Over the past ten years, probation departments across the state of California have undertaken five major initiatives aimed at juvenile offenders and at-risk youths. Although these initiatives were concomitant with reductions in juvenile arrests and other positive outcomes, we cannot definitively attribute such observed statewide trends to these…

In 1996, California provided funding to 14 county probation agencies to implement multiagency, comprehensive services to keep troubled youths from recommitting crime and progressing farther into the justice system. We report results of a randomized experiment used to evaluate Ventura County's 4-year demonstration project called the South Oxnard…

The Comprehensive Youth Services Act (CYSA), which was enacted in 1997 to fund juvenile probation services, had the following three basic goals: (1) keep probation youths from further crime; (2) help probation and at-risk youths develop essential skills to avoid dependence on public assistance; and (3) help achieve overarching federal Temporary…