Juvenile Justice

Timothy Ross identifies the obstacles frustrating service coordination and details ways to strengthen the fragile web connecting the many systems involved in protecting foster youth. Child welfare agencies often have responsibility for a child when a family crisis arises, but not the authority or capacity to resolve it without cooperation from other government divisions. When complex systems and bureaucracies have overlapping jurisdiction, fine-tuned coordination is the exception and not the rule.

This study examined the prosecution of the commercial sexual exploitation of children and youth (CSEC) in the United States. The research took the form of a national analysis of federal prosecutions since the passage of the Trafficking Victims Protection Act (TVPA) in 2000, answering the following research questions: (1) Is the United States enforcing existing federal laws related to CSEC? (2) What are the key features of successfully prosecuted CSEC cases? (3) Have the U.S. courts increased penalties associated with sexual crimes against children? (4) What are the effects of CSEC legislation on service providers who work with victims? This assessment provides policy makers with a means of assessing the effects of legislation aimed at combating CSEC.

When youth in the child welfare system face problems such as juvenile delinquency, the agencies charged with their care often find that they do not have the capacity to act without the cooperation of other government departments. The trap gets tighter when parents have lost custody or are in the criminal justice system themselves. Such scenarios frustrate staff in government agencies and cause vulnerable youth to lose confidence in the system just when they need it the most. Child Welfare: The Challenges of Collaboration highlights several scenarios requiring interagency collaboration and also includes an evaluation of Project Confirm, a cross-agency effort to help foster children in juvenile detention. Though the challenges of collaboration will be difficult to solve, this book offers practical examples to guide child welfare service agencies.

This report presents interim findings of the Urban Institute's evaluation of the Gang Reduction Program (GRP), a $10 million, multi-year, federal initiative to reduce gang crime in Los Angeles, California; Milwaukee, Wisconsin; North Miami Beach, Florida; and Richmond, Virginia. The evaluation found substantial variation in collaboration levels among partners in each site, but each site achieved significant implementation successes. The effects of GRP in each site were mixed, and only one site, Los Angeles, showed a significant reduction in crime levels. By late 2007, however, three sites had undertaken significant steps towards sustaining GRP beyond the federal funding period.

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.