Today juvenile delinquents are viewed and treated much like adult criminals. The goal of rehabilitating and reforming youthful offenders--once the primary function of juvenile courts--has largely been abandoned in the past decade in favor of a punishment-orientation that includes extended periods of incarceration. This study, written by a distinguished group of criminologists, legal experts, and social scientists, attempts to determine the reasons for the decline in interest in rehabilitation, what can be done to revive it, and whether rehabilitation is ultimately a practical approach to the problem of juvenile crime.

One of the most astonishing aspects of juvenile crime is how little is known about the impact of the policies and programs put in place to fight it. As a result of this almost complete absence of evaluation, the most commonly used strategies and programs for combating juvenile delinquency problems primarily rely on intuition and fads. Fortunately, as a result of the promising new research documented in "Changing Lives," these deficiencies in our juvenile justice system might quickly be remedied.Peter W. Greenwood here demonstrates that as crimes rates have fallen, researchers have identified more connections between specific risk factors and criminal behavior, while program developers have discovered a wide array of innovative interventions. The result of all this activity, he reveals, has been the revelation of a few prevention models that reduce crime much more cost-effectively than popular approaches such as tougher sentencing, D.A.R.E., boot camps, and "scared straight" programs. "Changing Lives "expertly presents the most promising of these prevention programs, their histories, the quality of evidence to support their effectiveness, the public policy programs involved in bringing them into wider use, and the potential for investments and developmental research to increase the range and quality of programs. Combining compassion with common sense and clear prose with the most cutting-edge research available on the efficiency of delinquency prevention programs, "Changing Lives" should be read by any policymaker, attorney, criminologist, social worker, psychologist, or other worker faced with the task of trying to help rehabilitate young offenders.

The authors find that well-targeted early intervention programs for at-risk children, such as nurse home visits to first-time mothers and high-quality pre-school education, can yield substantial advantages to participants in terms of emotional and cognitive development, education, economic well-being and health.

The authors report on the benefits and costs of California's new mandatory-sentencing law, which provides for progressively longer sentences with an increasing number of prior convictions for serious felonies. The authors find that the new law, if fully implemented, will decrease serious crime committed by adults by about 28 percent at a cost of an extra $5.5 billion a year. Alternatives that narrow the law's application result in a lower benefit but an even greater reduction in costs. The authors were also able to devise an alternative that resulted in the same crime-reduction benefit for lower cost. The authors conclude that the state budget cuts required to fund the new law will be so great that it is unlikely to be fully implemented.