This book investigates the Youth Police Initiative (YPI) intervention with a comprehensive look at its effects in Boston as well as Brownsville, Brooklyn, a neighborhood that has both rich community networks as well as the highest crime rate in New York City. Based on a phenomenological approach, The Case for Youth Police Initiative: Interdependent Fates and the Power of Peace offers first-person narratives of youth, police, and community members in Brownsville as the YPI program was put into action Police shootings and other negative exchanges between community members and the police have brought heightened awareness to the volatile relations between communities and police. The North American Family Institute began the YPI in Baltimore in 2003 with the ambition of keeping vulnerable youth away from arrests, gangs, guns, violence, and death. The program has been replicated in several communities in the United States and beyond. The focus of YPI training is to address the dual challenge of teaching youth the skills to resolve daily conflicts with authority while also teaching police officers to have meaningful dialogue with young people. The voices of the stakeholders reveal changes in attitudes and actions from before, during, and after YPI’s implementation. A comprehensive illustration of the intervention’s arc provides the reader with an in-depth, textured perspective of what it takes to prevent pernicious eruptions of tension between police and the community they are charged to serve and protect. YPI’s success in addressing tensions between youth and police in Boston and Brownsville, Brooklyn, maps out a blueprint for progress in other communities. Suitable for scholars and researchers in juvenile justice, law enforcement, psychology, and social work as well as practitioners on the front lines, The Case for Youth Police Initiative will provoke dialogue on best practices for changing the volatile climate between police and the youths in their communities.

A brilliant analysis of the foundations of racist policing in America: the day-to-day brutalities, largely hidden from public view, endured by Black youth growing up under constant police surveillance and the persistent threat of physical and psychological abuse "Storytelling that can make people understand the racial inequities of the legal system, and...restore the humanity this system has cruelly stripped from its victims.” —New York Times Book Review Drawing upon twenty-five years of experience rep­resenting Black youth in Washington, D.C.’s juve­nile courts, Kristin Henning confronts America’s irrational, manufactured fears of these young peo­ple and makes a powerfully compelling case that the crisis in racist American policing begins with its relationship to Black children. Henning explains how discriminatory and aggressive policing has socialized a generation of Black teenagers to fear, resent, and resist the police, and she details the long-term consequences of rac­ism that they experience at the hands of the police and their vigilante surrogates. She makes clear that unlike White youth, who are afforded the freedom to test boundaries, experiment with sex and drugs, and figure out who they are and who they want to be, Black youth are seen as a threat to White Amer­ica and are denied healthy adolescent development. She examines the criminalization of Black adoles­cent play and sexuality, and of Black fashion, hair, and music. She limns the effects of police presence in schools and the depth of police-induced trauma in Black adolescents. Especially in the wake of the recent unprece­dented, worldwide outrage at racial injustice and inequality, The Rage of Innocence is an essential book for our moment.

"This co-authored book critically reviews existing literature on school resource officer (SRO) programs and presents a thorough evaluation of an SRO program offered by Peel Regional Police in Ontario, Canada. The implementation of a school resource officer (SRO) program is a controversial response to school violence and safety issues. While some call for an increased use of police in schools, others are pushing to remove police from schools, or at least to end their involvement in routine discipline. Though many SRO programs exist around the world, little systematic research has been conducted on the topic. The study reported in this book represents the largest and most comprehensive assessment of such programs to date. The research by Duxbury and Bennell indicates that SRO programs can provide real value for students, school staff, policing organizations, and society, but benefits rely on having programs that are well-designed, that the right officers are selected for SRO roles, and that the initiative has support from major stakeholders. Given the current conversations regarding the costs and benefits of having police officers in schools, there is a clear need to determine the value that investment in these types of proactive policing programs creates. The book provides researchers, SROs, police agencies, school boards, school administrators, teachers, parents, and students with information about: the activities that SROs are involved in, how SROs can collaborate with schools to create safe learning environments, and whether (and how) such programs benefit the police, schools, students, and society. Easy-to-digest charts facilitate understanding, and anonymized reflections from SROs, school staff, and students are presented throughout the book to provide context"--

This title is part of The Wadsworth Professionalism in Policing Series, edited by Samuel Walker. This reader is a descriptive presentation of current practices within policing and juvenile justice (focusing on gangs) that utilize the community-policing model. By looking at specific strategies and their efficacy, the authors attempt to combat a major perceived problem with community policing; that the methodology of community policing can be subjective and nebulous, using ill-defined and misinterpreted practices. This book shows what is working for agencies across the country and how these "best practices" can be employed.

Several million reported and unreported delinquent acts take place each year. In fact, according to the U.S. Department of Justice and the U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics, juvenile delinquency, acting-out and oppositional behavior, illegal drugs, guns, and youth violence are pervasive throughout American society. Juvenile Justice Sourcebook is the first comprehensive volume devoted exclusively to the biopsychosocial assessment, police and juvenile court processing, and institutional and community-based treatment and rehabilitation of juvenile offenders. The overriding objective of this sourcebook is to trace the tremendous progress achieved toward resolving juvenile justice issues, dilemmas, and controversies, while providing futuristic visions for the juvenile justice field. Each chapter, authored by preeminent expert practitioners and researchers, explores topics ranging from innovative counseling and multisystemic programs, to restorative justice, to rehabilitation programs such as aggression replacement training, wilderness programs, family treatment, substance abuse treatment, restitution, and aftercare. This volume, grounded in history and exhaustive research, presents the latest evidence-based policies, programs, and innovative treatment alternatives. Examining the entire juvenile justice system, including juvenile law, policies, practices, and research, the Juvenile Justice Sourcebook will be invaluable to all juvenile justice practitioners, policy analysts, researchers, and students.