NJJEC Bulletin November 2014

The NJJEC Bulletin

NJJEC is a project of the 

Justice Research and 

Statistics Association 

funded by the Office of 

Juvenile Justice and 

Delinquency Prevention

(OJJDP). NJJEC’s purpose is 

to improve the evaluation 

capacity of states, localities, 

and tribes and facilitate the 

use of evidence-based 

programs and practices in 

juvenile justice. The NJJEC 

Bulletin is disseminated 

directly to subscribers and 

posted on the NJJEC 

website, and provides 

information related to 

juvenile justice evaluation 

that is of interest to state, 

local, and tribal juvenile 

justice professionals. 

We welcome your 

participation! If you would 

like to submit an article, 

suggest a news item for the 

Bulletin, or ask a question 

about evaluation, e-mail 

njjec@jrsa.org. For more 

information about the 

resources available through 

the National Juvenile Justice 

Evaluation Center, visit the 

NJJEC website. 

What’s Going On at 

NJJEC?

Currently, new NJJEC staff is 

working to continue updating 

the NJJEC website and 

develop new webinars for 

2015 on evidence-based 

practices in the juvenile 

justice system. 

Do you have a suggestion for a 

new webinar topic or 

resource? Email 

njjec@jrsa.org! 

Upcoming Events of 

Interest

The Right Responses to 

Status Offenses – Best 

Practices for Counties 

November 20th, 2014, 2:00 pm 

– 3:15 pm ET. 

The National Association of 

Counties is sponsoring a 

webinar on responses to 

status offenses (e.g., running 

away, truancy, and curfew 

violations). This webinar will 

present information from 

counties that are successfully 

handling these cases through 

community-based services 

instead of court involvement. 

Registration information is 

available online. 

9

th Annual Models for 

Change Working 

Conference

December 15th – 16th, 2014

The McArthur Foundation’s 

Models for Change initiative 

will host its 9th annual 

National Working 

Conference in Washington 

DC, December 15th -16th. 

Details have yet to be posted, 

but you can continue to 

check online for updates. 

10th Annual Global Youth 

Justice Training Institute

December 2nd– 4

th, 2014

Global Youth Justice will host 

its 10th Global Youth Justice 

Training Institute in Las 

Vegas, NV from December 

2

nd –

4

th

. Participants will 

learn strategies to establish or 

enhance local youth justice 

diversion programs through 

teen, student, youth, peer 

courts and peer juries. 

Registration information is 

available online. 

National Mentoring 

Summit

January 28th– 30th, 2015

The Mentoring Partnership

will hold its annual National 

Mentoring Summit in 

Washington DC on January 

28th– 30th. More details and 

registration information are 
NJJEC Bulletin Page 2

available online. 

Featured Resources: 

Publications

The Council of State Governments, Justice 

Center recently released a white paper: 

“Core Principles for Reducing Recidivism 

and Improving Other Outcomes for Youth 

in the Juvenile Justice System.” This paper 

reviews the research on what works to 

reduce recidivism for youth under juvenile 

justice system supervision, and distills the 

research into four guiding principles. Along 

with each guiding principle are policy, 

practice, and resource-allocation 

recommendations. Much of the research, as 

well as the practice and policy 

recommendations, are based on the work of 

the MacArthur Foundation’s Models for 

Change and the Annie E. Casey Foundation’s 

Juvenile Detention Alternatives Initiative. 

The Council of State Governments, Justice 

Center also recently released a second 

paper: “Measuring and Using Juvenile 

Recidivism Data to Inform Policy, Practice, 

and Resource Allocation.” This paper 

summarizes the challenges faced when 

measuring juvenile justice recidivism. 

Authors offer recommendations for 

improving the collection and analysis of 

recidivism data, as well as strategies to use 

recidivism data to inform practice and 

policy.

Mark Lipsey, James C. Howell and John J. 

Wilson recently released (June 2014) a new 

book, A Handbook for Evidence-Based 

Juvenile Justice Systems. Drawing from 

research conducted over the past few 

decades, as well as more recent efforts to 

implement the Standardized Program 

Evaluation Protocol (SPEP), the authors put 

forth a comprehensive strategy which 

includes the use of evidence-based 

programming in conjunction with 

comprehensive treatment plans that focus 

on the needs of youth at most risk to 

reoffend. 

The Age of Opportunity: Lessons from the 

New Science of Adolescence is a new book 

(released in September, 2014) by Laurence

Steinberg, PhD, an expert who specializes 

in the psychology of adolescent 

development. Dr. Steinberg is well-known 

for outlining the legal implications of his 

developmental research on adolescence, 

particularly for the juvenile and criminal 

justice system. In the Age of Opportunity, 

Dr. Steinberg reviews the latest 

neuroscience research on adolescence, 

highlighting findings that adolescence is “a 

time of heightened brain plasticity.” In 

doing so, he seeks to transform our 

perceptions of adolescence from a 

developmental stage to be “survived” to a 

stage in which to “optimize” healthy 

developmental outcomes. Dr. Steinberg’s 

review of findings on the malleability of the 

adolescent brain are followed by several

practical recommendations for parents, and 

several practice and policy 

recommendations for policymakers in the 

field of education and juvenile/criminal 

justice. Although the research reviewed is 

fairly academic and may be difficult for a 

layperson to understand, Dr. Steinberg 

interprets the findings in a manner that is 

accessible to a broad audience. 

Featured Evaluation:

South Bronx Community 

Connections

South Bronx Community Connections 

(SBCC), a project of the Bronx-based non-
NJJEC Bulletin Page 3

profit Community Connections for Youth, was 

created in 2010 to divert youth from the 

juvenile justice system. The project emerged 

out of a grant from New York State’s Division 

of Criminal Justice Services (the State 

Administering Agency) seeking innovative, 

research-based strategies to address juvenile 

delinquency. Funding for the project was 

given under the condition that the project be 

subject to rigorous evaluation by an 

independent researcher. An evaluation team 

from the John Jay College of Criminal Justice 

was chosen as the independent evaluator for 

the project, and in October released a process 

evaluation on Phase 1, the initial three-year 

pilot portion of the project. (The full technical 

report is available online, as well as a shorter 

companion guide.) 

SBCC is designed to focus on youth arrested 

for misdemeanors who would otherwise be 

subject to formal juvenile justice processing. 

Initially the youth targeted for SBCC’s 

diversion program were those youth who 

resided in the South Bronx neighborhood of 

Mott Haven. Over time youth from 

surrounding neighborhoods were eligible for 

participation as well. Participation in the 

program is voluntary, with a requested 

commitment of 60 days. If youth are able to 

stay out of trouble during those 60 days their 

cases are closed and supervision terminated. 

Youth are given the option to extend 

participation after the initial 60 day 

commitment. 

SBCC uses a grassroots and positive youth 

development approach to engage youth in 

neighborhood improvement projects led by 

grassroots, faith, and neighborhood 

organizations. Partner organizations, who 

have a history of working with youth in their 

neighborhoods, hired young adults as mentors 

to lead program youth in neighborhood 

improvement projects. Current projects have 

included a neighborhood mural, youth 

leadership curriculum, youth organized and 

staffed social activities, a neighborhood talent 

show, and a small business which grew and 

sold fresh produce. 

The newly released process evaluation 

reviews the challenges SBCC faced and 

lessons learned throughout the 

implementation process. Several of the 

challenges hampered the ability of evaluators 

to conduct a rigorous outcome evaluation.

For example, SBCC had difficulties in the 

beginning in securing a management 

information system. This along with their 

lack of experience with data collection and 

data entry impacted how the project was 

managed. The report concludes that a “welldesigned” management information system is 

critical to successfully managing a project. 

Despite the challenges, evaluators cautiously 

reported the piloted projects’ outcomes. Of 

the 152 youth referred, 62 were “meaningfully 

engaged” in the program for a minimum of 60 

days. Further analysis compared the 62 youth 

in the diversion program with a comparison 

group of youth sampled from the larger 

community. The results indicate youth in the 

diversion program were significantly less 

likely than the comparison group to be 

rearrested within 1 year, upon completion of 

the program. However, due to the multiple 

implementation challenges faced by SBCC, 

researchers acknowledged that the outcomes 

for the initial three years were not entirely 

reliable.

Despite these limitations, researchers note 

that the evaluation for the first three years of 

this piloted diversion program still contains 

valuable information for juvenile justice 

stakeholders and policy-makers who strive to 

implement innovative grassroots 

programming to divert youth from justice 
`

system involvement.

National Spotlight:

A Developmental Approach to 

Juvenile Justice

In 2013, the National Research Council’s 

(NRC), Committee on Assessing Juvenile 

Justice Reform released a report entitled, 

Reforming Juvenile Justice: A Developmental 

Approach. This report reviewed the research 

on adolescent development and juvenile 

justice interventions, as well as the status of 

current juvenile justice reform efforts. 

Authors recommended a “developmental 

approach” to juvenile justice system 

improvements. They proposed that practices 

and policies at every decision-making point 

be grounded in the developmental sciences, 

as well as in research on the impacts of 

juvenile justice interventions. 

Just last month the NRC published a new 

report, Implementing Juvenile Justice Reform, 

the Federal Role. The report was written by 

the committee on a Prioritized Plan to 

Implement a Developmental Approach in 

Juvenile Justice Reform. This new 2014 report 

on the federal role builds upon the 2013 

report. The new report provides guidance to 

the federal government, specifically OJJDP, on 

an implementation plan for facilitating 

juvenile justice reform in state, local and 

tribal jurisdictions based on a developmental 

approach. The report proposes a 3-year plan 

of action and outlines strategies for 

strengthening the capacity of OJJDP to 

implement reforms. Also, seven hallmarks of 

a juvenile justice system grounded in the 

knowledge of adolescent development are 

summarized: accountability without 

criminalization; alternatives to justice system 

involvement; individualized response based 

on assessment of needs and risks; 

confinement only when necessary for public 

safety; a genuine commitment to fairness; 

sensitivity to disparate treatment; and family 

engagement. 

Featured resources and programs are not endorsed by 

the National Juvenile Justice Evaluation Center or the 

Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, 

Office of Justice Programs, U.S. Department of Justice.

NJJEC Bulletin Page 4

The NJJEC Bulletin is the newsletter of the National Juvenile Justice Evaluation Center. It provides information on NJJEC 

project activities, evaluation-related activities of OJJDP grantees, and upcoming trainings and conferences of interest.

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NJJEC is a Project of the Justice Research and Statistics Association. 

Notice of Federal Funding and Federal Disclaimer: This document was prepared under Grant Number 2010-JF-FX-0063 from the 

Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, Office of Justice Programs, U.S. Department of Justice. Points of view or 

opinions in this document are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent the official position or policies of the 

U.S. Department of Justice.