NCJ Number
165799
Date Published
1997
Length
38 pages
Annotation
This paper examines available research and statistical data on the criminal justice system's response to serious, violent, and chronic juvenile offenders; besides highlighting literature findings, the aim is to identify important information gaps and specify a future research agenda.
Abstract
The paper emphasizes the need for significantly more information about the criminal justice system's effect on careers of serious and violent juvenile offenders. While there is scant evidence that strong sanctions accelerate criminal careers, there is not much support for the thesis that current sanctioning policies reduce recidivism and reduce crime. Consequently, the research agenda to remedy the existing knowledge gap must be bold and ambitious. Research priorities must include causes and correlates of criminal behavior, the use of self-report data in correctional evaluations, experimental studies on what works with young offenders, standards that assess the performance of a wide range of interventions, and models that help policymakers forecast the likely impact of policy changes. Statistics on the number of serious and violent juvenile offenders are presented to show that serious and violent juvenile offenders comprise only a fraction of the total workload of the criminal justice system. Research on the limited efforts of juvenile justice agencies to identify actual and potential high-risk offenders is examined. The authors highlight the importance of evaluating police and prosecution programs targeting serious and violent juvenile offenders and the need for further research to study the effectiveness of incarcerating juveniles and the benefit of transferring juveniles to adult court. 50 references, 5 endnotes, and 1 figure