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Annie Salsich

Annie Salsich

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All Work by Annie

Status offense reform gaining momentum as both sides of the aisle see need for change

When friends and family who work in different fields ask me to describe Vera’s work in youth justice, they are inevitably perplexed when I first mention our status offense reform efforts. “Status offenses? Never heard of them.” But if I go on to describe what falls under that heading, the conversation gets interesting. People are shocked to learn h ...

Annie Salsich

Innovations in NYC Health and Human Services Policy

The Close to Home Initiative and Related Reforms in Juvenile Justice

Guided by research indicating that community-based alternatives are often more effective and less expensive and stigmatizing than placing juvenile offenders in institutional facilities, New York City has worked to reduce over-reliance on such dispositions and to ensure that those youth that may be placed in an institutional facility are in one near ...

Jennifer Jensen Ferone, Annie Salsich, Jennifer Fratello

January 03, 2014

Innovations in NYC Health and Human Services Policy

Juvenile Detention Reform

When New York City began reforming its juvenile detention system in 2006, youth were either sent to detention or released into the community with no formal supervision. The reform effort had the complementary goals of ensuring that costly juvenile detention beds would be reserved primarily for young people who present measurably high levels of risk ...

Jennifer Fratello, Annie Salsich, Jennifer Jensen Ferone

January 03, 2014

From Courts to Communities

The Right Response to Truancy, Running Away, and Other Status Offenses

Young people who run away from home, skip school, or engage in other risky behaviors that are only prohibited because of their age end up in courtrooms every year by the thousands. Responding to these cases, called “status offenses,” in the juvenile justice system can lead to punitive outcomes that are out of proportion to the young person’s action ...

Annie Salsich, Jennifer Trone

December 09, 2013

Guiding stronger, more effective juvenile justice systems

In early February, the National Juvenile Defender Center (NJDC), supported by the MacArthur Foundation’s Models for Change initiative, released the National Juvenile Defense Standards, a set of benchmarks for juvenile courts and juvenile defense attorneys throughout the United States. The national NJDC standards are rooted in best practices, resear ...

Annie Salsich
Theresa Sgobba

Youth, Safety, and Violence

Schools, Communities, and Mental Health

This policy brief contributes to the urgent national conversation about violence against children, and provides three perspectives from Vera experts on school safety, mental illness, and the delivery of mental health services. The perspectives draw on Vera’s work with government partners in each of these areas to develop and implement ways of enhan ...

Annie Salsich, Jim Parsons, Krista Larson

February 12, 2013

A wide-angle view of juvenile justice reform

On Monday, the U.S. Justice Department announced it has reached an agreement with Shelby County, Tennessee, to make fundamental changes to its policies and practices for handling juveniles in trouble with the law. When the Justice Department began investigating Shelby County’s juvenile justice system in 2009, outcomes for teenagers were grim by na ...

Annie Salsich

December 21, 2012

Vera weighs in to NYT debate on how violence affects youth

A November 4 New York Times article on the corrosive effects of gang violence among Chicago youth drew on an ongoing two-decade-long study of young people caught up in this violent culture.Today, Annie Salsich, director of Vera's Center on Youth Justice, continued the conversation about the critical problem in a Letter to the Editor amplifying the ...

Annie Salsich

November 13, 2012

Youth Justice

Better outcomes, brighter futures

September 20, 2010

A milestone for New York's juvenile justice reform

Wednesday’s announcement by New York Governor David Paterson that the state had reached a settlement with the U.S. Department of Justice to begin federal oversight of and introduce mental health services at four controversial juvenile placement facilities is a significant step toward change in New York’s juvenile justice system. Those of us at the ...

Annie Salsich

A good start on fixing the Empire State's juvenile justice system

Wednesday’s New York Times brought welcome news: According to a piece by Nicholas Confessore, New York Governor David Paterson has introduced a bill to kick-start reform of the state’s juvenile justice system—a sustained focus for those of us who work in the Vera Institute of Justice’s Center on Youth Justice. The governor’s proposal would reserve ...

Annie Salsich

Knowing when to hold them

Lately, the media, policy makers, and the advocacy community have paid a lot of attention to the need for “placement reform” in the juvenile justice system—shorthand for post-sentencing correctional reform. A feature by Denise-Marie Santiago in Sunday’s RochesterDemocrat and Chronicle titled “Why are more Monroe County kids in the juvenile justice ...

Annie Salsich

A spotlight on juvenile justice in NYC and beyond

New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg announced this week that the city's Department of Juvenile Justice is merging with its Administration for Children’s Services. For me, the good news is that this signals a real commitment to detaining fewer kids and making sure they get the care they need. The merger is also promising because the administratio ...

Annie Salsich

January 22, 2010

Addendum to Widening the Lens 2008

The Vera Institute of Justice has learned that Widening the Lens 2008 reflects an undercount of detention admissions (secure and non-secure) for juvenile delinquency (JD) and persons in need of supervision (PINS) cases outside of New York City. Following the report’s release, a handful of counties indicated that local detention numbers in these cat ...

Annie Salsich

November 30, 2009

Adolescent behavior is not a crime

The Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act (JJDPA) prohibits states that receive federal funds from placing status offenders—youth who exhibit troubling, but non-criminal, behaviors such as chronic truancy, incorrigibility, or running away—in locked juvenile detention or correctional facilities. A report released on September 8 by the Nati ...

Annie Salsich

September 10, 2009

Abuses at NYS Juvenile Correctional Facilities

A recently published letter to Governor David Paterson from the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) presents a heartbreaking picture of events in four New York State juvenile correctional facilities. Reading the account of broken bones, bruises, and psychological pain that youth have experienced within these institutions left me deeply saddened. Unfor ...

Annie Salsich

August 26, 2009

Widening the Lens 2008

A Panoramic View of Juvenile Justice in New York State

New York State’s juvenile justice system is run by several agencies that each collect and report their own data. Until recently, this data had never been compiled or distributed to offer a comprehensive understanding of the system. To address this problem, CYJ and the New York State Task Force on Juvenile Justice Indicators published the state’s fi ...

Annie Salsich

November 30, 2008

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