Children and Youth

Established in 2001, Vera’s Adolescent Portable Therapy (APT) project provides substance abuse and mental health treatment for adolescents involved in, or at risk of becoming involved in, the juvenile justice system. APT’s family counseling model of service helps families build on their inherent strengths to support their adolescents in making positive changes in their lives.

Common Justice offers an alternative to the traditional court process for youth charged with felonies such as assault, robbery, and burglary. Project staff bring together people immediately affected by a crime to acknowledge the harm done, address the needs of the harmed party, and agree on sanctions other than incarceration to hold the responsible party accountable. The project, which is based in the New York City borough of Brooklyn, seeks to repair harm, break cycles of violence, and decrease the system’s heavy reliance on incarceration. It operates with the generous support of the Blue Ridge Foundation, the Jacob and Valeria Langeloth Foundation, the Guggenheim Foundation, the Viola W. Bernard Foundation, the New York State Division of Criminal Justice Services, the Stoneleigh Center, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, and the Rockefeller Brothers Fund.

With assistance from the Center on Youth Justice, Vera's Cost-Benefit Analysis Unit conducted a cost-benefit analysis of programs for court-involved youth to help New York State policymakers identify cost-effective alternatives to juvenile incarceration.

In 2005, Vera collaborated with New York State to develop the state’s first ever set of juvenile justice indicators—statistics that provide insight into an organization’s work or the environment in which it operates. The indicators, which include detention admissions and placement lengths of stay, span five system points—arrest, referral to court, detention, court processing, and disposition—and offer statewide data as well as county-by-county information. CYJ staff assessed available juvenile justice data and statewide collection practices; compiled and analyzed available data to establish potential indicators; facilitated a task force to determine which indicators would be most useful to local and state policymakers; and established strategies for distributing and institutionalizing the indicators.

In half of U.S. states and the District of Columbia, a parent who does not ensure that his or her child attends school regularly can be charged with educational neglect and referred to child protective services. Most of these cases in New York State involve teenagers, even though experts and current research agree that the child protective system is not well equipped to address teenage absenteeism. Vera is working with the New York State Office of Children and Family Services (OCFS) to study and improve the government’s response to these cases, with support from Casey Family Programs.

In September 2008, New York Governor David Paterson created the Task Force on Transforming Juvenile Justice to establish a statewide process to improve the juvenile justice system. The task force was charged with creating a blueprint to strengthen alternatives to institutional placement for young offenders, improve residential care, and enhance reentry programming. It also addressed the disproportionate number of minority youth in the system. The task force was chaired by Jeremy Travis, president of New York City’s John Jay College of Criminal Justice. Members included representatives from the Office of Children and Family Services, law enforcement, advocacy organizations, county and state agencies, academia, and the judiciary. Vera’s Center for Youth Justice provided technical assistance by gathering data and facilitating discussion on ways to implement systemic changes.

In 2007, Vera was awarded a grant by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation to participate in the Models for Change initiative, an effort to create successful and replicable models of juvenile justice reform through targeted investments in key states. The initiative seeks to accelerate progress toward a fairer, more effective, and more developmentally sound juvenile justice system that holds young people accountable for their actions, provides for their rehabilitation, protects them from harm, increases their life chances, and manages the risk they pose to themselves and to the public.

The Promise for Success Initiative (PSI) was a year-long planning effort to improve services for youth who are at risk of entering or are already involved in the juvenile justice and child welfare systems in Doña Ana County, New Mexico. To achieve this goal, the Center on Youth Justice worked with the PSI steering committee to develop a comprehensive, community-based strategic plan for making services more accessible to at-risk youth and implementing crisis response capacity designed to keep youth from becoming involved in the system. The plan, which was released in 2008, also included a continuum of graduated sanctions for youth who are arrested.

Vera’s Center on Youth Justice (CYJ) is working with New York City’s Office of the Criminal Justice Coordinator and juvenile justice stakeholders to change juvenile detention policy in the city so that youth who do not pose a high risk of flight or re-arrest before trial can remain connected to their families and communities.

CYJ has been working with four New York Counties—Erie (Buffalo), Onondaga (Syracuse), Monroe (Rochester), and Albany County—to develop a reliable way for judges to decide whether arrested youth should be released, referred to community-based programs under supervision, or detained before trial. CYJ staff are also helping these counties develop a continuum of community-based supervision options for arrested youth. This reform is intended to reserve juvenile detention for youth who pose a risk of re-offending or failing to appear in court and keep youth who do not pose these risks connected to their communities, without compromising public safety.

In 2007, the general assembly in the State of Connecticut passed a law raising the age of juvenile jurisdiction from 16 to 18, effective July 2009. Prior to this legislation, Connecticut was one of only three states that continued to try 16- and 17-year-olds in an adult criminal justice system. CYJ staff provided technical assistance to help state officials develop a viable implementation plan that was a key element of the legislation's passage.

Vera’s Substance Use and Mental Health Program uses applied research to help government and community-based organizations create services and policies designed to help people who use substances or have psychiatric disorders avoid criminal justice involvement and receive the services they need to achieve stable community living. Program staff collect quantitative and qualitative data, evaluate existing programs, and review government data to understand the experiences of these populations, the circumstances that lead to their arrest, and the policies that prolong their involvement in the criminal justice system.

The Unaccompanied Children Program coordinates a nationwide effort to increase volunteer, or pro bono, legal representation for immigrant children with no parents or adult guardians to assist them as they undergo removal (deportation) proceedings. These children may be fleeing poverty, war, or other dangerous circumstances on their own, or they may have lost contact with an adult along the way. They are held in shelters or detention centers across the United States which are run by the Division of Unaccompanied Children’s Services, part of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR).