George Pesta

Juvenile Court and Contemporary Diversion

Research Summary The juvenile court was established to help children through the use of punishment and rehabilitation and, in so doing, “save” them from a life of crime and disadvantage. Diversion programs and policies emerged in the 1970s as one way to achieve this goal. Despite concerns about its potential harm, diversion became increasingly popular in subsequent decades. We examine the logic of a prominent contemporary diversion effort, civil citation, to illuminate tensions inherent to traditional and contemporary diversion. We then review extant evidence on traditional diversion efforts, examine civil citation laws, and identify the salience of both traditional and contemporary, police-centered diversion efforts for youth and the juvenile court. The analysis highlights that diversion may help children but that it also may harm them. It highlights that the risk of net-widening for the police and the court is considerable. And it highlights the importance of, and need for, research on the use and effects of diversion and the conditions under which it may produce benefits and avoid harms. Policy Implications This article recommends a more tempered embrace of diversion and a fuller embrace of research-guided efforts to achieve the juvenile courts ideals. Diversion may be effective under certain conditions, but these conditions need to be identified and then met.

Evaluation Research and Quality Assurance

This article describes the Juvenile Justice Educational Enhancement Program’s implementation of an evaluation research–driven quality assurance process for Florida’s juvenile justice educational programs. The article reviews the prior literature on promising juvenile justice educational practices and describes the educational quality assurance standards and annual modifications that draw from these promising practices. Included is description of the associated quality assurance, technical assistance, and corrective action processes that are used in the effort to ensure quality and accountable juvenile justice education. Quality assurance is argued to be a fundamental and necessary component to both the Juvenile Justice Educational Enhancement Program’s evaluation research and accountability functions.

Civil Citation: Diversion or Net Widening?

Objectives: The primary objective of this study is to assess potential variation across Florida’s counties of their implementation of civil citation and the outcomes associated with that implementation. Methods: Interrupted time-series analysis is used to determine whether the trends in juvenile arrests and the total delinquent population referred to the juvenile justice system (either through arrests or through civil citation) were significantly affected by the implementation of civil citation in each county. Results: There were immediate and gradual diversion effects of the civil citation program in a number of Florida’s counties. As a result, there is evidence of successful implementation with a few cases of net widening. Conclusions: While there was variation between counties in their implementation of civil citation, overall, Florida’s civil citation program was found to provide a diversion from arrest rather than a net-widening outcome. The study concludes with the identification of county-specific factors that characterized the local jurisdictions that were able to successfully overcome the major impediments associated with diversion and other reform programs’ implementation fidelity.

The Benefits, Risks, and Challenges of Get-Tough and Support-Oriented Approaches to Improving School Safety:

Schools have adopted get-tough policies and support-oriented policies, each of which creates not only potential benefits but also potential risks for youth delinquency and education. This article identifies potential benefits and risks of get-tough approaches and support-oriented approaches, respectively, to reduce delinquency. It then identifies challenges that can arise when schools seek to balance both get-tough and support-oriented policies. We illustrate these challenges by drawing on prior scholarship on these policies as well as a process evaluation of a large metropolitan school district’s pilot initiative to promote school safety and academic performance by assisting court-involved youth. We argue for developing a stronger empirical foundation for school-based approaches that aim to improve school safety and educational outcomes of youth.