Teen Court (TC) is a juvenile diversion program designed to prevent the formal processing of first-time juvenile offenders within the juvenile justice system. TC instead utilizes informal processing and sanctions in order to prevent future offending. Despite its widespread popularity throughout the United States of America, little rigorous research has been conducted on the effectiveness of the TC model for reducing recidivism. Using an experimental design, this study examined the effectiveness of TC in reducing recidivism and improving the attitudes and opinions of juvenile offenders in comparison with a control group of youth who were formally processed. Self-reported delinquency was higher for those youth who participated in TC. TC youth were also found to have significantly lower scores on a scale of belief in conventional rules than had youth who were processed in the Department of Juveniles Services. Implications of these findings are discussed.
Both developmental and propensity theories root the etiology of chronic offending in factors other than peer influence. This does not mean that peers have no role in the expression of chronic offending, however. For instance, scholars have noted that offending with accomplices (i.e., cooffending) can reflect processes other than normative influence, such as selection and cooperation. Drawing from these notions, this investigation hypothesizes that chronic offenders will be less likely to cite peer influence as a reason for their deviance when compared to other offenders, whereas they will be equally likely to engage in group offending. The analysis uses information from the Racine cohort data and the results support the
Human trafficking is second only to drug trafficking in terms of criminal industry profitability and has a known annual revenue of greater than $100 billion. The COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated the problem of trafficking by exposing populations to social conditions such as unemployment and poor health outcomes, conditions that render individuals more vulnerable to traffickers. Human trafficking has historically been recognized as a problem exclusively for law enforcement, though modern scholars have increasingly recognized human trafficking as a social justice issue that must involve all facets of society, from governments and healthcare providers to local businesses, in the response. After establishing human trafficking as a social justice issue that requires a collaborative and multi-faceted response, the chapter will lay out an example of how collaborative work, focused on the application of technology, can elevate a response to a complex problem such as human trafficking.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.