Juvenile Justice Reforms in New Jersey Chronicled in Annie E. Casey Foundation Report

Amid all of Juve­nile Deten­tion Alter­na­tives Ini­tia­tive​’s suc­cess­es nation­al­ly, one JDAI goal has remained stub­born­ly elu­sive — statewide adop­tion. Giv­en the demands of the JDAI mod­el, local sites typ­i­cal­ly require out­side assis­tance if they are to pur­sue deten­tion reform suc­cess­ful­ly (if at all). As a result, the Casey Foun­da­tion has been work­ing for more than a decade to engage states in the JDAI repli­ca­tion process. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, robust state lead­er­ship on deten­tion reform has not emerged eas­i­ly in most states. Rather, sig­nif­i­cant bar­ri­ers have often got­ten in the way of states mobi­liz­ing sup­port and pro­vid­ing mean­ing­ful lead­er­ship to assist local JDAI repli­ca­tion efforts.

New Jer­sey was a strik­ing excep­tion to this trend. After start­ing with five sites in 2004, New Jer­sey extend­ed its JDAI efforts to 10 sites in 2006. And it has con­tin­ued to grad­u­al­ly expand to addi­tion­al sites ever since, adding its 17^th and 18^th coun­ties in 2013. With the three remain­ing coun­ties expect­ed to join JDAI by 2015, New Jer­sey has dis­tin­guished itself as the only state in the nation where JDAI is on track for statewide adop­tion in the near term.

Both in the ini­tial coun­ties and in repli­ca­tion sites, deten­tion admis­sions and dai­ly pop­u­la­tion have plum­met­ed. Many of the state’s deten­tion cen­ters have closed or con­sol­i­dat­ed. An impres­sive net­work of deten­tion alter­na­tives has been erect­ed. In addi­tion, a new risk-assess­ment instru­ment, wide­ly embraced by judges and oth­er sys­tem lead­ers through­out the state, has helped to sharply reduce the num­ber of low-risk youth placed into deten­tion cells.

A new report from the Casey Foun­da­tion traces the state’s suc­cess to the crit­i­cal assis­tance pro­vid­ed by New Jersey’s state gov­ern­ment. From the out­set of their JDAI efforts in 2004, top offi­cials in New Jersey’s juve­nile cor­rec­tions agency and judi­cia­ry focused intent­ly on statewide repli­ca­tion. Over time, New Jer­sey devel­oped a mul­ti­fac­eted sup­port struc­ture to facil­i­tate effec­tive JDAI repli­ca­tion, includ­ing: a net­work of deten­tion spe­cial­ists to sup­port local JDAI efforts, a strong statewide data col­lec­tion and analy­sis process, a clear and con­sis­tent process for coun­ties to ini­ti­ate local JDAI efforts, and peri­od­ic statewide JDAI conferences.

JDAI in New Jer­sey’s final pages describe the recent progress in sev­er­al states to mobi­lize state lead­er­ship and to begin emu­lat­ing New Jersey’s suc­cess in JDAI, and they point to crit­i­cal lessons for oth­ers states seek­ing to assume a lead­er­ship role in pro­mot­ing wide­spread and effec­tive repli­ca­tion efforts.

View JDAI in New Jer­sey.