Each response is to be in APA format (minus a cover-page and abstr

Each response is to be in APA format (minus a cover-page and
abstract), be 750 words maximum in length no less, have in-text
citations from peer reviews and cite what page and paragraph
where source is found with a corresponding reference page, and
include biblical in-text support to support your Christian world
view. PLEASE MAKE SURE YOU INCLUDE A TITLE PAGE,
ABSTRACT, AND REFERENCES!No Late Work!
DUE: by February 25, 2021 Thursday by 11:59 a.m
READ: CH. 17, 21-22 (Sherman & Jacobs).
4 QUESTIONS GRADING RUBRIC
Make sure to include peer-reviewed articles in text citations,
along with biblical context.
NO MORE THAN 750 WORDS!
KEEP IN MIND:
The title page, abstract is no less than 150 words, keywords,
and references.
The 750 words does not include the title page, abstract,
keywords or references, these are not part of the 750 words. The
750 words are the body not title page, abstract, keywords or
references.
4 QUESTIONS:
1. What is the role of federalism in framing youth issues?
2. What are the Juvenile Detention Alternatives Initiative's five
objectives for reform in the juvenile justice system?
3. What is important to consider when using a data-driven
approach to decision making?
4. How can fragmentation and tunneling be overcome?
1

MSN5550 Health Promotion: Prevention of Disease
Case Study Rubric
Criteria Unsatisfactory-Beginning Developing Accomplished
Exemplary Total
Ideas,
Arguments,
& Analysis
0-30 points 35-39 points 40-44 points 45-50 points /50
Ideas expressed lack an
understanding of the case
study. Comments are
irrelevant, off-topic, and/or
confusing to follow.
Viewpoint, if given, is not
supported with evidence or
examples.
Ideas expressed in case
study show a minimal
understanding of the topic.
Comments are general in
nature and/or occasionally
may not be relevant.
Rehashes or summarizes
ideas with limited analysis,
original thought, and/or
supported viewpoints.
study are mostly substantive

and relevant to topic; some
original thought.
Demonstrates logical
thinking, reasoning, and/or
analysis for most part.
Viewpoint is supported with
evidence and/or examples.
study include original
thought, substantial
depth, and are relevant to
topic. Responses show
strong logical thinking,
reasoning, and analysis
with evidence and
examples. Construction of
new meaning and insights
are evident.
Connection
to Course
Materials
No connections are made
to readings or other course
materials (lectures, media,
resources, etc.), and/or if
made, are not clearly
stated and are largely
personal opinions.
Minimal direct connections
are made to readings and/or

other course materials
(lectures, media, resources,
etc.). Connections are
largely inferred and
somewhat unclear at times.
Some direct connections are
made to readings and/or
other course materials
(lectures, media, resources,
etc.) and are clearly stated
for the most part.
Strong, direct connections
are made to readings
and/or other course
materials (lectures, media,
resources, etc.) and are
clearly stated.
Content and
Pedagogical
Knowledge
The case study response
displays a lack of
comprehension of the
assignment.
The case study responses
are partially addressed.
There are components of

the assignment not
addressed.
demonstrates
comprehension of
assignment expectations,
however, is missing
responses to some of the
case study questions.
demonstrates
comprehension of
assignment expectations
and includes the essential
components of the
assignment.
2
Case Study Rubric (continued)
Criteria Unsatisfactory-Beginning Developing Accomplished
Exemplary Total
Writing

Quality
0-6 points 7 points 8 points 9-10 points /10
Responses to case study
show a below average/poor
writing style that lacks
standard English, and/or is
difficult for readers to
follow. Contains frequent
errors in grammar,
punctuation, usage, and
spelling.
show an average and/or
casual writing style using
standard English that is
generally clear but contains
some errors in grammar,
spelling.
show above average writing
style that is clear using
standard English with minor
errors in grammar,
punctuation, usage, and/or
spelling.
are well written and
clearly articulated using
standard English,
characterized by elements

of a strong writing style
with correct grammar,
spelling.
TOTAL POINTS (sum of Criteria) /100
Source: Rubric by Denise Kreiger, Instructional
Design/Technology Services, SC&I, Rutgers, 3/2014
Source: Rubric by Denise Kreiger, Instructional
Design/Technology Services, SC&I, Rutgers, 3/2014
MSN 5550 Health Promotion: Prevention of Disease
Case Study Module 6
Instructions: Read the following case study and answer the
reflective questions. Please provide
rationales for your answers. Make sure to provide
citations/references for your answers in APA
format.
Deadline: Due by Sunday at 23:59 p.m.

CASE STUDY: Albert
Albert Mitchell is a 36-year-old man who will be traveling to
Dubai to give a business presentation in
3 months. Although he has traveled widely in the United States
as a consultant, this is his first trip to
the Middle East.
He requests information regarding immunizations needed before
his trip. Albert states that as he will
be in Dubai for only a few days, he is unlikely to contract a
disease in such a short time and
therefore believes that it is illogical to obtain immunizations.
Albert states that he has heard that the side effects of the
immunizations might be worse than the
diseases they prevent. He is also concerned about leaving his
wife at home alone because she is 6
months pregnant.
Reflective Questions
1. How would you address Albert’s beliefs?
2. What learning would be needed in each domain?
3. What learning theories would you consider?
4. How might his family concerns be addressed?
Juvenile Justice
Juvenile Justice

Advancing Research,
Policy, and Practice
Edited by
FRANCINE T. SHERMAN and
FRANCINE H. JACOBS
John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
This book is printed on acid-free paper. !1
Copyright # 2011 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc. All rights
reserved.
Published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey.
Published simultaneously in Canada.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a
retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means,
electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning, or
otherwise, except as permitted under Section 107 or 108 of
the 1976 United States Copyright Act, without either the prior
written permission of the Publisher, or authorization
through payment of the appropriate per-copy fee to the
Copyright Clearance Center, Inc., 222 Rosewood Drive,
Danvers,
MA 01923, (978) 750-8400, fax (978) 646-8600, or on the Web

at www.copyright.com. Requests to the Publisher for
permission should be addressed to the Permissions Department,
John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 111 River Street, Hoboken, NJ
07030, (201) 748-6011, fax (201) 748-6008.
Limit of Liability/Disclaimer of Warranty: While the publisher
and author have used their best efforts in preparing this book,
they make no representations or warranties with respect to the
accuracy or completeness of the contents of this book and
specifically disclaim any implied warranties of merchantability
or fitness for a particular purpose. No warranty may be created
or extended by sales representatives or written sales materials.
The advice and strategies contained herein may not be suitable
for your situation. You should consult with a professional where
appropriate. Neither the publisher nor author shall be liable
for any loss of profit or any other commercial damages,
including but not limited to special, incidental, consequential,
or
other damages.
This publication is designed to provide accurate and
authoritative information in regard to the subject matter
covered. It is
sold with the understanding that the publisher is not engaged in
rendering professional services. If legal, accounting, medical,
psychological, or any other expert assistance is required, the

services of a competent professional person should be sought.
Designations used by companies to distinguish their products
are often claimed as trademarks. In all instances where
John Wiley & Sons, Inc., is aware of a claim, the product names
appear in initial capital or all capital letters. Readers,
however, should contact the appropriate companies for more
complete information regarding trademarks and registration.
For general information on our other products and services
please contact our Customer Care Department within the U.S.
at (800) 762-2974, outside the United States at (317) 572-3993
or fax (317) 572-4002.
Wiley also publishes its books in a variety of electronic
formats. Some content that appears in print may not be available
in
electronic books. For more information about Wiley products,
visit our Web site at www.wiley.com.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data:
Juvenile justice: advancing research, policy, and practice/edited
by Francine T. Sherman and Francine H. Jacobs.
p. cm.
Includes index.
ISBNs 978-0-470-49704-3; 978-1-118-10586-3; 978-1-118-
10585-6; 978-1-118-10587-0; 978-1-118-09337-5

1. Juvenile justice, Administration of—United States. 2.
Juvenile corrections—United States. 3. Juvenile
delinquents—United States. I. Sherman, Francine T., 1955- II.
Jacobs, Francine H.
HV9104.J864 2011
364.630973—dc22 2011014932
Printed in the United States of America
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
To all the children, families, advocates, practitioners,
and policy makers involved with juvenile justice,
acknowledging the critical roles you play in creating
a more humane and effective system
Contents
Foreword Justice for America’s Children xi
Marian Wright Edelman
Preface xv
Francine T. Sherman and Francine H. Jacobs
Introduction xvii
Francine T. Sherman and Francine H. Jacobs
Contributors xxvii

SECTION I
Framing the Issues 1
Chapter 1 A Developmental View of Youth in the
Juvenile Justice System 3
Marty Beyer
Chapter 2 Youth in the Juvenile Justice System:
Characteristics and Patterns of Involvement 24
Kristi Holsinger
Chapter 3 The Health of Youth in the Juvenile
Justice System 44
Paula Braverman and Robert Morris
Chapter 4 Children’s Rights and Relationships:
A Legal Framework 68
Francine T. Sherman and Hon. Jay Blitzman
Chapter 5 A Vision for the American Juvenile Justice System:
The Positive Youth Development Perspective 92
Richard M. Lerner, Michael D. Wiatrowski, Megan Kiely
Mueller,
Christopher M. Napolitano, Kristina L. Schmid, and Anita
Pritchard
vii

SECTION II
Understanding Individual Youth 109
Chapter 6 Race, Ethnicity, and Ancestry in Juvenile Justice 111
James Bell and Raquel Mariscal
Chapter 7 The Role of Gender in Youth Systems:
Grace’s Story 131
Francine T. Sherman and Jessica H. Greenstone
Chapter 8 Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender (LGBT)
Youth and the Juvenile Justice System 156
Laura Garnette, Angela Irvine, Carolyn Reyes, and Shannan
Wilber
Chapter 9 Adolescent Parents and the Juvenile Justice System:
Toward Developmentally and Socioculturally Based
Provision of Services 174
Ellen E. Pinderhughes, Karen T. Craddock, and LaTasha L.
Fermin
SECTION III
Understanding Youth in Context 197
Chapter 10 Parents, Families, and the Juvenile Justice System
199
Francine H. Jacobs, Claudia Miranda-Julian, and Rachael
Kaplan

Chapter 11 Violence Within Families and Intimate
Relationships 223
Linda L. Baker, Alison J. Cunningham, and Kimberly E. Harris
Chapter 12 Making a Place for Youth: Social Capital,
Resilience, and Communities 245
Robert L. Hawkins, Maryna Vashchenko, and Courtney Davis
Chapter 13 The Developmental Impact of Community Violence
267
Edmund Bruyere and James Garbarino
viii C O N T E N T S
Chapter 14 The Right to a Quality Education for Children
and Youth in the Juvenile Justice System 286
Kathleen B. Boundy and Joanne Karger
Chapter 15 Juvenile Prison Schooling and Reentry:
Disciplining Young Men of Color 310
Sabina E. Vaught
Chapter 16 The System Response to the Commercial
Sexual Exploitation of Girls 331
Francine T. Sherman and Lisa Goldblatt Grace
Chapter 17 How American Government Frames

Youth Problems 352
Timothy Ross and Joel Miller
Chapter 18 Youth Perspectives on Health Care 369
Rachel Oliveri, Ila Deshmukh Towery, Leah Jacobs,
and Francine H. Jacobs
SECTION IV
Working for Change 389
Chapter 19 Youth-Led Change 391
Barry Dym, Ken Tangvik, Jesus Gerena, and Jessica Dym
Bartlett
Chapter 20 The End of the Reform School? 409
Vincent Schiraldi, Marc Schindler, and Sean J. Goliday
Chapter 21 Collaboration in the Service of Better Systems
for Youth 433
Anne F. Farrell and Diane M. Myers
Chapter 22 Getting on Board With Juvenile Justice
Information Technologies 456
Stan Schneider and Lola Simpson
Contents ix

Chapter 23 Establishing Effective Community-Based Care
in Juvenile Justice 477
Peter W. Greenwood and Susan Turner
Chapter 24 Better Research for Better Policies 505
Jeffrey A. Butts and John K. Roman
Afterword 527
Congressman Robert (Bobby) Scott
About the Editors 531
Author Index 533
Subject Index 551
x C O N T E N T S
Foreword: Justice for America’s Children
MARIAN WRIGHT EDELMAN
President, Children’s Defense Fund, Washington, DC
The test of the morality of a society is what
it does for its children.
—Dietrich Bonhoeffer (c. 1940)
Has America turned her back on her most
vulnerable children?
America is the richest nation in the world.

We rank #1 in gross domestic product (GDP),
and we have more billionaires than any other
country. Surely, a nation so blessed will take
care of its children, who are its greatest treasure,
its future, and its most vulnerable population.
Yet the gap between rich and poor in
America is greater than in any other major
industrialized nation
1
and is growing wider,
dooming millions of children to the fate of
growing up poor—if they survive infancy.
Today, tens of thousands of poor babies in
rich America enter the world with multiple
strikes against them: born without prenatal
care, at low birth weight, and to a teen, poor,
and poorly educated single mother and absent
father. Many are funneled from birth into what
the Children’s Defense Fund calls ‘‘the cradle-
to-prison pipeline,’’ which traps children into
life paths marked by abuse, illness, school failure
and suspension, detention, incarceration, and,
too often, early death. Others become trapped
in the pipeline to prison later in life.
At crucial points in a poor child’s develop-
ment, more risks pile on—the loss of a parent,
sibling, or friend; low teacher expectations;
family or neighborhood violence; gang
involvement—making a successful transition
to productive adulthood significantly less likely
and involvement in the criminal justice system

significantly more likely. For children of color,
who are disproportionately poor, the odds of
youth detention and eventual incarceration as
adults greatly exceed those for White children.
Black children are 3 times as likely as White
children to be poor. A Black boy born in 2001
is more than 5 times as likely as a White boy
born that same year to be incarcerated at some
point during his lifetime.
And, in the past 20 years, sentencing for
juveniles in our nation has become increas-
ingly harsh and punitive and there has been an
increase of 72% in the number of children
held in America’s juvenile detention centers;
2
thousands of children are held in adult prisons.
As a number of the chapters in this im-
portant volume illustrate, the experiences of
detained and incarcerated children in America
are rarely rehabilitative. Children and teens
who go through our nation’s juvenile justice
2
Myers, D. M., & Farrell, Anne F. (2008). Reclaiming
Lost Opportunities: Applying Public Health Models in
Juvenile Justice. Children and Youth Services Review 30,
1159–1177.
1
OECD Report (2009), Growing Unequal? Income Distri-
bution and Poverty in OECD Countries, notes that ‘‘the

United States is the country with the highest inequality
level and poverty rate across the OECD, Mexico and
Turkey excepted.’’
xi
system are condemned to long terms at large
youth detention centers and adult prisons only
to languish in cells surrounded by thick walls
and razor wire. Too often, they are locked
down for long periods of the day with no real
opportunities for rehabilitation, treatment, or
education. Many youth become hardened
criminals while incarcerated, and at the end
of their sentences they are released into com-
munities that don’t have adequate resources to
reintegrate them.
Tragically, instead of helping disadvantaged
youth become responsible adults, the juvenile
justice system today has become a major feeder
into the cradle-to-prison pipeline, leading
young people into the adult criminal system.
That pipeline runs through economically de-
pressed neighborhoods and failing schools;
across vacant lots where playgrounds and health
facilities should be; and in and out of broken,
understaffed child welfare agencies. By the time
many children get arrested and are brought
before a juvenile court, they have been pro-
vided far too little loving and thoughtful adult
support—only to face purported child-serving
systems that treat them unjustly.

The high number of cases that juvenile
courts administer—an estimated 1.6 million
cases each year nationwide—is attributable to
the fact that we, the adults, have let our most
vulnerable children down. We don’t pay at-
tention to early warning signs, such as a drop
in grades or a reluctance to go to school, that
indicate poor children need help; we don’t
provide them with adequate mental health
services or other counsel; and we have per-
mitted the increasing criminalization of chil-
dren at younger and younger ages for
behaviors that used to be handled by families,
churches, teachers, and community organiza-
tions. We seem to have forgotten that children
are children, and that our job as adults is to
guarantee their safe passage to successful,
productive adulthood by guiding them, nur-
turing them, protecting them, and teaching
them.
It was not always so. America’s juvenile
justice system was once regarded as one of the
most enlightened in the world. It was founded
over 100 years ago on the principle that chil-
dren, unlike adults, are still developing and that
many of their perceptions, actions, and re-
actions are immature responses to an increas-
ingly complex world. The early American
juvenile justice philosophy taught that, with
the proper guidance, children can learn new
behaviors and attitudes as they mature. The
emphasis was on rehabilitation, not punishment
and retribution. In order to grow into respon-

sible and caring adults, it was believed, youthful
offenders need support, treatment, and care.
The editors of this volume and authors of
individual chapters urge us to remember that
the children involved in our juvenile justice
system are, first and foremost, children. Like all
children, they need the love and guidance of
adults—in their families, in their neighbor-
hoods, in their communities—to develop their
considerable potential and to thrive. And like
all children, they need a nurturing school
environment, the attention of caring and tal-
ented teachers who know their students can
learn, and a rigorous curriculum that gives all
students the skills to succeed in college and the
workplace. The fact that risk factors such as
poverty, discrimination, and personal tragedy
add stress to their young lives and increase their
chances of becoming trapped in the cradle-to-
prison pipeline should not cause us, the adults
in their lives, to lower our expectations for
their success or, worse, write them off or
abandon them. Indeed, their increased vul-
nerability should make us redouble our efforts
to give them the support and care they sorely
need. Repeatedly, in the chapters of this vol-
ume, we are reminded that deficit- and
xii F O R E W O R D : J U S T I C E F O R A M E R I C A ’ S
C H I L D R E N
punishment-based approaches to juvenile jus-
tice only feed the pipeline to prison and that

when we identify children’s strengths and
build on those strengths intentionally and
consistently, we can help children in the juve-
nile justice system grow and thrive.
In the pages that follow, you will meet
children involved in the juvenile justice system
who would have benefited from a coordinated,
caring, and developmentally appropriate system
of support. There is Marco, a young boy who
initially did well in school and loved science but
whose grades dropped when he became sad and
fearful in middle school because he was terror-
ized by gang violence in his neighbor hood and
witnessed the murder of a friend; no adults
picked up on signs of his stress or bothered to
check in with him to see what was going on. As
his fears grew, Marco succumbed to pressure to
join a gang ‘‘for protection’’ and, before long,
he was charged with being an accessory to a
crime in a drive-by shooting.
You also will hear from Grace, an intelli-
gent and outspoken young girl of color who,
shortly after her placement in a foster home
(a placement she perceived as punishment), was
charged with assault on a public employee and
‘‘disturbing school assembly.’’ After Grace’s
expulsion from school, she was shuttled among
foster homes, residential placements, and secure
detention, as the Department of Family Ser-
vices and the Department of Juvenile Justice
struggled over control of her case. And you will
visit a juvenile justice detention center school
where children 13–20 years old are regarded as
‘‘predators’’ by the adults in charge of their care

and whose ‘‘sentences’’ are extended when they
fall asleep in class.
The authors place such stories in the
context of the latest research and recommend
best practices on child development that
emphasize the importance of an environmen-
tal, developmental approach that builds on a
child’s strengths. The chapter on youth-led
change introduces us to youth who have dis-
covered, within themselves, immense re-
sources not only to change themselves but
to transform their communities, creating ‘‘vir-
tuous cycles’’ (instead of ‘‘vicious cycles’’) that
serve as positive feedback loops building on
increasing strengths.
The lessons in this book remind us that we
can—and that we must—do better, for the sake
of our children, their futures, and the sake of
our nation. Incarceration should not be our
society’s first or primary response to youth in
trouble. Judges need to look for opportunities
to offer poor, young, and minority defendants
the same second chances most privileged youth
can count on. These include alternatives to
incarceration such as restitution, community
service, electronic monitoring, drug rehabilita-
tion treatment, or placement in a ‘‘staff secure’’
(but not locked) community corrections facil-
ity. These youth in trouble must get the educa-
tion, special education, mental health
treatment, and other services they need. We
must ensure that systems intended to support
children actually help them, instead of serving

as entryways into the cradle-to-prison pipeline.
And as the final chapter in this volume makes
abundantly clear, child welfare, juvenile justice,
and education systems all need to collaborate to
design individualized systems of support that
build on each child’s strengths.
There is already good work under way in a
number of states and communities, and you
will read about that work throughout this
volume. Committed leaders and staff are
working to rid the system of the abusive
and punitive treatment of youth in custody
that now too often pushes them into the adult
criminal justice system. Reforms in Missouri’s
juvenile justice system, often now referred to
as the Missouri Model, have replaced large
training schools and detention facilities with
Foreword: Justice for America’s Children xiii
small group programs located as close to
youth’s homes as possible. These small pro-
grams offer a broad range of therapeutic inter-
ventions and are staffed by highly trained and
educated staff who understand that construc-
tive reform is best accomplished through pos-
itive behavioral supports and that the use of
force must be kept to a minimum. The
Missouri Model is being used to promote
juvenile justice reforms in Louisiana; New
Mexico; San Jose, California; and Washington,
DC, and other jurisdictions are waiting in line.
States such as California, Texas, and New York

are also making progress in establishing alter-
natives to secure confinement. The Juvenile
Detention Alternatives Initiative, begun by the
Annie E. Casey Foundation 15 years ago, has
reduced the number of youth in detention
and in some places also reduced the number
of juvenile arrests.
The goal of these and other reforms is to
create throughout our nation a juvenile justice
system that will give children the support they
need to grow into thoughtful, confident, car-
ing, and productive adults as they transition to
the community. We must bring to scale the
reforms already under way that build on the
strengths of children, youth, and families;
provide children and youth with individual-
ized and comprehensive services in the least
restrictive setting appropriate to their needs;
promote evidence-based approaches; and
assist and support the successful return of
youth to their communities. These new
approaches recognize the usefulness and
importance of tracking outcomes for youth
and responses to the new reforms over both
the short and long term.
At the same time, we must take action to
address the root causes of a child’s involvement
with the juvenile justice system so that we
might keep children and youth from ever
entering the system. We must eliminate child
poverty, assure every child comprehe nsive
health and mental health coverage and the
early childhood experiences and education

required to meet their individual needs, and
offer families the supports needed to keep their
children safe and in nurturing communities.
This volume is a call to action, and I
encourage everyone who reads it to take steps
to ensure that all America’s children are given
an equal chance to succeed. We must all work
together to replace the cradle-to-prison pipe-
line with a pipeline to responsible, productive
adulthood.
xiv F O R E W O R D : J U S T I C E F O R A M E R I C A ’ S
C H I L D R E N
Preface
FRANCINE T. SHERMAN AND FRANCINE H. JACOBS
The idea for this book grew out of our 5-year
collaboration on the Massachusetts Health Pass-
port Project (MHPP; first the Girls’ Health
Passport Project), which was an effort to de-
velop a system of continuous health-care access
for girls, and then boys and girls, committed to
the Massachusetts Department of Youth Ser-
vices. Fran Sherman was the principal investi-
gator of the core project to develop and
implement MHPP, and Fran Jacobs and her
team at Tufts University, of its evaluation.
Through many hours of discussion, debate,
and mutual education explicating MHPP goals
and teasing out ways to evaluate them, we each
discovered new, more critical ways of thinking
about our own fields, along with new connec-

tions among the worlds of law, policy, and the
social sciences. The experience was both
refreshing and challenging.
For us, that concrete, almost daily collabo-
ration reinforced our belief in interdisciplinary
conversations and understandings of juvenile
justice and broader youth policy. It also re-
inforced the importance of looking behind
practice (however successful you think you
are being) to understand how, and the extent
to which, it reflects current theory and research
on the one hand, and is approaching attainment
of its goals, on the other. That iterative process
of doing and analyzing and then redoing and
reanalyzing, is key to the development of sound
and innovative juvenile justice policy and
practice moving forward, and was practiced,
as well, in the development of this volume. In
that spirit, we hope this book will stimulate
both interdisciplinary conversations among stu-
dents, academics, policy makers and practition-
ers, and links among practice, research, and
theory to develop programs and policies pro-
moting positive development for youth and
their communities.
We have both benefited from the support
and dedication of talented students and col-
leagues. I (Fran Sherman) am grateful to the
Juvenile Rights Advocacy Project clinic and
seminar, which gives me the invaluable, daily
opportunity to see juvenile law and policy
through the fresh eyes and quick minds of
second- and third-year law students; to

Rebecca Vose and Tony DeMarco, my JRAP
colleagues, who have made my work life both
stimulating and fun and have been so generous
with their time, giving me time to work on this
volume, and Judy McMorrow, who has pro-
vided thoughtful and consistent counsel and
friendship through all of my 26 years at Boston
College Law School. I also want to thank my
national juvenile justice colleagues, many of
whom have contributed to this volume, who
demonstrate the power of vision, leadership,
devotion, and intentionality in implementing
smart and effective juvenile justice practices and
policies. The many youth and, particularly
young women, whom I have represented
xv
over 30 years, are an ongoing inspiration and
education, and are, of course at the core of this
volume.
Likewise, I (Fran Jacobs) have much
appreciated the support and encouragement
of colleagues in both of my departments at
Tufts—the Eliot-Pearson Department of
Child Development, and the Department
of Urban and Environmental Policy and
Planning—many of whom, from distinct
and distantly flung perches in the worlds of
child development and public policy, have
had encouraging words to share about the
worthiness of this book. Rachel Oliveri, Ila
Deshmukh Towery, Jessica Greenstone, and

Claudia Miranda-Julian expertly helped us
convert what was learned in the course of
the MHPP evaluation into broader lessons
for juvenile justice policy. And Maryna
Vashchenko and Jessica Dym Bartlett pro-
vided expert substantive consultation and
patient editorial intervention. At Boston
College Law School, Classie Davis, Celeste
Laramie, Kori Burnham, Lauren Whillhoite,
Hilary Jaffe, Coleman Peng, Dan Maltzman,
Mary Ann Neary, and Chester Kozikowski all
provided important research and administra-
tive support.
A number of foundations supported
the Girls’ Health Passport Project and the
Massachusetts Health Passport Project in
some way, and through that support helped
stimulate the thinking behind this volume.
They are: The Blue Cross Blue Shield of
Massachusetts Foundation, The Jacob and
Valeria Langeloth Foundation, The Boston
Foundation, the Florence V. Burden Founda-
tion, The Jessie B. Cox Charitable Trust, and
the Gardiner Howland Shaw Foundation. We
are grateful for their support and for the
encouragement and insight provided by our
grant administrators in each and every case. I
(Fran Sherman) have greatly appreciated the
support and fellowship I have received over the
years from my colleagues at the Annie E. Casey
Foundation’s Juvenile Detention Alternatives
Initiative. The many lessons I have learned
from them are woven through this volume.
We both thank our universities, Boston Col-

lege Law School and Tufts University, respec-
tively, for providing us with essential research
leave and support to work on this volume. We
are also grateful to Marian Wright Edelman for
her foreword to this volume; her career as an
advocate for children is unparalleled and stands
as an inspiration.
My (Fran Sherman) boundless love, grat-
itude, and respect go to my three children,
Leah, Sarah, and Jake Tucker for their warmth,
kindness, intelligence, and senses of humor.
This book and so much of my work, which is
centrally about ways to support youth, is dedi-
cated to my children for the way they honor
their many gifts and opportunities. They are my
inspiration, and I look forward to continuing to
watch their adult lives unfold. And most of all,
my gratitude and love go to my husband, Scott
Tucker—my best friend, most solid support,
and biggest booster.
My (Fran Jacobs) deep gratitude goes
to my family—first and foremost to my hus-
band Barry Dym—and then to my children
(Jessica and JJ Bartlett, and Gabriel Dym and
Rachael Kaplan) and grandchildren (Molly
and Jake Bartlett, and Eli Aaron Dym) for
having the patience to see me through this
process, and the good sense to avoid me on
those crunch writing days. My 91-year-old
mother, Miriam Jacobs, kept up on the prog-
ress of this project, celebrating with me the
completion of each phase. This book, about
children and families and the help that every
one of them needs and deserves, pays tribute

to them all.
xvi P R E F A C E
Introduction
FRANCINE T. SHERMAN AND FRANCINE H. JACOBS
Arthur Schlesinger Jr. (1986) observed that
the history of social policy in the United
States reflects fairly predictable cycles, com-
pleted in 30 years or so, between liberalism
and conservatism—‘‘public purpose and private
interest’’ (p. 31). These cycles of national in-
volvement with issues of social concern invig-
orate our politics with new energy and ideas;
their seeds are sown, during previous cycles, as
forays of innovation that eventually coalesce.
And although it can appear at the ‘‘end’’ of a
cycle, that policy has not advanced much, if at
all, in fact the process is recursive. For better or
worse, we never do return precisely to where
we were, and every so often, the change in
policy direction is bold, significant, and per-
manent. Those of us who came of age in the
1960s and 1970switnessed this transformational
progress in civil rights, women’s rights, and the
rights of persons with disabilities.
And then there is juvenile justice policy. It is
often noted that our national disposition toward
delinquent youth and our approach to addressing
their deeds and needs vacillate, unsurprisingly,
and in the regular cycles that Schlesinger de-
scribed, between punishment and rehabilitation.

Modest changes are often consolidated before
the pendulum swings once again in the opposite
direction; reformers at either end tool up, ready-
ing themselves to undo or modify what has been
codified in the ‘‘down’’ cycle.
The prediction of the ‘‘coming of the super-
predators’’ by John Dilulio (1995, November
27), then a professor at Princeton University, in
the mid-1990s, may represent the apogee of the
pendular swing of that time, the midpoint of that
cycle. Broadly speaking, with the Juvenile Justice
and Delinquency Prevention Act and the pro-
cedural due process revolution of the late 1960s
and 1970s, juvenile justice policy had become
more rehabilitative in orientation. Rates of ju-
venile crime arrests increased over the 1980s,
however, and the population of juvenile offend-
ers became increasingly racialized. The rise in
juvenile violent crime arrests during the 1980s
was a complex, multidetermined phenomenon
(Zimring, 1998), however, and by 1994 juvenile
violent crime arrests had already begun their
long decline (Puzzanchera, 2009). Nonetheless,
Dilulio capitalized on, and catalyzed, the grow-
ing sentiment among Americans that these
youth were too dangerous to have in our midst.
They were depraved, thoroughly incorrigible,
and therefore needing to be removed from
society to protect the rest of us.
We know the end of this story: That on-
slaught never materialized—and indeed, juve-
nile crime statistics have evidenced steady
improvement over the ensuing years (Puzzan-

chera, 2009). Nonetheless, the late 1990s wit-
nessed a flurry of state legislation that expanded
punitive approaches for juveniles, including
making it easier to transfer youth to the adult
correctional system.
Meanwhile, reformers were preparing for
the next cycle to emerge, and that cycle is,
xvii
indeed, upon us. There are many recent signs of
progress toward a more rehabilitative posture in
juvenile justice. The Supreme Court’s decisions
in Roper v. Simmons (2005) and Graham v. Florida
(2010) struck down the juvenile death penalty
entirely and juvenile life without parole in non-
homicide cases based, in part, on grounds of
child development and neuroscience. On the
front end of the system, detention reform has
significant national momentum, helping juris-
dictions to be more accountable to youth and
communities and reduce the use of secure de-
tention to cases of greatest community and flight
risk. On the back end of the system, led by
the Missouri Model, states are reducing their
reliance on secure youth institutions and build-
ing networks of community-based youth
programs on principles of positive youth devel-
opment. Around the country there is increasing
use of evaluation—and evidence-based practices
in juvenile justice systems—reflecting a more
thoughtful and hopeful approach to meeting the
goals these systems set for themselves.

With greater interdisciplinary engage-
ment, new ways to understand and support
youth in the system have emerged. Positive
youth development, ecological developmental
theory, family systems theory, and new re-
search on adolescent brain development, for
example, are infiltrating programming and
policy discussions in juvenile justice as well
as the law. This is a moment of hope and
possibilities; and perhaps these new possibilit-
ies will even direct us toward transformational
changes in juvenile justice.
THE ARCHITECTURE
OF THE VOLUME
The organization of this volume, reflecting the
forward-facing trends previously noted, is eco-
logical in structure, considering youth in the
juvenile justice system within the context of
their families, communities, and the multiple
public systems that influence them, and are
influenced by them as well. Although most
of its chapters are scholarly in tone and content,
other authors approach their topics with an
activist orientation—a mix of perspectives we
sought out from the volume’s inception. Chap-
ter authors represent a broad range of disciplines
and perspectives, also necessary, in our view, to
engage meaningful juvenile justice policy.
Followingthisecological road map, Juvenile
Justice: Advancing Research, Policy, and Practice is
divided into four sections: The first, ‘‘Framing

the Issues,’’ offers an introduction to the core
elements of the juvenile justice system—the
youth, the proposed developmental lens (posi-
tive youth development) through which to
consider their behaviors and the system’s re-
sponses to them, and the law that undergirds
and directs the system operations. Next, in
‘‘Understanding Individual Youth,’’ we provide
more in-depth portraits of subgroups of these
youth, according to characteristics that appear
to influence their experiences in the systems—
race and ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation,
and family circumstances. Next, in ‘‘Under-
standing Youth in Context,’’ we open the lens
and examine aspects of family, community, and
formal and informal systems particularly rele-
vant to youth’s system involvement. Finally, in
‘‘Working for Change,’’ we highlight some of
the most promising innovations in juvenile
justice; combined they offer a vision for the
future of juvenile justice system policy.
BASIC PREMISES
Although the chapters in this volume present a
range of opinions and approaches to collecting
and validating evidence, certain underlying
premises are represented in the book—obvious
xviii I N T R O D U C T I O N
tous,butworthmentioning—thatcontributeto
the volume’s overall point of view.

& Youth have a set of legal rights that are
central to the structure and operation
of effective and successful public sys-
tems and of society as a whole. The
juvenile justice system is first a legal
system, with youth involvement trig-
gered by an alleged law violation.
Youth do not lose their rights
when they enter this system; rather,
in significant ways, their rights are
appropriately enhanced in counter-
point to the risk the system poses to
them. The rights of system-involved
youth, and of children generally, have
a long history in the United States
and can be understood to advance
youth’s needs and autonomy. Youth
law can also be understood ecologi-
cally, with children’s rights in relation-
ship with those of their parents and
the state. When the legal system
works properly, it both respects and
protects youth.
& The course of development is mallea-
ble, at least into earlyadulthood. While
early experiences are core to a child’s
development, a substantial, accumulat-
ing body of theory and research—
reflected in recent Supreme Court
and other court decisions—concludes
that this developmental trajectory is
not set by adolescence. Youth in the
juvenile justice system, therefore, are
still maturing, making them amenable
to rehabilitation and, using value

language, redeemable.
& This course of development is also
multidetermined, involving millions
of transactions and ‘‘inputs.’’ Urie
Bronfenbrenner, the developmental
psychologist who coined the term
ecological development for use in his
field, imagined the child as the core
piece in a collection of nested, Rus-
sian dolls—at the center of a set
of concentric circles of influence,
including families; communities; in-
formal and formal, governmental and
nongovernmental institutions and or-
ganizations; and societal values and
beliefs. Youth are both shaped by
and shape their environments, and
interventions to affect individual de-
velopment need to factor these con-
texts, centrally, into the equation.
& The juvenile justice system is in the
position both to improve and to de-
grade the functioning and future pros-
pects of youth in its custody. Even
assuming a benign or helping orienta-
tion, the juvenile justice system as pres-
entlystructured(aback-end,after-the-
fact,residualsystem)isnotwell-situated
to achieve its rehabilitation goals; there
is a poor match between what youth
need and what the system can provide.
Given the awesome legal power it
holds,systemreformersareincreasingly

proposingadoptionofthe‘‘First,dono
harm’’ dictum—involvement only or
primarily with those youth whose
actions clearly demonstrate imminent
risk to public safety.
& Juvenile justice system reformers un-
derstand that much of the essential
work for youth occurs at local levels.
It follows, then, that efforts should be
directed at families and communities
as the primary vehicles for positive
change for youth. The juvenile justice
process should be used to intention-
ally engage these levels of youth ecol-
ogy with, for example, positive youth
Introduction xix
development models of juvenile
defense, expanded diversion, proba-
tion as brokers of community services,
reduced use of secure detention
and treatment, and expansion of
community- and family-focused treat-
ment at the back end of the system.
& The most promising juvenile justice
policy includes respectful, authentic
engagement of the full range of its
participants. Although theory and re-
search, and the wisdom of practition-
ers, are important cornerstones of
juvenile justice policy, so are the be-

liefs, opinions, strategic recommenda-
tions, and visions for the future of
system-involved youth, their parents
and family members, their neighbors,
and other members of the community.
This input is critical to developing
services that youth and families actu-
ally use, and to redressing the long-
standing sense of disregard that these
individuals have experienced.
& Interdisciplinarity in research, prac-
tice, and policy is critical to the devel-
opment of a well-functioning system.
Juvenile justice (like most of youth
policy) is a naturally interdisciplinary
field and should be intentionally ap-
proached as such. Practitioners, schol-
ars, andadvocatesinlaw,developmental
psychology, and sociology must make
their work comprehensible across disci-
plines. Demystifying these disciplines
for use by one another contributes to
essential cross-system collaboration.
& Policy is also normative, informed by
values. Research can get us only so
far; at a certain point the decision is
about the kind of society in which we
want to live—inclusive or exclusive;
more or less equitable, with more or
less of a generous civic impulse. Effec-
tive juvenile justice systems are self-
reflective in this way, asking them-
selves what they stand for, how they

want to be viewed, and the result is as
much values-based as evidence-based.
We argue that this is as it should be.
& Confronting issues of race and pov-
erty is critical to any real progress—
the beachhead to claim during this
cycle. The juvenile justice system
cannot be fixed until it deals with
the issues of race and poverty that
undergird it and give it its present
shape. The disproportionate minority
contact (DMC) mandate, and federal
and state policy behind it, acknowl-
edge the racial impact of much of
juvenile justice policy, a fact that we
are only beginning to address.
SECTION I: FRAMING THE ISSUES
We begin this volume, and this section, with
an introduction to five system-involved youth
whose developmental trajectories Beyer ana-
lyzes in Chapter 1 using a strengths/needs-
based developmental framework. Based on
years of clinical practice, she argues that ado-
lescent delinquent behavior results, in part,
from immature thinking and the effects of trauma
and learning disabilities, all common in this
population. These factors, in addition to the
youth’s strengths, seen within the context of
their families, peers, schools, neighborhoods,
and cultural communities, must be considered
at all points of the juvenile justice decision-
making process.

In Chapter 2, Holsinger, as a criminolo-
gist, bases her portrait of youth in the juvenile
justice system on nationally available data that
detail their demographic characteristics, and
xx I N T R O D U C T I O N
the characteristics of the offenses that trigger
and sustain their system involvement. The
chapter includes an overview of the history,
development, and current operations of the
juvenile justice system, providing a shapshot of
the youth involved at each of its phases.
In Chapter 3, Braverman and Morris, both
physicians, introduce these youth as health-care
providers might encounter them: often high-
risk, underserved young people with a host of
unaddressed health, dental, and mental health
needs. After presenting the youth’s profile from
this vantage point, the authors conclude that
the factors that predispose these youth to poor
health outcomes are not a unique combination
of risks, but rather are shared by other disad-
vantaged young people in the United States.
The final two chapters in this section
provide theoretical and empirical scaffolding
for the remainder of the book. In Chapter 4,
Sherman and Blitzman, lawyer and judge,
respectively, provide an overview of U.S.
children’s law, framed both in terms of auton-
omy-based and needs-based rights, and by the
legal dynamic among child, parent, and state.

They highlight the law of juvenile justice and
child welfare systems, and also examine law
relevant to education and health care, two
central institutions for children. The chapter
proceeds ecologically, acknowledging that
children’s lives, including their legal lives,
are related to their families, communities,
and the social institutions surrounding them.
Finally, in Chapter 5, applied develop-
mental scientist Lerner and his colleagues
argue that the contemporary juvenile justice
system is predicated on a deficit view of the
youth in its custody, and as such demonstrates a
counterfactual and counterproductive under-
standing of the nature of adolescent develop-
ment. The authors provide an alternative
lens—the positive youth development (PYD)
perspective—that capitalizes on contemporary
theory and research on adolescent develop-
ment and has profound implications for the
transformation of juvenile justice policy and
programs.
SECTION II: UNDERSTANDING
INDIVIDUAL YOUTH
In Chapter 6, Bell and Mariscal, both lawyers
and advocates, begin with an overview of the
history, causes, and current status of racial and
ethnic disparities in the juvenile justice system,
placing contemporary federal policies pur-
porting ‘‘race neutrality,’’ but actually disad-
vantaging Black and Latino youth, in the
context of a deep historical legacy of systemic

racism. They then examine promising policies
and practices for reducing these disparities,
arguing that despite its history, the juvenile
justice system should strive to, and might
achieve, fairness and equity for all young
people.
In Chapter 7, Sherman and Greenstone —
from a legal and developmental perspective,
respectively—describe the experiences of
‘‘Grace,’’ a teenage girl involved with multiple
public systems, including juvenile justice.
Through detailed analysis of primary interview
data with Grace and others responsible for her
care and supervision, and of court case mate-
rial, they shed light on how Grace’s actions
were interpreted and the responses they
evoked. Their case study includes recommen-
dations for implementing gender-responsive
principles across these systems.
In Chapter 8, Garnette, Irvine, Reyes, and
Wilber (as lawyers, researcher, and system
administrator) follow with a discussion of
the experiences and needs of lesbian, gay,
bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) youth in
the juvenile justice system. The authors offer
a framework for understanding healthy
Introduction xxi
adolescent development within this popula-
tion, and particular ways it can go awry, and
present data on the often harmful effects of

arrest and detention for LGBT youth. The
chapter concludes with policy and program
recommendations for addressing their needs.
Finally,inChapter9,Pinderhughesandcol-
leagues,fromacultural/developmentalperspec-
tive, present the challenges to development—
particularly identity development—and thus
to parenting, encountered by the diverse
population of incarcerated teen parents who
are involved with the juvenile justice system.
The authors recommend that the system adopt
a more strengths-based orientation to these
young parents, including facilitating contact
with their own children during their confine-
ment; this approach would increase the like-
lihood for continued engagement with their
children after their confinement ends.
SECTION III: UNDERSTANDING
THE CONTEXTS OF YOUTH
The first two chapters in this section focus on
families. In Chapter 10, Jacobs, Miranda-Julian,
and Kaplan—representing a combination of
policy, developmental, and clinical expertise—
detail the current state of family involveme nt in
juvenile justice, proposing explanations for why
there is evidence of so little. They argue that
more and broader participation is a critical
feature of any juvenile justice system that seeks
or claims to be ‘‘reformed,’’ and review some
promising approaches to engaging families in
the positive development and rehabilitation of
their children.

Chapter 11 focuses on the significant
percentage of system-involved youth who
have experienced and/or perpetrated, vio-
lence in their families. Baker, Cunning ham,
and Harris—clinical and developmental
psychologists—usefully identify ‘‘signposts’’
of the effects of family violence, for example,
compromised school success or mental health,
substance abuse, and early home leaving. They
argue for greater attention to the role that
family violence plays in the lives of delinquent
youth, in the service of designing more effec-
tive prevention and intervention programs.
Chapters 12 and 13 focus on communities
as a context for the development of system-
involved youth. In Chapter 12, Hawkins,
Vashchenko, and Davis combine their exper-
tise in urban policy, social work, and develop-
mental psychology to offer a framework,
rooted in resilience and social capital theory,
with which to generate support for youth
reentering their communities after incarcera-
tion. The authors suggest that juvenile justice
reentry programs and policies, and those de-
signed to prevent criminal activity in the first
place, would do well to assess a youth’s access
to positive as opposed to negative social capi-
tal, and then optimize opportunities to build
on the former.
In Chapter 13, Bruyere and Garbarino—
from a developmental perspective—discuss the
effect of risk accumulation, community vio-
lence, and other trauma on youth, some of

whom go on to become involved with the
juvenile justice system. The chapter then
argues for ratification of the United Nations
Convention on the Rights of the Child,
seeing it as providing critically needed guid-
ance for community development to support
this population and reduce the need for
future juvenile incarceration.
Moving to the systems that interact with
delinquent youth, and with other public
youth-serving systems, the next two chapters
examine the role of education before, during,
and after incarceration. In Chapter 14,
Boundy and Karger (lawyers who focus on
educational policy) provide a detailed
xxii I N T R O D U C T I O N
discussion of the two most relevant federal
laws—Title I of the Elementary and Second-
ary Education Act/No Child Left Behind Act
and the Individuals with Disabilities Education
Act—which together require states to provide
a quality public education to school-age
youth, with and without disabilities, including
those in delinquent facilities. Despite these
guarantees, they find the education of these
youth is seriously compromised throughout.
The chapter concludes with research-based
practices, targeted at implementing effective
teaching, learning, and planning for transi-
tion, meant to thwart this school-to-prison
pipeline.

In Chapter 15, Vaught, a scholar of urban
education, brings an ethnographic lens to the
issue of race, education, and juvenile justice,
using a Critical Race framework to examine
how institutional schooling practice and policy
function—in one school within a juvenile
prison—to hinder, complicate, and even likely
scuttle altogether, community reentry for in-
carcerated young men. The dynamics explored
here serve as a local window onto national
education policy, raising issues of fairness about,
for example, zero-tolerance policy, and policies
that assure the quality of the schooling offered
to system-involved youth.
Sherman and Goldblatt Grace, from the
perspectives of law, public health, and social
work, examine the system’s response to the
commercial sexual exploitation of children
(CSEC) in Chapter 16, focusing here on girls.
They describe the issue and then examine the
range of international, federal, state, and local
laws and policies, aimed at aiding and enhanc-
ing prosecution of perpetrators of CSEC (i.e.,
pimps, johns), and at providing protection and
services to its victims. They show that, as state
and local authorities implement practice and
policy for this population, those two goals—
law enforcement and victim protection—may
conflict, creating practices that serve neither
goal fully and yielding results contrary to
sound public policy and research. The chapter
concludes with a recommended comprehen-
sive response to CSEC.

In Chapter 17, Ross and Miller bring
youth policy and criminal justice together,
and shift to providing a view of the landscape
of government systems involved with youth
issues. They argue that the structure of
American government, combined with bu-
reaucratic service delivery systems, lead to
fragmented and, at times, inconsistent policies
concerning youth, including youth caught up
in the juvenile justice system. A number of
solutions to these problems are offered, and the
chapter concludes on a hopeful note: that
efforts to address service fragmentation are
improving the circumstances for some of these
system-involved youth.
This section concludes with Chapter 18,
Oliveri and colleagues’ (developmental psy-
chologists) qualitative study of the complex
relationships among system-involved youth
and the multiple systems meant to help
them maintain good health. Beginning with
a detailed review of the literature on health-
care access and utilization among this popula-
tion, the chapter then analyzes primary data
collected from youth regarding their health
behaviors and preferences, and their use of
health care. Its findings are useful to those
working across public sectors interested in
improving the health status of these youth.
SECTION IV: WORKING
FOR CHANGE
WithChapter19,Dymandcolleagues(psychol-

ogists and community activists) launch this sec-
tion devoted to promising efforts to reform the
juvenile justice system, with a case study of a
Introduction xxiii
youth-ledcommunitydevelopmentprogram—
the Hyde Square Task Force (HSTF) in Boston,
Massachusetts. Youth at HSTF, with the support
and encouragement of staff, initiate, design,
and implement advocacy projects to improve
their own circumstances and transform their
community. HSTF is nationally recognized as
a model for community-based youth develop-
ment, acting as an antidote to the forces that
pull youth toward involvement in the juvenile
justice system.
We move from program-specific innova-
tion to focus on systemwide reform in
Chapter 20. Schiraldi, Schindler, and Goliday
(experienced system administrators) thought-
fully advocate for systemwide reform to elim-
inate the training school and its mind-set, in
favor of a graduated, primarily community-
based approach to juvenile justice premised on
the tenets of positive youth development.
After reviewing the troubled history of the
reform school, and the promising alternatives
now available, they argue that this route is the
most likely to be able both to support youth
and protect and enhance communities.
In Chapter 21, Farrell and Myers (devel-

opmentalists interested in service systems’
operations) identify collaboration as the ‘‘new
imperative’’ across youth-serving systems. They
present the advantages of, and potential barriers
to, collaboration, and offer suggestions for
increasing service providers’ organizational
capacities to engage in this way. After recom-
mending the development of principles and
guidelines for evaluating systems change efforts,
Farrell and Myers conclude that systems pro-
viding services to at-risk and incarcerated youth
must find ways to communicate, cooperate, and
share accountability for outcomes.
Chapters 22, 23, and 24 focus on the
significant contributions that relevant, reliable,
and accessible information can make to sys-
tems reform. In Chapter 22, Schneider and
Simpson, experienced data system consultants
to child-serving public agencies, highlight
how the quality, availability, and use of data
can either promote or impede agencies’ abili-
ties to plan, operate, and evaluate wisely. The
authors review the role that data systems have
played historically in these agencies, and the
current status, overall, of their information
systems; they then provide a detailed analysis
of the technical, logistical, and resource-
related challenges to be addressed before
agencies can shift to data-driven decision
making, using three JDAI (Juvenile Deten-
tion Alternatives Initiative) jurisdictions as
successful case examples.
In Chapter 23, Greenwood and Turner,

experienced consultants on evidence-based
practices for juvenile justice systems, review
the current state of evidence-based practice,
enumerating its demonstrable benefits, and
noting the challenges it may pose for agencies
adopting it. The chapter then provides the
framework by which the Blueprints for Vio-
lence Prevention project validates program
models as promising or efficacious, and in-
cludes an overview of successful programs.
The authors conclude with examples of the
implementation of such programs in selected
jurisdictions.
Finally, in Chapter 24, Butts and Roman
draw on their extensive experience as pro-
gram and systems evaluators to provide a
clear-eyed review of the research approaches
that inform evidence-based policy. Although
they support the increasing intention, and
practice, of using evidence to inform policy,
they caution against overreliance on it, detail-
ing the limitations of currently available
methods and products of research and eval-
uation for the tasks juvenile justice systems
have at hand. The authors conclude with
recommendations for enhancing the applica-
bility of research in this context.
xxiv I N T R O D U C T I O N
The volume concludes with an afterword
from U.S. Representative Robert ‘‘Bobby’’
Scott of Virginia. Congressman Scott, a na-

tional spokesperson for youth and families in
the juvenile justice system, notes prospective
federal legislation that focuses increasing at-
tention on less advantaged children, and
exhorts the federal government to continue
to demonstrate its leadership by enacting a
number of pending federal bills and initiatives,
such as the reauthorization of the Juvenile
Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act and
the Youth PROMISE (Prison Reduction
through Opportunities, Mentoring, Interven-
tion, Support, and Education) Act.
In reflecting both the exciting advances
and the considerable challenges currently
evident in the juvenile justice system, Juvenile
Justice: Advancing Research, Policy, and Practice
aims to make a modest contribution to the
movement toward a rehabilitative, youth and
community-centered vision of juvenile
justice.
REFERENCES
Dilulio, J. (1995, November 27). The coming of the
super-predators. Weekly Standard.
Puzzanchera, C. (2009). Juvenile arrests 2009.
Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Justice:
Office of Justice Programs: Office of Juvenile
Justice and Delinquency Prevention.
Schlesinger, A., Jr., (1986). Cycles of American history.
Boston, MA: Houghton-Mifflin.

Zimring, F. (1998). American youth violence. New York,
NY: Oxford University Press.
Introduction xxv
Contributors
Linda L. Baker, PhD
Centre for Children and Families
in the Justice System
London, Ontario, Canada
Jessica Dym Bartlett, MSW, LICSW
Tufts University
Medford, MA
James Bell, JD
W. Haywood Burns Institute
San Francisco, CA
Marty Beyer, PhD
Independent Juvenile Justice and Child
Welfare Consultant
Cottage Grove, OR
Honorable Jay Blitzman, JD
Massachusetts Juvenile Court
Lowell, MA
Kathleen B. Boundy, JD

Center for Law and Education
Boston, MA
Paula Braverman, MD
Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical
Center
Cincinnati, OH
Edmund Bruyere, MS
Loyola University
Chicago, IL
Jeffrey A. Butts, PhD
City University of New York
New York, NY
Karen T. Craddock, PhD
Education Development
Center, Inc.
Newton, MA
Alison J. Cunningham, MA
Centre for Children and Families
in the Justice System
Courtney Davis, MPP
New York University
New York, NY
Barry Dym, PhD
Boston University School of Management
Boston, MA

Marian Wright Edelman, LLB
Children’s Defense Fund
Washington, DC
Anne F. Farrell, PhD
University of Connecticut
Stamford, CT
LaTasha L. Fermin, MA
Tufts University
Medford, MA
xxvii
James Garbarino, PhD
Loyola University
Chicago, IL
Laura Garnette, MPA
County of Santa Clara Probation Department
San Jose, CA
Jesus Gerena
Family Independence Initiative/Hyde Square
Task Force, Inc.
Boston, MA
Lisa Goldblatt Grace, LICSW, MPH
My Life My Choice/Justice Resource
Institute
Boston, MA

Sean J. Goliday, PhD
CSR, Inc.
Arlington, VA
Jessica H. Greenstone, MS
Tufts University
Medford, MA
Peter W. Greenwood, PhD
Association for the Advancement of
Evidence-Based Practice
Agoura, CA
Kimberly E. Harris, PhD
Centre for Children & Families in the
Justice System
Robert L. Hawkins, PhD
New York University
New York, NY
Kristi Holsinger, PhD
University of Missouri
Kansas City, MO
Angela Irvine, PhD
National Council on Crime and Delinquency
Oakland, CA
Francine H. Jacobs, EdD
Tufts University
Medford, MA

Leah Jacobs, MA, MSW
University of California
Berkeley, CA
Rachael Kaplan, MSW, LICSW
Clinical Social Worker
Brookline, MA
Joanne Karger, JD, EdD
Center for Law and Education
Boston, MA
Richard M. Lerner, PhD
Tufts University
Medford, MA
Raquel Mariscal, JD
Senior Consultant/Annie E. Casey Foundation
Watsonville, CA
Joel Miller, PhD
Rutgers University
Newark, NJ
Claudia Miranda-Julian, MS, LICSW
Tufts University
Medford, MA
Robert Morris, MD
Los Angeles, CA
Megan Kiely Mueller, MA
Tufts University
Medford, MA

xxviii C O N T R I B U T O R S
Diane M. Myers, PhD
Assumption College
Worcester, MA
Christopher M. Napolitano, MA
Tufts University
Medford, MA
Rachel Oliveri, MA
Tufts University
Medford, MA
Ellen E. Pinderhughes, PhD
Tufts University
Medford, MA
Anita Pritchard, PhD
Florida Atlantic University
Boca Raton, FL
Carolyn Reyes, MSW, JD
Legal Services for Children
San Francisco, CA
John K. Roman, PhD
The Urban Institute
Washington, DC
Timothy Ross, PhD
Action Research Partners
Brooklyn, NY

Marc Schindler, JD
Venture Philanthropy Partners
Washington, DC
Commissioner Vincent Schiraldi, MSW
Department of Probation
New York, NY
Kristina L. Schmid, MA
Tufts University
Medford, MA
Stan Schneider, MA
Metis Associates
New York, NY
Congressman Robert (Bobby) Scott, JD
U.S. House of Representatives
Washington, DC
Francine T. Sherman, JD
Boston College Law School
Newton, MA
Lola Simpson, MS
Metis Associates
New York, NY
Ken Tangvik, EdD
Hyde Square Task Force, Inc.
Boston, MA
Ila Deshmukh Towery, PhD
The New Teacher Project
Boston, MA

Susan Turner, PhD
Irvine, CA
Maryna Vashchenko, EdM
Tufts University
Medford, MA
Sabina E. Vaught, PhD
Tufts University
Medford, MA
Michael D. Wiatrowski, PhD
Center for Democratic Policing
Williamsburg, VA
Shannan Wilber, JD
Legal Services for Children
San Francisco, CA
Contributors xxix
SECTION I
FRAMING THE
ISSUES
Ju venile Ju stice: Advancing Research, Policy, and Practice
Edited by Francine T. Sherman and Francine H. Jacobs
Copyright © 2 0 1 1 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

1
CHAPTER
A Developmental View of Youth
in the Juvenile Justice System
MARTY BEYER
Marco is a serious 14-year-old whose parents,born in Mexico,
have been stably employed
for many years. Although his family is close, Marco
has faced numerous family problems, including the
death of his grandmother who took care of him, and
his parents’ preoccupation with the problems of his
older siblings, leading to his feeling sad and unloved.
Because his parents worked so hard, it felt ungrateful
for him to disparage them.
Marco’s parents had high aspirations for their
children. When his older siblings dropped out of
school and had children as teenagers, the pressure
was on Marco to be the one to graduate high school.
Marco did well in school and particularly loved
science. But he found his teachers were overly critical
of him—in his view, because they knew his siblings,
who had been problem students in the same school,
and because some had racist attitudes. When his
grades started dropping in eighth grade, the school
did not initiate any special supports. He started
spending time with dropouts, was suspended, and
then arrested for a fight in school; he was diverted
from the juvenile justice system but received no
services. His parents’ disapproval and his own
feeling that he was a school failure were difficult
for Marco to bear.

For several years, Marco had been increasingly
terrorized by gang violence in his neighborhood. He
witnessed the murder of a friend and worried every
time he walked down the street. Marco had been
seriously threatened three times in the 2 weeks before
this arrest. “I tried never to walk alone. If I did, I’d
run to a safe spot where there were people. You
didn’t have to look like a gangbanger. If you ignored
them, they would jump you. If you ran, they would
chase you. This is not the movies. In life, violence is
real. A lot of people have died in my neighborhood.
Death is always there.”
Marco did not talk to his family members or
friends about his sadness or fears. He did not realize
how intense the pressure was and how having to
contend with it alone undermined good decision
making. Marco is emotionally needy, like a younger
teenager, but he does not admit his desire for comfort
and protection. He started spending most of his time
with his brother and his friends, all several years
older and in a gang. As he got more scared, Marco
reluctantly went along with pressure from them to
join their gang. Marco did not realize the risks of
gang protection: “I now know that when I joined a
gang it was not a smart choice, but I thought I had to
have protection.” Working long hours with many
family responsibilities, his parents assumed Marco
was safe with his brother, and did not know that he
had joined a gang, used marijuana, and was
becoming alienated from school.
The day before ninth grade began, a gang leader
gave Marco, his brother, and a friend a ride home.
Unbeknownst to Marco, they were on their way to a

drive-by shooting. “At first, I thought it wasn’t
really going to happen. I realized it too late, but I
could have gotten out of the car. But I was
3
Ju venile Ju stice: Advancing Research, Policy, and Practice
Edited by Francine T. Sherman and Francine H. Jacobs
Copyright © 2 0 1 1 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
threatened. He pushed everyone around. These
things went on every day in the neighborhood,
shootings and beatings to get revenge. He was
mad about something done to him and he made
us take revenge. It made no sense. But it seemed the
only way out was to do what he ordered.” Marco
talked about how sad he felt for the victim and
expressed sympathy for the family. Marco did not
object to being blamed and took responsibility for
having bad judgment and not getting out of the car.
He knows it was wrong, and if he had seen any
choice, he said he would have left, but felt trapped
even though he never intended to hurt anyone.
How should the juvenile justice system
deal with Marco? What criteria should it use
to assess his culpability and impose an appro-
priate disposition? How does the system cur-
rently act in cases such as his?
Juvenile justice systems make most deci-
sions about youth based on age and offense.
Yet age tells us little about what is behind an

offense—for example, what precipitated it and
what its meaning is for that individual—since
each youth’s developmental progression is
unique, often indexed in only limited ways
to chronological age. The delinquent act itself
also tells us little about the youth, since the
contexts in which many offenses are committed
are so complex. The intricate weave of factors,
individual and contextual, that contributed to
Marco’s involvement in a drive-by shooting
illustrates how much more than age and offense
must be considered in designing an effective
rehabilitative service combination for him.
However, employing a developmental
framework allows for more hopeful and effec-
tive responses from the system and the com-
munity agencies that should be poised to help.
In this chapter, I propose a developmental
framework for making decisions regarding
court proceedings, detention, and services,
based on my training as a psychologist and
my years of experience working with youth in
juvenile programs and evaluating them for
court. Its foundation, and the organizing
premise of the chapter, is that the delinquent
behavior of adolescents must be understood as
resulting from their immature thinking and the
effects of trauma and learning disabilities, which
are ubiquitous among these youth. These core
components are first introduced briefly below,
and then I elaborate on each. I also argue for
including youth’s strengths, and assessing their
capacity for resilience within the context of
their families, peers, schools, neighborhoods,

and cultural communities at all points of the
decision-making process. The chapter con-
cludes with a demonstration of the richness
of a developmental framework in vignettes of
four system-involved youth, ages 13–16, with
a range of offenses; Marco’s story is also in-
cluded in the analyses.
CORE CONCEPTS
To the extent that juvenile justice decisions are
based on developmental concepts, these ap-
pear to be the outmoded, rigidly linear stage-
based, and noncontextual theories of many
years ago (Lerner & Steinberg, 2004). This
view of development does not consider
strengths, the effects of traumatic experiences,
and environmental influences on youth. As
a result, both in understanding the young
person’s behavior and in designing services
to change it, system decisions have not been
developmentally sound, in the complex ways
that we now understand development.
For example, even though there is con-
siderable research on the effects of trauma on
children (Osofsky, 2004), it has not penetrated
the system, perhaps because addressing the
effects of trauma on delinquent behavior is
not compatible with the simplistic view that
offending is a bad choice. Probation and
4 F R A M I N G T H E I S S U E S

juvenile facilities assume that youth control
their behavior to avoid consequences and get
rewards. What this fails to take into account is
that some behavior is reactive to past victim-
ization, and that traumatized youth may be
unable to use rational decision making when
the memories and anxiety from traumatic
events are triggered.
The challenges of learning disabilities have
been well researched across academic and
applied fields. Unfortunately, the application
of research on learning disabilities, including
processing problems, executive function diffi-
culties, and attention deficits, appears to have
been confined to use in schools, not in the
many other realms of children’s lives. The
school—in either the juvenile facility or the
community—is expected to manage disabil-
ities as they pertain to education, rather than
helping everyone involved with the young
person understand that they affect the youth’s
behavior generally, and use this understanding
outside the educational setting. In juvenile
justice, disabilities are seldom used as a lens
to understand the offense or facilitate behavior
change. Instead, it is assumed that youth com-
prehend what to do and are simply being
oppositional and making bad decisions.
The notion that maturity should be as-
sessed as a distinct developmental process,
apart from chronological age, has a fairly
long theoretical history in developmental psy-
chology, but has only recently gained traction
in juvenile justice policy and practice (Ameri-

can Medical Association, 2005). Research has
demonstrated that adolescents are different
from adults (Owen-Kostelnik, Reppucci, &
Meyer, 2006; Steinberg & Haskins, 2008), but
justice systems treat teenagers as adults in many
ways (Bishop, 2000; McGowan et al., 2007).
For example, even intelligent teenagers cannot
appreciate the consequences of waiving their
Miranda rights. Most teenagers say that
although they were told they had a right to
remain silent, they believed they could not
refuse to answer police questions. Typically,
when they are asked what would happen if the
judge heard afterward that they would not talk
to the police, they respond that the judge
would believe they were guilty. These beliefs
demonstrate that they do not comprehend the
meaning of the right to remain silent and their
decision making is influenced by emotions
(Grisso et al., 2003).
Teenagers are also more vulnerable to
psychological manipulation than are adults.
In the police station without a lawyer, young
people may well give statements in response to
questions that reduce their self-confidence and
make them feel hopeless (Ofshe & Leo, 1997;
Warden & Drizin, 2009). While research has
found that adolescents 16 and older have
similar competence-related abilities to adults
regarding understanding facts about court pro-
ceedings (see Scott & Grisso, 1997, for a
review), these findings have been widely mis-
interpreted to mean that youth over 16 should
be considered adults. In fact, even 16- or

17-year-olds with normal intelligence are
often incapable of weighing alternatives, seeing
the risks of taking a plea or going to trial, and
looking into the future in discussions with their
lawyers; youth with learning disabilities are
even further compromised.
Developmentally sound juvenile justice
decisions must be based on more than re-
search on cognitive and psychosocial growth
in adolescence. The developmental frame-
work proposed here is comprehensive—
including immaturity as well as a clinical
perspective on trauma and learning disabil-
ities and using an ecological approach regard-
ing the contexts in which the teenager is
gradually maturing.
Let’s consider the several components of
immaturity first.
A Developmental View of Youth in the Juvenile Justice System
5
THE EFFECTS OF IMMATURITY
ON TEEN BEHAVIOR
Adolescent development is not a smooth,
uniform, linear progression—there are differ-
ences in maturity among youth of the same age
and across domains within individuals. I have
sketched out in this section a number of ways
that immaturity affects behavior in these years.

Immature Thinking
In real life situations, particularly when influ-
enced by peers and/or under the influence of
substances, young people often have immature
thought processes, including not anticipating,
minimizing danger, reacting to stress, and seeing
only one option.
& Not anticipating. Adolescents often do
not plan or do not follow their plans
and get caught up in unanticipated
events. They usually view as “acci-
dental” the unintended poor conse-
quences of actions that adults could
have predicted. For example, a young
person could go with a group to an
event and, on the way, a friend could
have a conflict with a young person
outside the group; a fight might break
out, and several youth might be
arrested for an assault they never imag-
ined would have happened. Carrying,
and even using, a weapon does not
mean that a teen intended harm or
thought that he or she would use the
weapon. Often, teens feel driven to
self-protection and never picture an
injured victim.
& Minimizing danger. Risk taking is typ-
ical of adolescents who seldom can
consider the worst possible outcomes
of their actions (Furby & Beyth-
Marom, 1992; Steinberg, 2008).

Youth do not perceive or weigh risks
accurately, and indeed, it has been
asserted that “it is statistically aberrant
to refrain from such [risk-taking]
behavior during adolescence” (Spear,
2000, p. 421). In comparison to
adults, teenagers attach different value
to the rewards that risk taking pro-
vides (Fareri, Martin, & Delgado,
2008; Scott & Steinberg, 2008).
Difficulty in managing impulses is a
normal characteristic of teens, partly
because they have more rapid and
extreme mood swings than do adults
(Scott & Steinberg, 2008). Impul-
sively defending a friend who is teased
or pushed can quickly escalate into a
situation a youth will regret but did
not view as risky. Similarly, youth get
in trouble with parents, school, and/
or the juvenile justice system for text-
ing they think is benign, and do not
realize can be interpreted as threat-
ening. Drugs and alcohol, also often
not seen as risky, lower inhibitions
and reduce teens’ abilities to use ma-
ture judgment; being high frequently
contributes to delinquent acts.
& Reacting to stress. Stress affects the
ability to weigh risks and to override
impulses with rational thought, and
adolescents are more susceptible to
stress and emotional fluctuations
than are adults (Hampel & Petermann,
2006; Larson, Moneta, Richards, &

Wilson, 2002; Seiffge-Krenke, 1995;
Spear, 2000; Wills, Sandy, & Yaeger,
2001). Decision making can be even
more immature when a teen is scared,
particularly if he or she has been
mistreated in the past. A common
form of immature cognitive processes
in adolescents is reacting to threat that
adults might consider exaggerated.
For example, a young person with
no prior arrests or problems in school
who jumps a subway gate without
paying could get into a physical con-
frontation that leads to the serious
charge of assaulting a police officer.
Afterwards, his parents may find it
difficult to understand how he could
have felt so threatened.
& Seeing only one option. Adolescents
only gradually develop the advanced
cognitive ability to weigh alternatives
simultaneously (Wigfield, Byrnes, &
Eccles, 2006). In situations where
adults see several choices, adolescents
may believe they have only one. It
is not unusual even for intelligent
adolescents to imagine only a single
scenario. When things do not unfold
as they imagined, because of their
immaturity, they behave as if they

are incapable of adapting with an-
other reasonable choice. For exam-
ple, a teenage girl who thinks she is
going shopping with a friend may be
surprised when her friend encour-
ages her to shoplift but may feel
unable to leave, go home, or shop
on her own.
Immature Identity
Identity development is among the central
tasks of adolescence (Erikson, 1959; Kroger,
2003). Becoming good at something, for
example, doing well in school, arts, sports,
or religious or cultural practices, is a corner-
stone in the development of a positive identity,
and helps it to solidify. Many system-involved
youth have not experienced success, particu-
larly in school; often, they feel marginalized.
Having an unformed identity makes them
more vulnerable to involvement with delin-
quent peers.
For most teenagers, belonging to a family
provides the basic architecture for identity
development. Family provides cultural,
religious, and other values that are important
to the teenager’s self-definition: sometimes
the youth’s values remain consistent with his
or her family, and sometimes he or she sepa-
rates from the family’s values. Identifying
with peers is another important aspect of
self-definition; group membership is neces-
sary for a young person to feel valued. The

process of developing a stable identity takes
time, during which young people need
approval from family and peers.
An ecological approach to understanding
teenagers in the context of all their relation-
ships—particularly family and peers—recognizes
that development is influenced in complex ways
by these interconnected contexts (Garcia Coll,
Akerman, & Cicchetti, 2000; Lerner, 2002;
Spencer et al., 2006). Conflicting identifications,
between two groups of peers or between family
and peer expectations, may cause unpredictable
behavior in a teenager, especially under stress.
Even protective families find it challeng-
ing to ensure positive friendships for their
teens, and a teen may have positive peers
and still get exposed, often in unplanned
situations, to peer coercion and/or pressure
from the desire for peer acceptance. Some
families think teens cannot be supervised,
and others, whose authoritarian tendencies
increase out of a desire to protect, instead
overlimit the teen’s autonomy, both with po-
tentially disastrous consequences (Dodge et al.,
2006; Putnick et al., 2008). It is difficult for
adults to help youth develop self-confidence to
resist peer pressure when the need to belong is
so strong. Families can be unaware when a
teen, who seems the same at home, becomes
7

more influenced by peers and negative school
and neighborhood environments. Further-
more, in some neighborhoods, resisting the
pressure to commit crimes or to seek protec-
tion from a gang itself puts the young person in
danger (Fagan, 2000).
& Racial and ethnic identity. As their social
networks expand, youth see them-
selves in multiple roles requiring
different self-presentations. Racial
stereotypes and cultural dissonance
make the process of achieving a stable
identity more difficult for youth of
color (Cross & Fhagen-Smith, 2001;
Luthar, 2003). Youth are vulnerable to
racial and ethnic marginalization.
Violence poses a complex series of
threats to resilience for Black males,
including aggression as an adaptive
response to deal with victimization,
which may lead to arrest and reinforces
negative stereotypes (Graham &
Lowry, 2004; Spencer et al., 2006).
& Girl identity. Experts disagree about
how much the increase in arrests of
girls represents a change in behavior
as opposed to a change in society’s
responses to girls (Zahn, 2009). De-
velopmental research has identified
stressors on girls that make them
more vulnerable, especially during
physical maturation and school tran-
sitions. For example, many 11- and

12-year-old girls become less out-
spoken and more preoccupied with
perfection and fear being disliked;
and this may contribute to an endur-
ing sense of unworthiness affecting
their involvement in delinquent
acts (Beyer, Blair, Katz, Simkins, &
Steinberg, 2003; Brown & Gilligan,
1992; Chamberlain & Moore, 2002;
Hennessey Ford, Mahoney, Ko, &
Siegfried, 2004; Wood, Foy, Goguen,
Pynoos, & James, 2002a).
A connection to others is the
central organizing feature of develop-
ment in girls, and their relationship
focus and the struggle to be loyal,
including worries about abandon-
ment and disconnection, dominate
girls’thinking. Girls in juvenile justice
include first-time offenders who were
coerced by their older boyfriends.
Many teenage girls report violence
in their dating relationships. Though
some confide in a friend, almost none
talk to adults in their family or at
school about being victimized in
this way and the difficulty of extricat-
ing themselves. Traumatic experien-
ces predict delinquency and risky
sexual behavior, and most girls who
have experienced significant trauma
need, but do not receive, trauma
treatment—including many who
do not have PTSD diagnoses (Smith,

Leve, & Chamberlain, 2006; see also
Sherman & Greenstone, Chapter 7,
this volume).
& Sexual orientation and gender identity.
Harassment for gender-nonconforming
appearance or behavior, a nonheter-
osexual orientation or nontraditional
gender identity can lead to a serious
loss of self-esteem (Galliher, Rostosky,
& Hughes, 2004). Homophobic dis-
crimination at school and in the com-
munity is common and hurtful to
teenagers and can lead to youth miss-
ing school or activities because they
feel unsafe (Majd, Marksamer, &
Reyes, 2009). Youth who experience
antigay victimization in middle or
high school are more than twice as
likely to be depressed and have sub-
stance abuse problems and three times
as likely to report suicide attempts
than lesbian, gay, or bisexual peers
who have not been harassed (Wilber,
Ryan, & Marksamer, 2006; see also
Garnette, Irvine, Reyes, & Wilber,
Chapter 8, this volume). Youth whose
parents reject their sexual orientation
and gender expression are more likely
to be depressed and suicidal; they may
end up living on the street, which may,

in turn, bring them into the juvenile
justice system (Ryan, Huebner, Diaz,
& Sanchez, 2009).
Immature Moral Reasoning
Much has been written about moral devel-
opment during adolescence, stressing youth’s
increasing responsibilities in relationships and
awareness of how others will judge one’s
actions (Eisenberg, Morris, McDaniel, &
Spinrad, 2009). The practical application of
adolescent moral development research to
real-life reasoning under stress is compli-
cated. Committing a delinquent act can be
misconstrued as an indication that the young
person did not know right from wrong
and/or lacked concern for others. But youth
may express strong family and religious values
and are frustrated that they cannot explain
why they used poor moral reasoning during
the offense. Adolescents are generally moral-
istic, insisting on what should be and in-
tolerant of unfairness (Smetana & Turiel,
2003). They may become involved in an
offense naively in order to right wrongs,
often out of loyalty. As a result, they may
not express an adult understanding of the
effect of their offense on victims, despite
the fact that their capacity for empathy
with others may not be impaired.
Next let’s turn to considering the role of
trauma in the lives of these youth.

THE EFFECTS OF TRAUMA
ON TEEN BEHAVIOR
The incidence of posttraumatic stress disorder
(PTSD) among youth in the juvenile justice
system is up to 8 times higher than youth in the
community in general (Abram et al., 2004;
Kerig, Ward, Vanderzee, & Moeddel, 2009).
Among nonincarcerated youth seen in juve-
nile court clinics, one in nine met criteria
for PTSD (Brosky & Lally, 2004). In a study
of 50 delinquents, all but two had experienced
trauma, including repeated abuse and/or
parent death and/or abandonment; at least a
third were physically abused and a quarter
were sexually abused; more than half the
girls had been physically or sexually abused
(Beyer, 2006).
In my experience, trauma typically slows
down development in children and can inter-
fere with all aspects of a youth’s functioning.
While other children are growing emotionally,
the child coping with trauma is distracted from
normal developmental tasks and is occupied
with sadness and feeling powerless. Trauma
causes disturbances of emotional regulation,
social relationships, and attachment (Lieber-
man & Van Horn, 2004). Children who have
been abused or were not protected from
violence often blame themselves and have
trouble trusting others (Cohen, Mannarino, &
Deblinger, 2006).
Many youth in juvenile justice have in the
past been involved with child protective ser-

vices and some are in foster care when they are
9
arrested. Children who are exposed to dis-
rupted caregiving (separation from their fami-
lies and multiple foster homes) are at risk for
continued difficulty in emotional regulation
and deficits in social cognitive processing
(Price & Landsverk, 1998).
Depression Associated With Trauma
Depression is common but often not diag-
nosed in traumatized teenagers (Ney, Col-
bert, Newman, & Young, 1986). Their
behavior problems become the focus rather
than their underlying sadness, isolation, and
loss. Depressed children typically express self-
dislike, show distorted thinking, and have a
greater dependence on peers, but being de-
pressed is correlated with teacher and peer
ratings of unpopularity (Cicchetti & Toth,
1998). Often, young people come to juvenile
justice without having received trauma treat-
ment despite persistent depression, aggression,
and school difficulties (Wolfe, Rawana, &
Chiodo, 2006).
Aggression Associated With Trauma
Aggression can be a defense against the help-
lessness common among traumatized children.

Traumatized youth may misinterpret and be
offended by relatively benign things that
others say and react with combative self-
preservation. These young people often have
had difficulty since childhood modulating
their reactions and putting their feelings into
words. They react negatively to outside con-
trols and are often labeled oppositional (Ford,
Chapman, Hawke, & Albert, 2007; Wolfe et
al., 2006). Traumatized teens may not be able
to stop these reactions because they see con-
trolling adults as mean and unfair, to which
past abuse has made them acutely sensitive.
When adults threaten them, they reflexively
protect themselves; even if the adults believe
they are controlling a situation, the teen au-
tomatically reacts as if back in the position of
being victimized. When their feelings are
hurt, they are flooded with anger from the
past, which they are unaware is out of propor-
tion to the present provocation, and they lack
the ability to calm themselves. Unless adults
arrange an environment to meet their needs,
this predictable reflexive reaction will be pro-
voked repeatedly. Multiple placements cause
more loss and anxiety, provoking fear reactions
and reinforcing sensitivity to hostility, rejec-
tion, and perceived unfairness.
Externalizing behaviors—behavior prob-
lems in school, substance use, and truancy—are
correlated with extreme parental permissiveness,
and internalizing behaviors—depression, anxi-
ety, and self-destructiveness—are associated
with extreme parental psychological control

(Steinberg, Lamborn, Darling, Mounts, &
Dornbusch, 1994). Furthermore,
the problem-solving strategies that
boys bring to adolescent and adult
social situations are directly traceable
to the lessons learned from dads . . .
young boys who are aggressive and are
low in pro-social behaviors . . . have
fathers who are more likely to engage
in angry exchanges with them . . .
the [boys] who are most prone to
break down when the going gets
tough are those who have been raised
with the idea that to admit vulnera-
bility, even to themselves, is weak.
(Kindlon & Thompson, 1999, pp.
102–104)
Reactions to Bullying
Youth who have been chronically picked on
have low self-esteem and academic and peer
difficulties in school, leading to more teasing
and bullying (Horowitz et al., 2004). Bullying
keeps children from perceiving school as a safe
environment. Other students fear that by asso-
ciating with victims they may become targets.
Sometimes victimized children become bullies
themselves, and they tend to have more emo-
tional problems than those who are victims only

(Arseneault et al., 2006; Olweus, 1993).
Pathologizing Trauma-Related Behaviors
It is unfortunate that the effects of trauma on
youth are often overlooked or misunderstood
(see Sedlak & McPherson, 2010; see also
Baker, Cunningham, & Harris, Chapter 11,
this volume). The effects of trauma may sig-
nificantly interfere with the young person’s
life and put him or her at risk of delinquency,
even those whose symptoms do not meet the
PTSD criteria (Widom, 1994; Wood, Foy,
Layne, Pynoos, & James, 2002b) (see also
Braverman & Morris, Chapter 3, this vol-
ume). Adolescents with a history of trauma
have high rates of alcohol and substance
abuse; these youth rely on substances to escape
sad feelings and bad memories (Giaconia,
Reinherz, Paradis, & Stashwick, 2003).
Trauma is considered a significant risk factor,
accounting for numerous items in checklists
of factors connected to delinquency or dan-
gerousness (e.g., the Structured Assessment of
Violence Risk in Youth [SAVRY] and the
Massachusetts Youth Screening Instrument
[MAYSI-2]), but is seldom considered in
designing rehabilitative services. Too often,
symptoms from trauma are misinterprete d as
part of the character of the young person,
rather than a guide to what is behind behavior
that can be changed.
Finally, I briefly discuss the effects of
learning disabilities on the behavior of youth
in the juvenile justice system.

THE EFFECTS OF LEARNING
DISABILITIES ON TEEN BEHAVIOR
About 17–53% of youth in juvenile justice
systems have learning disabilities, in comparison
to 2–10% in the overall child population
(Kazdin, 2000; Sedlak & McPherson, 2010).
Learning disabilities affect young people not
only in school, but at home and in the com-
munity, particularly in comprehending, follow-
ing directions, and establishing and maintaining
relationships. Learning disabilities include a
variety of problems in listening, remembering,
prioritizing, and strategizing as well as reading
and mathematics. Delinquents
have higher rates of neuro-
psychological deficits as reflected in
language, verbal intelligence, working
memory, and reading. Of special in-
terest are deficiencies in “executive”
functions that are served primarily by
the frontal lobes of the brain . . .
[including] abstract reasoning, goal
setting, anticipating and planning,
self-monitoring and self-awareness,
inhibiting of impulsive behavior,
and interrupting an ongoing sequence
of behavior in order to initiate a more
adaptive behavior (Kazdin, p. 53).
Attention deficit disorder (ADD) and
attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD)
are the most frequently diagnosed behavior
disorders of childhood. It is estimated that

at least 25% of adolescents (17% of males
and 21% of females) in the juvenile justice
system have ADHD, compared to 9% in the
overall child population (12% of males
and 5% of females; Eme, 2009). Distrac-
tibility and impulsiveness are prominent
characteristics of attention deficit disorders,
making these young people less able to stop
11
behaviors, which may contribute to delin-
quency (especially when they have immature
cognitive processes and are unable to see
alternative choices at the time of an offense).
Difficulties with social skills are also common
among children with attention deficits and,
in myexperience, often lead to indiscriminately
seeking acceptance (even from delinquent
peers). Some youth’s problem-solving skills
are compromised by not accurately per-
ceiving cues from peers and adults, typically
attributing hostility to others and believing
that aggressive acts will result in peer approval
(Dodge, 2003).
By the time the learning disability is
identified, many youth lack the basic skills
necessary to comprehend schoolwork and to
get along with others. Often, the youth who
is embarrassed by poor performance gets
into a negative cycle of attention seeking
that interferes with school participation.

Some youths’ problem-solving skills are
compromised by not accurately perceiving
cues from peers and adults, typically attrib-
uting hostility to others and believing that
aggressive acts will result in peer approval
(Dodge, 2003). Truancy from feeling picked
on by teachers and/or students and frustra-
tion with poor academic progress can begin
early in young people with learning disabil-
ities, and not attending school can lead to
delinquency.
STRENGTHS OF YOUNG PEOPLE
AND THEIR ENVIRONMENTS
Youth have strengths that must be built on in
designing supports and services to meet the
needs driving their delinquent behavior
(Eccles & Gootman, 2002; see Lerner et al.,
Chapter 5, this volume). Often, youth can
be engaged in change when their strengths
are recognized. Their aspirations may be
connected to something they are or were
good at, and what may motivate them to
change is to get back on track toward achiev-
ing dreams. Although families are typically
blamed as the cause of delinquency, most
families also have strengths, and youth often
take it personally when their families are criti-
cized (see Jacobs, Miranda-Julian & Kaplan,
Chapter 10, this volume). Peers and neighbor-
hoods also receive blame for youth getting
involved in delinquency, but positive peers
can encourage the youth’s aspirations and
neighborhoods can offer significant support

Each response is to be in APA format (minus a cover-page and abstr

Each response is to be in APA format (minus a cover-page and abstr

Recommended

Recommended

More Related Content

Similar to Each response is to be in APA format (minus a cover-page and abstr

Similar to Each response is to be in APA format (minus a cover-page and abstr (20)

More from AlyciaGold776

More from AlyciaGold776 (20)

Recently uploaded

Recently uploaded (20)

Each response is to be in APA format (minus a cover-page and abstr