to a degree not seen since the 19th century,there are some indications that we have not embraced this position single-mindedly. Aswe have seen, the restorative justice movement, which is inconsistent with a narrow focuson punishment, is gaining ground. In some areas of the country, restorative justiceprinciples and programs are being used at sentencing and as an adjunct to probation.20There is also another movement afoot that may be even more important. Morespecifically, in the midst of all the indicia of a criminalized juvenile justice that we havediscussed, there are signs of a revitalization of rehabilitation.

In the last 15 years, there have been major advances in evaluation research, andboth private foundations and the federal government have invested significant funding inassessing the effectiveness of various forms of treatment.21 This research has produced

20 We see little potential for the transformation of juvenile justice aroundprinciples of restorative justice. Existing bureaucracies (court, probation,prosecutorial, and defense systems) are entrenched, and do not easilyaccommodate a central role for victims and community members, norrelinquish their focus on adversariness and due process.

21Interest in rehabilitation waned in the 1970s, following therelease of the widely publicized Martinson Report (Martinson 1974;Lipton et al 1975). Critics of the report responded that the negativeresults could be explained by methodological problems and weakevaluations, rather than by the absence of effective treatments, but

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fairly consistent evidence that treatment-oriented programs, especially those that focus oninterpersonal skill development and parent/family interventions, are considerably moreeffective than punishment-oriented ones (e.g., Lipsey and Wilson, 1998; Lipsey et al.,2000). Research has identified effective nonresidential treatment programs for minor andfirst-time offenders as well as effective residential interventions for serious and chronic

offenders. Some show very substantial reductions in recidivism, especially if programsare well designed and faithfully implemented (Lipsey 1999a, 1999b). In addition toLipseys research, which utilizes meta-analysis, the Center for the Study and Preventionof Violence has played a major role in renewing interest in treatment. Center staff havereviewed individual evaluations of rehabilitation programs throughout the country thatmeet rigorous scientific criteria (i.e., the evaluation must use an experimental design andinclude at least 1-year of follow-up). They have identified a number of BlueprintPrograms that have produced statistically significant reductions in recidivism and thathave been replicated in at least one other site. (These include multisystemic therapy, lifeskills training, and multidimensional treatment foster care.)

It is possible that, at the local level, thousands (or even tens of thousands) of

rehabilitation programs exist despite policymakers determination to implement punitivepolicies. Unfortunately, because most states and the federal government do not maintainprogram inventories or conduct surveys to determine what kinds of programs areoperating and where, it is impossible to determine the extent of rehabilitativeprogramming in the United States today.

It is still too early to tell, but the punitive tide may be turning. Opinion pollsshow that the public continues to support treatment for juvenile offenders. In addition,public officials have begun to express real worry about how they are going to manage thefinancial costs of Americas imprisonment binge (Austin, ). In combination with theresearch evidence showing the substantial advantages of rehabilitative programs overpunitive ones, these considerations may support a revival of interest in returning totraditional core principles of juvenile justice.

CONCLUDING THOUGHTS ON EFFECTIVE PROGRAMS AND POLICIESIn his seminal book on American street gangs Klein (1995) laments the fact that

thirty years of gang intervention and programming have little to show for what works.The situation is not quite that bad with regard to the impact of programs and policies inAmerican Juvenile Justice, but almost. Lundman (2001:11) notes the American tendencyto choose what he calls cut-through programs, programs that ignore root causes ofdelinquency and are seen as quick fixes. This predilection for such cut-throughprograms has led the United States to spend large amounts of money on programs such asDARE, Zero-tolerance programs, Scared Straight Programs, Boot Camps, large custodialprograms, and curfew and truancy interventions. Evaluation results for these programshave been reviewed extensively by Howell (2003) and found wanting for positive results.

these responsesand even the subsequent retraction of the MartinsonReports conclusion by its authorsfell on deaf ears. Instead, the ideaof rehabilitation was increasingly viewed with skepticism. Subsequentincreases in juvenile crime, especially juvenile violence, contributed tothe view that treatment was ineffective.

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IV. Policies that have Improved Prevention/Intervention and

Respect For Individual RightsTremendous advances in program evaluation research have taken place in the last

twenty years. As a consequence, we have a great deal more evidence of the efficacy of

prevention and intervention strategies, and can be much more confident in the results.We now know a great deal about ineffective policies and programs, as well as those thatproduce meaningful beneficial effects. This is not to say, however, that policy makershave looked to social science research for guidance. Many ineffective programs continuebecause the general public continues to believe that they are effective or because theyserve retributive aims in an era that is highly punishment oriented. Effective programsmay not be popular, or they may be implemented only sparsely among a fewcommunities. Although the United States does not have national juvenile justice policy,there is much that could be done at the federal level to support the proliferation ofeffective strategies (e.g., by making funds available for communities that want toimplement them). However, the current administration has been far more supportive offairly simplistic and inexpensive punitive programs (that tend to be less effective) than ofholistic and generally more costly strategies aimed at providing family intervention,education and training, social skills training, and social support. As important as it is tohave good evaluation and research to use as a foundation for programs, it is equallyimportant to have the political will and courage to use these results for effectiveprogramming. To date, America seldom shows that will.

There are two comments we offer in closing to address the issue of increasedrespect for the rights of juveniles. First, the United States is one of two nations in theworld that has not ratified the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child(1989). That failure speaks volumes about the status of children in America and therespect that the government holds for those children. Second, the last decade of policy,legislative and program changes have been overwhelmingly punitive, to the exclusion ofconsiderations of the rights and welfare of juveniles. If Tom Bernard is right thatjuvenile justice moves from cycles of punitiveness to consideration of the welfare ofchildren, the United States should be on the verge of a major change in the orientation ofits juvenile justice system. We are not that optimistic.

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References

Ainsworth, Janet E. 1999. Re-Imagining Childhood and Reconstructing the LegalOrder: The Case for Abolishing the Juvenile Court. Pp. 8-12 in Barry Feld (Ed.)Readings in Juvenile Justice Administration. New York: Oxford.

Allen, Francis. (1981). The Rehabilitative Ideal. New Haven, CT: Yale.

Bernard, Thomas J. (1992). The Cycle of Juvenile Justice. New York: Oxford.

Bazemore, Gordon, and Mark S. Umbreit. A comparison of four restorativejustice conferencing models. Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Justice.

Bazemore, Gordon, and Lode Walgrave. (1999). Introduction: RestorativeJustice and the International Juvenile Justice Crisis. Pp. 1-13 in GordonBazemore and Lode Walgrave (Eds.),Restorative Juvenile Justice: Repairing theHarm of Youth Crime. Monsey, NY: Criminal Justice Press.

Butts, Jeffrey A., and Daniel P. Mears. 2001. Reviving Juvenile Justice in aGet-Tough Era. Youth & Society 33:169-198.

Butts, Jeffrey, Dean Hoffman, and Janeen Buck. (1999). Teen courts in theUnited States: A profile of current programs. OOJDP Fact Sheet No.118.Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Justice.

Butts, Jeffrey A., Janeen Buck, and Mark Coggeshall. (2002) The impact of TeenCourt on young offenders. Washington, DC: The Urban Institute.

Caliber Associates. (2002). 2002 Report to Congress: Title V CommunityPrevention Grants Program. NCJ 202019. Washington, DC: U.S. Departmentof Justice, Office of Justice Programs, Office of Juvenile Justice and DelinquencyPrevention.

Carlsson, Yngve and Scott H. Decker. (2005). Gang and Youth ViolencePrevention and Intervention: Contrasting the Experience of the ScandinavianWelfare State with the United States. In. S. Decker and F. Weerman, Gangs andTroublesome Youth Groups in Europe: Results from the Eurogang ResearchProgram. San Francisco, CA.: Alta Mira.

Carter, Robert M. 1984. The United States. Pp. 17-38 in M. Klein (Ed.)Western Systems of Juvenile Justice. Beverly Hills, CA: Sage.

Center for the Study and Prevention of Violence. Blueprints for ViolencePrevention. [Online] Available: http://www.colorado.edu/cspv/blueprints/

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Dawson, Richard O. (1988). The Third Justice System: The New Juvenile-Criminal System of Determinate Sentencing for the Youthful Violent Offender inTexas. St. Marys Law Journal19: 943-1015.

Decker, Scott H. and G. David Curry. (2001). JAIBG, St. Louis. Third Year

Evaluation Report. UM-St. Louis. Department of Criminology and CriminalJustice.

Farrington, David P. (2000). Explaining and preventing crime: Theglobalization of knowledge. [American Society of Criminology PresidentialAddress.] Criminology38: 1-24.

Feld, Barry C. 1999. Bad kids: Race and the transformation of the juvenilecourt. New York: Oxford University Press.

Finckenauer, James O., and P. W. Gavin. (1999). Scared Straight: The Panacea

Phenomenon Revisited. Prospect Heights, IL: Waveland.

Hawkins, David, and Richard Catalano. (1992). Communities that Care. SanFrancisco: Jossey-Bass.

Howell, James C. (2003). Preventing & Reducing Juvenile Delinquency: AComprehensive Framework. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

Klein, Malcolm W. 1984. Introduction. Pp. 1-16 in M. Klein (Ed.) WesternSystems of Juvenile Justice. Beverly Hills, CA: Sage.

Klein, Malcolm W. 1995. The American Street Gang. New York: Oxford.

Lanza-Kaduce, Lonn, Charles E. Frazier, Jodi Lane, and Donna M. Bishop.(Final Report...get full citation.)

Lauritsen, Janet, Robert J. Sampson and John Laub. (1991). The Link betweenOffending and Victimization among Adolescents. Criminology, 29: 265-292.

Lipton, Douglas, Robert Martinson, and J. Wilks. (1975). The Effectiveness ofCorrectional Treatment: A Survey of Treatment Evaluation Studies. New York:Praeger.

Lipsey, Mark W. (1999a). Can intervention rehabilitate serious delinquents.Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 564: 142-166.

Lipsey, Mark W. (1999b). Can rehabilitative programs reduce the recidivism ofjuvenile offenders? An inquiry into the effectiveness of practical programs.Virginia Journal of Social Policy and Law 6: 611-641.

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Documents

Jjt Juvenile Justice in the United States