Professional Perspectives of Youth Justice Policy Implementation:Contextual and Coalface Challenges

© 2020 The Authors. The Howard Journal of Crime and Justice published by Howard League and John Wiley & Sons Ltd This article offers a multilayered analysis of the subjective perspectives and experiences of key youth justice stakeholders; exploring the inherent dynamism, contradiction, non-linearity, and contentiousness of youth justice policy implementation. We interrogate how professionals make sense and meaning of policy in the real world and how professional perspectives drive and shape their contributions to policy implementation nationally and locally. Contemporaneously, these analyses enable us to critically examine the caricatures, stereotypes, and assumptions that can (mis)inform common constructions, representations, and understandings of youth justice policy trajectories, including those relating to contextual stability, conceptual clarity, robust evidence bases, and purported foundations in stakeholder consensus

Managing the Socially Marginalized: Attitudes Towards Welfare, Punishment and Race

Welfare and incarceration policies have converged to form a system of governance over socially marginalized groups, particularly racial minorities. In both of these policy areas, rehabilitative and social support objectives have been replaced with a more punitive and restrictive system. The authors examine the convergence in individual-level attitudes concerning welfare and criminal punishment, using national survey data. The authors\u27 analysis indicates a statistically significant relationship between punitive attitudes toward welfare and punishment. Furthermore, accounting for the respondents\u27 racial attitudes explains the bivariate relationship between welfare and punishment. Thus, racial attitudes seemingly link support for punitive approaches to opposition to welfare expenditures. The authors discuss the implications of this study for welfare and crime control policies by way of the conclusion

Quality of the Literacy Environment in Inclusive Early Childhood Special Education ECSE Classrooms

The purpose of this study was to examine the quality of the literacy environment in inclusive early childhood special education (ECSE) classrooms (N = 54). The first aim was to describe the quality of the literacy environment in terms of structure (i.e., book materials and print/writing materials) and instruction (i.e., instructional support). The second aim was to examine the interrelationships among teacher and classroom characteristics and the quality of the literacy environment. Results showed that, on average, the quality of the structural literacy environment was low to moderate, and the quality of the instructional literacy environment was generally low. The number of children who were Dual Language Learners related to the quality of the structural literacy environment. The quality of the instructional literacy environment was positively associated with two teacher variables (teacher education and self-efficacy) and was negatively associated with one teacher variable (the number of language and literacy workshops attended). Implications are discussed

Early childhood educators’ knowledge, beliefs, education, experiences, and children’s language- and literacy-learning opportunities: What is the connection?

In this study, we investigated how multiple types of knowledge and beliefs, along with holding an early childhood-related degree and teaching experience, were linked to amounts of early childhood educators’ language and literacy instruction. Quantile regression was used to estimate associations between these variables along a continuum of language and literacy instruction for 222 early childhood educators. In general, low levels of language- and literacy-related instruction were observed; however, the use of quantile regression afforded unique insight into the associations of knowledge, beliefs, education, and teaching experience with instruction when levels of instruction were sufficient. These findings would not have been visible with traditional, linear regression models. Specifically, two types of knowledge were examined: disciplinary-related content knowledge about the structure of language and knowledge for use in teaching language and literacy to young children. Only educators’ disciplinary content knowledge was associated with amount of instruction. Associations between beliefs about language and literacy instruction and amount of instruction were less consistent. Generally, holding an early childhood related degree was positively associated with language and literacy instruction whereas teaching experience was negatively associated with the amount of instruction. Implications for studying educators and understanding the associations among educator characteristics and instruction are discussed

Nebraska Alternative to Detention Programs 2015 to 2016

The overarching goal of an alternative to detention (ATD) program is to ensure that youth released to the community are adequately supervised instead of being detained. JJI set out to evaluate whether youth would have in fact been detained (that is, are we using the program as an alternative to detention?). Secondarily, we planned to evaluate whether the program ensured that the youth showed up for the scheduled court date and refrained from any new law violations while placed in the community. The research questions that JJI hoped to answer were as follows: 1. How many youth are served in an ATD? 2. How many of those youth would have gone to detention, without the ATD? 3. Are ATDs effective programs for ensuring youth get to their court date? 4. Do ATDs help youth avoid additional charges while the court date is pending? Number of youth served? Programs funded through Community-based Aid, including ATDs, are statutorily required to report data to the Nebraska Commission on Law Enforcement and Criminal Justice (Nebraska Crime Commission or NCC) (Neb. Rev. Stat. § 43-2404.02(4a)). This requirement is fulfilled when programs enter youth information into the Juvenile Case Management System (JCMS). However, many of these programs serve youth at various stages, some pre-adjudicated and others who have been adjudicated to probation. For an accurate count of youth served, programs must enter data on all youth served. The Office of Probation has indicated that they cannot share any information about youth who are on probation because it is a violation of confidentiality. However, the community-based aid statutes are clear regarding confidential records. Neb. Rev. Stat. §43-2404.02(c) specifically states that: ”Providing the commission access to records and information for, as well as the commission granting access to records and information from, the common data set is not a violation of confidentiality provisions under any law, rule, or regulation if done in good faith for purposes of evaluation. Records and documents, regardless of physical form, that are obtained or produced or presented to the commission for the common data set are not public records for purposes of sections 84-712 to 84-712.09. Furthermore, Neb. Rev. Stat. § 43-2404.02 mandates that the Office of Probation shall share data with the Nebraska Crime Commission, “to ensure that the dataset permits evaluation of recidivism and other measures.” How many of those youth would have gone to detention, without the ATD? In the State of Nebraska, the Office of Juvenile Probation Administration screens youth using the Nebraska Juvenile Intake Screening Risk Assessment prior to making a recommendation on whether a youth should be detained. The data indicates that 26.2% of the youth participating in an ATD were the intended population and scored high enough to be detained, if not for an available ATD. However, once again, in 476 cases the data on RAI score not completed, so we are unable to assess whether youth served in our ATDs would have otherwise been detained. Are ATDs effective programs for ensuring youth get to their court date? JJI sought court data on court dates for the youth served through an alternative to detention from the Court Administrator. Unfortunately, when a youth fails to appear for court that is coded as continued, but the reason the case is continued is not captured. In the future, JJI will build fields to capture information related to court dates and ask programs to track whether the youth appeared in court as scheduled. Do ATDs help youth avoid additional charges while the court date is pending? From the 877 youth examined, only 91 or roughly 10%, had a new law violation between the youth’s date of enrollment in an ATD and the date of discharge. Unfortunately, while these appear to be very promising results, with so much data missing, the results are incomplete and not valid. Overall, the missing data compiled for this report led to an insufficient count of youth participating in ATDs and an inadequate evaluation into how alternatives to detention are being used in Nebraska

An empirical investigation of the dimensionality of the physical literacy environment in early childhood classrooms

This study investigated the dimensionality of the physical literacy environment of early childhood education classrooms. Data on the classroom physical literacy environment were collected from 245 classrooms using the Classroom Literacy Observation Profile. A combination of confirmatory and exploratory factor analysis was used to identify five separate dimensions of the physical literacy environment; including (a) variety and use of books, (b) variety and use of writing center materials, (c) variety and use of technology, (d) variety of environmental print and (e) variety and use of other literacy-related materials. Overall, these five dimensions demonstrated reasonable reliability and validity. Implications for investigating the physical literacy environment and future directions for research are discussed

Delivering McJustice? The Probation Factory at the Magistrates’ Court

Despite playing a pivotal role in thousands of defendants’ experiences of criminal justice every year, the role of probation workers in the English and Welsh Magistrates’ courts has been neglected by researchers for several decades. This article presents the findings of an ethnographic study of the work of probation staff in two such courts. The study suggests that probation work in this context is being squeezed into an operating model which bears all the hallmarks of a process described by Ritzer as ‘McDonaldization’. It is argued that the proximate causes of McDonaldization in this sub-field of probation work lie at the intersection of parallel Government-led reform programmes – Transforming Rehabilitation and Transforming Justice – which have respectively focused on creating a market for probation services and enhancing the administrative efficiency of criminal proceedings. Until now, almost no attention has been paid, either by researchers or policy-makers, to the intersection of these programmes of reform in the probation suites at the Magistrates’ courts

Approaches to detect genetic effects that differ between two strata in genome-wide meta-analyses: Recommendations based on a systematic evaluation.

Genome-wide association meta-analyses (GWAMAs) conducted separately by two strata have identified differences in genetic effects between strata, such as sex-differences for body fat distribution. However, there are several approaches to identify such differences and an uncertainty which approach to use. Assuming the availability of stratified GWAMA results, we compare various approaches to identify between-strata differences in genetic effects. We evaluate type I error and power via simulations and analytical comparisons for different scenarios of strata designs and for different types of between-strata differences. For strata of equal size, we find that the genome-wide test for difference without any filtering is the best approach to detect stratum-specific genetic effects with opposite directions, while filtering for overall association followed by the difference test is best to identify effects that are predominant in one stratum. When there is no a priori hypothesis on the type of difference, a combination of both approaches can be recommended. Some approaches violate type I error control when conducted in the same data set. For strata of unequal size, the best approach depends on whether the genetic effect is predominant in the larger or in the smaller stratum. Based on real data from GIANT (>175 000 individuals), we exemplify the impact of the approaches on the detection of sex-differences for body fat distribution (identifying up to 10 loci). Our recommendations provide tangible guidelines for future GWAMAs that aim at identifying between-strata differences. A better understanding of such effects will help pinpoint the underlying mechanisms