Reducing Harms to Boys and Young Men of Color from Criminal Justice System Involvement

This paper reviews systemic, institutional, and community policies and practices that greatly impact the life chances of boys and young men of color. Policy and practice changes that would reduce criminal justice engagement and that would reduce the harms caused to communities of color from criminal justice engagement are identified and suggestions are made for developing more evidence of effectiveness for initiatives in this area

Be Careful What You Wish For: Legal Sanctions and Public Safety Among Adolescent Offenders in Juvenile and Criminal Court

Three decades of legislative activism have resulted in a broad expansion of states\u27 authority to transfer adolescent offenders from juvenile to criminal (adult) courts. At the same time that legislatures have broadened the range of statutes and lowered the age thresholds for eligibility for transfer, states also have reallocated discretion away from judges and instituted simplified procedures that permit prosecutors to elect whether adolescents are prosecuted and sentenced in juvenile or criminal court. These developments reflect popular and political concerns that relatively lenient or attenuated punishment in juvenile court violates proportionality principles for serious crimes committed by adolescents, and is ineffective at deterring or controlling future crimes. This legislative activism has reshaped the boundaries of the juvenile court, and animated calls for its elimination. Yet these developments have taken place in a near vacuum of empirical analysis of the efficacy of these measures to increase punishment or reduce crime. Jurisprudential analyses of the fit between the traditional doctrines of immaturity and reduced culpability of juveniles also has lagged far behind the pace of legislative change. The redrawing of the boundaries of the juvenile court also has not reflected new knowledge on adolescent development, the legal socialization of adolescents, and their responsiveness to criminal sanctions. The new boundaries of the juvenile court also threaten to reify and intensify social and racial dimensions of criminal punishment. To address these questions, we conducted a natural experiment to assess whether prosecuting and sentencing adolescent felony offenders in the criminal court leads to harsher punishment, and whether that harsher punishment translates into improved public safety. We show that serious adolescent offenders prosecuted in the criminal court are likely to be rearrested more quickly and more often for violent, property and weapons offenses, and they are more often and more quickly returned to incarceration. Adolescents prosecuted and punished in the juvenile court are more likely to be rearrested for drug offenses. These results suggest that law and policy facilitating wholesale waiver or categorical exclusion of certain groups of adolescents based solely on offense and age, are ineffective at both specific deterrence of serious crime, despite political rhetoric insisting the opposite. Such laws may increase the risk of serious crimes by adolescents and young adults, by heavily mortgaging their possibilities to deflect their criminal behavioral trajectory and enter a path of prosocial human development. Returning to a discretionary, judge-centered transfer policy, rather than wholesale waiver or surgical exclusion of entire categories of adolescent offenders, would limit the number of youth subjected to criminal court prosecution and harsh punishment conditions in adult corrections. A policy of discretionary transfer of only the most serious offenders, whose eligibility for transfer would be transparently assessed with full access to evidence and expertise, would ensure proportional punishment for the few adolescents whose severe crimes demand greater punishment than is available in the juvenile court, and whose punishment as juveniles might corrode the legitimacy of the juvenile court

Models for Change Legacy Phase Evaluation Report

Note: This evaluation is accompanied by an evaluation of the National Campaign for this initiative as well as introduction to the evaluation effort by MacArthur's President, Julia Stasch, and a response to the evaluation from the program team. Access these related materials here: https://www.macfound.org/press/grantee-publications/evaluation-models-change-initiative.This report summarizes the findings of the Evaluation of the Models for Change Legacy Phase andreviews what has been achieved thus far to create fairer, more effective, and developmentallyappropriate justice systems throughout the United States; documents the progress that has been madein specific goal areas; and assesses current capacity to sustain and grow these efforts in the years ahead

Frequency and Severity Approaches to Indexing Exposure to Trauma: The Critical Incident History Questionnaire for Police Officers

The Critical Incident History Questionnaire indexes cumulative exposure to traumatic incidents in police by examining incident frequency and rated severity. In over 700 officers, event severity was negatively correlated (rs = -61) with frequency of exposure. Cumulative exposure indices that varied emphasis on frequency and severity-using both nomothetic and idiographic methods-all showed satisfactory psychometric properties and similar correlates. All indices were only modestly related to posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms. Ratings of incident severity were not influenced by whether officers had ever experienced the incident. Because no index summarizing cumulative exposure to trauma had superior validity, our findings suggest that precision is not increased if frequency is weighted by severity

Punishment, Proportionality and Jurisdictional Transfer of Adolescent Offenders: A Test of the Leniency Gap Hypothesis

In the past two decades, nearly every state has expanded its authority and simplified its procedures to transfer adolescent offenders from juvenile to criminal (adult) courts. As a result, the use of jurisdictional transfer has grown steadily. These developments reflect popular and political concerns that punishment in juvenile courts is too lenient for serious crimes committed by adolescents. Yet there is mixed evidence that expanded transfer authority has produced more certain or severe punishments for adolescents prosecuted in criminal courts. Some empirical studies show that adolescents transferred to criminal court are more likely to be convicted, sentenced to prison, and serve longer sentences, compared to similar cases that remain in the juvenile court. Other studies show that transferred cases receive similar sentences or receive less severe punishments. In this article, we report the results of a natural experiment comparing detention, disposition and custodial sentence lengths for matched groups of adolescents charged with serious felony offenses in juvenile or criminal courts. We report that adolescents prosecuted as adults are at a greater risk of detention and incarceration, and if incarcerated, sentenced to longer sentences than adolescents in juvenile courts. Yet the disparity between outcomes in juvenile and criminal courts is not as large as the rhetoric surrounding this issue would lead one to believe. The resilience of common law doctrine of diminished culpability of adolescents is evident in the limited effects of expanded jurisdictional transfer activity on sentencing and punishment of adolescents in criminal court. We discuss the jurisprudential and social policy implications of denying adolescents the latitude of a traditionally more rehabilitative and lenient juvenile court

Punishment, Proportionality, and Jurisdictional Transfer of Adolescent Offenders: A Test of the Leniency Gap Hypothesis

In the past two decades, nearly every state has expanded its authority and simplified its procedures to transfer adolescent offenders from juvenile to criminal (adult) courts. As a result, the use of jurisdictional transfer has grown steadily. These developments reflect popular and political concerns that punishment in juvenile courts is too lenient for serious crimes committed by adolescents. Yet there is mixed evidence that expanded transfer authority has produced more certain or severe punishments for adolescents prosecuted in criminal courts. Some empirical studies show that adolescents transferred to criminal court are more likely to be convicted, sentenced to prison, and serve longer sentences compared to similar cases that remain in the juvenile court. Other studies show that transferred cases receive similar sentences or receive less severe punishments. In this Article, we report the results of a natural experiment comparing detention, disposition, and custodial sentence lengths for matched groups of adolescents charged with serious felony offenses in juvenile or criminal courts. We find that adolescents prosecuted as adults are at a greater risk of detention and incarceration and, if incarcerated, are sentenced to longer sentences than adolescents in juvenile courts. Yet the disparity between outcomes in juvenile and criminal courts may not be as large as the rhetoric surrounding this issue would lead one to believe. The resilience of the common law doctrine of diminished culpability of adolescents is evident in the limited effects of expanded jurisdictional transfer activity on sentencing and punishment of adolescents in criminal court. Denying adolescents the latitude of a traditionally more rehabilitative and lenient juvenile court indeed results in more severe punishments; however, this jurisdictional shift also creates the opportunity for organizational and discretionary adaptations to case processing that might contradict popular efforts to criminal adolescent offenders