National Analysis
This report, written by the Sentencing Project, highlights the harmful practice of direct file, or “auto-charging” youth in adult court. This national analysis looks at the practice of direct file and the pervasive harms that it has on the wellbeing and future thriving of young people and makes recommendations for states to limit pathways for…
In October 2025, the Gault Center convened over three hundred youth defense lawyers and advocates at our annual Youth Defender Leadership Summit. Together, we practiced the cultivation of community in service of building a more just, more liberated, and more human humanity for all children and for us all. This resource captures the shared learnings…
This report highlights D.C. transfer laws and discusses the current U.S. Attorney’s argument that the District of Columbia should amend its law to transfer more young people to to adult court. The report compares D.C.’s transfer law to transfer laws across the country and highlights decades of research that has concluded transfer laws do not…
The Annie E. Casey Foundation released its annual Kids Count Data Book, which offers a national analysis on four indicators of child wellbeing: economic wellbeing, education, health, and family and community. This report is part of the Kids Count Data Center, which provides demographic and wellbeing data on children and families. This report includes data…
The Center for Native American Youth (CNAY) at the Aspen Institute released a report detailing survey results of nearly one thousand Native youth on their needs and priorities across issues that matter most to them. This survey was built and disseminated by Native youth leaders who worked in partnership with CNAY staff to practice and…
This one-page infographic from the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention illustrates trends in delinquency cases in 2022.
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
