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Youth justice settings should provide safe, therapeutic environments, tailored to young people's needs. Current custodial models rarely meet these aims, mainly because a focus on security tends to outweigh an emphasis on care, diminishing rather than encouraging young people's positive development. This article reports on a three-year evaluation of youth justice reforms in the Netherlands, including small-scale, community-embedded facilities with an emphasis on relational security. We outline key operational elements and conditions for implementation of these facilities to provide guidance for youth justice professionals, and for managers and policymakers seeking to promote political and financial investments in effective youth justice strategies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Estimates suggest that over a million children per year are deprived of their liberty across the world. Little is known about the types, ethos or distribution of secure beds in which they are detained. Aim: This study aims to provide quantitative data with background information, to explore similarities and differences across jurisdictions, and to inform critical inquiry into key concepts and practices. Methods: Data was obtained using an opportunistic sample of affluent countries, derived from an emerging academic/practice network of senior professionals. Depending on jurisdiction, data was already in the public domain or specifically requested. Data requests were related to the nature and size of health, welfare and criminal justice elements of secure beds and recent occupancy. Key professionals working in child secure settings, within jurisdictions, provided commentary on local approaches. Results: Data was incomplete but allowed for comparisons between 10 jurisdictions. The proportions of the populations of children and young people detained varied by jurisdiction as did their distribution across variations of secure settings. Not all jurisdictions had all three kinds of secure settings. Definitions of secure beds varied depending on the use of relational, procedural or physical security. Conclusion: Findings are tentative but suggestion solely considering numerical descriptions of children's detention is misleading; our study highlights ways in which comparative studies may be improved. Within reported jurisdictions, the framework of health, welfare and justice was meaningful but this may not hold true with a wider international application of this method. Open interrogation of this data would be enhanced by the inclusion of children's perspectives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Community-integrated facilities provide security and care for justice-involved youth, minimizing risks, while allowing youth to build on protective factors within their community. Literature on the specific factors that determine appropriate placement in a community-integrated facility, versus a more restrictive high-security setting, is scarce. Current screening and assessment tools for youth are mostly applied after placement and mainly focus on the reoffending risk. The current paper explored which youth, who would previously have been placed in a high-security setting, could be successfully placed in a less secure community-integrated facility. Through qualitative analysis, based on the perspectives of professionals, youth and parents, the current paper identified six distinct domains to guide appropriate screening and outlines guidelines for policy and practice. These domains include: motivation to comply, short and long-term perspective, current offense context, crime history, safety and support from youth's network, and mental health and intellectual abilities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Life-course persistent offending contributes greatly to violent offending in any country. South Africa has high rates of violence; this study investigated what proportion of young South African offenders might be identified as life-course persistent, and what risk factors identified this group. Offenders aged 12 to 25 years (N = 395) were selected from eight different correctional facilities in four provinces of South Africa. Latent class analysis identified 164 offenders (41.5%) with distinctly earlier starts and more serious offending. These (probably life-course persistent) offenders were distinguished from others by male gender, violence at home, other victimization, familial crime, school performance, violence at school, and alcohol abuse and gang membership. Correctional services should be specifically targeted at this large subgroup of offenders to prevent recidivism. Primary prevention efforts should be targeted at preventing violence at home and school, at promoting school attachment, at substance abuse treatment, and at gang membership. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

All over Europe youth delinquency is decreasing; our understanding of the factors related to juvenile delinquency and the characteristics of effective forensic youth care has increased substantially. However, effective prevention and intervention strategies are not always employed due to financial, demographical and socio-political challenges countries face, while the burden of mental health in juvenile justice populations is high. With this commentary, we highlight the importance of international collaboration to set out a direction to improve forensic youth care, to bundle our strengths and overcome our challenges. It is a continuation of the course that was set out by Doreleijers and Fegert (Child Adolesc Psychiatry Ment Health 5:20, 2011), in their editorial they highlighted the importance of collaboration and presented an overview of the state of the art on forensic youth care in eight European countries (and Russia). With this manuscript, we present an overview of statistics in juvenile justice of all European countries and present an integrated mission statement for forensic youth care, which was formulated in a keynote debate at the 6th biennial congress of the European Association for Forensic Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, Psychology and other involved professions (EFCAP). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Youngsters with intellectual disabilities are overinvolved within the youth justice system. The aim of this study was to explore the suitability of a small-scale community-integrated approach for justice involved youngsters with intellectual disabilities. This study compared the numbers of transfers, the number, type, and rate of change in incidents, and the possible mediating effect of resilience thereon, between 40 youngsters with and 19 youngsters without intellectual disabilities, placed in a small-scale facility. There were no differences in the number of transfers, the number, type, and rate of change in incidents, and no mediating effect of resilience was found. A small-scale community integrated approach for youth justice facilities can be suited to provide tailored placement for youngsters with intellectual disabilities, given the presence of protective factors and motivation. Both youngsters with and without intellectual disabilities showed a low number of incidents and were able to continue or initiate structural daytime activities., Competing Interests: Declaration of Conflicting InterestsThe author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.