What Works to Reduce Juvenile Crime

Summary

The Evidence Rejects “Tough on Youth”

The research is clear: harsher punishments, trying youth as adults and overreliance on incarceration do not make communities safer — and often worsen outcomes. (R Street Institute) Instead, they fuel deeper cycles of involvement, undermine rehabilitation and harm community trust.

Three Proven Approaches to Juvenile Justice Reform

Rather than defaulting to punitive responses, this commentary highlights three limited‑government models that align accountability with healing, support and trust:

• Community Violence Intervention (CVI): Focused and Effective
  CVI strategies target high-risk individuals and locations with the help of credible messengers and wraparound support. Programs like Operation Ceasefire in Boston led to more than a 60% drop in homicides, underscoring CVI's power to change behavior through community engagement rather than punishment.
• Deflection and Diversion: Connecting Youth to Services
  Multi-disciplinary deflection initiatives (also known as diversion), such as Cambridge's Safety Net, bring together police, schools, mental health providers and community organizations. These programs respond to early warning signs and steer youth away from deeper justice involvement — resulting in lower arrest rates and faster access to support.
• Restorative Justice: Repairing Harm, Reducing Recidivism
  Restorative justice practices prioritize healing and accountability over punishment. When youth engage with those they've harmed, and take active responsibility, outcomes improve. One study showed that restorative participants were 20% less likely to be rearrested compared to peers in traditional systems.

Additional Resources

Stick Talk: An Innovative Violence Intervention Approach – This commentary from the R Street Institute explores the unconventional violence-intervention model known as “Stick Talk,” which notably allows young people to retain weapons as part of its harm-reduction orientation and argues that abstinence-only models often clash with the realities faced by inner-city youth.

Juvenile Deflection – In this research piece, R Street presents “juvenile deflection” as a scalable, bipartisan strategy that enables law-enforcement-led programs — such as Florida’s civil-citation system and the Cambridge Safety Net — to divert youth from the formal justice system by embedding accountability within a developmentally appropriate continuum of care.

Restorative Justice – This R Street research report explains how restorative justice brings together individuals who have caused harm, their victims and community members in “restorative conferences” to repair relationships and promote accountability outside of traditional court, probation or detention systems.