Breakthroughs in Crime Deterrence: Stopping Youth Violence and More

How can you reform your juvenile court to cut down on juvenile crime?

1. Impose mild sanctions that are immediate and reliable.
2. Work with your community to improve the public legitimacy of your juvenile court. Recent research has shown that people are more likely to obey the law if they think the system is fair. 

With regard to the first point, why "mild" sanctions? Because they appear to be more effective at deterring crime than severe ones as long as they're quick and certain, as juvenile justice expert Jeff Butts wrote in a column for us last July. Mild sanctions may not be appropriate or possible for all crimes, but might be very effective for teens committing drug offenses.
Jeff was writing about the pioneering work done with drug-involved adult offenders in Hawai'i -- an experiment that leads off a fantastic article, "Prisoners of Parole", which recently appeared in The New York Times Magazine.
Part of the article talks about Operation Cease Fire, an innovative attempt to reduce youth violence in Boston in the 1990s. (Operation Cease Fire, incidentally, was the precursor to the evidence-based youth violence initiative in Chicago, called CeaseFire. Funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the initiative has, among many other things, used a virtual online world to address youth violence.)
Here's a summary of what Operation Cease Fire accomplished:

In May 1996, Kennedy, Piehl and Braga helped to design the first of what came to be known as “call-in” sessions, intended to put gangs on notice that they would face swift and certain punishments. Working with Kennedy, probation and parole officers ordered gang members to attend face-to-face meetings with the police. The gang members were given three warnings. First, they were told that if anyone in their group killed someone, the entire group would suffer consequences. Second, the gang members were told that if they want to escape from street life, they could get help and job training from social service agencies and churches. And finally, they heard from members of their community that violence was wrong and it had to stop. The results of the forums were striking and immediate. Within two years, youth violence in Boston fell by two-thirds and city homicide rates by about half.

When teens and young adults get feedback from the community that their criminal behavior is not acceptable, it works to increase the legitimacy of the court. To make that happen, of course, requires open dialogue between the juvenile court and community members.
I'm not suggesting that such dialogue is easy. Nor am I clear on how "swift and certain" sanctions -- if they involve detention -- jibe with detention reform. But it's evident from this article that some communities are beginning to figure out how to use both to get results with youth violence and with drug trafficking, while reducing detention and jail populations. 
And that should be good news for juvenile courts everywhere.
Related Post:

• Moving from Them to Us - Challenges in Reframing Violence Among Youth

(Photo by peretzpup.)