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.

The evidence-based policing (EBP) movement has intensified in many countries around the world in recent years, resulting in a proliferation of policies and infrastructure to support such a transformation. This movement has come to be associated with particular methods of evaluation and systematic review, which have been drawn from what is assumed to prevail in medicine. Given the credibility EBP is currently enjoying with both practitioners and government, it is timely to subject its underpinning logic to thoughtful scrutiny. This involves deliberating upon the meaning of evidence and what different models of knowledge accumulation and research methods have to offer in realising the aims of EBP. The communication and presentation of evidence to practitioner audiences is another important aspect of EBP, as are collaborative efforts to ‘co-produce’ new knowledge on police practice. This is the first book that takes a kaleidoscopic approach to depict what EBP presently is and how it could develop. The chapters individually and collectively challenge the underlying logic to the mainstream EBP position, and the book concludes with an agenda for a more inclusive conceptualisation of evidence and EBP for the future. It is aimed at students and academics who are interested in being part of this movement, as well as policymakers and practitioners interested in integrating EBP principles into their practices.

Mental health disorders are common in youth, impacting up to 1 in 5 children and adolescents. Typically, mental health difficulties result in impaired functioning and lower quality of life for both youth and their families. Fortunately, there are psychosocial treatments for the mental health needs of youth that have earned the "evidence-based" label. However, these treatments are not widely available, and it is estimated that it can take up to 17 years for them to be transported into community settings. As a result, a new field of dissemination and implementation (DI) science has emerged to address this problem. Dissemination refers to the transfer of information about evidence-based practices to community settings, and implementation refers to active strategies to assist adoption of evidence-based practices in community settings. Dissemination and Implementation of Evidence-Based Practices in Child and Adolescent Mental Health is the first book to bring together the world's foremost experts in implementation science and evidence-based practices for youth to provide the latest findings around DI for children and adolescents. Chapters provide comprehensive coverage of the science of dissemination and implementation across contexts, disorders, and international perspectives. This volume will be an essential resource to implementation scientists and scholars, instructors in doctoral-level training programs, and graduate students, as well as policymakers, community mental health clinicians and administrators, school administrators, researchers, and other mental health professionals.

This handbook promotes a comprehensive strategy founded on evidence-based programming for juvenile justice systems to adopt or enhance their current system. The comprehensive strategy is supported strongly by the broad research base that is now available. This strategy recognizes, first, that a relatively small proportion of the juveniles who initially enter the juvenile justice system will prove to be serious, violent, or chronic offenders, but that group accounts for a large proportion of the overall amount of delinquency. An important component of a comprehensive evidence-based juvenile justice system, therefore, is distinguishing these offenders from others and focusing attention and resources on that smaller group. Second, a comprehensive strategy recognizes that serious, violent, or chronic delinquency emerges along developmental pathways that progress from less to more serious profiles of offending. Priority must be given to interrupting these offender careers by calibrating the level of supervision and control of the juveniles’ behavior to their level of risk. The third major component of a comprehensive strategy, therefore, is effective intervention programs that are capable of reducing the recidivism of those juveniles at risk for further delinquency. The Comprehensive Strategy for Serious, Violent, and Chronic Juvenile Offenders is an administrative framework that supports a continuum of services that parallel the development of offender careers. This framework emphasizes evidence-based programming specifically on recidivism reduction, and supports protocols for developing comprehensive treatment plans that match effective services with offender treatment needs along the life-course of delinquent careers, as they move from intake onward, to probation, community programs, confinement, and reentry. Juvenile justice systems will benefit from incorporation of a comprehensive strategy as provided in the handbook.

Even though youth crime rates have fallen since the mid-1990s, public fear and political rhetoric over the issue have heightened. The Columbine shootings and other sensational incidents add to the furor. Often overlooked are the underlying problems of child poverty, social disadvantage, and the pitfalls inherent to adolescent decisionmaking that contribute to youth crime. From a policy standpoint, adolescent offenders are caught in the crossfire between nurturance of youth and punishment of criminals, between rehabilitation and "get tough" pronouncements. In the midst of this emotional debate, the National Research Council's Panel on Juvenile Crime steps forward with an authoritative review of the best available data and analysis. Juvenile Crime, Juvenile Justice presents recommendations for addressing the many aspects of America's youth crime problem. This timely release discusses patterns and trends in crimes by children and adolescentsâ€"trends revealed by arrest data, victim reports, and other sources; youth crime within general crime; and race and sex disparities. The book explores desistanceâ€"the probability that delinquency or criminal activities decrease with ageâ€"and evaluates different approaches to predicting future crime rates. Why do young people turn to delinquency? Juvenile Crime, Juvenile Justice presents what we know and what we urgently need to find out about contributing factors, ranging from prenatal care, differences in temperament, and family influences to the role of peer relationships, the impact of the school policies toward delinquency, and the broader influences of the neighborhood and community. Equally important, this book examines a range of solutions: Prevention and intervention efforts directed to individuals, peer groups, and families, as well as day care-, school- and community-based initiatives. Intervention within the juvenile justice system. Role of the police. Processing and detention of youth offenders. Transferring youths to the adult judicial system. Residential placement of juveniles. The book includes background on the American juvenile court system, useful comparisons with the juvenile justice systems of other nations, and other important information for assessing this problem.

A selection of papers presented at the international conference, Leuven, May 12-14, 1997.