Schools, Youth, and Justice

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Abstract
This article posits that using the literature on school effectiveness as a basis for creating effective schools, holds the most promise for developing an efficient and cost-effective delinquency prevention strategy. It is argued that typical organizational and instructional practices of schools, maintain a two-trajectory system of education that ill-prepares low trajectory youth for success in school and the out-of-school world, and thus creates the conditions that generate troublesome and delinquent behavior. A detailed strategy for creating effective schools is presented that is grounded in the notion of using collaborative group decision making to develop specific plans for local school improvement. It is argued that effective schools, orchestrated with changes in the occupational arena, will reduce the flow of juveniles into the justice system.