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32 Crime & Delinquency 3 (1986)

handle is hein.journals/cadq32 and id is 1 raw text is: Introduction Barry Krisberg The winds of change are blowing across the nation's juvenile justice system. Traditional reforms are being supplanted with a new and more conservative agenda of juvenile justice. This new reform agenda emphasizes concern for victims, punishment for serious juvenile of- fenders, and protection of children from physical and sexual ex- ploitation. Policies such as diversion and deinstitutionalization are less in fashion. After decades of attempting to remove status offenders from the juvenile justice system, there are increasing calls for returning runaways, truants, and other troubled youth to juvenile court juris- diction. There are, however, many juvenile justice reformers who remain dedicated to advancing due process rights for children and reducing reliance on incarceration. The conflict between the old and new reform agendas represents a significant watershed in the history of juvenile justice reform. This special issue of Crime & Delinquency is devoted to exploring key components of the contemporary debate over juvenile justice reform. The first article by Krisberg, Schwartz, Litsky, and Austin presents an overview of current policy debates. They present new data on trends in juvenile crime and the juvenile justice system. These data reveal that although juvenile arrests have declined, the juvenile justice system has become more formal and restrictive and more oriented toward punish- ment. For example, in 1982 the incarceration rate of juveniles reached its highest point since 1971. These authors also spell out their views of policy implications and potential remedies. The next article by Alfred Regnery provides an excellent exposition of the changed federal perspective on juvenile justice reform. Mr. Regnery, the administrator of the federal Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP), spells out the major programmatic elements of OJJDP's new reform emphasis and also explains the ideological rationale for those activities. BARRY KRISBERG: President of the National Council on Crime and Delinquency. 3 from the SAGE Social Science Collections. All Rights Reserved.