In 2019, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's (CDC's) Youth Risk Behavior Survey found that 8% of youth in grades 9-12 reported being in a physical fight one or more times in the 12 months preceding the survey, with more than 7% reporting being threatened or injured with a weapon on school property. Homicide is the 3rd leading cause of…

This study employed a mixed methods design to evaluate an elementary school truancy intervention in terms of reducing rates of juvenile delinquency over six years. Few (n = 11) participants became involved in the formal justice system, so the intervention's effectiveness was measured by re-referrals for continued truancy. The regression…

Objectives: To estimate the impacts of Sweden's Contact Family/Person Program (CFPP) for older children on participants' long-term outcomes related to mental health problems, illicit drug use, public welfare receipt, placement in out-of-home care, educational achievement, and offending. Method: We analyzed longitudinal register data on more than…

In a context where more than 1,000,000 American adolescents are processed by juvenile courts annually and approximately 160,000 are sent to residential placements, this paper examines "what works" and "what doesn't work" in reducing the criminal behavior of juvenile offenders and presents examples of government initiatives that have successfully…

Youths in gang-ridden neighborhoods are at risk for trauma-related mental health disorders, which are early indicators of likely school failure and delinquency. Such youths rarely seek out services for these problems. The Juvenile Intervention and Prevention Program (JIPP), a school-based gang intervention and prevention program in Los Angeles,…

In recent years, schools have become a focal point for general delinquency and gang prevention programs for a variety of reasons. One premise behind this approach is that schools can serve as ideal settings for providing delinquency and intervention services because youths spend so much time there. School-based gang prevention efforts are supposed…

Replicated and extended the design and outcome measures of several small studies. In these studies, juveniles at high risk for violence and delinquency showed decreased violence and positive changes in psychological risk factors after being required to take a school-linked course in traditional martial arts. (Author)

The effects of a criminal diversion project on recidivism rates are described for late-age adolescent defendants with learning disabilities (n=73). Recidivism rates were 12% for the project completers, 40% for noncompleters, and 38% for nontreated subjects. The importance of skill development and interventions targeted toward this population is…

Traditional mental health approaches for serious, violent, and chronic juvenile offenders often fail to yield successful results. However, one method, Multisystemic Therapy (MST), which represents a departure from traditional treatment strategies, is described. MST was designed to provide communities with affordable and effective remedies for…

There is a great deal of rhetoric concerning the prevention of violence and related problems faced by youth. A conference speech, this document advocates that rhetoric must be replaced by an examination of available data and experience with school-based prevention programs. This is especially important in light of a growing emphasis on "Safe…

In 1976 the Special Emphasis branch of the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention made $10 million available for the development of 11 diversion programs. A national evaluation of these programs was promoted in the hope of better understanding the viability of diversion as an alternative to traditional practices. The impact of…

This report, the second part of a longer study prepared by the Delinquency and School Environments Program, further describes interim results of the program's national evaluation of the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention's (OJJDP's) Alternative Education Program. The report consists of evaluations of 14 specific projects: (1)…

A boot camp is a military style correctional facility in which inmates are subject to a highly structured and challenging regimen of physical training, in addition to vocational, educational, and therapeutic programming (Cronin and Han, 1994; Austin, Jones, and Bolyard, 1993; Mackenzie and Souryal, 1991). Originally introduced to rehabilitate…