Examines the impact of race on age at the onset of school disciplinary actions and police contact, and the rate of receiving increasingly severe disciplinary actions.
This report details the results of the first-ever state-wide Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) survey administered to people currently incarcerated for crimes they committed as children (under eighteen). The trauma measured from ACEs surveys include physical, sexual, and emotional abuse; physical and emotional neglect; separation from parents; mental illness or substance abuse in the home; parent…
Studies consistently confirm that incarcerating young people causes great harm, including increased victimization, recidivism, school drop-out, and long-term physical and mental health issues. Fortunately, research also identifies what young people need for positive, healthy development. Alternatives to incarceration, such as release schedules, should be crafted to ensure each young person has time for and access…
This one-page infographic from the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention illustrates trends in delinquency cases in 2022.
An evaluation report for the LEAP initiative Prepared for the Annie E. Casey Foundation June 2024.
A robust literature is developing around how the stress of discrimination is implicated in individual- and group-level sleep disturbances, and how these disturbances contribute to the development of population-level sleep disparities over time. Although discrimination can be based on many individual and intersecting biases, like gender, sexuality, socioeconomic status, and education, in this article, we…
A decade after national protests catapulted the Black Lives Matter movement following the police killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri and four years after a national racial reckoning triggered by Minneapolis police officers killing George Floyd, lawmakers are wavering on their commitment to making the criminal legal system more just and effective. Many are…
This brief describes how states currently treat two categories of young people: youth who commit status offenses—behaviors that are not categorized as crimes—and young children who do not have the developmental capacity to fully understand the crimes they are committing. Through a 50-state scan of policy and practice, we detail how states respond to these…
School districts historically approached conflict-resolution from the perspective that suspending disruptive students was necessary to protect their classmates, even if this caused harm to perceived offenders. Restorative practices (RP) – focused on reparation and shared ownership of disciplinary justice – are designed to address undesirable behavior without imparting harm. This study looks at Chicago Public…
This one-page infographic illustrates statistics from the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention’s Juvenile Residential Facility Census
This one-page infographic from the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention illustrates statistics on waiver from juvenile to criminal courts.
This research article explores the history of girls prosecuted as adults in courts across the United States. It explores the effects of childhood trauma and victimization on brain and physical development and the connection to involvement in the criminal legal system as children. The article describes the results of a survey of young women who…
The COVID-19 pandemic, declared a public health emergency in the United States on March 13, 2020, had an impact on the policies, procedures, and data collection activities of juvenile courts relating to the referrals and processing of youth. Mitigation efforts such as stay-at-home orders and school closures impacted the volume and types of law-violating behavior…
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…
This report is the product of a one-year project to hear directly from Black communities about what safety means to them. The Black Public Defender Association, in partnership with the BlackRoots Alliance, Cook County Public Defender, and Northwestern University, conducted more than 100 interviews of Black residents in Chicago to collect their stories and advice…
