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Blogs / Children, Youth, and Family
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Children, Youth, and Family
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- 12/23/2011
Research shows that incarcerated young people who sustain positive relationships with loved ones have better outcomes during and after being in juvenile justice placement facilities than youth who do not. This brief summarizes the first year of a research and technical assistance project the Vera Institute of Justice conducted with the Ohio Department of Youth Services. The initiative was designed to help placement facility staff draw on the families of incarcerated youth as a source of support.
- 11/03/2011
Most research and programming about incarcerated people and their family support systems focus on prison settings. Because jail is substantially different from prison—most notably, time served there is usually shorter—it is not clear that policies and practices that work in prisons can be applied successfully in jails.
- 05/25/2011
Juvenile and criminal justice systems are increasingly adopting family-focused policies and practices, primarily because research shows that contact with supportive family members can result in better outcomes when individuals are released and return to the community. A family-focused approach to justice reform also has important, if less apparent, consequences for other systems, such as schools, health care, and law enforcement.
- 04/06/2011
Family Court judges and other decision makers must weigh whether arrested youths are likely to reoffend or fail to appear if allowed to go home prior to their court date. To help guide these decisions, staff from Vera’s Center on Youth Justice partnered with juvenile justice stakeholders in New York City to create and implement a research-based detention risk-assessment instrument (RAI) for use alongside a continuum of community-based alternatives to detention. This report describes that process and early results from the RAI’s implementation.
Projects
Projects
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As a critical step in New York State’s juvenile justice reform process, Vera is assisting the Cuomo administration in examining and identifying strengths and weaknesses in the state’s juvenile justice funding structure. The aim is to create an effective funding system that will support and encourage best practices in juvenile justice on the ground, ensure positive outcomes for youth, families, and communities, and save money for both the state and counties.
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Established in 2001, Vera’s Adolescent Portable Therapy (APT) project provides substance use and mental health treatment for adolescents involved in, or at risk of becoming involved in, the juvenile justice system. The program’s family counseling model of service helps families build on their inherent strengths to support their adolescents in making positive changes in their lives. APT also helps other programs to improve their practice through training and technical assistance.
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To create better outcomes for youth, families, and communities, the New York State Office of Children and Family Services (OCFS) has partnered with Vera’s Center on Youth Justice (CYJ) and the Missouri Youth Services Institute (MYSI) to design a new model for state juvenile justice custody that is therapeutic, community-based, and grounded in national best practices. Through the “Brooklyn for Brooklyn Initiative” (B4B), Vera has assisted OCFS in planning and implementing a pilot of the model that is tailored to the needs of youth in Brooklyn, and is working with OCFS to expand the model statewide.
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The Vera Institute of Justice is partnering with the New York City Administration for Children’s Services (ACS), the New York State Office of Court Administration (OCA), the New York City Family Court, and Casey Family Programs to conduct an operational review of the abuse and neglect case process flow in the Queens and Bronx family courts. Vera is combining data analyses and findings from interviews and observations to describe how the abuse and neglect cases are processed, identify causes of delay, and develop specific actions that the court and agencies can take to accelerate permanent living arrangements for children.
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Close to Home seeks to improve reentry outcomes when people return to the community from jail. Program staff will partner with jails, community-corrections agencies, and community-based organizations in two jurisdictions to help them apply a family-focused approach to reentry planning. The project's lessons are expected to be applicable to jurisdictions throughout the country.
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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, based in Brooklyn, New York, seeks to repair harm, break cycles of violence, and decrease the system’s heavy reliance on incarceration.
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Vera's Cost-Benefit Analysis Unit (CBAU), in conjunction with the Center on Youth Justice, is working with the North Carolina Youth Accountability Planning Task Force to estimate the costs and benefits associated with raising the age of juvenile jurisdiction.
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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.
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The Family Justice Program is partnering with the Kentucky Department of Juvenile Justice to make services more family-oriented in the agency’s detention centers, youth development centers, and group homes. A consistent, systemwide focus on the strengths of youth and their families is expected to help young people succeed after their release.
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Vera is helping the Ohio Department of Youth Services (DYS) develop and refine tools to establish and implement a family-oriented approach in its policies and practices. The partnership will enhance Ohio’s ability to serve young people in its juvenile justice system as well as their families. It will also advance an approach other jurisdictions can use to work more closely with youth and their social networks. The project is supported by the Public Welfare Foundation.
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The Family Justice Program is partnering with the Performance-based Standards Learning Institute (PbS Li) to develop national standards for juvenile correctional facilities to engage incarcerated youths’ family members in all aspects of the youths’ incarceration. PbS Li has developed a system of Performance-based Standards (PbS) that allows agencies and facilities to identify, monitor, and improve conditions and treatment services for incarcerated youth using national standards and outcome measures. This project is funded by the Public Welfare Foundation.
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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.
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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.
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In 2011, Vera’s Center on Youth Justice (CYJ) began providing research and technical assistance to help New York State juvenile justice officials develop a strategy to reform detention practices and policies statewide. These reforms include the development of an risk assessment instrument (RAI) to be implemented in upstate counties by 2012.
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The Family Justice Program’s Reentry Is Relational project trained participating staff at two prisons in New Mexico and Oklahoma, and at their corresponding probation and parole offices, to help incarcerated people draw on their social networks as they transition from prison to parole. By enhancing case management practices at the facilities and promoting more collaboration between prison and parole staff, the project had the goal of improving reentry outcomes for people coming home from prison. To sustain changes in practices and policies, the initiative also provided these institutions with technical assistance and evaluation support.
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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 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).
Archived Projects
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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.
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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.
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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 on Youth Justice provided technical assistance by gathering data and facilitating discussion on ways to implement systemic changes.
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In late 2009, Vera’s Center for Youth Justice (CYJ) began collaborating with the Executive Office of the Mayor in the District of Columbia (DC) to develop and disseminate monthly data indicator reports—statistics that help stakeholders analyze how well a system is operating—covering DC’s juvenile and criminal justice systems.
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In 2009, Vera’s Center for Youth Justice (CYJ) began to work with the Department of Youth Rehabilitation Services (DYRS) in the District of Columbia (DC) to assist DYRS in developing and implementing comprehensive performance measures in the agency’s three areas of supervision and programming for committed youths: secure confinement; reentry and alternatives to secure confinement; and case planning. The performance measures were intended to better equip DYRS to evaluate its efforts, ensuring that its services and programs protect public safety and result in positive outcomes for youth, families, and communities.
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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.
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Since 2006, Vera’s Center on Youth Justice (CYJ) has partnered 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.
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At the request of the New York City Administration for Children’s Services, in 2005 Vera began an in-depth examination of issues related to the enrollment and monitoring of New York City foster children who participated in HIV/AIDS clinical trials beginning in the 1980s. The request was prompted by allegations that African American and Latino children were inappropriately removed from their families and placed in foster care to facilitate their enrollment in clinical trials of new treatments.
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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.
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In April 2009, Vera's Center on Youth Justice (CYJ) began a year-long process evaluation of Washington, DC's four-and-a-half-year (2005 through mid-2010) effort to reform its juvenile institutional placement system. This process evaluation, funded by the Edna McConnell Clark Foundation, sought to document Department of Youth Rehabilitative Services’ (DYRS) strategy for the reforms, as well as to assess the implementation of the changes, which drew inspiration from the highly regarded Missouri Model of juvenile justice practice.
Blog
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Scholars, practitioners, and justice advocates have extensively examined the corrosive impact of mass incarceration on families and communities. The inclusion of family impact statements into the justice equation, as reported by Vera, signals a welcome confluence of empirical research and criminal j...
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As the chief executive of Families Outside, a national Scottish charity that works on behalf of children and families affected by imprisonment, I found the recent article on the San Francisco Adult Probation Department’s family-focused approach to probation a breath of fresh air. San Fran...
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As you might expect, the end-of-the-year holidays present an opportunity for youth service programs to focus on families. No matter what the rest of the year looks like, suddenly calendars fill with dinners, presents, and special family visits. Social service programs aren't unusual in this regard;...
Vera in the News
Experts
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Director, Center on Youth Justice
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Director, Common Justice
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Director, Department of Planning and Government Innovation



