The juvenile justice system was established as a result of an unprecedented movement pioneered by the child savers. Child savers strived to protect America's children from physical and moral harm. Since the juvenile justice system's inception, research has focused extensively on the effectiveness of the juvenile system. Numerous studies have observed the perceptions of the general public, juvenile probation officers, and juvenile correctional staff regarding the juvenile justice system. The current study examined actual participants in the juvenile justice system to assess their opinions of the system that was designed to serve, protect, and rehabilitate them into active members of society. A survey was conducted with juvenile offenders who had been placed on court mandated juvenile probation, and their responses were analyzed and compared with previous research regarding the effectiveness of the juvenile justice system.

Essa dissertação trata da relação entre o saber pedagógico e o governo dos adolescen-tes infratores. A partir da filosofia de Michel Foucault se investigará em um conjunto de arti-gos acadêmicos e opinativos- e de documentos governamentais quais são as novas práticas e concepções pedagógicas que surgiram na última década. Sabe-se que nos últimos anos o sis-tema de justiça juvenil brasileiro tem passado por grandes transformações, tanto no plano prá-tico quanto no teórico. O objetivo do trabalho é saber o que se passou durante esse período de reforma da instituição de responsabilização juvenil e se esse processo tornou o atendimento aos adolescentes infratores mais eficaz do ponto de vista da gestão da criminalidade juvenil. Inicialmente expõem-se alguns debates teóricos importantes para a justiça especial dispostas no Estatuto da Criança e do Adolescente. Trata-se então, da relação entre direito e poder a partir da análise dos argumentos expostos no debate acerca da redução da maioridade penal. Apresentam-se na sequência as diversas forças que habitam as instituições socioeducativas. Em seguida, vê-se como as práticas jurídicas e processuais tendem a limitar a ação governa-mental, proscrevendo-lhe regras de não intervenção. Por fim expor-se-á as práticas de atendi-mento, ressaltando terapêuticas e as práticas limitativas. Conclui-se que é o modelo de justiça penal mínima que melhor desenvolveu as aspirações educativas do ECA. Que, apesar de ter alcançado bons resultados, esse modelo concorre com muitas das forças reminiscentes do mo-delo anterior. / This essay studies the relationship between education knowledge and the juvenile justice sys-tem in Brazil. Based on the work of Michael Foucault, a selection of articles, government papers and academic publications is investigated in order to acknowledge the education prac-tices and techniques that arouse in the last decade. Brazilian juvenile justice system went through major transformations in recent years, both in the theoretical and practical fields. The goal of this research is to recognize the key transformations that took place in this period and learn if the process did or did not improve government\'s assistance towards young offenders. It starts with some theoretical debates relevant for the juvenile justice system, followed by the analysis of the relationship between law and power contained in the arguments exposed in the reduction of criminal age\'s debate. Numerous forces dwelling the country\'s juvenile justice institutions are presented. The following part analysis how legal and procedural practices tend to limit government interference, prescribing it rules of non intervention. It\'s understood that the criminal justice model of minimal intervention is the one that better developed ECA\'s ed-ucational aspirations. Despite achieving satisfactory results, this model still competes with many reminiscent forces of it\'s predecessor model.

At the end of the nineteenth century, individuals identified as child savers pioneered an unprecedented movement to save America’s children from physical and moral harm. The establishment of the juvenile justice system came as a result of the actions of the child savers. Researchers have focused extensively on many aspects of the juvenile justice system including studies on the effectiveness of the system to tracking the changes the system has undergone since its establishment. Numerous other studies examined opinions of the juvenile justice system. However, the research has focused solely on the general public, juvenile probation officers and juvenile correctional staff. The current study examined the actual participants within the juvenile justice system - the juvenile offenders - to gauge their perceptions of the system that was created to protect and turn them into law-abiding individuals. A survey was conducted with juvenile offenders housed within two conservative, Midwestern juvenile correctional facilities. The juveniles believed that rehabilitation should be an integral goal of the juvenile justice system and they endorsed community-based interventions as a means to change behavior. The results indicate that the juvenile offenders are in tune with the general public as seeing the juvenile justice system as a child saving institution rather than as a punitive endeavor.

Many social workers are unaware of their responsibilities related to African American, male, juvenile delinquents who have gang affiliation. Punishment by detention is detrimental to these youth because detention perpetuates criminal careers and does not rehabilitate juvenile offenders. The purpose of this action research study was to determine how social workers understood their role in the rehabilitation of gang-affiliated, African American, male juvenile delinquents. Differential association theory was used as the conceptual framework to understand the detriment of youth being incarcerated without rehabilitation. One focus group of 5 social workers was formed using purposive sampling of social workers who worked with the juvenile delinquent population in different settings. Manual transcription, hand coding, and thematic analysis were used to analyze the data. Participants explained why social workers see the population of African American, male, juvenile delinquents with gang involvement as vulnerable, reasons for gang affiliation, barriers to treatment, and how to engage this population. Findings include strategies to promote positivity within urban environments, foster a sense community in these areas, and engage clients. Recommendations were made to advocate for policy change, incorporate the arts into intervention, and to create urban beautification programs. Findings and recommendations from this study might bring about social change by providing insight into how social workers understand their role in the rehabilitation of the population of African American, male, juvenile delinquents with gang involvement and what can be done to enhance the social work involvement.

The primary purpose of this study was to examine differences in the attributions teachers make toward students in the child welfare and juvenile justice systems. The study utilized vignettes and asked teachers to attribute the responsibility for declines in behavior and academic performance to one of five sources (the student, the parents, the teacher, the court system, or the student's friends). The study further asked teachers to identify the extent to which the changes were due to the student's internal traits and external factors, the likelihood of changes in behavior and academic performance with and without intervention, the teachers' beliefs about their ability to impact change, the amount of time the teachers reported being willing to spend with the students outside of class, and the likelihood of the student pursuing post-secondary education. Teachers were also asked to identify to whom they would first refer the student in the vignette for outside assistance due to declines in behavior and academic performance and then provide all referrals they would make. A total of 224 certified 6th -12th grade teachers in the state of Iowa completed the vignette survey between January 2014 and April 2014. Results indicated that teachers made different attributions toward students on the basis of their involvement in either the child welfare or juvenile justice system. Specifically, teachers attributed the reason for behavioral and academic declines to different sources for students in the child welfare system, the juvenile justice system, and the control condition. Teachers were more likely to attribute academic and behavioral declines to internal factors for students in the juvenile justice system and external factors for students in the child welfare system. Teachers reported students in the juvenile justice system as least likely to change without intervention. The majority of teachers across the three conditions indicated their first referral would be to mental health services within the school. Teachers did not differ in the total number of referrals made, the amount of time until making the referral, the amount of time they would be willing to spend with the student outside of class time in order to impact change, their feelings of efficacy to impact change, and the likelihood of the student obtaining post-secondary education. Finally, limitations of the study are presented, suggestions for future research are discussed, and the implications of this study for teachers and school psychologists are discussed.

This dissertation focused on the topic of youth violence in two very different populations, young workers and youth offenders. Youth violence at the home, in school and in the community has been well documented in the literature but very little is known about the prevalence of and risk factors for victimization at the workplace in young workers. In chapter two, a retrospective cohort study was conducted using National Crime Victimization Survey data from 2008–2012. We calculated a rate of workplace violence victimization and compared those rates between occupations and demographic characteristics in young workers 16–24 years. Multilevel, weighted Poisson regression models were used to compare rates of workplace victimization across occupations and demographic characteristics. The rate of workplace violence victimization was 1.11 (95% CI: 0.95–1.27) incidents per 1,000 employed person-months. Young workers in retail sales occupations had a higher rate of workplace victimization than workers in health care occupations (RR = 0.52, 95% CI: 0.26–1.03) but a lower rate of workplace victimization than workers in protective service occupations (RR = 2.25, 95% CI: 1.34–3.77). Rates of workplace violence victimization differed significantly by age, income and workplace location. In contrast, the prevalence of and risk factors for juvenile offender are well-known. However, there still exist major gaps in determining the effectiveness of tertiary interventions, justice-based processes (i.e. formal appearance in court vs. informal agreement or meeting with court officer) and placement (e.g. detention centers, foster care, mental health institutions). In chapters three and four, the effectiveness of justice-based processes and placement on recidivism in young offenders 12–16.5 years were evaluated using data received from the Iowa Criminal and Juvenile Justice Planning Agency (CJJP) from 2010–2013. Multivariable logistic regression was used to impute risk level scores, to calculate propensity scores and to measure associations between demographic or complaint characteristics and main exposures. A sensitivity analysis was conducted by comparing the associations between process type and recidivism in a sample matched on propensity scores to the original unmatched sample. Cox Proportional Hazards models were used to compare time to recidivism by process type or placement in matched and unmatched samples. In chapter three, out of 2,901 youth offenders, 41% recidivated over an 18-month period. Eighteen percent were formally processed while 82% received an informal agreement. Youth who received an informal agreement had a lower risk of reoffending at any time compared to youth who were formally processed in both the unmatched (HR = 0.93, 95% CI: 0.76–1.13) and matched sample (HR= 0.86, 95% CI: 0.65–1.14). These estimates were not statistically significant. We observed an offense-specific association between processing and recidivism. Property (HR = 0.74; 95% CI: 0.57–0.96) offenders who received an informal agreement were significantly less likely to recidivate compared to property offenders who were formally processed. In chapter four, out of 1,469 youth offenders, 36% recidivated over an 18-month period. Nine percent received placement while 91% did not. Youth who received placement had up to an 87% higher risk of reoffending at any time compared to youth who did not receive placement in both unmatched (HR = 1.52, 95% CI: 1.11–2.08) and matched (HR= 1.87, 95% CI: 1.23–2.84) samples. We observed a charge-specific association between receiving placement and recidivism. Youth charged with a simple misdemeanor (HR = 2.74; 95% CI: 1.63–4.60) or other charges (HR = 6.60, 95% CI: 1.56–28.00) and received placement were significantly more likely to recidivate compared to those who did not receive placement. These findings contribute to the youth violence literature in the following ways. Chapter two identified the occupations and target populations in need of policies and evidence-based interventions aimed at improving the working conditions for young workers. Chapter three and four supports the continual evaluation of the juvenile justice system to determine the best practices that may reduce violence and recidivism in young offenders.

This research utilised a range of deterministic and stochastic analyses to establish whether Queensland's juvenile justice system processes Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal young male offenders differently. The impetus for this research stemmed from the continued high rates of Aboriginal over-representation within Australia's criminal justice system, despite diversionary measures to reduce such over-representation, and a commitment by the Queensland Government to reduce by 50% the number of Aboriginal peoples in custody by the year 2011. There are two competing hypotheses concerning the cause of this over-representation, (i) external factors such as socioeconomic disadvantage, unemployment or substance abuse, or (ii) systemic disparity within the criminal justice system. For this research, disparity is defined as the unacceptable use of discrimination; discrimination can be appropriate if it is used to define or enhance a situation, such as discriminating between offenders who are recidivists and those who are first time offenders. The inappropriate use of discrimination occurs for example, when harsher sentences are issued to offenders based on non-legal factors such as race or gender. Systemic disparity is therefore used here to represent the inappropriate use of discrimination against an offender by the criminal justice system. The second hypothesis, one of systemic disparity, provided the framework for this research, which posed the following primary question: Is there quantifiable evidence to support the existence of disparity acting against young male Aboriginal offenders within Queensland's juvenile justice system? Two separate but complementary studies were designed to address this issue: the pathways study and the trajectory study. The pathways study utilised 20,648 finalised appearances for Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal young male offenders in Queensland's juvenile courts, during 1999 to 2003. Three custodial decision-making stages (police custody, remand, and sentencing) were examined and two questions initially posed: Does the custodial decision made at one stage of the juvenile justice system impact on a subsequent custodial decision-making stage? Does criminal history, Aboriginal status, offence type or an interaction of these factors significantly influence the probability of (i) detention in police custody (ii) court remand (iii) a custodial order at sentencing? It was recognised that other legally relevant factors such as family structure and stability, school attendance and community ties might also influence these custodial decisions; however, for the purposes of this research it was not possible to include these variables in the analyses. Controlling for criminal history, findings from logistic regression analyses indicated that being detained in police custody increased the odds of being remanded into custody, and being remanded into custody increased the odds of a custodial order. Whilst Aboriginal status was not a consistent factor at any of these three custodial stages, there was clear evidence of disparity acting against the young male Aboriginal offender, particularly early in their criminal career. To examine these disparities further, these three custodial stages were modeled as eight processing pathways: four of which resulted in a custodial order and four in a noncustodial order. Using this processing model, a third question was posed: Do young Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal male offenders have different custodial pathways? Findings indicated that Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal young male offenders were in general, processed along similar custodial pathways that did not include police custody, remand or a custodial order. However, young male Aboriginal offenders were less likely than equivalent non-Aboriginal offenders to have been processed along this pathway and more likely to be processed along the pathways that included remand. It was found that young offenders with a chronic criminal history were more likely to be processed along these remand pathways, and Aboriginal offenders were more likely to have a chronic criminal history than non-Aboriginal offenders; there was clear evidence of disparity at specific custodial stages of the system. In addition, as young male Aboriginal offenders progressed deeper into the system there was evidence of cumulative disparity, particularly along the remand pathways, meaning that the probability of being in custody increases as the offender progresses from one custodial stage to the next custodial stage. Given the existence of disparity, acting within the juvenile justice system and against the young male Aboriginal offender, it was important to formulate viable solutions to such disparity, particularly in light of the Queensland government's commitment to reduce Aboriginal offenders in custody by 50%. Deterministic analyses and computer simulations were used to test the viability of various reduction scenarios suggested by the data. Despite in some instances, different results from the deterministic analyses and the computer simulations, overall findings indicated that to reduce custodial disparity whether at the remand stage, the custodial order stage, or in custody overall (the summation of police custody, remand and custodial orders) that reducing remand, regardless of whether the young offender had been in police custody or not, was the best overall solution. The trajectory study built on the findings of the pathways study, which had identified criminal history as an important factor in the processing pathways of young male Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal offenders. Using the semi-parametric group based method, the criminal trajectories of Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal young male offenders in Queensland were modeled. These trajectories were based on the finalised appearances of two cohorts of young offenders aged 10 to 17 years of age: those born in 1983 and 1984 and who had turned 18 years of age in 2001 and 2002 respectively. All of these young male offenders had entered the adult system when they turned 17 years of age, and this data provided their complete juvenile history in Queensland. Prior analyses using this method had not considered Aboriginal status or race as a determining factor in these trajectory models, nor had these models been validated either internally or externally in published works. For this research, internal validity was considered as the correct classification of offenders into trajectory groups, and external validity as the ability to reproduce these results in a second or subsequent sample of juvenile offenders. Two questions were therefore posed in the trajectory study: Do young Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal male offenders have different criminal trajectories? Can the predicted model(s) be validated, both internally and externally? Initial findings indicated that the optimal trajectory models selected on prior knowledge and the Bayesian Information Criterion did not validate internally. This finding brought into question the trajectory results of other published works that had not internally validated their models. The models finally selected as optimal indicated that Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal young male offenders did not have a common criminal trajectory and could not be modeled as one population. Both Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal young offenders were modeled by a low-frequency group, a late-onset group, and a chronic trajectory group. However, the young male Aboriginal offender was more likely than the non-Aboriginal to have been in the chronic or the late onset group and less likely to have been in the lowfrequency group. External validation utilised an innovative but simple method that utilised all of the data in the modeling process along with a sample of this same data for validation purposes: 10% of the criminal profiles, which were characteristic of the trajectory groups, and a further 5% of randomly selected profiles were chosen for validation. All of the characteristic profiles, but only 50% of the randomly selected profiles were validated, and of the latter, the majority not validated was in the late-onset group. In total, 79.2% of the Aboriginal trajectories and 85.6% of the non-Aboriginal criminal trajectories were correctly externally validated. Overall, there are two important implications from this research for government. First, even though young male Aboriginal offenders are more likely to have a chronic criminal history than non-Aboriginal offenders, this factor does not account for all of the observed disparity acting against the young Aboriginal offender within Queensland's juvenile justice system: there is evidence of disparity within the system that is unaccounted for by either offence type or criminal history. Second, given this chronic criminal history, systemic solutions to systemic disparity whilst viable, will not ultimately resolve this problem: they are only short-term measures at the end of a very long justice system. Longer-term solutions are needed to address external factors such as socio-economic disadvantage, unemployment and substance abuse in Aboriginal communities, before these young people are exposed to the system. Continuing to concentrate on systemic solutions, to such an entrenched problem as Aboriginal overrepresentation and disparity, is a misdirection of system resources and is inconsistent with social justice.

Problem gambling currently affects between 5-7% of youth ages 12-18 (Hardooon & Derevensky, 2002); however, rates of problem gambling among youth who are involved with the Juvenile Justice System are more than twice that of school sample rates (Lieberman & Cuadrado, 2002). Furthermore, disordered gambling often co-occurs with substance use and criminal activity (Huang & Boyer, 2007), issues that are compounded in the Juvenile Justice population. The current study assessed gambling behaviors and risk factors of 145 youth involved in juvenile, juvenile drug, and family courts. Results indicated that nearly 13% of these youth are currently problem gamblers, and that males and African-Americans had higher problem gambling rates than female and Caucasian youth. Furthermore, gambling-related crime, substance use, scope of gambling activities, and time in detention facilities were all predictive of problem gambling severity, while suicidal ideation, urban environment, and lottery sales per capita were not. Finally, having a parent with a gambling problem also emerged as a risk factor;however, the risk was greater for males than for females. These results present a distinct need for youth to be screened for gambling problems upon entering and exiting the Juvenile Justice System, and for prevention and intervention services to be offered within juvenile and family court settings. Furthermore, communities need to take an active role in preventing youth gambling problems through increasing public awareness and insuring that appropriate and accurate messages reflecting gambling opportunities and outcomes are presented.

Essa dissertação trata da relação entre o saber pedagógico e o governo dos adolescen-tes infratores. A partir da filosofia de Michel Foucault se investigará em um conjunto de arti-gos acadêmicos e opinativos- e de documentos governamentais quais são as novas práticas e concepções pedagógicas que surgiram na última década. Sabe-se que nos últimos anos o sis-tema de justiça juvenil brasileiro tem passado por grandes transformações, tanto no plano prá-tico quanto no teórico. O objetivo do trabalho é saber o que se passou durante esse período de reforma da instituição de responsabilização juvenil e se esse processo tornou o atendimento aos adolescentes infratores mais eficaz do ponto de vista da gestão da criminalidade juvenil. Inicialmente expõem-se alguns debates teóricos importantes para a justiça especial dispostas no Estatuto da Criança e do Adolescente. Trata-se então, da relação entre direito e poder a partir da análise dos argumentos expostos no debate acerca da redução da maioridade penal. Apresentam-se na sequência as diversas forças que habitam as instituições socioeducativas. Em seguida, vê-se como as práticas jurídicas e processuais tendem a limitar a ação governa-mental, proscrevendo-lhe regras de não intervenção. Por fim expor-se-á as práticas de atendi-mento, ressaltando terapêuticas e as práticas limitativas. Conclui-se que é o modelo de justiça penal mínima que melhor desenvolveu as aspirações educativas do ECA. Que, apesar de ter alcançado bons resultados, esse modelo concorre com muitas das forças reminiscentes do mo-delo anterior. / This essay studies the relationship between education knowledge and the juvenile justice sys-tem in Brazil. Based on the work of Michael Foucault, a selection of articles, government papers and academic publications is investigated in order to acknowledge the education prac-tices and techniques that arouse in the last decade. Brazilian juvenile justice system went through major transformations in recent years, both in the theoretical and practical fields. The goal of this research is to recognize the key transformations that took place in this period and learn if the process did or did not improve government\'s assistance towards young offenders. It starts with some theoretical debates relevant for the juvenile justice system, followed by the analysis of the relationship between law and power contained in the arguments exposed in the reduction of criminal age\'s debate. Numerous forces dwelling the country\'s juvenile justice institutions are presented. The following part analysis how legal and procedural practices tend to limit government interference, prescribing it rules of non intervention. It\'s understood that the criminal justice model of minimal intervention is the one that better developed ECA\'s ed-ucational aspirations. Despite achieving satisfactory results, this model still competes with many reminiscent forces of it\'s predecessor model.

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