Juvenile Justice Information Exchange (https://jjie.org/tag/report/)
After decades of neglect, the youth justice field is awakening to the importance of diversion in lieu of arrest and formal court processing for many or most youth accused of delinquent behavior.
Recently I became aware of additional research on youth probation published by the National Partnership for Juvenile Services that provides compelling findings related to juvenile probation and juvenile courts’ use of incentives versus sanctions to achieve reductions of recidivism among youth.
Non-felony offenses accounted for two out of three arrests of juvenile girls in Florida, according to “The Justice for Girls Blueprint: The Way Forward for Florida,” recently released by the Delores Barr Weaver Policy Center.
Two-thirds of the state's justice-involved girls but roughly one-third of boys — 66% versus 38% — were arrested for felony offenses. Two-thirds of girls and almost one-fifth of boys were incarcerated for non-felonies, according to the center's analysis of data from Florida’s Department of Juvenile Justice Delinquency Dashboard, Department of Health Youth Substance Abuse Survey and the Youth Risk Behavior Survey...
"The United States incarcerates an alarming number of children and adolescents every year. Disproportionately, they are youth of color.
Given the short- and long-term damages stemming from youth out of home placement, it is vital to understand its true scope. In 2019, there were more than 240,000 instances of a young person detained, committed, or both in the juvenile justice system. However, youth incarceration is typically measured via a one-day count taken in late October. This metric vastly understates its footprint: at least 80% of incarcerated youth are excluded from the one-day count..."
States across the country place children as young as 8 years old on sex offender registries for conduct that is otherwise developmentally normal. Required by federal law, this label imposes barriers on young people’s access to education, employment and safe housing. It can devastate them psychologically with little benefit to the community.
Since 2016, Elder Yusef Qualls has been on a tireless campaign to have officials in Michigan revisit a criminal case that has kept his son incarcerated for over two decades.
A so-called “juvenile lifer,” Qualls’ son, also named Yusef Qualls, has lived within Michigan’s adult correctional system since 1997. At 17 Qualls was sentenced to life without parole after police linked him as an accomplice to the murder of a woman in Detroit. Elder Qualls has been a juvenile justice advocate since his son’s incarceration began. But the fight took a new turn when, in 2016, the Supreme Court retroactively banned sentences of life in prison without the possibility of parole for juvenile offenders. That meant the courts had to revisit his son’s case.
How can the juvenile justice system — and other agencies that serve children — build post-traumatic resilience among youth?
A new Data Points report from the organization Citizens for Juvenile Justice indicates that juvenile arrests in Massachusetts are on the decline, with the number of young people being arrested in 2011 dropping by more than 20 percent compared to 2010 findings. The report also finds violent and property offenses committed by juveniles in the state to be decreasing, with 2009 data indicating an 8 percent decrease and 4 percent decrease, respectively, from juvenile violent crime and property crime rates in 2008. Compared to 1998 data, researchers say that property crimes and violent crimes committed by juveniles have decreased dramatically, with the rates in Massachusetts for violent crime plummeting by 36 percent and property crime dropping by 45 percent over the 11-year study window. Researchers have also observed a decline in Massachusetts juvenile court charges. For the FY 2012, the total number of “youthful offender” and delinquency proceedings brought before state juvenile courts dropped 13 percent from FY 2011 data, representing nearly a 44 percent decline in total proceedings since 2008.
Heavy marijuana use among teens has increased drastically in recent years, with nearly one in 10 sparking up 20 times or more each month, according to a new survey of young Americans released this morning. The findings represent nearly an 80 percent increase in past-month heavy marijuana use among high school aged youth since 2008. Overall, the rate of marijuana use among teens has increased. Past month marijuana users, or teens that have used marijuana in the month prior to the survey, increased 42 percent, to 27 percent of teens, compared to 2008 findings. Past-year and lifetime use also increased, but not as drastically, at 26 percent and 21 percent respectively.
A study conducted in a sexual assault resource center found more than 70 percent of alleged offenders were known to the victims. The report by researchers at the University of Tennessee, “Percentage of Named Offenders on the Registry at the Time of the Assault: Reports from Sexual Assault Survivors,” used one year of data from the resource center during which it provided services to approximately 1,300 people. Full names were provided for more than 60 percent of the known assailants. Of those 566 cases only 4.8 percent were found on a sex offender registry and even fewer, 3.7 percent (21 cases) were listed publicly due to the date of conviction. More than 95 percent of the alleged offenders were know personally to the victims in the 21 cases where the offender could have been identified by the sex offender registry. Researchers concluded the sex offender registries might have limited impact due to the fact that they only include convicted sex offenders.