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Purpose – The purpose of this study is to examine how staff contributes to the operations of an adult drug court and, more critically, how staff produces client failure. Previous drug court researchers often attribute outcomes to the characteristics or the behaviors of the clients or to the program design, not to the actions of the staff.

Methodology – This study is based on extensive field research in three drug courts over a 4-year period. We observed both public and less public drug court events from the court event to staff meetings.

Findings – The key finding is that staff produces program failures. Within the policies and procedures of their programs, using their professional belief systems, and in interaction with a range of others to manage the demands of their position, staff produces the outcomes.

Limitations – As with other ethnographies, the generalizability of the exact processes may be limited. The core finding that the staff actively creates outcome decisions is a fundamental process that we believe occurs in any drug court or, more widely, problem-solving courts.

Implications – The practical implications of this research are in the illustrations of how staff matter, which we hope will spur others into examinations of staff actions.

Originality – Previous research ignores staff or treats them as mere extension program policies. The in-depth examination of staff behavior provides a unique and valuable examination of how much is lost by ignoring the staff judgments, perceptions, and actions.

Back in 2005 lawyers for the Milwaukee school board decided to exclude Viagra and similar erectile dysfunction (ED) drugs from health coverage for the teachers’ union because, well, they were simply too expensive.¹ And besides, so the school board explained, such drugs are used primarily for recreational sex and are not a medical necessity.

Adverse peer pressure is a long‐established contributing factor in the explanation for youth crime. There is also some evidence that positive peer influence is capable of having the opposite effect. In the US, efforts are made to exploit this process in ‘teen courts’, a voluntary alternative to the traditional criminal justice system for younger offenders charged with less serious offences. The aim is to divert them from further involvement in offending. An adapted version of this model is being piloted in Preston, Lancashire, in restorative peer panels. Restorative justice is at the heart of this diversionary initiative for young people at risk of offending. This article, written by members of the evaluation team for the peer panel project, considers the principles, practice and impact of teen courts, and offers some thoughts on implications from the Lancashire pilot.

Analyses teen phone behaviour – regarding conversational skills among some boys with girls. Reveals some interesting household co‐ordination and parental supervision issues around the use of the telephone. Concludes that, as there is an advance in technology, more and more services will be used creatively to resolve conflict between social control and monitoring and individual identity.

This study presents findings from the South Carolina Youth Court Initiative, a statewide community corrections approach to delinquency prevention. The national youth court movement, its restorative justice theoretical underpinnings, and a brief history of youth courts in South Carolina are reviewed as a context for the present study. A mixed-methodological design utilizing a survey, costs–benefits analysis, site visits, and interviewing was employed to analyze the entire study population (N=21). Findings are presented which call into question the value of youth court performance in terms of effectiveness and expenditure.

Outlines the patchwork of federal law and self‐regulatory codes and guidelines which makes up the legislative system relating to advertising to Canadian children. Lists the former as the Broadcast Code of Advertising to Children, the Telecaster Services of the Television Bureau of Canada, and the CBC Advertising Standards, while self‐regulatory codes include the Canadian Code of Advertising Standards and the Code of Ethics and Standards of Practice of the Canadian Marketing Association. Focuses next on Quebec’s provincial laws for advertising to children; Quebec is the only province, and in fact the only jurisdiction in North America, in which commercial advertising to persons under 13 is generally prohibited. Discusses lastly the sensitive issue of collecting personal information from children.

John Pitts reports on recent developments in youth justice policy in the US. A task force is charged with transforming juvenile justice by looking at ways to strengthen alternatives to custody, improve residential care and enhance re‐entry programmes. Pitts looks forward to a more rational approach to policy‐making in the US.

The growing concern about school violence and security has led to a dramatic increase in the number of police officers working in schools. This increase has been accompanied by a focus on the training of school-based law enforcement, the discretion that they exercise when interacting with youth, and the concern that these factors may lead to more youths facing arrest and formal processing by the juvenile and criminal justice system. What is not well understood is whether or not having formal school resource officer (SRO) training or higher education impacts the officer’s decision making when responding to an incident involving a student. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

This paper uses survey data from school police officers within the USA (n=179) to examine the officer’s preferred post-incident method of disciplining the youth, from the most punitive and formal approach of suspension or referral to juvenile authorities, to the less punitive and informal approach such as diversion or warn and release.

Overall, the study found that officers who have received formal SRO training were more likely to prefer a formal resolution to the incidents, and more highly educated officers tended to favor less punitive and informal responses.

These findings question the current state of the effectiveness of SRO training at using diversionary tactics for conflict resolution in a school setting.