What Works in Managing Young People who Offend? A Summary of the International Evidence – This review was commissioned by the Ministry of Justice and considers international literature concerning the management of young people who have offended. It was produced to inform youth justice policy and practice. The review focuses on the impact and […]

Treatment, Services, and Intervention Programs for Child Delinquents. Child Delinquency Bulletin Series – Compared with juveniles who start offending in adolescence, child delinquents (age 12 and younger) are two to three times more likely to become, tomorrow’s serious and violent offenders. This propensity, however, can be minimized. These children are potentially identifiable either before […]

Treatment of Offender Populations: Implications for Risk Management and Community Reintegration – Traditionally, one of the goals of incarceration has been rehabilitation. However, there has been a great debate in the literature about the efficacy of different treatment interventions for offenders and the ability of these treatments to decrease recidivism rates. In the 1950s […]

The Importance of Institutional Culture to the Adjustment of Incarcerated Youth and Young Adults – In this article, we discuss key findings from research that focuses on the experiences and adjustment of youth in custody and pre-trial detention. Problems with the overuse of segregation for both adolescents and young adults are debated. Complemented by […]

The impact of incarceration on juvenile offenders – Increasingly, research points to the negative effects of incarcerating youth offenders, particularly in adult facilities. Literature published since 2000 suggests that incarceration fails to meet the developmental and criminogenic needs of youth offenders and is limited in its ability to provide appropriate rehabilitation. Incarceration often results […]

The Efficacy of Strategies to Reduce Juvenile Offending – The purpose of this report was to examine the national and international research literature relating to the efficacy of a range of strategies to reduce juvenile offending. These strategies were categorized according to Tonry and Farrington’s (1995) framework of four groupings of crime  prevention strategies: […]

Risks, Outcomes, and Evidence-Based Interventions for Girls in the US Juvenile Justice System – The proportion of the juvenile justice population that comprises females is increasing, yet few evidence-based models have been evaluated and implemented with girls in the juvenile justice system. Although much is known about the risk and protective factors for girls […]

Re-Arrest among Juvenile Justice-Involved Youth – The purpose of this study is to investigate the static and dynamic risk factors for re-arrest among detained youth by examining gender, race/ethnicity, age, special education and mental health variables (i.e., anger/irritability, depression/anxiety, somatic complaints, suicide ideation, thought disturbances, and traumatic experiences). The demographic profiles of detained youth […]

Juvenile Mental Health Court: Rationale and Protocols – On Feb. 14, 2001, the nation’s first juvenile mental health court processed its debut calendar in Santa Clara County (San Jose), California. This debut was the culmination of nine months of judicially convened meetings to establish ground rules and develop relationships. It took the efforts of […]

Juvenile Delinquency and Mental Health – In today’s world of rapidly-rising crime, we are compelled to expand our knowledge about crime through an increased understanding of its beginnings in juvenile delinquency. The decade of 1990 saw more youth transferred to criminal court, longer sentences, and lower minimum ages at which juveniles could be prosecuted […]