Assessing Juvenile Justice Reform

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Adolescence is a distinct, yet transient, period of development between childhood and adulthood characterized by increased experimentation and risk-taking, a tendency to discount long-term consequences, and heightened sensitivity to peers and other social influences. A key function of adolescence is developing an integrated sense of self, including individualization, separation from parents, and personal identity. Experimentation and novelty-seeking behavior, such as alcohol and drug use, unsafe sex, and reckless driving, are thought to serve a number of adaptive functions despite their risks.

Research indicates that for most youth, the period of risky experimentation does not extend beyond adolescence, ceasing as identity becomes settled with maturity. Much adolescent involvement in criminal activity is part of the normal developmental process of identity formation and most adolescents will mature out of these tendencies. Evidence of significant changes in brain structure and function during adolescence strongly suggests that these cognitive tendencies characteristic of adolescents are associated with biological immaturity of the brain and with an imbalance among developing brain systems. This imbalance model implies dual systems: one involved in cognitive and behavioral control and one involved in socio-emotional processes. Accordingly adolescents lack mature capacity for self-regulations because the brain system that influences pleasure-seeking and emotional reactivity develops more rapidly than the brain system that supports self-control. This knowledge of adolescent development has underscored important differences between adults and adolescents with direct bearing on the design and operation of the justice system, raising doubts about the core assumptions driving the criminalization of juvenile justice policy in the late decades of the 20th century.

It was in this context that the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP) asked the National Research Council to convene a committee to conduct a study of juvenile justice reform. The goal of Reforming Juvenile Justice: A Developmental Approach was to review recent advances in behavioral and neuroscience research and draw out the implications of this knowledge for juvenile justice reform, to assess the new generation of reform activities occurring in the United States, and to assess the performance of OJJDP in carrying out its statutory mission as well as its potential role in supporting scientifically based reform efforts.

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462 pages · 6 x 9 · paperback
ISBN Paperback: 0-309-27890-2
ISBN Ebook: 0-309-27891-0
DOI: https://doi.org/10.17226/14685

Suggested citation

National Research Council. 2013. Reforming Juvenile Justice: A Developmental Approach. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press.

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Robert L. Johnson

Robert L. Johnson is the Sharon and Joseph L. Muscarelle Endowed Dean, (Interim) and chair of pediatrics at the New Jersey Medical School. He also holds an appointment in the Department of Psychiatry. His research focuses on adolescent physical and mental health, adolescent HIV, adolescent violence, adolescent fatherhood and risk prevention/reduction programs with specific emphasis on substance and alcohol abuse, sexuality and sexual dysfunction, male sexual abuse, suicide, and AIDS. He is a past member of the National Institute of Mental Health National Advisory Council, the Board of the Violence Institute of New Jersey, and the Pediatric Residency Review Committee of the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education. He was a member of the Advisory Committee on Adolescent Health of the Office of Technology Assessment, chairman of the Board of Advocates for Youth, and president of the New Jersey State Board of Medical Examiners. He also serves on several Institute of Medicine committees, including the Board on Health Care Services, and has been a member of Institute of Medicine committees such as the Committee on Unintended Pregnancy. He currently serves on the DBASSE Advisory Committee. Dr. Johnson received his M.D. from the UMDNJ New Jersey Medical School.

Carl C. Bell

Carl C. Bell is Clinical Professor of Psychiatry and Public Health and the Director of the Institute for Juvenile Research (IJR) at the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC). IJR is a century old, multi-million dollar academic institute providing child and family research, training, and service, employing 257 academic faculty and support staff. Dr. Bell is president and chief executive officer of the Community Mental Health Council (CMHC) and Foundation, Inc., in Chicago. CMHC is a comprehensive community mental health center employing 390 social service workers. He is currently serving as a member of the NRC Committee on Law and Justice and the National Institute of Mental Health’s National Mental Health Advisory Council. He is co-director - UIC Interdisciplinary Violence Prevention Research Center, University of Illinois at Chicago. Dr. Bell was the E.Y. Williams Distinguished Senior Clinical Scholar Award of the Section on Psychiatry of the National Medical Association in 1992. He received the American Psychiatric Association President's Commendation - Violence in 1997. During 40 years, he has published more than 450 articles, chapters, and books on mental health and has authored The Sanity of Survival. A 1967 graduate of UIC, he earned his MD from Meharry College in Nashville, Tennessee in 1971. He completed his psychiatric residency in 1974 at the Illinois State Psychiatric Institute/Institute for Juvenile Research in Chicago.

Lawrence D. Bobo

Lawrence D. Bobo is the W.E.B. Du Bois Professor of the Social Sciences at Harvard University. He holds appointments in the Department of Sociology and the Department of African and African American Studies. His research has appeared in the American Sociological Review, the American Journal of Sociology, Social Forces, the American Political Science Review, the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Social Psychology Quarterly, and Public Opinion Quarterly. His research focuses on the intersection of social inequality, politics, and race. He is the founding editor of the Du Bois Review: Social Science Research on Race published by Cambridge University Press. He is co-author of the award winning book Racial Attitudes in America: Trends and Interpretations (Harvard University Press, 1997, with H. Schuman, C. Steeh, and M. Krysan) and senior editor of Prismatic Metropolis: Inequality in Los Angeles (Russell Sage Foundation, 2000, with M. L. Oliver, J. H. Johnson, and A. Valenzuela). His most recent book Prejudice in Politics: Group Position, Public Opinion, and the Wisconsin Treaty Rights Dispute (Harvard University Press, 2006, with M. Tuan) was a finalist for the 2007 C. Wright Mills Award. Professor Bobo is an elected member of the National Academy of Science as well as a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Philosophical Society and the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Richard J. Bonnie

Richard J. Bonnie is the Harrison Foundation Professor of Medicine and Law, professor of psychiatry and neurobehavioral sciences, professor of public policy and director, Institute of Law, Psychiatry and Public Policy at the University of Virginia. He was elected to the Institute of Medicine in 1991and has served on and chaired numerous IOM and NRC standing committees and study committees. Professor Bonnie teaches and writes about criminal law, bioethics and public policies relating to mental health, substance abuse, aging and public health. He has been associate director of the National Commission on Marihuana and Drug Abuse (1971-73); secretary of the first National Advisory Council on Drug Abuse (1975-85) and chief advisor for the ABA Criminal Justice Mental Health Standards Project (1981-88). He currently chairs a Commission on Mental Health Law Reform at the request of the chief justice of Virginia. Bonnie has served as an advisor to the American Psychiatric Association Council on Psychiatry and Law since 1979 and received the Association’s Isaac Ray Award in 1998 for contributions to the field of forensic psychiatry. He has also served on the MacArthur Foundation’s Research Network on Mental Health and the Law and a successor Network on Mandated Community Treatment and is currently participating in the Foundation’s Project on Law and Neuroscience. He received the Yarmolinksy Medal in 2002 for his contributions to the IOM and the National Academies. In 2007, Bonnie received the University of Virginia’s highest honor, the Thomas Jefferson Award.

Jeffrey A. Butts

Jeffrey A. Butts is Executive Director of the Criminal Justice Research and Evaluation Center at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, City University of New York (CUNY). Previously, Dr. Butts was a research fellow with Chapin Hall at the University of Chicago, director of the Program on Youth Justice at the Urban Institute in Washington, DC, and senior research associate at the National Center for Juvenile Justice (NCJJ) in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. NCJJ is the national repository for state juvenile court records and is the main producer and analyzer of juvenile justice system statistics. His work focuses on research and evaluation projects designed to discover and improve policies and programs for at-risk and disconnected youth, especially those involved with the justice system. He has more than 25 years of experience in research, program evaluation, policy analysis, and direct services. Dr. Butts has authored two books, dozens of reports for the U.S. Department of Justice and other agencies, and articles in journals such as the American Journal of Criminal Law, Crime and Delinquency, Criminal Justice Policy Review, Judicature, Law & Policy, Juvenile and Family Court Journal, and Youth & Society. He began his career in 1980 as a drug and alcohol counselor with the juvenile court in Eugene, Oregon. He received his Ph.D. in sociology and social work from the University of Michigan.

Gladys Carrion

Gladys Carrión is Commissioner of the New York State Office of Children and Family Services (OCFS). She was named to this position by New York State Governor Eliot Spitzer in January, 2007 and continues to serve under Governor David A. Patterson. OCFS has oversight of child welfare, including child preventive and protective services, foster care, and adoption; manages the state's juvenile justice system; and regulates and licenses child care. OCFS has an annual budget of approximately $4 billion dollars. During Carrión's tenure, OCFS has earned national recognition for her initiative to transform the juvenile justice system she inherited, from a "custody and control" model with a reputation for using excessive force on children; no oversight and few resources; and an 89 percent recidivism rate, to an evidence-based, trauma-informed, community-centered therapeutic model which has significantly better outcomes for children and for maintaining community safety. Carrión's reform of New York's juvenile justice system also has included the closing of 13 empty or underutilized, but fully staffed, residential centers in local counties which sent few or no children to OCFS for out-of-home residential placement. Other positions she has held include staff attorney at Bronx Legal Services Corporation, commissioner of the NYC Community Development Agency, chair of the NYC School’s Chancellor’s Task Force on Latino Educational Opportunity, executive director of Family Dynamics and program officer in community development at the Ford Foundation. She received her J.D. from the New York University School of Law.

B.J. Casey

B.J. Casey is Director of the Sackler Institute for Developmental Psychobiology and the Sackler Professor of Developmental Psychobiology, Weill Cornell Medical College. She has been examining the normal development of brain circuitry involved in attention and behavioral regulation and how disruptions in these brain systems give rise to a number of developmental disorders. Most recently she has begun to examine the effects of gene-environment interactions in the development of affect and behavioral regulation and related brain systems using both human and mouse genetics. She currently serves as a member of the IOM/DBASSE Board on Children, Youth, and Families. She received a Ph.D. in experimental psychology from the University of South Carolina.

Kenneth A. Dodge

Kenneth A. Dodge is the William McDougall Professor of Public Policy and Professor of Psychology - Social and Health Sciences at Duke University. Additionally, he is the first director of the Center for Child and Family Policy at Duke. In this role, he leads an effort to bridge basic scientific research in children’s development with public policy affecting children and families. The center provides an integrated system of research, debate and dissemination, public service and teaching, addressing issues of child and family policy. Professor Dodge is trained as a clinical and developmental psychologist, has published more than 400 scientific articles, and is the principal investigator for several large research grants. He is the recipient of a research scientist award from the National Institute of Mental Health and has been honored with several awards from the American Psychological Association, including the Distinguished Scientific Award for Early Career Contribution to Psychopathology. His particular area of scholarship has addressed the development and prevention of chronic violence in children and adolescents. He has conducted both laboratory and longitudinal studies of how chronic aggressive behavior develops across the life span. His work has identified early family experience factors (such as child physical abuse), peer relations factors, and social-cognitive patterns that serve as catalysts for aggressive behavioral development. With colleagues, he developed the Fast Track Program, a comprehensive effort to prevent the development of chronic violence in high-risk children. This program is being implemented and evaluated in four regions of the country, with positive preliminary results. Previously Dodge served on the faculty at Indiana University, the University of Colorado and Vanderbilt University. He earned his Ph.D. in psychology from Duke University.

Sandra H. Graham

Sandra Graham is a Professor in the Department of Education at UCLA. She received her BA from Barnard College, an MA in History from Columbia University, and her PhD in Education from UCLA.. Her major research interests include the study of academic motivation, peer aggression, and juvenile delinquency, particularly in African American children and adolescents. Professor Graham has published widely in developmental, social, and educational psychology journals. She currently is Principal Investigator on grants from the National Science Foundation and the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development. She also is the recipient of an Independent Scientist Award, funded by the National Institute of Mental Health. She is a former recipient of the Early Contribution Award from Division 15 (Educational Psychology) of the American Psychological Association and a former Fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, Stanford, California. Among her professional activities, Professor Graham is an Associate Editor of American Psychologist and a member of the MacArthur Foundation Network on Adolescent Development and Juvenile Justice, the Governing Council of the Society for Research on Adolescence, and the advisory committee of the Minority Fellowship Program of APA.

Ernestine Gray

Ernestine Gray is Chief Judge of the Orleans Parish Juvenile Court in New Orleans, Louisiana. She was elected in 1984 and has since been re-elected to three full, eight-year terms on that court. Prior to that, Judge Gray was employed by the Baton Rouge Legal Aid Society, the Attorney General of the State of Louisiana and the United States Equal Employment Opportunity Commission as a trial attorney. Throughout her career, Judge Gray has held leadership positions with children's advocacy, judicial and bar organizations. She is also past-president of the National Council of Juvenile and Family Court Judges and the National CASA Board of Trustees. At National CASA she serves on the Inclusion and Outreach; Education and Public Awareness; and Standards committees. (This sentence should be deleted because at Legal Aid I was a trail attorney in the state judicial system and at EEOC I was in federal court. Her experience in the state’s judicial system began with her tenure as a trial attorney in the offices of both the Attorney General of the State of Louisiana and the United States Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.) She received her J.D. from Louisiana State University.

Edward P. Mulvey

Edward P. Mulvey is Professor of Psychiatry and Director of the Law and Psychiatry Program at Western Psychiatry Institute and Clinic at the University of Pittsburgh’s School of Medicine. He has been at the University of Pittsburgh since 1983. Dr. Mulvey is a Fellow of both the American Psychological Association and the American Psychological Society, a recipient of a Faculty Scholar's Award from the William T. Grant Foundation, a member of two MacArthur Foundation Research Networks (one on Mental Health and the Law and another on Adolescent Development and Juvenile Justice), and a member of the Steering Committee for the National Science Foundation-funded National Consortium on Violence Research. His research has centered on issues related to the use of mental health treatment as a method of social control, primarily focused on how clinicians make judgments regarding the type of risk posed by adult mental patients and juvenile offenders. He received his Ph.D. in community/clinical psychology from the University of Virginia in 1982. He also did post-doctoral training in quantitative methods in criminal justice at Carnegie Mellon University.

Robert Plotnick

Robert D. Plotnick is Professor of public affairs and Adjunct Professor of economics at the University of Washington, where he has served since 1984. He is a research affiliate with the West Coast Poverty Center and the Center for Studies in Demography and Ecology at the University of Washington and the Institute for Research on Poverty at the University of Wisconsin. Plotnick has written extensively on American poverty, income inequality, income support policy, teenage childbearing, and related social policy issues. He has been a visiting scholar at the Russell Sage Foundation, the University of New South Wales and the London School of Economics. Among his current professional activities, Plotnick is vice-president of the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management and deputy editor of Demography. Professor Plotnick received his Ph.D. in economics from University of California, Berkeley.

Elizabeth S. Scott

Elizabeth Scott is the Harold R. Medina Professor of Law at Columbia University Law School. From 2007-2009, she served as the law school’s vice-dean. Professor Scott teaches family law, property, criminal law, and children and the law. She has written extensively on marriage, divorce, cohabitation, child custody, adolescent decision-making, and juvenile delinquency. Her research is interdisciplinary, applying behavioral economics, social science research, and developmental theory to family/juvenile law and policy issue. Prior to joining the Columbia Law School faculty, she served as legal director of the Forensic Psychiatry Clinic, Institute of Law, Psychiatry and Public Policy at the University of Virginia from 1979-87. Professor Scott served as associate professor at Virginia from 1988-91, university professor from 1992-2006 and Class of 1962 professor of law from 2001-06. She was the founder and co-director of the University of Virginia's interdisciplinary Center for Children, Families and the Law. From 1995-2006, she was involved in empirical research on adolescents in the justice system as a member of the MacArthur Foundation Research Network on Adolescent Development and Juvenile Justice. In 2008, she published Rethinking Juvenile Justice (Harvard University Press) with developmental psychologist Laurence Steinberg. The book draws on their collaborative work on the Network to offer a developmental framework for juvenile justice policy. She is also the co-author of two casebooks on family law and children in the legal system. She received her J.D. from the University of Virginia’s School of Law in 1977.

Terence P. Thornberry

Terence P. Thornberry is Professor, Department of Criminology and Criminal Justice at the University of Maryland. He was formerly director of the Problem Behavior Program at the Institute of Behavioral Science and professor of sociology, University of Colorado (2004-2009) and prior to that held numerous positions at Albany, State University of New York (1984—2003) including: distinguished professor and dean at the School of Criminal Justice and director of the Hindelang Criminal Justice Research Center. In 1995 he was elected a fellow of the American Society of Criminology and in 2008 he was the recipient of that society’s Edwin H. Sutherland Award. Dr. Thornberry is the recipient of numerous other awards including the President's Award for Excellence in Research at the University at Albany, the Justice for Children Award from the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, and was an invited lecturer at the White House Conference on Helping America’s Youth in 2005. Professor Thornberry's research interests focus on understanding the development of delinquency and crime over the life course, the consequences of maltreatment, and intergenerational continuity in antisocial behavior. He is the principal investigator of the Rochester Youth Development Study, a three-generation panel study begun in 1986 to examine the causes and consequences of delinquency and other forms of antisocial behaviors. He has developed an interactional theory to explain these behaviors and has used data from the study to empirically test his theory. He is the author of a number of books, including The Criminally Insane (1979) which received the American Bar Association's Gavel Award Certificate of Merit, From Boy to Man, From Delinquency to Crime 1987, and Gangs and Delinquency in Developmental Perspective 2003 which received the American Society of Criminology’s Michael J. Hindelang Award for the Most Outstanding Contribution to Research in Criminology. He received his Ph.D in sociology from the University of Pennsylvania.

Cherie Townsend

Cherie Townsend has served as Executive Director or Executive Commissioner of the Texas Youth Commission since 2008. In this position she oversees the state operated juvenile corrections system which includes secure and non-secure residential facilities, specialized treatment, and aftercare/parole. Her responsibilities include leading over 4000 employees in a reform effort and daily operations of this system. Ms. Townsend brings thirty-five years of juvenile justice experience to this position. Prior to her appointment as executive director of TYC, Ms. Townsend served as Director of Juvenile Justice Services in Clark County, NV (Las Vegas) and as director of Juvenile Court Services in Maricopa County, Arizona (Phoenix). In both of these positions she was responsible for overseeing early intervention, alternatives to detention, detention, probation and community residential programs. In Clark County, her work involved being a replication site for the Juvenile Detention Alternatives Initiative (JDAI). She previously worked for the Texas Youth Commission in various capacities, including director of Community Services. She also served as director of Victim-Witness Services for the Travis County District Attorney in Texas. In 2003, Ms. Townsend received the Juvenile Court Administrator Award from the National Juvenile Court Services Association. She received the Sam Houston State University Award as the Outstanding Probation Executive for 2001. Ms. Townsend has earned a M.P.A. from Southern Methodist University and a M.B.A. from the University of Texas.

Closed

Assessing Juvenile Justice Reform

January 19 - 20, 2011

Past

Additional Information

Is it a Closed Session event?

Institution Closed

The following committee members were present at the closed sessions of the event

Robert Johnson
Carl Bell
Lawrence Bobo
Jeffrey Butts
Gladys Carrion
B.J. Casey
Kenneth Dodge
Edward Mulvey
Elizabeth Scott
Terrence Thornberry

The following topics were discussed in the closed sessions:

-Discussion of issues in recent NRC workshop report "The Science of Adolescent Risk-Taking"
-Discussion of significant areas for the committee’s work and report
-Discussion of key points and potential recommendations
-Discussion of future activities and information collection that may best guide the study

The following materials (written documents) were made available to the committee in the closed sessions:

-proposed timeline for study
-summary notes from December/January subgroup calls

Date of posting of Closed Session Summary:

March 16, 2011

Contact

Barbara Boyd

202-334-3730
bboyd@nas.edu

Location

Keck Center

500 5th St NW

Washington DC 20001, USA

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Assessing Juvenile Justice Reform

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Suggested citation

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Assessing Juvenile Justice Reform

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Featured publication

Reforming Juvenile Justice: A Developmental Approach

Description

Contributors

Committee

Sponsors

Staff

Major units and sub-units

Contact

Provide feedback

Request materials

More like this

Review of the draft United by Nature assessment

Modernizing Mathematics Education for Grades 9-14

Health Care Financing to Improve Availability of Affordable Contraception: Identifying Promising Practices

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