Showing papers in "The Future of Children in 2018"

Parental Incarceration and Children's Wellbeing

Abstract: Summary:A half Century ago, relatively few US children experienced the incarceration of a parent. In the decades since, incarceration rates rose rapidly (before leveling off more recently), and today a historically unprecedented number of children are exposed to parental incarceration. In this article, Kristin Turney and Rebecca Goodsell walk us through the evidence that parental incarceration impairs children's wellbeing throughout the life course. Given the fact that already vulnerable children are also the most likely to experience having a parent behind bars, they write, these trends increase inequality among children.After documenting the scope of parental incarceration, Turney and Goodsell review mechanisms that may link parental incarceration to children's wellbeing, such as the parent's physical absence, the trauma associated with the criminal justice process, and the stigma of having a parent in jail or prison. They also review research into how parental incarceration affects four aspects of children's wellbeing: behavior, education, health, and hardship and deprivation. In each of these areas, parental incarceration has detrimental consequences for children.The authors then turn to programs designed to improve the wellbeing of children of incarcerated parents. Interestingly, they note, despite the fact that fathers' rather than mothers' incarceration appears to have worse consequences for children, many such programs focus on incarcerated mothers—although some aim to treat both parents, or the family as a whole. Yet, they find, few such interventions have been conclusively shown to improve children's wellbeing during and after parental incarceration. Turney and Goodsell suggest three other types of interventions that might help reduce disparities among children of incarcerated parents: programs that strengthen parents' relationships, increase families' economic wellbeing, and treat parents' substance abuse.

Charter Schools and the Achievement Gap

Abstract: Abstract:On average, charter schools perform at about the same level as traditional public schools. But an overall estimate disguises considerable variation in charter school impacts. Urban charter schools and those serving low-income and minority students, a number of which share a no excuses philosophy, tend to produce the largest gains. Expanding these highly effective charters and their practices may be a way to close achievement gaps. Research shows that charters can expand successfully and that traditional public schools that adopt charter practices (or are taken over by charter operators) can also make large academic gains. But to have a meaningful impact on nationwide achievement gaps, charter school approaches would need to be adopted beyond the charter sector itself. Any interventions that are built around using charter schools to close achievement gaps should focus not on the type of school but on the practices that work in the most effective charter schools.

The Role of Schools in Sustaining Juvenile Justice System Inequality

Abstract: Summary:Childrens school experiences may contribute in many ways to disproportionate minority contact with the juvenile justice system, writes Paul Hirschfield. For example, research shows that black students who violate school rules are more often subject to out-of-school suspensions, which heighten their risk of arrest and increase the odds that once accused of delinquency, they'll be detained, formally processed, and institutionalized for probation violations.Hirschfield examines two types of processes through which schools may contribute to disproportionate minority contact with the justice system. Micro-level processes affect delinquents at the individual level, either because they're distributed unevenly by race/ethnicity or because they affect youth of color more adversely. For example, suspensions can be a micro-level factor if biased principals suspend more black youth than white youth. Macro-level processes, by contrast, operate at the classroom, school, or district level. For example, if predominantly black school districts are more likely than predominantly white districts to discipline students by suspending them, black students overall will be adversely affected, even if each district applies suspensions equitably within its own schools.Some policies and interventions, if properly targeted and implemented, show promise for helping schools reduce their role in justice system inequality, Hirschfield writes. One is school-based restorative justice practices like conferencing and peacemaking circles, which aim to reduce misbehaviors by resolving conflicts, improving students' sense of connection to the school community, and reinforcing the legitimacy of school authorities. Another is Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports, a multi-tiered, team-based intervention framework that has proven to be effective in reducing disciplinary referrals and suspensions, particularly in elementary and middle schools. However, he notes, if successful programs like these are more accessible to well-off schools or to white students, they may actually exacerbate inequality, even as they reduce suspension for blacks.

Ending Mass Probation: Sentencing, Supervision, and Revocation

Abstract: Summary:The United States' high incarceration rate gets a lot of attention from scholars, policy makers, and the public. Yet, writes Michelle Phelps, the most common form of criminal justice supervision is not imprisonment but probation—and thats just as true for juveniles as for adults.Probation was originally promoted as an alternative to imprisonment that would spare promising individuals from the ravages of institutionalization, Phelps writes. But instead, it often serves as a net-widener, expanding formal supervision to low-level cases. Like mass incarceration, she demonstrates, mass probation is marked by deep racial and class disparities, and it can have devastating consequences for poor and minority communities.In her review, Phelps covers three aspects of probation supervision—who is sentenced to probation, what they experience, and when and why probation is revoked (that is, when probationers are sent to jail or prison for violating the terms of supervision). She then presents policy recommendations for each of these three stages that could reduce the harms of mass probation. They include scaling back the use of probation, offering probationers more meaningful help to improve their lives, and raising the bar for revoking probation. Though probation reform may not be a cure-all, she writes, it could reduce the scale of our criminal justice system and temper its detrimental effects.

Can Foster Care Interventions Diminish Justice System Inequality

Abstract: Summary:Children who experience foster care, write Youngmin Yi and Christopher Wildeman, are considerably more likely than others to have contact with the criminal justice system, both during childhood and as adults. And because children of color disproportionately experience foster care, improvements to the foster care system could reduce racial/ethnic justice system inequality. Yet the link between foster care and justice system inequality hasn't received the attention it deserves. This article represents the most comprehensive review to date on how foster care placement can affect children's risk of criminal justice contact.Yi and Wildeman review how children come to the attention of Child Protective Services (CPS), how they come to be placed in foster care, and the risks that children in foster care face. They also examine how the child welfare and criminal justice systems intersect, with special attention to the large racial/ethnic disparities in both CPS contact and foster care placement and experiences.The authors then examine strategies that might reduce inequality in criminal justice outcomes at two stages—during foster care placement, and after children age out of the system (that is, after they reach the age when they're no longer eligible to stay in foster care or receive attendant services). They highlight promising interventions that target five critical objectives: the promotion of stability and permanency in foster care placements; expanded and improved access to substance use treatment and mental health care services; provision of legal support for foster youth; extension of employment and educational support for late adolescents and young adults; and supports for securing housing and health care for youth who age out of foster care.

Jails and Local Justice System Reform: Overview and Recommendations.

Abstract: Summary:Over the past three decades, the number of people housed in local jails has more than tripled. Yet when it comes to reforming the nation's incarceration policies, write Jennifer Copp and William Bales, researchers, policymakers, and the public alike have focused almost exclusively on state and federal prisons.If you took a snapshot on a single day, the prison population would far exceed the population of local jails. But, the authors show, compared to prisons, roughly 18 times more people are admitted to and released from jails every year. Furthermore, about two-thirds of jail inmates have yet to be convicted of a crime, and they often languish behind bars only because they can't afford to pay bail. And although jails are intended for adults, on any given day roughly 4,000 young people under age 18 are confined in local jails.In this article, Copp and Bales provide a broad overview of US jails, including facilities and operations, characteristics of inmates, and the conditions of confinement, and they make a number of suggestions for policy and practice. In particular, they argue that the justice system should slash the use of money bail, which disproportionately harms the poor and minorities. Specifically, they recommend that jurisdictions adopt validated risk assessment tools to help make decisions about who should and shouldn't be detained before trial; expand pretrial services that can, among other things, monitor compliance with release conditions; divert more people away from the criminal justice system; consider alternatives to jail, such as probation, for convicted offenders; and expedite case processing to decrease the time to trial and thus the overall length of jail stays.

"Kids Do Not So Much Make Trouble, They Are Trouble": Police-Youth Relations

Abstract: Summary:Young peoples encounters with the criminal justice system generally begin with the police. Officers' decisions about how to handle these encounters are affected by their on-the-spot assessments of young peoples proclivity for delinquency, prospects for rehabilitation, and overall moral character. And because most police-citizen interactions occur in public spaces, officers render these judgments with limited information, often falling back on racial and ethnic stereotypes. In this article, Rod Brunson and Kashea Pegram examine how police officers' decisions about which young people to watch, stop, search, and arrest contribute to historical and enduring justice system inequality.Research confirms that officers apply their discretion highly unevenly, Brunson and Pegram write, consistently exposing youth of color to a wide range of harms. Moreover, aggressive policing strategies such as stop-and-frisk disproportionately affect youths and communities of color. In many urban areas, they say, officers are a constant, inescapable, and unwelcome presence in the lives of black and Latino adolescents—especially males, who are disproportionately stopped, searched, and killed by police.Yet the authors find reason for optimism in efforts to improve trust in minority communities and end racially discriminatory policing through practices based on procedural justice principles—that is, whether citizens believe they're treated fairly and with respect during police encounters. Still, they acknowledge, racial disparities in policing mean that in many places, police-community relations have already suffered tremendous harm that will be extremely difficult to repair.

Decriminalizing Racialized Youth through Juvenile Diversion

Abstract: Summary:In the context of juvenile justice, writes Traci Schlesinger, diversion can mean two things. Informal diversion includes police officers' decisions to warn and release, probation officers' decisions not to report violations, prosecutors' decisions not to prosecute, and judges' decisions to dismiss cases. Informal diversion sends youth out of the system, lets them remain at home, and asks nothing further of them. Formal diversion includes decisions by intake workers—including police, school resource officers, probation officers, and sometimes prosecutors or judges—to move cases away from formal court processing to programs that provide services but also include requirements.Because diversion can keep young people from deeper involvement with the juvenile justice system, it has the potential to ameliorate the processes through which racialized youth become criminalized at much higher rates than legally similar white youth. The research evidence, Schlesinger writes, offers clear suggestions in three areas: which youth should be diverted, which officials make good gatekeepers for diversion programs, and which implementation principles are most important. Her key recommendation is that jurisdictions should use informal diversion to decriminalize low-risk youth and formal diversion to keep high-risk youth away from court processing and in their communities.Schlesinger notes several challenges to making diversion policies successful. For one, she writes, jurisdictions must use risk assessments that don't replicate or exacerbate racial disparities. In addition, she says, formal diversion works best when youth can access services in the communities where they live, rather than in the justice system. This condition is becoming more difficult to achieve as cities and states have increasingly chosen to spend their limited funds on facilities within punitive systems rather than within communities, for example, by closing community-based mental health centers and then opening new facilities in a local jail. Finally, jurisdictions must ensure that diversion programs are properly implemented and that the youth who begin diversion programs actually complete them.

Reducing Justice System Inequality: Introducing the Issue

Abstract: VOL. 28 / NO. 1 / SPRING 2018 3 John H. Laub is Distinguished University Professor in the Department of Criminology and Criminal Justice at the University of Maryland, College Park. The topic of inequality in the United States has become virtually impossible to ignore, and the justice system is an important part of the discussion. Witness the recent National Research Council report on the causes and consequences of the country’s high rates of incarceration, especially for minority offenders.1 We’ve also heard heated debates about the stop, question, and frisk policies followed by police in New York City and elsewhere.2 More broadly, legal scholar Michelle Alexander has referred to mass incarceration and other justice system policies as “the New Jim Crow” in America.3