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Youth Policy and Juvenile Justice Reform

NCJ Number
94910
Journal
Crime and Delinquency Volume: 30 Issue: 3 Dated: special issue (July 1984) Pages: complete issue
Editor(s)
G F Blake, J Galvin
Date Published
1984
Length
134 pages
Annotation
The two sections of this special issue describe current developments in four areas addressed by juvenile justice reform -- status offenses, privatization of treatment, diversion, and female delinquency -- and discuss the continuing need for change and the development of an overall youth policy.
Abstract
One message that emerges is that juvenile justice reform will be largely ineffective unless it broadens its focus to include changes in other social institutions, primarily school and the work world. Individual authors call for a revitalization of the reform movement in juvenile justice; document the efforts in one county of a southeastern State to establish a peer jury system; examine the possibility of unanticipated gender bias in juvenile diversion; question the contention that the women's movement resulted in a rapid change in both the quantity and quality of female offenses; show how the schools can be a mechanism for generating delinquency in low-trajectory youths (proposing ways to organize effective schools to stem the flow of juveniles into the justice system); and link the problem of ineffective schools to the lack of occupational futures for low-status youths, suggesting an approach that blends education and work to integrate such youths into the mainstream.