Gun violence in New Orleans has grown exponentially over the years. As a society we often forget to reflect on how gun violence effects the youth in our communities. Local members of the community in New Orleans have decided to come together to form organizations that can produce better outcomes for the youth in the New Orleans area, two of those organizations being Son of A Saint and the Youth Empowerment Project. Both of these organizations have started the journey to decreasing the amount of gun violence in the city.

The present study involved an examination of the delinquency problem in Saudi Arabia within the framework of social control theory. Specifically, the study was based on the thesis set forth by Travis Hirschi, i.e., that delinquent acts result when an individual's bond to society is weak or broken. Also taken into account, however, were the findings from the research of Wiatrowski, et al. that suggest a need for a) some modifications in Hirschi 's conceptual framework and b) inclusion of socio-economic factors in the social control model.

Results of the Youth Center Research Project were almost equally favorable for each other's two schools. The parole-violation rates of the wards released from both institutions dropped from 43% to 31%, a considerable improvement when compared with the two control California Youth Authority schools continuing failure rate of 46%. These figures were for twelve-month parole-exposure periods. But the study’s major hypotheses were not verified. The more mature youths did not do better with TA than with B Mod, and the lower-maturity wards did no better with B Mod. In fact, one classification of higher-maturity wards did a little better with B Mod, and some lower-maturity wards did a little better with B Mod, and lower-maturity wards did better with TA. But all levels did fairly well with either systems, regardless of whether or not the wards declared themselves to be in need of change. Whether those results would endure for more than twelve months were still in question as of this writing. The data were to be evaluated for years to come. In the meantime, an important question not answered in the 1972 report was: were there any interaction effects between the three major aariables: treatment method, maturity level of wards, and treater competence?

Juvenile justice reforms in America today closely resemble the ones that occurred over a century ago. The reforms of both eras aim to separate juveniles from adults and emphasize rehabilitation over punishment. Why is policy repeating itself? In search of an answer, I look to a monumental series of liberal Supreme Court decisions made in the 1960s that constituted what is now known as the Civil Rights Era’s “due process revolution.” In these cases, the Supreme Court provided juveniles with procedural protections in attempt to prevent the manifestation of racial bias in the juvenile court. It is commonly agreed upon that the due process revolution failed in its mission to protect minority youth. However, scholars are divided on why it failed. Some claim that states simply did not implement the protections properly. Others argue that a conservative backlash obstructed their proper implementation. In this thesis, I put forth that the decisions themselves — specifically, Kent v. United States and In Re Gault — criminalized youth by mistakenly presuming that racism could be regulated out of the court by enhanced procedures of due process. The liberal decisions made in Kent and Gault ultimately paved the way for the conservative carceral agenda of the late twentieth century and subjected minority youth to unprecedented punitive policy. I refer to Naomi Murakawa’s “racial innocence” theory to illuminate this interpretation of events and suggest that communities look inwards for alternatives to institutional reform.

As of May 2016, the U.S. State Department officially declared a priority date for all green cards for applicants from El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras that capped the number of visas granted to individuals from these three countries to just 10,000 per year. This inherently created a two to three-year backlog for Special Immigrant Juvenile Status applicants from these countries as well, meaning that SIJS petitioners will remain undocumented for periods of up to six years until their petition is adjudicated by USCIS and their priority date arrives. I research whether the increasingly difficult path to obtaining permanent residency through a Special Immigrant Juvenile Status petition is a result of a change in federal administrations––– between former President Obama’s covert mechanisms of marginalization and deportation of Central Americans to the overtly anti-immigrant rhetoric stemming from Trump––– or if SIJS backlogs are an inevitable phenomenon resulting from U.S. imperialism in Central America throughout the 20th century. I ground my research on pre-existing literature that explains the legal processes of obtaining permanent residency through a SIJS petition and include scholars’ criticisms of the interpretation of the policy by state and federal courts. To exemplify the complications that youth face while petitioning for SIJ status, I also incorporate the perceptions and experiences of several attorneys who have represented SIJS applicants and my own interpretations of how judges treat SIJS applicants courtrooms throughout Los Angeles County.

This research study seeks to enhance previous mentoring literature (Converse & Lignugaris, 2008; Cavell, Elledge, Malcolm, & Faith, 2009; Devenport & Lane, 2009) by further identifying the strategies and skills which help mentors form quality relationships and ultimately impact the resilience of at-risk adolescent mentees. Specifically, this study investigates volunteer mentors’ perceptions of incorporating the positive coping strategies of active listening, emotional regulation, conflict resolution, and future orientation within the initial stages of the mentoring process. Participants in this study are divided into two groups: the Coping Strategies (CS) Group and the Untrained Group (UG). The CS Group mentors have been individually trained to use the aforementioned coping strategies prior to being matched with mentees. The Untrained Group consists of mentors who received no formal training. Semi-structured interviews, which were conducted between three and four months into each mentoring relationship, reveal that focusing on relationship building and creating a level of comfort and trust with mentees were viewed by mentors from both groups as the paramount objectives during these beginning stages. Active listening is identified by a majority of participants as crucial for establishing a connection between mentor and mentee, building trust within the relationship, and engendering meaningful dialogue during beginning mentor sessions. Ultimately, this study finds that active listening training can be useful for helping mentors establish the foundation for a quality mentoring relationship, as well as for the use of additional coping strategies.

Après une décennie de réformes incessantes et à l’heure où l’on envisage une refonte globale de la matière, il paraît important de s’interroger sur les principes supérieurs gouvernant le droit pénal des mineurs délinquants. En dépit d'une cristallisation remontant à 2002, via le mécanisme original du principe fondamental reconnu par les lois de la République, et sa protection par quelques instruments internationaux, l’autonomie de la justice des mineurs pose, à ce jour encore, de nombreuses questions. Sur le plan substantiel, elle repose sur des principes, reconnus supérieurs, d’adaptation de la réponse au relèvement éducatif et moral des mineurs et d’atténuation de la pénalité, qui s’avèrent quasiment absolus. Le discernement, en revanche, n’a pas bénéficié, pour sa part, d’une consécration expresse sur le plan suprême. Il se voit même concurrencé par le critère rigide de l’âge, et ce, bien qu’il soit un préalable essentiel à la détermination de la responsabilité pénale. Sur le plan processuel, malgré leur protection supra-législative, tant la règle de juridictions spécialisées que l’exigence de procédures appropriées, régulièrement infléchies, semblent vouées à la relativité. Le Conseil Constitutionnel, à la fois constituant et garant de la matière, a souvent été invité à en marquer les limites infranchissables et à en protéger le noyau dur inaltérable. Fort de l’identification et de l’appréciation de ce dernier, le présent travail tend à montrer que la malléabilité des principes de forme du droit pénal des mineurs délinquants permet de contourner l’immutabilité des principes de fond dirigeant celui-ci. / Following one decade of continuous reforms of the juvenile offenders penal law and while a global recast of the matter is considered, it appears important to question the superior principles governing it. Despite its original crystallization, starting in 2002, through the original mechanism of fundamental principle recognized by Republic Law, and its protection by some international tools, the autonomy of the juvenile justice is still currently questionable. On the substantial side, juvenile justice is based on principles, recognized as superior, of answer’s adaptation to the educational and moral restoring of the juvenile and sentence mit igation, which appear nearly absolute. On the other hand discernment has not benefited from an explicit consecration of its paramount status. It is even challenged by the age arbitrary criteria despite the fact that this condition is a cardinal preliminary for penal responsibility determination. On the procedural side, notwithstanding their supra-legislative guarantee, specialized jurisdictions so as requirement for appropriate procedures, regularly inflected, seems dedicated to relativity. Constitutional Council, both matter constituent and guarantor, has been very often invited to determine unreachable limits and to protect the unalterable core. Based on this core’ identification and assessment, this work intend to demonstrate that malleability of the form principles of juvenile offender penal law allows by-pass of background principles immutability, governing this one.

This thesis analyzes how caring relationships and an emancipatory approach to law related education (LRE) within juvenile justice facilities can cultivate political agency. I focused specifically on Camp Afflerbaugh-Paige, an LA County juvenile probation facility, in La Verne, CA, as a case study. During three months of teaching a law related education class and embedding myself at the facility with an asset-based framework, I encountered a wealth of knowledge that incarcerated juveniles possess, not from formal education or research, but based in their own lived experiences. Los Angeles County Probation spends $233,000 per student per year; assuming best intentions of those in charge and the actors, the students, with a wide array of expertise, should be thriving within these institutions and set up for success upon their release. Unfortunately, though, students’ academic, entrepreneurial, and legal expertise are criminalized rather than cultivated by the juvenile justice system. Through a policy class, the students created reforms to address the challenges of a paramilitary camp that neglects students’ emotional, physical, and mental health. The challenges in the environment complicate the political agency of students within the camp and post-release. I am making the claim that the political agency of the students is visible and the assets are tangibly cultivated by an emancipatory pedagogy, ethic of care, and the law related education curriculum.

Current research indicates an association between intense adolescent work (twenty hours or more per week) and delinquent behavior. It has been widely speculated that this relationship is spurious, occurring only as a result of other factors which are common to both offending and intense employment. The current study attempts to fill a gap in the literature by utilizing the Pathways to Desistance dataset to examine the evolution of the relationship between work and self-reported offending in a longitudinal sample of juvenile offenders. Work intensity and consistency, social capital, and expectations for success were analyzed as potential predictors of recidivism or desistance as juvenile offenders mature into adulthood. Variations in the significance of these variables throughout the first seven waves of data collection were examined from the life course perspective. Results provide support for the theory of age graded social control and suggest that high risk youth self-select into intensive work roles as adolescents. No statistically significant differences in lifetime offending were found between respondents across varying levels of work intensity.