Even though youth crime rates have fallen since the mid-1990s, public fear and political rhetoric over the issue have heightened. The Columbine shootings and other sensational incidents add to the furor. Often overlooked are the underlying problems of child poverty, social disadvantage, and the pitfalls inherent to adolescent decisionmaking that contribute to youth crime. From a policy standpoint, adolescent offenders are caught in the crossfire between nurturance of youth and punishment of criminals, between rehabilitation and "get tough" pronouncements. In the midst of this emotional debate, the National Research Council's Panel on Juvenile Crime steps forward with an authoritative review of the best available data and analysis. Juvenile Crime, Juvenile Justice presents recommendations for addressing the many aspects of America's youth crime problem. This timely release discusses patterns and trends in crimes by children and adolescentsâ€"trends revealed by arrest data, victim reports, and other sources; youth crime within general crime; and race and sex disparities. The book explores desistanceâ€"the probability that delinquency or criminal activities decrease with ageâ€"and evaluates different approaches to predicting future crime rates. Why do young people turn to delinquency? Juvenile Crime, Juvenile Justice presents what we know and what we urgently need to find out about contributing factors, ranging from prenatal care, differences in temperament, and family influences to the role of peer relationships, the impact of the school policies toward delinquency, and the broader influences of the neighborhood and community. Equally important, this book examines a range of solutions: Prevention and intervention efforts directed to individuals, peer groups, and families, as well as day care-, school- and community-based initiatives. Intervention within the juvenile justice system. Role of the police. Processing and detention of youth offenders. Transferring youths to the adult judicial system. Residential placement of juveniles. The book includes background on the American juvenile court system, useful comparisons with the juvenile justice systems of other nations, and other important information for assessing this problem.

Race and Ethnicity in the Juvenile Justice System provides a comprehensive empirical examination of the role of race and ethnicity in the juvenile court. Using empirical research as a foundation, the authors examine how race and ethnicity influence multiple decision points for youth entering the juvenile system including arrest, referral, petition, pre-adjudication release, adjudication, and disposition. The authors ground the decision-making in a separate chapter that exclusively focuses on theories that can be used to explain the role of race and ethnicity in juvenile justice processing. Additionally, there is an examination of how community factors differentially impact decision-making based on the race/ethnicity of youth, the role of race/ethnicity in the practice of transferring youth to adult court, and how race influences juveniles' perceptions of police and the juvenile system. Also, the authors empirically examine the role of race/ethnicity on the processing of status offenders and how it influences female involvement in delinquency. In framing all of these salient issues in the proper context, the authors provide a historical analysis on the role of race in development of the juvenile court system and how different races were treated both before and after the juvenile court's implementation. The underlying theme of the text is that all races/ethnicities of youth were not initially served by or meant to benefit from the juvenile court. Therefore, the continuing racial and ethnic disparities currently observed in the system can be traced to the pre-juvenile court era.

"The second edition of Race, Ethnicity, Crime, and Justice presents the latest research on studies of race, ethnicity, and justice practices at the juvenile and adult levels. With a focus on intersectionality, the text shows how these extralegal factors interact with others to help understand outcomes such as disparities in excessive use of force by the police and court sentencing, as well as disproportionate minority confinement in corrections. Designed to be brief yet thorough, the text covers the most important issues related to race and ethnicity as they pertain to the law, crime and delinquency, policing, courts, and corrections. Race, Ethnicity, Crime, and Justice is highly readable and classroom friendly while also making a meaningful contribution to the literature on the topic"--

In Our Children, Their Children, a prominent team of researchers argues that a second-rate and increasingly punitive juvenile justice system is allowed to persist because most people believe it is designed for children in other ethnic and socioeconomic groups. While public opinion, laws, and social policies that convey distinctions between "our children" and "their children" may seem to conflict with the American ideal of blind justice, they are hardly at odds with patterns of group differentiation and inequality that have characterized much of American history. Our Children, Their Children provides a state-of-the-science examination of racial and ethnic disparities in the American juvenile justice system. Here, contributors document the precise magnitude of these disparities, seek to determine their causes, and propose potential solutions. In addition to race and ethnicity, contributors also look at the effects on juvenile justice of suburban sprawl, the impact of family and neighborhood, bias in postarrest decisions, and mental health issues. Assessing the implications of these differences for public policy initiatives and legal reforms, this volume is the first critical summary of what is known and unknown in this important area of social research.

Over the last few decades, the racial and ethnic composition of the United States has changed dramatically. This seismic transformation has important implications for theory, research, policy, and public opinion – perhaps most crucially around the topic of race/ethnicity and our justice systems. Recent national events – from Ferguson, to ferocious public debate about racism, to media depictions of police violence – have reawakened the tense question of race relations in the 21st century. This edited collection of research aims to highlight contemporary issues surrounding the overrepresentation of racial and ethnic minorities throughout both the juvenile and adult criminal justice systems. Our contributors cover both formal sources of social control (e.g. police, courts, correction facilities) and perceptions and public opinions of the relationship between race/ethnicity and offending behaviors. As the intellectual sphere ignites with fresh debate, old questions redefined and new ones asked, this publication provides innovative insight into how race and ethnicity interconnect with all aspects of criminology and criminal justice. Furthermore it helps encourage directions for future research, practice, and public policy. This book was originally published as a special issue of the Journal of Crime and Justice.

This anthology provides a balanced assessment of whether the American criminal justice system is guilty of bias in its treatment of racial and ethnic minorities. Contexts in which this question is explored include: policing and perceptions of police, sentencing, prison populations, racial profiling and forensic sciences.the diverse theories on disparities in the criminal justice process;evidence of racial prejudice in policing;African-American citizens' and police officers' perceptions of police bias;disparities in sentencing;differential sentencing patterns among juvenile drug offenders;minority overrepresentation in the prison population;the application of the death penalty;racial profiling of white customers in retail stores;misuse of race and racial identification in the forensic sciences;residents' proximity to environmental hazards and enforcement of environmental regulations

Adolescence is a distinct, yet transient, period of development between childhood and adulthood characterized by increased experimentation and risk-taking, a tendency to discount long-term consequences, and heightened sensitivity to peers and other social influences. A key function of adolescence is developing an integrated sense of self, including individualization, separation from parents, and personal identity. Experimentation and novelty-seeking behavior, such as alcohol and drug use, unsafe sex, and reckless driving, are thought to serve a number of adaptive functions despite their risks. Research indicates that for most youth, the period of risky experimentation does not extend beyond adolescence, ceasing as identity becomes settled with maturity. Much adolescent involvement in criminal activity is part of the normal developmental process of identity formation and most adolescents will mature out of these tendencies. Evidence of significant changes in brain structure and function during adolescence strongly suggests that these cognitive tendencies characteristic of adolescents are associated with biological immaturity of the brain and with an imbalance among developing brain systems. This imbalance model implies dual systems: one involved in cognitive and behavioral control and one involved in socio-emotional processes. Accordingly adolescents lack mature capacity for self-regulations because the brain system that influences pleasure-seeking and emotional reactivity develops more rapidly than the brain system that supports self-control. This knowledge of adolescent development has underscored important differences between adults and adolescents with direct bearing on the design and operation of the justice system, raising doubts about the core assumptions driving the criminalization of juvenile justice policy in the late decades of the 20th century. It was in this context that the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP) asked the National Research Council to convene a committee to conduct a study of juvenile justice reform. The goal of Reforming Juvenile Justice: A Developmental Approach was to review recent advances in behavioral and neuroscience research and draw out the implications of this knowledge for juvenile justice reform, to assess the new generation of reform activities occurring in the United States, and to assess the performance of OJJDP in carrying out its statutory mission as well as its potential role in supporting scientifically based reform efforts.

Winner, 2020 ACJS Outstanding Book Award, given by the Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences A major statement on the juvenile justice system by one of America’s leading experts The juvenile court lies at the intersection of youth policy and crime policy. Its institutional practices reflect our changing ideas about children and crime control. The Evolution of the Juvenile Court provides a sweeping overview of the American juvenile justice system’s development and change over the past century. Noted law professor and criminologist Barry C. Feld places special emphasis on changes over the last 25 years—the ascendance of get tough crime policies and the more recent Supreme Court recognition that “children are different.” Feld’s comprehensive historical analyses trace juvenile courts’ evolution though four periods—the original Progressive Era, the Due Process Revolution in the 1960s, the Get Tough Era of the 1980s and 1990s, and today’s Kids Are Different era. In each period, changes in the economy, cities, families, race and ethnicity, and politics have shaped juvenile courts’ policies and practices. Changes in juvenile courts’ ends and means—substance and procedure—reflect shifting notions of children’s culpability and competence. The Evolution of the Juvenile Court examines how conservative politicians used coded racial appeals to advocate get tough policies that equated children with adults and more recent Supreme Court decisions that draw on developmental psychology and neuroscience research to bolster its conclusions about youths’ reduced criminal responsibility and diminished competence. Feld draws on lessons from the past to envision a new, developmentally appropriate justice system for children. Ultimately, providing justice for children requires structural changes to reduce social and economic inequality—concentrated poverty in segregated urban areas—that disproportionately expose children of color to juvenile courts’ punitive policies. Historical, prescriptive, and analytical, The Evolution of the Juvenile Court evaluates the author’s past recommendations to abolish juvenile courts in light of this new evidence, and concludes that separate, but reformed, juvenile courts are necessary to protect children who commit crimes and facilitate their successful transition to adulthood.

Written by two of the most prominent criminologists in the field, Race and Crime, Fourth Edition examines how racial and ethnic groups intersect with the U.S. criminal justice system. Award winning authors Shaun L. Gabbidon and Helen Taylor Greene provide students with the latest data and research on White, Black, Hispanic/Latino, Asian-American, and Native American intersections with the criminal justice system. Rich with several timely topics such as biosocial theory, violent victimizations, police bias, and immigration policing, the Fourth Edition continues to investigate modern-day issues relevant to understanding race/ethnicity and crime in the United States. A thought-provoking discussion of contemporary issues is uniquely balanced with an historical context to offer students a panoramic perspective on race and crime. Accessible and reader friendly, this comprehensive text shows students how race and ethnicity have mattered and continue to matter in the administration of justice.

State-of-the-art critical reviews of recent scholarship on the causes of juvenile delinquency, juvenile justice system responses, and public policies to prevent and reduce youth crime are brought together in a single volume authored by leading scholars and researchers in neuropsychology, developmental and social psychology, sociology, history, criminology/criminal justice, and law.