Titus, Jennifer

NEWS 7 Articles (Tampa, FL)

Published: 9:00 AM EST February 28, 2018

The goal of this policy brief is to provide state and local policymakers as well as education and juvenile justice leaders with information about how they can use requirements under ESSA to improve education and workforce outcomes for youth in long-term juvenile justice facilities.

Adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) have been identified as a key risk factor for a range of negative life outcomes, including delinquency. Much less is known about how exposure to negative experiences relates to continued offending among juvenile offenders. In this study, we examine the effect of ACEs on recidivism in a large sample of previously referred youth from the State of Florida who were followed for 1 year after participation in community-based treatment.

This report presents findings from a project in which researchers examined six mentoring programs in Ohio to better understand their impact on recidivism. Youth on parole and probation who received mentoring services were matched with similar youth who did not receive mentoring services. While some reductions in recidivism were found, the differences were not statistically significant. The study looked at six Ohio mentoring programs and their impact on youth recidivism.

This report provides an introductory snapshot of what happens when justice-involved youth are held by the state: where they are held, under what conditions, and for what offenses. It offers a starting point for people new to the issue to consider the ways that the problems of the criminal justice system are mirrored in the juvenile system: racial disparities, punitive conditions, pretrial detention, and overcriminalization.

Miller, Elizabeth

New Mexico In Depth 2-26-2018

“Without realizing it, we treat girls differently because of our desire to keep girls ‘safe’” … In the interest of protecting girls from potentially volatile home situations or reducing possible exposure to violence or sexual abuse—and many have a history of forced sexual contact—the county’s report found they were sending these girls to the detention center.”

This report reviews a number of prominent frameworks that are available to help youth justice systems rely on positive outcomes rather than recidivism to measure their effectiveness. These include the Developmental Assets model, the 5Cs model, the Youth Program Quality Assessment model, the Positive Youth Justice model, and the Youth Thrive framework. Each model or framework aligns with the key principles of positive youth development as well as the large body of research on desistance from crime, which is also presented in this report (p. 1).

This report evaluates the New York City-based Arches Transformative Mentoring program, finding that participation in the program reduces one-year felony reconviction by over two-thirds, and reduces two-year felony reconviction by over half, with especially profound impacts for the youngest program participants. The program's evidence-based curriculum is completed over a 6-12-month period and delivered in a group setting by "credible messengers," direct service professionals with backgrounds similar to the populations they serve.

In 2012, Georgia passed comprehensive criminal justice reform legislation. The reforms restructured offense classifications and sentencing policies for drug and property offenses with the goal of tailoring justice system responses to the severity of the offense committed. This brief analyzes trends in commitments, sentence length, and time served for offense categories affected by the reforms. Commitments to prison for these offenses declined 13 percent, and probation commitments fell 9 percent.

In 2010, South Carolina passed the Sentencing Reform Act, enacting comprehensive criminal justice reforms. One key reform encouraged the Department of Probation, Parole, and Pardon Services to employ administration responses to parole and probation violations, rather than sending people to prison. This brief finds that, following these reforms, use of administrative responses increased.