Federal Resources

This Bulletin focuses on four restorative conferencing models: victim-offender mediation, community reparative boards, family group conferencing, and circle sentencing. It first describes each of the four restorative conferencing models, then compares and contrasts.

This bulletin from OJJDP summarizes findings from analyses of data from the Pathways to Desistance study, which followed more than 1,300 serious youthful offenders for seven years after their court involvement. These analyses addressed the overlap of behavioral health problems and offending behavior (PDF, 16 pages), the care young people with disorders received while in juvenile justice settings, and the care received in the community upon their release. Implications for juvenile justice practice and policy and potential opportunities for system improvement are discussed.

“AMBER Alert Best Practices,” published by the Department of Justice, discusses the most effective strategies that AMBER (America’s Missing: Broadcast Emergency Response) partners have provided for recovering missing children. It explains the history of the system, the role each partner plays in child recovery and how to use the resources provided as best as possible. 

This document makes the case for a new mission for juvenile justice known as the "Balanced Approach," and advocates consideration of a new philosophical framework, "Restorative Justice," to guide broader policy development and reform in juvenile justice.

With the repeal of the “Alaska Exemption” from the 2013 Violence Against Women Act, Alaska Native communities will now be able to use their sovereign authority to protect women from domestic violence. This repeal was one of the recommendations in the recently released report, Ending Violence So Children Can Thrive (PDF, 258 pages) developed by the Advisory Committee of the Task Force on American Indian and Alaska Native Children Exposed to Violence.

This Bulletin examines aftercare services that provide youth with comprehensive health, mental health, education, family, and vocational services upon their release from the juvenile justice system.

This bulletin provides a review of effective early childhood, juvenile, and early adulthood programs that mitigate risk factors for delinquency and have demonstrated measurable impacts on offending (PDF, 8 pages). These programs are grouped by family, school, peers, and community, individual, and employment. 

The SafeFutures initiative joins what we have learned from research about risk and protective factors with what we now know from experience about promising approaches to preventing and controlling delinquency, resulting in a continuum of care that responds to the needs of youth at critical stages in their development. This Summary describes the lessons learned over the initial 3 years of the initiative's implementation in three pilot sites.

The Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (JJDP) Act establishes the Coordinating Council on Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (Council) as an independent body within the executive branch of the federal government. The Council's primary functions are to coordinate federal juvenile delinquency prevention programs, federal programs and activities that detain or care for unaccompanied juveniles, and federal programs related to missing and exploited children.

This site provides information and resources focused on the disproportionate number of minority youth who come into contact with the juvenile justice system

As part of the Girls Study Group series, which was established to guide the development, testing, and implementation of strategies to prevent and intervene in girls’ delinquency, this bulletin synthesizes the methods, findings, and implications from a collaborative analysis of data that the Denver Youth Survey and the Fast Track Project collected on the developmental patterns of girls’ offending from childhood through adolescence. 

The National Institute of Justice and the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention developed the bulletin, "Criminal Career Patterns" as part of the Justice Research Series. This bulletin describes criminal career patterns in adolescence and adulthood.

This web-based guide offers facility leadership and staff who work with confined youth information on principles, concepts, and practices in use in custody facilities. 

To help teachers address issues surrounding youth in confinement, the National Juvenile Detention Association's Center for Research and Professional Development (CRPD) has developed a National Training Curriculum for Educators of Youth in Confinement Facilities (Educator's Curriculum). Topics addressed include behavioral development, mental health, and assessment.

This Report represents a compendium of the opinions and concerns of the Task Force members about current conditions that affect court-involved youth and identifies the most promising strategies for connecting court-involved youth to the labor market.

The National Institute of Justice and the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention developed the bulletin, "Explanation for Offending" as part of the Justice Research Series. This bulletin examines various developmental, biological, social, and psychological explanations for offending.

This report makes recommendations to the President, Congress, and OJJDP on four areas of major concern to the juvenile justice community: evidence-based youth justice practices, youth engagement, youth justice and schools, and youth justice and disproportionate minority contact. These recommendations were formed through research and reviews by FACJJ’s expert subcommittees and through feedback from state advisory groups, state juvenile justice specialists, and state disproportionate minority contact coordinators.

This bulletin describes effective approaches to reintegrating youth from juvenile justice system settings into the education mainstream and provides information about promising programs, practices, and resources.

This resource page from the OJJDP provides a comprehensive summary about girls and delinquency and their involvement in the juvenile justice system. It also covers more in-depth information about how girls develop differently than boys, how this affects their experiences with the juvenile justice system, and why services need to be tailored to their needs. Evaluation of gender-specific programming has shown encouraging results in substance abuse and gang prevention programs for girls.

The Department of Justice’s Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention's first issue of the Journal of Juvenile Justice

This report is part of the Beyond Detention series, which examines the findings of the Northwestern Juvenile Project, a large-scale longitudinal study of youth detained at the Cook County Juvenile Temporary Detention Center in Chicago, Illinois. This bulletin specifically analyzes the youths’ functional impairment three years after their release in school, work, home, and community settings. 

This resource is particularly useful for new applicants in navigating the challenges of a highly competitive application and grant award process. The Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP) has posted a number of current solicitations on OJJDP's Funding Opportunities Web page. Additional funding opportunities from other OJP components may be found on OJP's Open Solicitations Web page.

An OJDDP report on the growth of youth gang problems in the United States between 1970-1998.

The International Association of Chiefs of Police (IACP), in collaboration with OJJDP, developed a free, online training series about effective juvenile interviewing and interrogation techniques. The series target law enforcement and legally authorized juvenile justice professionals who interview or interrogate youth. 

The Department of Justice’s Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention has released “Highlights of the 2010 National Youth Gang Survey,” a fact sheet that discusses the prevalence of gangs and gang activity in the United States, as well as reasons for gang-member migration and external gang influences.