A Curated Collection of Resources for Youth Justice Professionals

The Youth Jus­tice Resource Library is a new dig­i­tal plat­form from the Annie E. Casey Foun­da­tion. It offers access to hun­dreds of prac­ti­cal, action­able and cur­rent resources specif­i­cal­ly designed for pro­fes­sion­als. The library cur­rent­ly hous­es over 300 resources from near­ly 100 orga­ni­za­tions. Assem­bled by nation­al experts, the col­lec­tion encompasses:

• diver­sion and prevention;
• deten­tion reform; and
• pro­ba­tion transformation.

The selec­tion process pri­or­i­tizes qual­i­ty, rel­e­vance and time­li­ness, with spe­cial atten­tion giv­en to youth voic­es and cur­rent reform pri­or­i­ties. The col­lec­tion will evolve through user sub­mis­sions and reg­u­lar updates. Prac­ti­tion­ers can rec­om­mend new resources through a brief online form. To main­tain rel­e­vance, the library team con­ducts annu­al reviews to remove out­dat­ed mate­ri­als and ensure resources remain cur­rent with best prac­tices in juve­nile jus­tice reform. The library’s offer­ings explic­it­ly exclude pro­mo­tion­al mate­ri­als, per­son­al pro­files, news arti­cles, out­dat­ed infor­ma­tion and gen­er­al pub­lic-fac­ing content.

Users can search by top­ic area, key­word or for­mat, such as video or tool kit. A cus­tom chat­bot also assists in nav­i­gat­ing the library’s col­lec­tion. Each resource includes com­pre­hen­sive meta­da­ta, includ­ing a title, descrip­tion, pub­li­ca­tion year, source, for­mat type, esti­mat­ed read­ing time and top­i­cal keywords.

“We’ve reimag­ined what a resource library should be for juve­nile jus­tice pro­fes­sion­als,” said Nate Balis, direc­tor of the Juve­nile Jus­tice Strat­e­gy Group at the Casey Foun­da­tion. ​“The ini­tia­tive address­es a long-stand­ing chal­lenge in the field: the over­whelm­ing vol­ume of avail­able infor­ma­tion, mak­ing it sim­pler for pro­fes­sion­als to find and apply what they need.”

Explore the library

Con­nect with oth­er youth jus­tice reform­ers in the Jus­ticeLink Slack com­mu­ni­ty