Resources

Justice practitioners have tremendous discretion on how to handle juvenile offenders. Police officers, district attorneys, juvenile court intake officers, juvenile and family court judges, and other officials can decide whether the juvenile should be “officially processed” by the juvenile justice system or should be diverted from the system to a program, counseling, or some other services—or they can decide to do nothing at all, releasing the juvenile altogether.

The objective of this paper is to answer an important policy question: Does juvenile system processing reduce subsequent delinquency? Cowritten by WestEd’s Anthony Petrosino and Sarah Guckenburg with Carolyn Turpin-Petrosino for the Campbell Collaboration, it presents the background, objectives, methodology, and results of this systematic review, as well as a list of references and an appendix.