Policy Tool
This report is the latest in a series of Juvenile Justice Initiative (JJI) reports on juvenile detention, building on prior research in concluding the time is ripe for a complete overhaul of the juvenile detention system in Illinois.
This report challenges the notion that Georgia’s youth legal system is built to rehabilitate and suggests measures that protect the health and humanity of all the state’s children. First, this report will explore the myth of the “superpredator” and its impact on perceived Black youth criminality. Second, it will detail the state’s school-to-prison pipeline and…
The National Institute of Justice issued five key findings from research and data on youth and delinquency. The findings include: 1) risk-taking behaviors are a normal part of adolescent development; 2) risky behaviors increase through adolescence and then decline over time as youth mature; 3) few youth are arrested for any crime, and even fewer…
Florida routinely pushes Black children out of schools and into a legal system with well-documented harms. In recent years, the state has made significant investments in school law enforcement and self-proclaimed “tough love” youth legal system policies, purportedly in the name of public safety. However, these investments have yielded a system that disparately disciplines, arrests,…
The Sentencing Project released an updated snapshot of youth arrest and incarceration rates, revealing that youth arrest rates have declined 80% from 1996 and youth incarceration declined 75% between 2000 and 2022. Despite these shrinking rates, the juvenile legal system is still marked by significant racial and ethnic disparities. Black youth are 4.7 times more…
The evidence provided in this brief supports bold reforms for youth and emerging adults sentenced to extreme punishments.
The American Bar Association (ABA) passed a resolution urging all governmental authorities to enact laws and policies prohibiting police from utilizing deceptive practices during youth interrogations. Relying on adolescent development research and recognizing the inherent vulnerabilities of youth during police interrogations, the ABA outlines that “it is beyond dispute that interrogations of adolescents by law…
The answer, then, is not to simply reform the system of punishment, but to stop surveilling and punishing kids and instead invest in the things that set kids up for success, like education, family support, and access to healthcare. We need to start seeing children as children, not as criminals, and giving them the tools…
By understanding the conditions facing incarcerated youth, the responsibility of the justice system, and strategies designed to improve outcomes, stakeholders can make informed decisions. After arming readers with the historical timeline necessary to understand Texas’ complicated history with its juvenile justice system, LSJA’s Reimagining Reform report issues a challenge to stakeholders during a crucial time…
The National Youth Justice Network released a report detailing legislative trends on youth rights from 2023. This report highlights key gains made by several states around juvenile court fines and fees, expungement, transfer, and youth interrogation among other issues, and flags several regressive legislative trends rooted in harmful narratives about young people. This overview of…
A new study by The Pew Charitable Trusts shows that young people assigned to probation after their first offense are more likely to be rearrested in the future, particularly for technical violations, than their peers diverted away from probation. The study, based on data provided by the Texas Juvenile Justice Department (TJJD) and analyzed by…
This report describes the process of developing or cultivating purpose and explains why purpose is one of the key aspects of healthy development in adolescence. Cultivating purpose is widely beneficial for adolescents, and it is particularly important for adolescents from traditionally underserved groups. Purpose is essentially a renewable resource that has the potential to benefit…
The focus of this paper is on the experience of Black adolescents who are growing up amidst evolving national beliefs about racism, ongoing political debate surrounding the Black Lives Matter movement, and a growing national awareness about the experience of being Black in America.
The work described herein articulates a way forward for the NIH to continue to improve youth mental health and to reduce YMHD through supporting rigorous, impactful research. However, the urgency of the youth mental health crisis and YMHD is so pressing that many NIH ICOs have already begun this important work, particularly through supporting research.…
This report examines racial disparities, policing landscapes, and budgets in twelve jurisdictions across the country, comparing the city and county spending priorities with those of community organizations and their members. While many community members, supported by research and established best practices, assert that increased spending on police do not make them safer, cities and counties…
This report presents the evolution of the second look movement, which started with ensuring compliance with the U.S. Supreme Court’s decisions in Graham v. Florida (2010) and Miller v. Alabama (2012) on the constitutionality of juvenile life without parole (“JLWOP”) sentences.12 This reform has more recently expanded to other types of sentences and populations, such…
A concentration of a few states has unevenly complied with Miller and the possibility of resentencing provided by Montgomery. Some states have refused to comply at all. This uneven implementation of the Miller decision has a particularly profound impact on racial disparities among those serving JLWOP. An analysis of those deemed worth protecting from JLWOP…
