Report Release: Restorative Justice Conferencing Programs FY 2015-2020

The Juvenile Justice Institute is happy to announce that our latest report on restorative justice conferencing programs, also known as mediation centers, has been released today.

Restorative justice conferencing programs aim to increase community engagement, reduce recidivism, prevent youth from moving deeper into the juvenile justice system, and produce greater community and/or victim satisfaction. The report also discusses how restorative justice programs work, and how factors like race/ethnicity, gender, and age affect aspects of these programs and youth outcomes.

You can read the report here. If you would like to see all of our previous publications, check out our Reports page.

NIJ Publication: Effects of SROs in Schools

The National Institute of Justice has released an article, published in Criminology & Public Policy, detailing the effects of school resource officers on school crime and responses to school crime. This study in this article, funded by a grant from the NIJ, examined schools that increased their spending on SROs.

You can read the article online at the Wiley Online Library at this link.

In the study linked above, evidence was found that SROs do not necessarily make schools safer, and generally end up increasing the criminalization of school discipline.

The presence of school resource officers in the classroom is a controversial topic. In Lincoln, the school board debated whether or not to continue its $500,000 contract with the Lincoln Police Department to have SROs in the schools. Members of the community and the school board said that the money would be spent better elsewhere, such as on social workers, counselors, school psychologists, and so on. The school board ultimately decided to keep the contract with LPD.

Report Release: Crisis Response Programs, FY 2015-2020

The Juvenile Justice Institute is pleased to announce the release of our latest report examining Community-based Aid-funded crisis response programs. Crisis response programs allow communities to react to crises when and where they happen, whether they occur at schools, the home, or public spaces. These programs work closely with law enforcement to help prevent youth from being detained, keep youth within their home communities, and prevent future crises by establishing systems of support for the youth and their families.

This report examines a variety of factors about crisis response programs and their efficacy. In it, the JJI examines how crisis response teams operate, how they work with law enforcement, how effective they are at keeping youth out of detention/hospitals, what sort of crises they respond to, and more.

This report, along with all of our other past reports, is available on our Reports page after this link.

If you have any questions, comments, or feedback, you are always welcome to contact us. We’re happy to hear from you!

NIJ Evaluation: Crisis Response and Prevention

The National Institute of Justice has taken a close look at crisis response programs within schools. These crisis response programs differ from the ones funded by Community-based Aid grants in that they are within schools, rather than the broader community.

These programs are organized into tiers. The first tier involves teaching student leaders how to use practical, nonviolent communication and intervention skills. These students also communicate with school staff to discuss observations they have made about bullying and harassment.

The second tier identifies students who may need emotional or behavioral support. After a student is identified, they are assessed and linked to services in the third tier. These tiers are intended to help prevent an emotional crisis from happening in the school.

The fourth tier involves responding to a crisis as it happens in the school. A licensed, certified social worker (or workers) intervene with a student who is having a crisis. They use culturally-sensitive, school-informed protocol to assist the student. After the crisis is responded to, tier five involves connecting that student to aftercare to prevent a relapse.

This intervention proves promising, according to the NIJ. While the program did result in a significantly lower frequency of office referrals and suspensions, it does not appear to have affected the frequency of bullying, juvenile justice referrals, or emotional/behavioral health incidents.

To learn more about this intervention, please visit the NIJ website to see their evaluation in more detail.

New OJJDP Resources: Juvenile Statistics

The Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention has released three new books focusing on statistics for juveniles in the United States. These books are freely available to the public. The JJI has also provided permanent links to these books on our Resources page so they can be more easily accessed in the future.

Juvenile Court Statistics 2018 - This resource describes delinquency cases and status offense cases between 2005 and 2018 from all over the US. The report details the types of cases heard in juvenile courts and frequency of delinquent actions.

Juvenile Arrests, 2018 - In this report, the author examines juvenile arrest rates and details from 2018, and compares this data to previous years. There is a downward trend in juvenile arrest rates since the mid-90s. This report also breaks down arrest rates by demographics.

Juveniles in Residential Placement, 2017 - This report examines the number and demographics of youth in residential placement. The author also examines the differences between public and private facilities, demographic information, and compares rates between states and over time.

Report Release: Nebraska's CBA-Funded Mental Health Programs

The Juvenile Justice Institute is pleased to announce the release of our latest brief looking at CBA-funded mental health programs in the state of Nebraska.

To create this brief, the JJI surveyed mental health practitioners from CBA-funded programs to collect information about the barriers youth and their families may face while trying to get mental health services.

We also used data from the Juvenile Case Management System to obtain information about the types of mental health symptoms youth in CBA-funded programs may have, and then compare that data to previous studies.

You can read this brief, and all of our previous publications, on our Reports page after this link.

We welcome your feedback and would love to hear your thoughts! Please feel free to contact us at any time with any questions or comments you have.

NIJ Evaluation: Cyberbullying Programs

The National Institute of Justice has released an evaluation of cyberbullying prevention and intervention programs. Cyberbullying is defined as aggressive, intentional act carried out by an individual or group over digital media, repeatedly over time against a vulnerable target. Examples may include hateful posts on social media, spamming harassment, and so on.

The programs evaluated aimed to prevent cyberbullying from happening, and/or intervene if someone is being cyberbullied. Programs were categorized based on who they targeted: individuals, universal/whole-schools, or multi-level systemic approaches. Individual-level strategies focused on teaching students a variety of strategies to respond to cyberbullying. Universal/whole-school strategies used schoolwide strategies and addressed how school related to cyberbullying. Finally, multi-level systemic approaches addressed different groups: classrooms, teachers/staff, families, and/or students. These programs may teach students how to respond to online bullying, and then also help staff build students’ social relationships at school, for example.

The NIJ found that these programs were effective in both addressing bullying and victimization. Using randomized controlled trials, the findings indicate that participating in cyberbullying invtervention or prevention programs can reduce online bullying behaviors and victimization from online bullying among school-aged youth.

To read more about the NIJ’s findings, you can visit the site after this link.

NIJ Evaluation: School-Based Interventions to Reduce Exclusion

The National Institute of Justice has evaluated school-based interventions that focus on reducing exclusion, commonly known as suspension and expulsion. The interventions described in this article tend to target students between four and eighteen in non-specialized schools. Interventions may target individual students or teachers, or they may target the whole school.

Components of the programs were varied. Components included enhancement of academic skills, after-school programs, mentoring/monitoring programs, building social skills, training for teachers, violence reduction efforts, and counseling, among others.

Interventions were delivered on school premises, or were supported by the school with at least one component being delivered in the school setting. The programs varied in length, and usually ranged from 12 to 14 weeks.

Students in the treatment group who received the intervention experienced a statistically-significant reduction in school exclusion compared with the control group. For more information about the programs, you can view the article after this link on the NIJ website.