Juvenile Justice Reform and Juvenile Crime: Exploring the Impact of Declining Felony Adjudications and Residential Placements

• In Event: Implementing Evidence-Based Policy and Practice in Juvenile Justice: An Assessment of Varied Initiatives and Outcomes.

Abstract

In line with its first principles, some recent juvenile justice policy has emphasized the need to keep youth out of state residential facilities whenever possible. In Ohio, there has been a multifaceted effort to reduce the number of youth who are incarcerated in favor of community placements. The subsequent decrease in referrals has been accompanied by a similar drop in felony adjudications. Such trends are sometimes met with a visceral criticism that the juvenile court is being too soft on delinquent youth. Using official data from 88 counties in the state of Ohio (2008 to 2015), the present study will examine the decline in adjudication and placement rates and their relationship to juvenile crime rates. Exploratory data analysis will assess the nature of the trends in depth and longitudinal modeling will be used to make inferences about key relationships. The results will then be considered in the context of policy questions relevant to delinquent youth and community safety. In particular, the discussion will consider whether juvenile justice system must choose between crime reduction and the underlying desire to offer youth second chances via diversion and community-based placement.

Authors

• Bryan Holmes, University of Cincinnati

• Christopher Sullivan, University of Cincinnati

• Insun Park, University of Cincinnati

• Myrinda Schweitzer Smith, University of Cincinnati Corrections Institute