Get Involved: A Collection of Juvenile Justice Resources

Orig­i­nal­ly pub­lished March 7, 2016, at 7:44 p.m., updat­ed August 9, 2018

The Foun­da­tion works to improve out­comes for youth involved with the juve­nile jus­tice sys­tem. Our Juve­nile Deten­tion Alter­na­tives Ini­tia­tive^® and efforts to reduce youth incar­cer­a­tion focus on cre­at­ing sys­tems that use com­mu­ni­ty-based, fam­i­ly-ori­ent­ed inter­ven­tions and lock up few­er kids. Our reform efforts start­ed in the ear­ly 1990s with just a few juris­dic­tions. Today, the Foun­da­tion is a leader in a dynam­ic nation­al move­ment to ensure that chil­dren are not inap­pro­pri­ate­ly removed from their fam­i­lies and com­mu­ni­ties. We hope you join this effort.

Key Juve­nile Jus­tice Pub­li­ca­tions from Casey

Pub­li­ca­tions Relat­ed to the Juve­nile Deten­tion Alter­na­tives Initiative

JDAI at 25: Insights From the Annu­al Results Reports
The Foun­da­tion issued this results report in 2017, the 25^th anniver­sary of JDAI™. It tells how par­tic­i­pat­ing sites have achieved sig­nif­i­cant and — in many cas­es — long-last­ing reduc­tions in rates of juve­nile incar­cer­a­tion and juve­nile crime. Also, the report shares key chal­lenges and new goals, tools and strate­gies for JDAI sites to con­sid­er as they look to enhance their work.

Why Is Deten­tion Reform Important?
This blog post explains that many detained youth pose min­i­mal dan­ger to pub­lic safe­ty, and many youth lan­guish in deten­tion with no ben­e­fit for them­selves or for pub­lic safe­ty. Research shows that place­ment into a secure deten­tion facil­i­ty can have an out­sized impact on the ulti­mate case out­comes for court-involved youth — with poten­tial­ly pro­found and life­long neg­a­tive con­se­quences. Youth who spend time in cus­tody are less like­ly to com­plete high school, less like­ly to find employ­ment and more like­ly to suf­fer men­tal health prob­lems than com­pa­ra­ble youth who are not detained.

Why We’re Expand­ing JDAI’s Focus
The Foun­da­tion has launched an effort that will expand JDAI beyond the deten­tion phase of the juve­nile court process to focus on reduc­ing reliance on incar­cer­a­tion in longer-term juve­nile cor­rec­tions facil­i­ties. By expand­ing the focus of JDAI to include the system’s ​“deep end,” the Foun­da­tion believes that juris­dic­tions can sig­nif­i­cant­ly and safe­ly reduce the num­ber of youth who are placed in res­i­den­tial facil­i­ties and sep­a­rat­ed from their fam­i­lies. Deep end reform can also help set the stage for reform­ers to shift their focus from get­ting the sys­tem to do less harm to help­ing the sys­tem ​“do good.”

JDAI Prac­tice Guides Collection
These prac­ti­cal, detailed, how-to guides for sys­tem stake­hold­ers are avail­able on sub­jects rang­ing from deten­tion facil­i­ty self-assess­ment to LGBT youth in the juve­nile jus­tice sys­tem. The lat­est prac­tice guide is an update for prac­ti­tion­ers about nonci­t­i­zen youth.

Path­ways to Juve­nile Deten­tion Reform Series
These clas­sic reports for sys­tem stake­hold­ers share lessons learned from juris­dic­tions in the JDAI net­work on sub­jects such as elim­i­nat­ing delays in case pro­cess­ing pro­ce­dures and achiev­ing deten­tion reform in rur­al areas.

Pub­li­ca­tions Relat­ed to Reduc­ing Youth Incarceration:

Trans­form­ing Juve­nile Pro­ba­tion: A Vision for Get­ting It Right
This report presents the Foundation’s vision for trans­form­ing juve­nile pro­ba­tion into a focused inter­ven­tion that pro­motes per­son­al growth, pos­i­tive behav­ior change and long-term suc­cess for youth who pose sig­nif­i­cant risks for seri­ous offend­ing. Near­ly a half-mil­lion young peo­ple are giv­en some form of pro­ba­tion annu­al­ly and it serves as a crit­i­cal gate­keep­er to deter­mine whether young peo­ple are placed in res­i­den­tial insti­tu­tions. Pro­ba­tion plays a sig­nif­i­cant role in per­pet­u­at­ing the vast over­rep­re­sen­ta­tion of African-Amer­i­can, Lati­no and oth­er youth of col­or in our nation’s jus­tice systems.

No Place for Kids: The Case for Reduc­ing Juve­nile Incarceration
This report, and its com­pan­ion Mal­treat­ment of Youth in U.S. Juve­nile Cor­rec­tions Facil­i­ties: An Update, intro­duces new evi­dence on the wide­spread abuse of youth in state-fund­ed juve­nile cor­rec­tions facil­i­ties. The reports show that despite the best inten­tions of the peo­ple who run and work in them, youth pris­ons are inher­ent­ly prone to abus­ing the young peo­ple they are sup­posed to reha­bil­i­tate. Even for the small por­tion of kids who have com­mit­ted seri­ous crimes and require con­fine­ment, this out­dat­ed mod­el needs to be replaced with strate­gies we know encour­age youth devel­op­ment and growth.

Reduc­ing Youth Incar­cer­a­tion Data Snapshot
This four-page snap­shot presents sta­tis­tics under­scor­ing the sea change in how we treat juve­nile offenders.

Juve­nile Jus­tice Sto­ries in the News

The Foun­da­tion sup­ports sev­er­al resources that offer dai­ly updates via email:

The Mar­shall Project
This online news source cov­ers crim­i­nal jus­tice issues.

Juve­nile Jus­tice Infor­ma­tion Exchange
JJIE pro­vides news and com­men­tary writ­ten by jour­nal­ists and prac­ti­tion­ers on issues impact­ing youth.

Addi­tion­al Sources of Infor­ma­tion, Data and Analyses

Inter­est­ed in learn­ing more about juve­nile jus­tice? Explore the fol­low­ing resources:

JDAIcon­nect
JDAIcon­nect is an online com­mu­ni­ty for juve­nile jus­tice reform­ers to talk, find resources and learn. A part of the Casey Foun­da­tion’s Com­mu­ni­ty Café plat­form, JDAIcon­nect is avail­able to every­one inter­est­ed in youth jus­tice. Mem­ber­ship is open to all, whether or not you par­tic­i­pate in JDAI, and free of charge. It replaces the JDAI Helpdesk.

Juve­nile Jus­tice Geog­ra­phy, Pol­i­cy, Prac­tice and Statistics
JJG­PS is an online repos­i­to­ry for state pol­i­cy­mak­ers and sys­tem stake­hold­ers that tracks juve­nile jus­tice sys­tem reform across states and allows users to make com­par­isons and chart change.

Juve­nile Jus­tice Resource Hub
The Resource Hub aggre­gates research, best prac­tice mod­els, toolk­its and oth­er action-ori­ent­ed doc­u­ments on juve­nile jus­tice issues and reform trends.

Office of Juve­nile Jus­tice and Delin­quen­cy Pre­ven­tion (OJJDP) Sta­tis­ti­cal Brief­ing Book
This U.S. Depart­ment of Jus­tice resource gives users access to detailed sta­tis­tics on a vari­ety of juve­nile jus­tice top­ics, includ­ing juve­nile pop­u­la­tions, arrests, court cas­es and cus­tody populations.

In a relat­ed post, we share infor­ma­tion about advo­cates for change. These nation­al orga­ni­za­tions pro­mote reforms and advo­cate for bet­ter youth and fam­i­ly outcomes.