By Nikita Melnikov, Carlos Schmidt-Padilla, and Maria Micaela Sviatschi   

We study how territorial control by criminal organizations affects economic development. We exploit a natural experiment in El Salvador, where the emergence of these criminal organizations was the consequence of an exogenous shift in American immigration policy that led to the deportation of gang leaders from the United States to El Salvador. Upon arrival, the gangs gained control over many urban areas and re-created a system of borders to protect their territory from outsiders. Using a spatial regression discontinuity design, we find that individuals in gang-controlled neighborhoods have less material well-being, income, and education than individuals living only 50 meters away but outside of gang territory. None of these discontinuities existed before the arrival of the gangs. A key mechanism behind the results is that gangs restrict individuals’ mobility, affecting their labor market options by preventing them from commuting to other parts of the city. The results are not determined by high rates of selective migration, differential exposure to extortion and violence, or differences in public goods provision.     

  NBER Working Paper No. 27832  

Cambridge, MA:; National Bureau of Economic Research, 2022. 123p.

By Andrew Whittaker, James Densley , Tirion Havard, Len Cheston , Tajae Tyrell , Martyn Higgins and Claire Felix-Baptiste.

  The aim of the current study was to understand how gangs have changed in the past ten years since Pitts’ (2008) study in the London Borough of Waltham Forest. The study undertook interviews with 21 practitioners working on gang-related issues and 10 young people affected by gangs or formerly embedded in them. Two focus groups involving 37 participants from key agencies then explored the preliminary findings and contributed to a conceptualisation of a new operating model of gangs. The study found that local gangs had evolved into more organized and profit-oriented entities than a decade earlier. The new operating model rejected visible signs of gang membership as “bad for business” because they attracted unwanted attention from law enforcement agencies. Faced with a saturated drugs market in London, gangs moved out to capture drugs markets in smaller UK towns in “county lines” activities. This more business-oriented ethos has changed the meaning of both territory and violence  While gang members in the original study described an emotional connection with their postcode, territory is increasingly regarded as a marketplace to be protected. Similarly, violence has moved from an expressive means of reinforcing gang identity to being increasingly used as an instrumental means of protecting business interests. The current study offers a rare opportunity to gain a picture of gangs at two time periods and contributes to work on the contested nature of UK gangs and renewed interest in gang evolution. These findings have important implications for local authorities and criminal justice agencies who need to address directly the profit motive of gang activity.  

European Journal on Criminal Policy and Research volume 26, pages. 1–22 (2020). 

Byt Andrew Whittaker , James Densley and  Karin S. Moser 

Social media provide novel opportunities for street gangs to operate beyond their traditional borders to sell drugs, recruit members and control their territory, virtually and physically. Although social media have contributed to the means available to street gangs today, it does not mean that every gang agrees on their use. Drawing on different perspectives (ex-gang members, law enforcement) on gangs using a multi-method design in a London borough, the current study shows that social media have polarized gangs, resulting in two distinct types of digital adaptation. The proposed division of ‘digitalist’ and ‘traditionalist’ gangs is rooted in Thrasher’s (1927) dictum that no two gangs are alike and explains how some gangs prefer to keep a low profile, thus, avoiding social media use. ‘Digitalists’, by contrast, prefer to use social media as a way to gain reputation and territorial expansion. They use it to brand themselves and to appear attractive for recruits and customers alike. These differences can be theoretically explained firstly as a generational gap, meaning that younger gang members prefer the use of social media; and secondly, by how well established a gang already is, as newer gangs need more attention to establish themselves.
 Computers in Human Behavior Volume 110, September 2020, 106403

By Christian Dustmann, Mikkel Mertz and Anna Okatenko 

The effects of neighbourhood characteristics on the development of children and adolescents is a key area of research in the social sciences literature. Early papers such as Brooks-Gunn et al. (1993) document strong associations between children’s outcomes and the characteristics of the neighbourhoods they live in. More recent work finds evidence that the neighbourhood children grow up in a↵ects their earnings, college attendance, marriage, fertility (Chetty et al., 2016; Chetty and Hendren, 2018a,b; Chyn, 2018; Deutscher, 2020), and school performance (˚Aslund et al., 2011; Galster et al., 2016). One particular concern is the e↵ect of neighbourhood characteristics on adolescents’ criminal, delinquent, and health-compromising activities (for a review, see Leventhal and Brooks-Gunn (2000)), in particular the potential negative impacts of gangs, drugs and violence on children and young teenagers (Jencks and Mayer, 1990; Popkin et al., 2002). A small literature investigates the impact of exposure to crime on the criminal behaviour of young men and women, but little is known about which type of criminal activity in the neighbourhood may lead to spillovers, how this compares with the impact other neighbourhood characteristics have on later outcomes, how exposure to crime affects other dimensions of risky behaviour in particular for girls, and what the longer-term economic consequences of exposure to crime for males and females are….

Bonn: IZA  Institute of Labor Economics .2023. 76p.

By  Anne-Marie Day, Tim Bateman and John Pitts

  It is well documented that children in care – those looked-after by the local authority – are over-represented in the youth justice system.1 In recent years, the relationship between care and crime has begun to receive increasing academic and policy attention, culminating, in 2018, in the government publishing a national protocol to reduce unnecessary criminalisation of children in care and improve the criminal justice responses when they do enter the youth justice system. The use of child imprisonment has fallen dramatically over the past decade, but the experiences of children confined in the secure estate has worsened, leading to widespread acknowledgement that the incarceration of children is damaging and counterproductive and that existing provision is not fit for purpose. Looked-after children who come into contact with the justice system are seven times more likely to be detained than their non-care equivalents, but little is known about the factors leading to such over-representation or the differential experiences of children in care while in detention. This report bridges that evidence gap by considering the relationship between care and imprisonment. The research on which it draws, across the nine local authorities in the South and West Yorkshire Resettlement Consortium (SWYC) area, explored the pathways of looked-after children into, through and out of the custodial estate. A comparative approach allowed the identification of the extent to which those pathways differ for children in care and those who are not.

Bedminster, UK: University of Bedminster, 2020. 79p.

By Jean Marie McGloin and Kyle J. Thomas 

Peer influence occupies an intriguing place in criminology. On the one hand, there is a long line of theorizing and empirical work highlighting it as a key causal process for delinquency. On the other, there is a group of theoretical skeptics who view it as one of the most notorious examples of a spurious link. After discussing these perspectives, this review takes stock of our intellectual advancements in understanding peer influence over decades’ worth of research toward this endeavor. We conclude that although there have been important gains, essential questions and gaps remain. Toward this aim, we offer some lines of future work that we believe offer pathways to yielding the greatest added value to the discipline. 

Annu. Rev. Criminol. 2019. 2:241–64 

By Barbara J. Costello and John H. Laub

The publication of Travis Hirschi’s Causes of Delinquency in 1969 was a watershed moment in criminology. There are many reasons for the work’s lasting influence. Hirschi carefully examined the underlying assumptions of extant theories of crime in light of what was known about the individual-level correlates of offending. He then developed critical tests of hypotheses derived from social control theory and competing perspectives and empirically assessed them using original self-report delinquency data. Many of his key findings, such as the negative correlation between attachment to parents and delinquency, are now established facts that any explanation of crime must consider. Causes of Delinquency is still cited hundreds of times per year, and it continues to spark new research and theoretical development in the field. Perhaps the most lasting legacy is the volume of criticism it has attracted and fended off, leading to its enduring contribution to the study of crime and delinquency    

  Annu. Rev. Criminol. 2020. 3:21–41

By Arielle Baskin-Sommers, Shou-An Chang, Suzanne Estrada, and Lena Chan

Youthful offending is a complex behavior that develops from an interaction between social experiences and individual differences in thinking patterns and emotional reactions favoring antisociality. The combination of factors associated with offending varies across individuals and influences the ways in which youth perceive, interpret, and respond to a wide range of experiences. Programs must consider the specific environmental (e.g., community), institutional (e.g., schools, parents, peers), and individual factors impacting youth as essential targets for intervention.We synthesize research on familyfocused, school-focused, peer- and community-focused, trauma-focused, cognitive-behavioral, and multisystem interventions in terms of their targets and note variability in their effectiveness. Furthermore, we highlight the continued need for developmentally appropriate interventions that accurately target the mechanisms of action, do no harm, are delivered with fidelity, and encourage active engagement by both interveners and youth. 

  Annu. Rev. Criminol. 2022. 5:345–69  

By Craig Haney ;· Frank R. Baumgartner; · Karen Steele3   

In Roper v. Simmons (2005), the US Supreme Court raised the minimum age at which someone could be subjected to capital punishment, ruling that no one under the age of 18 at the time of their crime could be sentenced to death. The present article discusses the legal context and rationale by which the Court established the current age-based limit on death penalty eligibility as well as the scientific basis for a recent American Psychological Association Resolution that recommended extending that limit to include members of the “late adolescent class” (i.e., persons from 18 to 20 years old). In addition, we present new data that address the little-discussed but important racial/ethnic implications of these age-based limits to capital punishment, both for the already established Roper exclusion and the APA-proposed exclusion for the late adolescent class. In fact, a much higher percentage of persons in the late adolescent class who were sentenced to death in the post-Roper era were non-White, suggesting that their age-based exclusion would help to remedy this problematic pattern. 

 Journal of Pediatric Neuropsychology (2022) 8:168–177

By B.J. Casey, C. Simmons, L.H. Somerville, and A. Baskin-Sommers

Youthful offenders convicted of serious crimes continue to be sentenced to death and life without parole in the United States based on legal arguments that cast them as incorrigible and permanent dangers to society. Yet psychological and neuroscientific evidence contradicts these arguments and unequivocally demonstrates significant changes in brain, behavior, and personality throughout the life course, especially during adolescence as it extends into the early twenties. This article (a) clarifies the current state of the science on typical behavioral and brain development showing robust changes into the twenties; (b) demonstrates that behavior, personality, and psychopathic traits are dynamic and change over time; and (c) underscores that reliance on prior criminal behavior only to predict later recidivism is tenuous at best. Together, these scientific insights make a case for extending juvenile protections to youthful offenders sentenced for crimes committed in their teens and early twenties. 

Annu. Rev. Criminol. 2022. 5:321–43 

By Josh Rovner

The Sentencing Project, in its national survey of life and virtual life sentences in the United States found 1,465 people serving JLWOP sentences at the start of 2020. This number reflects a 38% drop in the population of people serving JLWOP since our 2016 count and a 44% drop since the peak count of JLWOP figures in 2012.1 This count continues to decline as more states eliminate JLWOP. In five decisions – Roper v. Simmons (2005), Graham v. Florida (2010), Miller v. Alabama (2012), Montgomery v. Louisiana (2016), and Jones v. Mississippi (2021) – the Supreme Court of the United States establishes and upholds the fact that “children are constitutionally different from adults in their levels of culpability”2 when it comes to sentencing. Differences in maturity and accountability informs the protections of the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment that limits sentencing a child to die in prison. Research on adolescent brain development confirms the commonsense understanding that children are different from adults in ways that are critical to identifying age-appropriate criminal sentences. This understanding – Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy called it what “any parent knows”3 – was central to the recent Supreme Court decisions excluding people under 18 from the harshest sentencing practices. Starting in 2005, Roper struck down the death penalty for people under 18…...  

Washington DC: The Sentencing Project, 2023.  6p.

By The U.S. Surgeon General
  Social media use by youth is nearly universal. Up to 95% of youth ages 13–17 report using a social media platform, with more than a third saying they use social media “almost constantly.”  Although age 13 is commonly the required minimum age used by social media platforms in the U.S., nearly 40% of children ages 8–12 use social media. Despite this widespread use among children and adolescents, robust independent safety analyses on the impact of social media on youth have not yet been conducted. There are increasing concerns among researchers, parents and caregivers, young people, healthcare experts, and others about the impact of social media on youth mental health.5, 6 More research is needed to fully understand the impact of social media; however, the current body of evidence indicates that while social media may have benefits for some children and adolescents, there are ample indicators that social media can also have a profound risk of harm to the mental health and well-being of children and adolescents. At this time, we do not yet have enough evidence to determine if social media is sufficiently safe for children and adolescents. We must acknowledge the growing body of research about potential harms, increase our collective understanding of the risks associated with social media use, and urgently take action to create safe and healthy digital environments that minimize harm and safeguard children’s and adolescents’ mental health and well-being during critical stages of development. 
  
Washington DC: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 2023. 25p.

By Andrea R. Coleman  
Involvement with the juvenile justice system may result in collateral consequences—sanctions and disqualifications that can place an unanticipated burden on rehabilitated youth transitioning back to their communities following out-of-home placement. Collateral consequences can negatively impact a youth’s access to higher education, employment, housing, and ability to serve in the military. Although states continue to pass new laws and increase public awareness efforts, expunging juvenile records is still a complicated process. State laws vary widely and it is not always clear exactly what expungement, sealing, or confidentiality covers. Fortunately, there are emerging practices that are helping youth, families, and professionals expunge juvenile records. Successful reentry reduces recidivism and increases public safety. It is our hope that the information contained in this bulletin will help court personnel, service providers, and youth advocates mitigate the effects of collateral consequences. Balancing public safety with the needs of juvenile offenders seeking to lead productive lives without unnecessary encumbrances is a challenge.

Washington, DC: Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, 2020. 12p.

By Christina A. Sorenson

Screaming Into The Void: Youth Voice in Institutional Placements is a report written by 2019 Soros Justice Fellow Christina K. Sorenson. This comprehensive report includes a personal anthology, a historical analysis, a review of the current state of affairs, an in-depth look at Pennsylvania, and a 51- jurisdictional research survey of youth grievance protections in institutional placements across the dependency and delinquency systems. The historical analysis is limited but essential to understanding the current system's failures and the need for system re-imagining.

The regularity of out-of-state placement necessitates a national perspective. The complicated intersection of federal and state laws exists ostensibly to protect the children we incarcerate. However, the research in this report unequivocally proves that nationwide, our oversight systems systematically dis-empower youth, hide abuses and limit liability.

Organized around three core components: See Youth, Hear Youth, and Protect Youth, this report weaves an existing analysis of protections across the county with multi-disciplinary recommendations and approaches. Finally, there is a curriculum developed by expert Antonio Thomas, to help jurisdictions work directly in partnership with youth to develop youth-centered grievance protections.

The purpose of this report is not to offer an answer, a model, or a template for grievance protection. Instead, the history, state statutory and regulatory review, and curriculum aim to supply the resources necessary for policy-makers and advocates to empower and include local youth with lived experience in imagining and implementing effective youth-centered grievance protections.
Philadelphia: Juvenile Law Center, 2023. 108p.

By   Ilya Klauzner, Suzanne Poynton, Don Weatherburn and Hamish Thorburn

Youth on Track is an early intervention scheme that was introduced in 2013 to help reduce the risk of young people re-offending. The scheme assigns young people to caseworkers for up to 12 months. Caseworkers administer interventions to the young person, including cognitive-behavioural and family interventions. They can also refer young people to external services to address criminogenic needs and engage with schools to increase attendance. Youth on Track is only available in seven sites in NSW and for young people who have never had a supervised order.
Between August 2017 and June 2020, a randomised controlled trial (RCT) was implemented to evaluate the Youth on Track program. A brief intervention called Fast Track was created as the control arm to ensure some level of treatment for all young people participating in the RCT. Fast Track was capped at six weeks of case management. Caseworkers did not deliver any structured interventions to the young person, but could refer them to external services.
We examined whether there were any differences in recidivism, education, employment, community activity, and housing outcomes between Youth on Track and Fast Track participants.

Sydney: NSW Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research. (Crime and Justice Bulletin No. 249).  

By  Aisha Ofori, Carmen Robin-D’Cruz, Bami Jolaoso and Stephen Whitehead

  Youth diversion is a set of informal, non-statutory practices in which children and young people are provided the opportunity to avoid a statutory out of court disposal or a court prosecution if they complete community-based interventions. It offers children and young people a crucial alternative, allowing them to avoid the damaging consequences of formal justice processing and the likelihood of becoming deeper entrenched into the youth justice system. However, at present, there are concerns that diversion is not equally available to all, potentially exacerbating the racial disparities that already mar the system. As the House of Commons Justice Select Committee reported, ‘race disproportionality is significant and fundamental, visible in every part of the youth justice system’.  Given the significant and potentially life-long harms which come with unnecessary involvement in the justice system, ensuring equal access to diversion is essential. This project explores the experiences of children and young people, some of whom had been diverted and some of whom had not, with a particular focus on how they perceived their ethnicity to have impacted the youth justice process and outcomes. Eleven children and young people currently in the youth justice system participated in face-to-face interviews about their experiences with the police, solicitors and youth justice services, and how they perceived these experiences to have been influenced by their ethnic background. This research, funded by the Esmée Fairbairn Foundation, follows on from our previous project ‘Equal diversion? Racial disproportionality in youth diversion’ and is a crucial step towards expanding the limited evidence base on youth diversion in England and Wales.  

London: The Centre for Justice Innovation, 2022. 21p.

By Patricia Soung

The dramatic growth of prison populations in the United States during the latter half of the twentieth century, as well as the problems of over-policing and police misconduct, have been well documented and decried.1 But the related expansion and problems of community supervision receive far less attention. Across the nation, reform efforts have increasingly included a focus on probation, especially juvenile probation, as an actor that both jails and polices youth in the community while also trying to rehabilitate them and promote their well-being. This Article studies the juvenile probation system, with a focus on California as one important system aiming to both surveil and care for individuals. It draws together two frameworks: 1) law and policy which describe the juvenile probation system as intended, and 2) juvenile probation practices and attitudes which reveal the day-to-day translation of the system’s formal intentions. Ultimately, where a system’s approach to rehabilitation and accountability become synonymous with or too reflexively able to adopt surveillance, containment, and punishment orientations, its ability to deliver meaningful help and support through that same system is improbable. Thus, this Article discusses the need in the United States to reform, dismantle, or replace probation with youth development-focused systems and uses Los Angeles as an example of a government already doing this important work

.112 J. Crim. L. & Criminology 549 (2022).

By Ben Finholt, Brandon L. Garrett, Karima Modjadidi, and Kristen M. Renberg 

Life without parole (LWOP) is “an especially harsh punishment for a juvenile,” as the U.S. Supreme Court noted in Graham v. Florida. The United States is the only country in the world that imposes juvenile life without parole (JLWOP) sentences. Many of these individuals were sentenced during a surge in LWOP sentencing in the 1990s. In the past decade, following several Supreme Court rulings eliminating mandatory sentences of LWOP for juvenile offenders, such sentencing has declined. This Article aims to empirically assess the rise and then the fall in JLWOP sentencing in a leading sentencing state, North Carolina, to better understand these trends and their implications.

We examine the cases of ninety-four North Carolina juveniles, aged thirteen to seventeen at the time of their offenses, who were sentenced to JLWOP. Of those, forty-nine are currently serving LWOP sentences. In North Carolina, JLWOP sentencing has markedly declined. Since 2011, there have been only five of such sentences. Of the group of ninety-four juvenile offenders, forty-four have so far been resentenced to non-LWOP sentences—largely pursuant to the post-Miller v. Alabama legislation passed in North Carolina. These JLWOP sentences are primarily concentrated in a small group of counties. A total of 61% (fifty-seven of the ninety-four) JLWOP sentences in North Carolina were entered in one of the eleven counties that have imposed more than three JLWOP sentences. We find a path dependency to these sentences: once a county has imposed a JLWOP sentence, it has a higher probability of imposing a JLWOP sentence again in the future. In contrast, homicide rates are not predictive of JLWOP sentences. We question what goals JLWOP serves, given what an inconsistently used, uncommon, geographically limited, and costly sentence it has been in practice. In conclusion, we describe alternatives to JLWOP, including the model adopted in states such as California and Wyoming, in which there is periodic review of lengthy sentences imposed on juvenile offenders.

110 J. Crim. L. & Criminology 141 (2020).

By Ashley Nellis and Niki Monazzam

  Beginning at age 18, U.S. laws typically require persons charged with a crime to have their case heard in criminal rather than juvenile court, where penalties are more severe.1 The justification for this is that people are essentially adults by age 18, yet this conceptualization of adulthood is flawed. The identification of full criminal accountability at age 18 ignores the important, distinct phase of human development referred to as emerging adulthood, also known as late adolescence or young adulthood.2 Compelling evidence shows that most adolescents are not fully matured into adulthood until their mid-twenties.3 The legal demarcation of 18 as adulthood rests on outdated notions of adolescence. Based on the best scientific understanding of human development, ages 18 to 25 mark a unique stage of life between childhood and adulthood which is recognized within the fields of neuroscience, sociology, and psychology. Thus, there is growing support for providing incarcerated people who were young at the time of their offense a second look at their original sentence to account for their diminished capacity. A 2022 study found similar levels of public support for providing a second look at prison sentences for crimes committed under age 18 as for those committed under age 25.4 This brief proceeds in three sections: • Analysis based on a newly compiled nationally representative dataset of nearly 30,000 individuals sentenced to life without parole (LWOP) between 1995 and 2017. • Research review on adolescent brain development revealing that emerging adults share more characteristics with youth than adults. • Judicial, legislative, and administrative reform updates in nine jurisdictions: California, Connecticut, Florida, Massachusetts, Michigan, Vermont, Washington, Washington, DC, and Wyoming.

Washington, DC: The Sentencing Project, 2023. 22p.  

By Charles Puzzanchera, Sarah Hockenberry, and Melissa Sickmund  

  Youth and the Juvenile Justice System: 2022 National Report is the fifth edition of a comprehensive report on youth victimization, offending by youth, and the juvenile justice system. With this release, the report series has adopted a new name (the series was previously known as “Juvenile Offenders and Victims”), but the focus of the report remains unchanged: the report consists of the most requested information on youth and the juvenile justice system in the United States. Developed by the National Center for Juvenile Justice (NCJJ) for the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention and the National Institute of Justice, the report draws on reliable data and relevant research to provide a comprehensive and insightful view of youth victims and offending by youth, and what happens to youth when they enter the juvenile justice system in the U.S. The report offers—to Congress, state legislators, other state and local policymakers, educators, juvenile justice professionals, and concerned citizens— empirically based answers to frequently asked questions about the nature of youth victimization and offending and the justice system’s response. The juvenile justice system must react to the law-violating behaviors of youth in a manner that not only protects the community and holds youth accountable but also enhances youth’s ability to live productively and responsibly in the community. The system must also intervene in the lives of abused and neglected children who lack safe and nurturing environments. To respond to these complex issues, juvenile justice practitioners, policymakers, and the public must have access to useful and accurate information about the system and the youth it serves. At times, such information is not available or, when it does exist, it is often too scattered or inaccessible to be useful. This report bridges that gap by pulling together the most requested information on youth and the juvenile justice system in the United States. The report draws on numerous national data collections to address the specific information needs of those involved with the juvenile justice system. The report presents important and, at times, complex information using clear, nontechnical writing and easy to-understand graphics and tables. It is structured as a series of briefing papers on specific topics, short sections that can be read independently   

 Pittsburgh, PA:  National Center for Juvenile Justice, 2022. 226p.