Publications on Juvenile Justice

In this Washington Examiner commentary, John Roman explains why automatically putting juvenile offenders in adult detention is a mistake: it can turn the teenagers into hardened criminals and sends the message that society has written them off.

To assess the Reclaiming Futures initiative's impact on agency relationships, social network questions were included in a series of expert informant surveys conducted bi-annually in each Reclaiming Futures community. Network analysis is a tool for investigating the complexity and strength of relationships and social interaction among individuals, groups, organizations, or states. The network analysis of Reclaiming Futures examined patterns of interaction among key agencies in eight communities working to implement system reform strategies and to improve services for drug-involved youthful offenders. Using measures such as network density, cohesion, and proximity, the analysis suggests that overall network strength increased in Reclaiming Futures communities.

Most publicly funded adolescent substance abuse treatment is provided and managed by the juvenile justice system, and juvenile courts and allied agencies are often the first responders to teen drug problems. But is this the right approach?

New crime statistics from the FBI show violent crime increased in 2005 and 2006, and an Urban Institute analysis offers evidence that the concurrent explosion in iPod use may have triggered the spike.

Reclaiming Futures (RF) is an initiative of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) that seeks to improve outcomes for drug-involved youth in the juvenile justice system. The Urban Institute and Chapin Hall Center for Children at the University of Chicago conducted biannual surveys in each of the ten communities participating in the initiative (December 2003 to June 2006) measuring the quality of juvenile justice and substance abuse treatment systems in each community. Positive and significant changes were reported in all ten communities. In several communities, most quality indicators measured by the evaluation improved significantly during the course of the initiative.