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A newsletter from The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation

Juvenile Justice:New Models for Reform

’05.3FALL VOLUME

President’s Message

Modeling change injuvenile justice

Adolescents are different fromadults

Is our system biased against children of color?

The United States’ juvenile justicesystem was founded a century ago with the enlightened goal of providing individualized

treatment and services to children in trou-ble. But in the s, the boundariesbetween the juvenile and criminal justicesystems began to erode. All but three statespassed laws designed to treat youthfuloffenders as criminals instead of delin-quents, ignoring their immaturity andholding them accountable as adults. Theresults have high individual and social costs that receive little public scrutiny — moreyouths tried in adult criminal court,turning away from rehabilitation, harsherand more punitive sanctions, reducing the confidentiality of proceedings, andgreater incarceration of adults and youngpeople in the same facilities.

Against this background, theMacArthur Foundation entered the field of juvenile justice in . Since then,the Foundation has invested nearly million in three areas: advancing the scien-tific knowledge base about adolescentdevelopment and criminal behavior;improving laws, policies, and practices; andsupporting the development of modeljuvenile justice systems. Over the next fiveyears, we will double our commitment to this work with million more — a total investment of over million inthe field of juvenile justice.

Youth on trialThe rising rate of violent juvenile crime in the s called for a reexamination of the juvenile justice system — the policiesand practices of courts and correctionalfacilities. But treating young offenders asadults has proved counterproductive andraised questions about the fundamental fairness of a criminal justice system that fails to acknowledge their immaturity.Studies conducted by the MacArthurResearch Network on Juvenile Justice andAdolescent Development have confirmedthat there are significant differences in the cognitive development of adolescentsand adults that affect the ability to makejudgments. Other findings point to the high individual and societal costs of treatingjuveniles as adults, including increasedrecidivism, reduced educational andemployment prospects, and troubling racialdisparities in arrest and incarceration rates.

There are encouraging signs that thisresearch is helping lay the groundwork forsignificant change in the field. Earlier thisyear, the Supreme Court drew on thesefindings in Roper v. Simmons, which pro-hibited the death penalty for those andyounger. Several states have closed downyouth prisons and shifted resources towardcommunity-based programs and services.Some have passed laws to reduce thenumber of youth tried and sentenced asadults. And there is rising concern for the

mental health needs of young people whocommit crimes.

Models for Change initiativeThis newsletter describes MacArthur’sModels for Change initiative, which buildsupon ongoing efforts to improve policyand practice. It will help accelerate system-wide reforms that are fair, effective, andrecognize the developmental differencesbetween children and adults. The goal is tosupport programs in several states that canimprove public safety and provide lessonsacross the nation.

Currently, Models for Change involvesfour states — Illinois, Louisiana, Pennsylvania,and Washington. Each state was selected on the basis of its commitment to keyprinciples that experts have identified formodel juvenile justice systems: individualresponsibility and fundamental fairness;recognition of juvenile and individual differences; and recognition of young peo-ples’ potential. Based on these principles,the initiative’s framework lays out goals,characteristics, practices, and outcomesagainst which actual systems can comparethemselves. In areas where they fall short or depart from the ideal, it is hopedthe framework will both stimulate and givepractical direction to reform efforts.

Tracking five key outcomesProgress in each state will be documented

President’s Message

A new century for juvenile justice

MacArthurFoundationMacArthurFoundation

JuvenileJustice

2 | MacArthur/FALL ’05

About this newsletterEach issue of the MacArthur newsletter willhighlight one area of the Foundation’sgrantmaking. Areas selected will reflect theFoundation’s overall approach to identifyingand carrying out activities to address spe-cific problems. More information about theFoundation and its grantmaking can befound online at www.macfound.org.

In its grantmaking, the John D. andCatherine T. MacArthur Foundationdevelops and follows a set of strategic,nonpartisan priorities related to a selectedproblem, holding itself accountable forresults, over time.This requires definingproblems and approaches, and continu-ously refining strategies as conditions and

opportunities change.The Foundationreaches out to individuals and organiza-tions it perceives to be the most promisingand effective, and provides support over asufficiently long period of time.

About the FoundationThe MacArthur Foundation is a private,independent philanthropic institution that makes grants through four programs.The Program on Global Security andSustainability supports organizationsengaged in international issues, includingpeace and security, conservation and sus-tainable development, population andreproductive health, and human rights.Toaid in this grantmaking, the Foundation

maintains offices in India, Mexico, Nigeria,and Russia.The Program on Human andCommunity Development supports organizations working primarily on nationalissues, including community development,regional policy, housing, public education,juvenile justice, and mental health policy.The General Program supports publicinterest media and the production of inde-pendent documentary films.The MacArthurFellows Program awards five-year, unre-stricted fellowships to individuals across allages and fields who show exceptionalmerit and the promise of continued creativework.With assets of about $5 billion, theFoundation makes grants totaling approxi-mately $200 million each year.

in order to provide a blueprint for changein other states. Ultimately, the success of ajuvenile justice system will be reflectedthrough improvements in the individuallives of youth in contact with the system.To understand how effective each systemis, we will help the states track five keyoutcomes.

Fairness — as reflected in impartial andunbiased decision making, measured byreduced racial disparities and access to qual-ified counsel;

Recognition of Juvenile-Adult Differences —as demonstrated by the appropriate retentionof youth in the juvenile justice system,measured by reduced transfer to adult crim-inal court;

Successful Engagement — as reflected byyoung people leaving the system morecapable and productive than when theyenter it, measured by increased participa-tion in education, rehabilitation, andtreatment services;

Community Safety — as demonstratedby youth who do not re-offend, measuredby rates of recidivism;

Diversion — as reflected by an increasedproportion of juvenile offenders handled as informally and as close to home as possible, measured by reduced reliance onincarceration as well as increased use ofcommunity-based alternative sanctions.

Ensuring that work in one state has animpact beyond its borders calls for two

kinds of action: efforts to document, assess,and understand the process of change, andefforts to spread the news about it.Information about Models for Change —the knowledge it generates, the innovationsit fosters, the results it achieves, the lessonsit teaches, and the possibilities it opens —will be made available to a national audi-ence. Outreach will include publications,national conferences, workshops, organizedsite visits, tool kits, and the launching of aspecial website devoted to the initiative.

Race mattersTo capture and enrich the lessons of eachstate, we will organize inter-state learningnetworks with participants from three additional states. One network will focus on an important concern that stands outacross all the states we have chosen to workwith: significant racial disparities in arrestand imprisonment. Studies reveal thatAfrican American and Latino youth receiveharsher treatment than whites for the sameoffenses and are more likely to be arrested,incarcerated, and transferred to adult court.Our goal in the seven participating states is to make real progress in reducing racialdisparities wherever they exist in the juve-nile justice system.We believe it is possibleto help America live up to its ideals of fairness and non-discrimination by focusingon these disparities and taking practicalsteps to eliminate them.

Investing in individuals who are introuble or in need ultimately benefits us all.Programs that promote recovery and helpintegrate individuals into the mainstreammake long-term financial and social sense.In Illinois, Louisiana, Pennsylvania, andWashington, the MacArthur Foundation isinvesting in institutions, organizations,and individuals we believe can pave the waytoward a juvenile justice system thatembodies its original intent — to enhancepublic safety while holding young offendersaccountable for their actions, providing fortheir rehabilitation, protecting them fromharm, and improving their outlook forsuccess as responsible and productive mem-bers of society. In these pages, you willlearn about some of these individuals andorganizations on the front lines helpingturn those high aspirations into reality.

Jonathan F. FantonPresident

MacArthur/FALL ’ | 3

MacArthurFoundation

JuvenileJustice

In , when America’s juvenile justice system marked the one hundredth anniversary of its founding, there was little to celebrate. During the first decades of the th century,

the juvenile court’s humane and pragmatic approach to the prob-lem of delinquency had spread rapidly throughout the world to become an established feature of all modern democracies.But by the end of the century, in this country, the court and its associated institutions had been under attack for decades — as soft, ineffective, and out of step with current conditions.

Modeling change in juvenile justice

Lawmakers in virtually every state,responding to public fears of escalatingjuvenile crime, had dramatically curtailedthe court’s jurisdiction, making way formore and more youth to be transferred tothe adult criminal court and correctionalsystems. At the same time, many seemedintent on remaking the juvenile system inthe image of the adult criminal one —restricting judges’ traditional discretion todeal with individuals on the basis of theirneeds, doing away with confidentiality pro-tections, mandating once-impermissiblepractices like the fingerprinting and photo-

graphing of suspects, and introducing puni-tive new sentencing approaches. So muchhad changed, in fact, that the boldest criticsproposed to celebrate the centenary of thejuvenile justice system by abolishing it —some because they preferred the criminaljustice system; others because they couldno longer see much difference.

In recent years, however, there havebeen signs of a swing the other way. Thesteady ebbing of serious juvenile crime hasprobably been a factor. Research on theactual effects of get-tough remedies, particu-larly on recidivism, show minimal impact,and some state legislators now seem willingto acknowledge that their responses to thesupposed “emergency” of the s —when public fear of youth crime hit an all-time high — may have been misconceived.At the same time, developmental research,including neuroscientific studies of the ado-lescent brain, have improved understandingof the real differences between adults andadolescents. The MacArthur ResearchNetwork on Adolescent Development andJuvenile Justice, founded in to providea developmental perspective to dealing with

young offenders, designed a research agendato look at adolescents’ competence, culpa-bility, and potential for rehabilitation (seeNetwork story, page ). Networkresearchers have found that adolescents, byvirtue of their immaturity, are in fact devel-opmentally different from adults — they are,for example, more prone to take risks, moresusceptible to peer pressure, and unable toforesee the consequences of their actions.And this, researchers say, should meanyoung offenders are treated differently thanadults who commit crimes.

These findings represent an opportunityto regenerate juvenile justice in America.But taking advantage of it will be a chal-lenge. For one thing, the juvenile justice“system” is an extraordinarily fragmentedone. Laws, procedures, practices, organiza-tional structures, funding mechanisms — everything from basic aims to basic termi-nology — can differ radically from state tostate, and even from county to county.So juvenile justice change, when it comes,tends to be localized, and piecemeal.

In this atmosphere, where there is

Developmental research,including neuroscientific studiesof the adolescent brain, haveimproved understanding of the real differences betweenadults and adolescents.

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momentum for real change, the MacArthurFoundation has launched a new initiative —Models for Change — designed to developsuccessful and replicable models of juvenilejustice system reform. It seeks both to set a broad, unifying agenda for change —to help accelerate change in several statestoward more effective, fair, and develop-mentally sound approaches to juvenilejustice — and to ensure that changespreads and reform momentum builds.Commitments that will reach millionby have been made for reform workin four bellwether states — Pennsylvania,Illinois, Louisiana, and Washington. Theidea, wherever the initiative reaches, will be to stimulate and channel what wouldotherwise be scattered, local improvementsinto something bigger: a variety of modeljuvenile justice systems and system components for states and counties acrossthe country to learn from and emulate.

A framework of valuesModels for Change grew out of years of MacArthur grantmaking in the field

of juvenile justice, most of it focused on expanding knowledge about adolescentdevelopment and advocating for publicpolicies that reflect that knowledge.Beginning in , the Foundation askeda group of national experts, including anumber of nationally prominent research,training, and advocacy organizations in the juvenile justice field, to help designa framework of a hypothetical “modeljuvenile justice system”: that is, a consis-tent set of goals, characteristics, practices,and specific outcomes that follow fromcertain broadly accepted core valuesrelating to youth. The resulting framework— which is based on principles like fun-damental fairness; individual, communityand system accountability; and recognitionof juveniles’ individuality and potential —provided the general direction in whichthe Models for Change initiative wouldseek to channel reform. From there,it was a matter of identifying states inter-ested in working with the project toaccelerate positive change on key issues of reform in each state.

Pennsylvania was the first state selected

for participation in the initiative. Accordingto Robert Schwartz, executive director ofthe Juvenile Law Center in Philadelphia,the Foundation-funded organization lead-ing the Models for Change team there,Pennsylvania’s selection was a recognition ofits potential as a model for the nation, aswell as a ratification of many of the reformpriorities of its juvenile justice leadership.“The fact that the Foundation, with its rep-utation, has said to Pennsylvania, ‘We wantto help you do what you would like to do,but even better,’ has meant a lot to people in the state,” he says.


“The fact that the Foundation,with its reputation, has said to Pennsylvania, ‘Wewant to help you do whatyou would like to do, but even better,’ has meant a lot to people in the state.”

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Juvenile arrest rates for violent crime indexoffenses, 1980-2001Arrests per 100,000 juveniles ages 10-17

The juvenile violent crime index arrest rate in2001 was at its lowest level since 1983 — 44%below the peak year of 1994. All of the growth inthe juvenile violent crime index arrest rate thatbegan in the latter part of the 1980s was erasedby 2001.

Violent crime index arrestsPer 100,000 population

In 2000, the violent crime arrest rate for juvenileswas nearly as low as it had been in 1980.

Through , more than millionwill be channeled into three targeted areasof improvement in Pennsylvania, chosen inconsultation with the state’s leadership, andcalculated to be good leverage points foreffecting change through the system as awhole. For example, the continuum ofaftercare services and supports for juvenilesreturning to their homes, schools, andcommunities from residential institutions —a disastrously weak point in most state systems — is getting a long-term, top-to-bottom overhaul in Pennsylvania. Modelsfor Change will assist directly withfunding for such things as statewide imple-mentation, monitoring, and interagencycoordination, as well as indirectly throughthe work of its grant-supported partners,who will help with planning, communica-tions, training of probation officers,juvenile defenders, and others in such areasas needs assessment and school reintegra-tion, and various kinds of technicalassistance and support for pilot experi-ments at the county level. What counts,Schwartz says, is not so much the dollarcost of all this help but the stimulus

it provides. “MacArthur funds are like amagnet, and all the little filings of fundsthat have been scattered across the tablesuddenly are drawn to the magnet,” hesays. “Counties are putting in some oftheir dollars, the state is putting in money,and scores of people have organizedaround the effort.”

Similarly ambitious reform efforts,focused on the coordination of mentalhealth services for court-involved juvenilesand on better monitoring and tracking ofdisparities in the treatment of minorities in the juvenile justice system, and ulti-mately working to reduce them, are alsobeing supported by the project.

Different states, different challengesIn Illinois, both the targeted change priori-ties and the overall strategies are different.“Reform is local,” says Diane Geraghty,who directs the Ciritas Childlaw Center atLoyola University in Chicago, which ishandling the coordination of the IllinoisModels for Change efforts. The projectthere is tackling different kinds of chal-lenges — for example, how do you

“right-size” a juvenile court’s jurisdiction,when state law sets no minimum delin-quency age at all, and a maximum age ofjust ? How do you grow and encouragecommunity-based alternatives to incarcera-tion, where the fiscal incentives all go theother way? How do you reduce minorityover-representation in detention centersand youth correctional institutions withoutmechanisms in place for collecting the data needed to understand the problem?

The work has already borne fruit,with the passage of historic transferreform legislation that makes Illinois thefirst state in the nation to take a signifi-cant step back from the policy of tryingjuveniles as adults. Pushed through thestate legislature with the help of researchand advocacy from Models for Changegrantees and signed by Governor RodBlagojevich in August, the new law abol-ishes the automatic transfer of - and-year-olds accused of drug offenses — a practice that had resulted in hundreds of youth, most of them low-leveloffenders and virtually all of them




MacArthurFoundation

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minorities, moving into the adult criminalsystem. From now on, transfer in Illinoisdrug cases will occur only after a juvenilecourt judges makes an individualizedassessment of whether a youth should betried in juvenile or adult court.

Other reforms that are now on the tablein Illinois, thanks to the public educationand advocacy work of Models for Changegrantees, include the establishment of awhole new, non-punitive system for thehandling of very young children accused ofcrime; the expansion of juvenile court juris-diction to cover -year-olds; and theseparation of the state’s juvenile correctionsdivision from the adult corrections agencyin which it is currently housed.

“There isn’t going to be a cookie-cutterway of change in every state,” Geraghtypoints out. “And the learning process here is to try to identify some of the commondenominators that make things work acrossjurisdictions, where there really are thesedifferent dynamics in place. And that can betranslated into knowledge as this effortmoves into other states.”

Measuring system vital signsThe long-term job of translating the knowl-edge generated by the Models for Changeproject — determining the impact of reformefforts, distilling lessons learned, and dissemi-nating them to the field at large — belongsto the National Center for Juvenile Justice inPittsburgh. “It’s basically documenting theprocess of change,” explains NCJJ seniorexecutive director Hunter Hurst.

Hurst explained that efforts in targetedstates will not yield models of systemchange that are replicable elsewhere unlessthey are thoroughly studied and explainedto the field. More basically, he said,someone must do the tracking and assess-ment needed to determine where“successful system change” has occurred inthe first place. For this purpose, NCJJ willnot only measure change at the targetedpoints — aftercare, mental health servicescoordination, etc. It will also attempt totrack and measure change radiating fromthose points through the system.

NCJJ is attempting to assess and quan-tify overall system change in the targetedstates by taking what it calls “vital sign”

measures, beginning with baseline meas-urements in Pennsylvania and Illinois. Justas doctors get the big picture by measuringand monitoring just a few key things —pulse, temperature, blood pressure — NCJJ will periodically monitor, in thestates where the Models for Change initiative works, five broad indicators ofjuvenile justice system functioning andalignment with core values: measures ofbasic racial fairness, transfer, diversion,social engagement, and recidivism followingjuvenile court intervention. It is hoped that a standardized index of these vital signswill one day provide practitioners, policy-makers and the public with an effectivemethod for assessing juvenile justice systemstrengths and weaknesses, and a tool forisolating trends, facilitating comparisons,and targeting resources.



Should this -year-old be sent to thedepartment of corrections? Did this-year-old knowingly waive hisMiranda rights? Should this child be

returned to her mother? These are some ofthe life-altering decisions that judges inCook County’s massive Juvenile Court, theoldest and largest such court in the country,must make every day about the youngpeople who stand before them. Often, thedecisions are complicated by the fact thatmany children in the juvenile courts facemental health or substance abuse problems.In cases when the court needs timely,impartial, high-quality information on achild’s mental health, it turns to the CookCounty Juvenile Court Clinic.

The clinic conducts individualized psy-chological evaluations and provides detailedreports on children, youth, and parents tojudges, probation officers, lawyers, andothers in courtrooms in Cook County.Since , it has transformed the court’sprocess of acquiring mental health evidencefrom one that was plagued with long delaysand poor quality to one that is a model forcourts nationwide.

“The courts really value our reports,”says clinic director Julie Biehl, who leads astaff of mental health professionals andlawyers. “Judges tell us our reports helpthem understand the mental health issues,but even more so, help them know thekids better. Even though the child is rightin front of them in the courtroom, ourwork brings the kids alive in a deeper andmore detailed manner. We point out notonly the challenges the child and thefamily face, but also the strengths. That’svery important, because without identi-fying the strength of the child and family,how do you move forward?”

Rethinking the systemUntil the mid- ’s, reliable informationabout a child’s mental state was providederratically, if at all. Delays were a particularconcern — a judge’s request for an evalua-tion of a child could take weeks or evenmonths to fulfill. The human cost of thewait was high, as the child was in a foster

home or in Cook County’s JuvenileDetention Center, separated from familyand not receiving services he or she mayhave urgently needed. Reports were oftenbased on standardized psychological testsrather than on in-depth individualizedinterviews. Judges, probation officers, states’attorneys, public defenders, and othersoften did not have what they needed tomake informed legal decisions or to deter-mine what kind of community-basedpsychological services or other interven-tions the child and family needed.

In , at the request of the ChiefJustice of the Circuit Court of CookCounty, the court’s system of acquiringclinical information (mental health infor-mation) underwent a three-year evaluationthat involved extensive interviewing withstakeholders, direct observation in thecourtroom, and review of other mentalhealth delivery systems. The study and thesubsequent redesign and restructuring ofthe clinic were funded by the MacArthurFoundation in partnership with theUniversity of Chicago and NorthwesternUniversity.

One of the major achievements of theclinic is to significantly reduce the timebetween when the court orders andreceives the evaluation.“Every day in thelife of these young people is a long time,”says Biehl. “Any amount of time we cancut off of the delay improves the perma-nency of their lives and gets kids to theappropriate services more quickly.”

A dramatic improvementWith new standards and procedures in placefor the clinic, the quality of assessments hasimproved significantly. One of the clinic’schief innovations, Biehl says, is the creationof the position of clinical coordinator, amental health professional who serves inthe courtroom as a facilitator to guidejudges, lawyers, and other court personnelregarding mental health issues. The coordi-nator separates requests that are primarilyservice related — referring children andfamilies to community-based providers ofmental health and family services — from

those that require a forensic evaluation,which the court will use to make a legaldecision. She then makes sure the rightrequests get to the appropriate provider asquickly as possible.

The clinic also provides education andtraining for judges, lawyers, hearing officers,probation officers, and caseworkers, as wellas postdoctoral fellows in forensic psy-chology and graduate students in socialwork, law, and forensic psychology. It alsocontinually gathers information about spe-cific mental health services and makes itavailable to the court. Recently, the cliniccreated an electronic catalogue of hundredsof community mental health providers,making it possible to direct families toappropriate resources.

The impact of the clinic extends wellbeyond Cook County. Staff have respondedto numerous requests for technical assis-tance in several jurisdictions around thecountry and have presented the clinic’smodel for reform at national conferences.

Cook County Juvenile Court Clinic

Taking mental health into account


MacArthurFoundation

JuvenileJustice

Although the nation refers to itsjuvenile justice “system,” there is,in fact, no single system — each state has its own way of

responding to young people in trouble with the law. For its Models for Changeinitiative, the Foundation chose four “bell-wether” states that have very differenthistories and cultures, population demo-graphics, economic resources, politicallandscapes, and types of challenges. In par-ticular, they diverge in terms of how faralong they are on the spectrum of juvenilejustice reform — from the ground floor tothe most advanced. By examining changein states that are at different starting pointsfor juvenile justice reform, Models forChange aims to broaden understanding ofsuccess in different regions, making it easierto generalize the lessons learned and repli-cate progress nationwide.

PennsylvaniaAmong the four states, Pennsylvania — the first state selected to participate in theprogram where work has been under wayfor more than a year — is the most clearlypoised to become an exemplary juvenilejustice system. It has a relatively low numberof youths incarcerated compared to otherstates and a longstanding commitment toreform. In , Pennsylvania established theJuvenile Court Judges Commission, anorganization of all juvenile judges in thestate, to assure best practices and standards.The commission, which has considerableauthority statewide, focuses attention onjuvenile justice issues, helps gain consensuson best practices, and provides leverage for implementing reforms. It is the onlysuch organization in the country.

In the late s, Pennsylvania passedlegislation to bring child welfare and juve-nile justice policy and practice together intoone agency, the Department of PublicWelfare — a move that acknowledges thatchildren who suffer from maltreatment orlive in foster care are often the same chil-dren in the juvenile justice system. Thestate also established a funding mechanismthat gives counties flexibility in meeting

juveniles’ needs but that does so in a waythat encourages good juvenile justice practice. For example, the state will fund alarger portion of the cost of providingyoung offenders with community-basedservices than it will if they are sent to correctional facilities.

IllinoisIllinois — the second Models for Changestate selected in early — is about mid-point on the juvenile justice spectrum.Although it was the first state in the nationto have a juvenile justice system, its com-mitment to reform has waxed and wanedover the years. Recently, the environmentfor reform has become much more favor-able. For example, Illinois is the only statein the nation that has rolled back “automat-ic transfer” (the policy of trying youngpeople who have committed certain crimesin adult courts) for drug offenses, returningmore discretion to judges in making thisdecision. Efforts are now under way inIllinois to move juvenile corrections outfrom under the auspices of the adult cor-rections system.

Illinois has recently become a nationalmodel for juvenile detention reform, withdelegations from around the countryseeking counsel on how to reduce the pop-ulation of young people in detention andto use community-based alternatives such asnight reporting centers and electronic monitoring. The state recently passed legis-lation to develop a pilot program to createfinancial incentives for counties in Illinoisto provide young people with services in the community rather than to send themto correctional facilities.

LouisianaLouisiana — selected in June — has a different history and starting point.In , the state experienced a crisiswhen the U.S. Department of Justicefound numerous civil rights violations inLouisiana correctional facilities. The stateseized a time of increased government and public attention as an opportunity toaddress juvenile justice issues from top

to bottom. Under Governor KathleenBlanco’s leadership, the state created theJuvenile Justice Reform ImplementationCommission, which has a mandate to lead the juvenile justice reform agenda. Asecond bill pushed the reform effort downto the parish level by establishing mecha-nisms in each of Louisiana’s judicial dis-tricts to coordinate treatment and servicesin the community that provide alternativesto incarceration. (As this publication wentto press, state officials had made it clear that — although lives have changed dra-matically following Hurricane Katrina —the state remains committed to Models forChange and intends to stay the course.)

Washington StateIn many ways, Washington — selected inOctober — already fits the profile ofa model state for juvenile justice. It has a long history of using research to informpolicymaking regarding juvenile justice,and many best practices already are in place. In , Governor ChristineGregoire (at the time she was StateAttorney General) was instrumental increating the Community JusticeAccountability Act, which was designed toreduce juvenile crime by funding research-based interventions for youth and families.This legislation has become the corner-stone for a variety of effective reforms.The state also has made significant progressin integrating juvenile justice programswith child welfare and mental health serv-ices and in improving child and youthinformation management systems acrossmultiple agencies. Washington is now positioned to tackle more ambitious andchallenging juvenile justice reforms and to disseminate model practices more evenly throughout the state.

Bellwether states

Four models for change


Fourteen-year-old “Brian” wascaught carrying marijuana into hisschool. Possession of drugs onschool grounds carries severe penal-

ties in Illinois. Brian’s case qualified forautomatic transfer from juvenile to criminalcourt, even though he had never been inserious trouble before.

The State’s Attorney offered Brian analternative: he could appear before aCommunity Panel, a group of trained vol-unteers from his own neighborhood whowould listen carefully to all parties involvedand come to a resolution. With the panel’sencouragement, Brian accepted responsi-bility for his actions and agreed to makerestitution to the community in a way thatbuilt on his interests and abilities: he wouldput his passion for movies to work bymaking a short video about the conse-quences of drug dealing. With the help ofpanel members, Brian arranged to have his video viewed and discussed by youth at his local community center. In addition,Brian was referred for math tutoring toimprove his grades at school.

Taking responsibilityEach year more than , young peoplebecome involved in the juvenile justice system in Illinois. Most of them haven’tcommitted violent crimes, but once they’veentered the system, many will becomemore deeply involved. Too often, neitherthe youth nor their communities will bene-fit from the experience.

As a result, some advocates of juvenilejustice reform in the state are exploringinformal, community-based mechanisms asan alternative to juvenile court for someyoung offenders. These new solutions canbe a positive and powerful force — anopportunity for communities themselvesto respond to crime and reinforce theirvalues, and for youth to reconnect withthe community.

Community Panels for Youth is anexample of that approach. Built on princi-ples of restorative justice, CPY createsopen dialogue among the young offender,the victim, and community members. In a

neighborhood setting, the panels addressthe harm done to the victim and the com-munity, seek ways to meet the youth’sindividual needs, and build relationshipsthat strengthen the social fabric of thecommunity.

Cheryl Graves is director of theCommunity Justice for Youth Institute,which coordinates the program. “The hear-ings give youth, victims, and their familiesan opportunity to speak from the heart,listen to each other, and discover thatthey’re not so different from one another,”Graves says. “Young offenders learn thatthey made some bad choices, that they hurtsomeone, and they’re held responsible fortheir actions. But they aren’t marginalized.Through the process, young people dis-cover their value to the community.”

CPY began in Chicago’s Austin neigh-borhood in and now operates in sevenof the city’s most disadvantaged communi-ties. Its success rate is impressive: percentof the young offenders entering the pro-gram have had no further juvenile courtcontact. In contrast, the recidivism rate foryouth processed through juvenile court isaround percent.

Promoting healthy developmentCommunity Panels go beyond accountabil-ity and restitution; they actively seek ways to help young offenders build thecompetencies that will help them developinto responsible, contributing members of the community. This is often the panel’smost difficult task.

“Some of the youth need mental healthcounseling or drug rehab,” Graves says.“But more often than not, they just needengaging after-school programs and positiveadult role models.”

The only way young people won’t beon the street, she adds, is if they have accessto something that interests them —whether it’s chess clubs, video-making, orsoftball practice. In the communities servedby Community Panels, few of these pro-grams exist; those that do generally won’ttake youth involved with the courts.

“It’s not just the youth who need to be

held accountable,” Graves emphasizes. “It’sthe responsibility of the community, thecity, and the private sector to ensure that allyoung people have what they need todevelop into healthy adults.”

Addressing this need, the CommunityJustice for Youth Institute has establishedcommunity-based advisory boards to helpidentify local and non-traditional resources.The boards quickly learn where the gapsare, and they become powerful advocatesfor community programs and services.

“Restorative practices have tremendoustransformative potential,” Graves says.“People realize that they have the capacitynot only to resolve their own conflicts,but to effect positive change in their livesand their communities.”

Community Panels for Youth

Responding to young offenders

In a landmark decision this year, theSupreme Court outlawed the deathpenalty for offenders who wereyounger than when they committed

their crimes. Justice Anthony Kennedy,writing for the majority in Roper v.Simmons, noted that execution is a punish-ment reserved for the worst of the worst —those whose extreme culpability, as well astheir crime, makes them deserving of death.Adolescents, Justice Kennedy wrote, areinherently less culpable than adults: Byvirtue of their age they are more prone toimmature and irresponsible behavior, moresusceptible to peer pressure and, becausetheir character is still being formed, morecapable of being rehabilitated.

Justice Kennedy’s opinion was based on groundbreaking work by the MacArthurResearch Network on AdolescentDevelopment and Juvenile Justice. SethWaxman, who argued the case before the Court, called the research “absolutelycritical” and made it a central point in his arguments.

While the death penalty decision drewnationwide media attention to the research,the network’s studies reach much further,touching on nearly every facet of juvenilejustice policy and practice.

Providing a developmental perspectiveThe juvenile justice system was foundedmore than a century ago on the principle

that children are fundamentally differentfrom adults, and that the justice system thatdeals with them should reflect these differ-ences. During the s that founding principle was all but forgotten as the system,in reaction to public demand, becameincreasingly punitive. New legislation passedin virtually every state meant more — and younger — children were being triedin criminal court, and the juvenile systemitself began meting out harsher penalties,emphasizing punishment rather than rehabilitation. Law enforcement viewedyoung offenders as criminals, not as children, while child advocates saw them as children, rather than criminals. Thereseemed to be no middle ground.

Adolescents are different from adults…and in the halls of justice, it matters.

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“What was missing was a developmentalperspective, based on sound science and legalscholarship,” says Laurence Steinberg, pro-fessor of psychology at Temple University.“It had to be both empirical and practical —something that policymakers and practi-tioners could respond to.”

The MacArthur Foundation establishedthe Network on Adolescent Developmentand Juvenile Justice to provide that perspec-tive.With Steinberg as its director, thenetwork brought together a broad spectrumof scholars, policy experts, and practitionersin social science, psychology, criminology,and law. Together they designed a researchprogram focusing on three broad themes:adolescents’ competence, culpability, andpotential for change. The first two deal withthe limitations of adolescence, and how theyinfluence the behavior and treatment ofyoung offenders. The third (the subject ofthe story on page ) looks at the factorsthat lead most adolescents to stop commit-ting delinquent or criminal acts and becomeproductive, contributing members of society.

Are adolescents competent?In , -year-old Lionel Tate killed a -year-old friend while imitating thewrestling moves he had seen on TV. Lionel’smother persuaded him to turn down a plea bargain — the decision was legally histo make — and in criminal court a juryconvicted him of first-degree murder. Hewas sentenced to life in prison.

Even the prosecutor was shocked by theseverity of the sentence, which was lateroverturned. But Lionel’s choice to go totrial, and the decision to try him as an adult,raise the question: Are young offenderscompetent to stand trial in an adversarialproceeding? The network’s large-scale study

of competence, the first of its kind, wasdesigned to answer that question.

Our legal system requires that adultdefendants be competent — able to under-stand the trial process, assist in their defense,and make important decisions about matterslike plea agreements. When juvenile courtswere concerned primarily with rehabilita-tion, competence in these areas wasn’t anissue. “But now we’ve raised the stakes foradolescents,” says Steinberg, “and we needto take competence into account.”

The Network’s Juvenile AdjudicativeCompetence Study — which involved more than , youths and adults at fourdifferent sites — gave credence to that concern. The study found that on measureslinked to competence, a significant propor-tion of adolescents age and younger —and especially those under — are aspoorly prepared to participate in their trialsas adults with serious mental illness. Olderadolescents are, on average, much closer toadults in their thinking.

“It’s not just that adolescents don’t havethe life experience to understand thesystem,” Steinberg says. “It’s the way theythink, and how they use information tomake decisions.”

The researchers showed that youngeradolescents don’t put facts together anddraw logical conclusions the way adults do.They’re more inclined to defer to authorityfigures, and they’re less likely to recognizethe risks inherent in the choices they face,or to consider the long-term consequencesof their legal decisions. That means, forexample, that they are more apt to accept aprosecutor’s offer of a plea agreement. Forthe same reason, they’ll more readily confessto police, regardless of their guilt, if theythink it will result in an immediate reward,

like going home. Thus, the issue of compe-tence has consequences beyond the abilityto stand trial.

State legislatures are beginning to reactto these findings. Arkansas now requirescompetence evaluations of young adolescentscharged with very serious crimes before theycan be transferred to adult court. Louisiana,Maryland, and Virginia have passed billsrequiring that youths have counsel at variousstages of juvenile court proceedings.Louisiana also is considering legislation that would set guidelines for competenceevaluations of juveniles, and Illinois islooking at bills that would keep more youthsin juvenile, rather than criminal, court.

As it did in the Simmons case, the net-work’s research has provided both aframework and a scientific foundation forthese reforms. “The language of adolescent development has become a part of the way

Law enforcement viewed youngoffenders as criminals, not aschildren, while child advocatessaw them as children, ratherthan criminals.



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we speak about youth and their needs in the juvenile justice system,” says Mary AnnScali, deputy director of the NationalJuvenile Defender Center. “And the researchdata help advocates support reforms that we know work for kids.”

How blameworthy are adolescents?The Supreme Court decision on the deathpenalty centered not on the issue of compe-tence but on criminal blameworthiness, orculpability.While competence concerns anindividual’s capacities at the time of arrestand court proceedings, culpability considershis or her state of mind at the time of the offense.

“Our findings from the competencestudy indicated there are significant, age-related changes in individuals’ ability toconsider the future consequences of theiractions and in their susceptibility to peerpressure,” Steinberg notes. “That bears onculpability because even if a youngster per-ceives a situation as an adult would — asrisky or morally wrong — his ability to acton that perception might be very different.”

The network brought in legal scholarsto examine the concept of mitigation incriminal law, and began to identify the psy-chological capacities that mapped onto theconcept. That work led to an article inAmerican Psychologist, “Less Guilty byReason of Adolescence,” that was quoted

extensively in the Supreme Court decisionand in its amicus briefs.

“The network’s culpability work wascentral in our decision to file an amicus briefin Simmons,” says Nathalie Gilfoyle, generalcounsel for the American PsychologicalAssociation. “It’s far more detailed than any-thing that’s been done before.”

“We’re not talking about excusingadolescents from responsibility for theiractions,” Steinberg notes. “But mostpeople agree that the degree of punish-ment should have something to do withstate of mind. That’s why premeditatedmurder is considered worse than non-pre-meditated murder. There are many factorsthat mitigate criminal responsibility; our


article says that developmental immaturityis one of them.”

That contention is bolstered by whatneuroscientists are discovering about braindevelopment: During adolescence, the part of the brain that controls “executivefunctions,” such as complex decision-making and long-range planning, is stillvery much a work in progress. Researchnow under way by the network is bringingtogether work on the psychological andneurobiological aspects of development.Investigators will be using functional MRIto monitor individuals’ brains while they areperforming decision-making tasks. Theresults will show more precisely whetherand how task performance correlates with

brain development through adolescenceand into adulthood.

Working from the ground upAs significant as the Supreme Court deci-sion is, Steinberg believes the network’smost important audience right now is prac-titioners. “You can affect policy from thebottom up as well as from the top down,”he says. “Changing the way people in the system operate has as much impact aslegislation.”

Laying the groundwork for that change,the network has developed a manual forassessing juveniles’ competence to stand trial.“The protocol is a joint effort by a nationalgroup of judges, prosecutors, defense attor-

neys, and clinicians,” says network memberThomas Grisso, professor of psychiatry atthe University of Massachusetts MedicalSchool. Grisso and his colleagues are nowworking to educate juvenile court judgesand lawyers about the tool, and to put itinto practice by forensic psychologistsnationwide.

One of those psychologists is IvanKruh, director of forensic services at theChild Study and Treatment Center inLakewood, Washington. “Our center pro-vides the courts with competencyevaluations, violence risk assessments, andevaluation of a child’s mental state at thetime of the offense,” Kruh says. “The net-(continued on back page)

For more information on mentalhealth and juvenile justice:

National Mental HealthAssociationwww.nmha.org

National Center for MentalHealth and Juvenile Justicewww.ncmhjj.com

The University ofMassachusetts Law andPsychiatry Program (The National Youth ScreeningAssistance Project)www.umassmed.edu/nysap

The MacArthur ResearchNetwork on Adolescent

Development and JuvenileJustice was established in 1997 to provide a devel-opmental perspective tojuvenile justice reform.Network members comefrom diverse disciplines andfields, including psychology,criminology, economics,and law. www.mac–adoldev–juvjustice.org

Laurence Steinberg, Ph.D.Network ChairDepartment of Psychology,Temple University

Marie Banich, Ph.D.Department of Psychology,University of Colorado

Bobby Brame, Ph.D.Department of Criminologyand Criminal Justice,University of South Carolina

Elizabeth Cauffman, Ph.D.Department of Psychology and Social Behavior,University of CaliforniaIrvine

Jeffrey Fagan, Ph.D.School of Public Health,Columbia University

Sandra Graham, Ph.D.Graduate School ofEducation, UCLA

Thomas Grisso, Ph.D.Department of Psychiatry,University of MassachusettsMedical Center

Alexes Harris, Ph.D.Department of Sociology,University of Washington

Amy Holmes Hehn, J.D.Multnomah County DistrictAttorney’s Office, Portland,Oregon

Patricia Lee, J.D.Public Defender’s Office, SanFrancisco, California

Edward Mulvey, Ph.D.Western Psychiatric Institute& Clinic, University ofPittsburgh

Orlando MartinezMartinez Group, JuvenileJustice Consulting

Daniel S. NaginHeinz School of PublicPolicy and Management,Carnegie Mellon University

The Honorable Kimberly B.O’DonnellRichmond Juvenile DistrictCourt, Richmond,Virginia

Alex Piquero, Ph.D.Center for Studies inCriminology & Law,University of Florida

Robert Schwartz, J.D.Juvenile Law Center,Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

Elizabeth Scott, J.D.School of Law, University ofVirginia

Jennifer Woolard, Ph.D.Department of Psychology,Georgetown University

Franklin Zimring, J.D.School of Law, University ofCalifornia, Berkeley

MacArthur network members


Ayoung offender appears in juve-nile court. After hearings andevaluations and testimony anddeliberation, the judge sentences

the youth to six months in a secure juvenilefacility. Or to a year’s probation and a treat-ment program. Or to hours ofcommunity service.

What happens when the time is done?Does the youth return to old behaviors?Become a career criminal? Or — like thevast majority of young offenders — does heor she gradually mature and become a con-tributing member of society?

Judges seldom learn the outcomes ofthe sanctions they have imposed. Althoughcourts and corrections officials are chargedwith protecting public safety and helpingyoung offenders become more responsibleadults, they get very little feedback onwhich decisions make a difference.

The largest project of the MacArthurResearch Network on AdolescentDevelopment and Juvenile Justice, a longi-tudinal study called Pathways to Desistance,aims to answer those questions. Researchersare following approximately , juvenilefelony offenders — white, AfricanAmerican, and Latino — from adolescenceinto young adulthood, assembling thelargest, most comprehensive data set onserious adolescent offenders ever available.The study addresses two of the mostenduring issues in juvenile justice: the riskthat offenders pose to the community,and the results of the treatment they receivein the justice system.

Not which kids, but why“Risk” is a tricky term. People often think it means predicting which youths arelikely to get into trouble. But networkmember Edward Mulvey, the study’s princi-pal investigator, speaks not of prediction but of assessing and managing risk. “Thisisn’t about putting people into boxes —

it’s about finding the factors that contributeto desistance,” says Mulvey, professor ofpsychiatry and director of the Law andPsychiatry Program at the University ofPittsburgh. “We want to know what thingsin a young person’s life need to change tolower the risk of re-offending.”

Some of those factors relate to the indi-viduals themselves: substance use andmental health, for example, or personality,intelligence, school performance and devel-opmental maturity. Other factors are in the youths’ social context: family, friends,and community. Still others concern thesanctions and services they receive from thejustice system. The Pathways study islooking at dozens of factors, and at howthey work together to increase or decreasethe risk of serious offending.

While the research is still in its earlystages, some significant findings are startingto emerge. One is the high correlationbetween substance abuse and seriousoffending — even when drug-relatedoffenses are taken out of the equation.Another is that different parenting stylesappear to correlate with different degrees ofoffending. Both, says Mulvey, suggest areas

that could be addressed to try to change theoutlook for individual offenders.

Which interventions for which kids?The heart of this work, says networkdirector Laurence Steinberg, is getting thecourts back to considering youth as individuals; what they bring to the situation; and what will get them back on track.

“When people look at studies onjuvenile offenders and recidivism, theyoften come away saying nothing works,”Steinberg says. “The fact is, some things do work for some kids some of the time. But the responses are extremelyvariable from one individual to the next. If you don’t match the kid with the right intervention… it’s like sending someone with pneumonia to a dermatologist.”

By looking at the full range of sanc-tions and services in this large and diversesample, the investigators hope to beginteasing out the factors that determinewhich interventions are successful forwhich young offenders — and to delineatethe components of a good intervention.

Pathways to Desistance

What makes delinquent youths “go right”?


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Is our system biased against children of color?

In the years since Congress passed the Juvenile Justice Delinquency andPrevention Act that required states toreduce racial inequities in their juvenile

justice systems, minority youth in nearlyevery state are still more likely than whiteyouth to be arrested, detained, prosecuted,incarcerated, and transferred to adult courts.

Congress’s mandate has done little toameliorate the problem of racial disparitiesin the system, which is commonly referredto as disproportionate minority contact(DMC). But the law has produced agrowing body of data that, while imperfect,provide an alarming picture of a juvenilejustice system in which minority youth areover-represented at every juncture.

Moreover, evidence is growing thatminority youth are treated more harshlyeven when they are suspected of the samecrimes as white youth.

While much is known about the extentof the problem, there is little agreementabout its causes. Are minority youth morelikely to be arrested because they commitmore offenses? Or is it because police patrolin minority neighborhoods more frequentlythan in white neighborhoods? Are minorityyouth more likely to be detained and incar-cerated because they pose a greater risk to the public than white youth? Or is itbecause there are fewer alternatives toincarceration in their communities? Expertsbelieve that the problem is most likely

attributable to a whole host of reasons,including unconscious racial biases.

Since the late s, several organiza-tions supported by the MacArthurFoundation have been conducting researchand pilot projects to better understand themultiple causes of disproportionateminority contact and to develop interven-tions to reduce it. They are using theirfindings to educate stakeholders in juvenilejustice systems across the country, as well asthe public, about the injustice inherent inthe differential treatment of minority youthand the benefits of community-based alter-natives to detention and incarceration.

Even before states began reporting data(continued on next page)

on the problem in , the Youth LawCenter, a MacArthur grantee, became awareof it through its frequent investigations intoconditions of confinement in juvenile facili-ties around the country. The Youth LawCenter, which has offices in San Franciscoand Washington, D.C., is a national publicinterest legal and advocacy organization that works to protect abused and at-riskchildren. “We’d been doing this work for years, and we were tired of walking intothese juvenile centers and only seeing kids of color,” says Mark Soler, president of the center. Soler adds that a major challenge to helping reduce the over-repre-sentation of minorities is that existing data does not reflect the problem he and his team had observed.

In , the Youth Law Center and a coalition of other advocacy groupslaunched Building Blocks for Youth, aninitiative aimed at changing publicthinking about juvenile offenders, pro-moting fair and effective juvenile justicepolicies, and reducing the disparate treat-ment and over-representation of minorityyouth in the juvenile justice system.They began by conducting research todocument how the over-representation ofminority youth is compounded as theyprogress through the juvenile justice systemand to better understand why minoritiesreceive harsher treatment than whites forthe same crime. Building Blocks revealed,for example, that a minority youth who is convicted of a drug offense is more thanthree times as likely as a white youth to be locked up. And the length of incarcera-tion for a Latino youth convicted of a drug offense is more than twice as long asthe stay for a white youth.

An issue of fairnessThe initiative’s documentation of differen-tial treatment based on race and ethnicityproved effective in helping policymakersand opinion shapers understand that dispro-portionate minority contact is, in essence, afairness issue, Soler says. “A lot of peoplehad thought, ‘Of course, kids of color areover-represented. They’re committing morecrimes.’They hadn’t taken into considera-tion the possibility that the system wasbiased against them.”

A pilot project launched by BuildingBlocks in in Seattle has contributedimportant knowledge about how each

decision-making point in the juvenile justice system contributes to the over-rep-resentation of minorities throughout. (Theproject is now run by the W. HaywoodBurns Institute, which was spun off fromthe Youth Law Center in .) When theSeattle project started, percent of thecounty’s youth were African American butrepresented percent of those in deten-tion. The project brought the system’sstakeholders together with youth, commu-nity groups, and elected officials to studyrace patterns in arrests, detention deci-sions, and court dispositions and thendevised interventions that would level theplaying field for minority youth.

As a result, the police department beganrequiring police to screen youth withobjective intake criteria before transportingthem to detention, and the probationdepartment and the juvenile court expandedcommunity-based alternatives to incarcera-tion. These actions have led to a steadydecrease in the total detained population,and a slight decrease in the disproportion-ate incarceration of minority youth.

The important thing is for the players in the juvenile justice system to be aware oftheir unconscious biases and to attempt to overcome them.

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Unconscious racial stereotypingIn a related study supported byMacArthur, researchers investigated theimpact of unconscious racial stereotypeson how police and probation officersrespond to minority youth (see sidebarpage ). They found that unconsciousbiases affect how minority youth are treated in the system.

“Stereotypes are culturally sharedbeliefs that everyone holds whether they’reaware of them or not,” says SandraGraham, one of the principal investigatorsand a social psychologist at the Universityof California at Los Angeles. “They aretriggered automatically, particularly in situ-ations where there’s a lot of ambiguity.”The important thing is for the players inthe juvenile justice system to be aware of their unconscious biases and to attemptto overcome them, she said.

Another MacArthur grantee, theNational Council of La Raza, has carriedout research on how Latinos are docu-mented in the system. Until recently, moststatistical analyses included racial andethnic categories for white, black, andother — Latinos were simply not countedas a population.

“Without accurate numbers, the seriousness of the problem will remainlargely hidden from view,” says AngelaMaria Arboleda, a civil rights analyst with NCLR.

In addition to being ”lost” within thedata, a closer look showed that in everyoffense category, the average length ofincarceration was longer for Latino youththan for any other racial or ethnic group,

including African Americans. According toArboleda, because the data concealed thereal story about Latinos in the system, littlehas been done until recently to acknowl-edge their unique needs, such as languagebarriers and immigration status.

Soler, Graham, Arboleda, and othersstress the importance of collecting moreand better data as a step toward addressingthe over-representation of minority youthin the system and their disparate treatment.As part of the Foundation’s Models forChange initiative (see story page ), theYouth Law Center will work with officialsin each participating state — Pennsylvania,Illinois, Louisiana, and Washington — todevelop better data collection methods onrace and ethnicity of youth in each state’sjuvenile justice system.

And NCLR will launch the LatinoJuvenile Justice Network in the four par-ticipating states to work with state andlocal community-based organizations to gather better data about the experienceof Latino youth in the system.

“This is about looking at real data to better understand what is happening in our juvenile justice systems,” said Soler. “It may take a long time to remedy the problem, but our data show that itwon’t cure itself.”

For more information on racial disparities in the juvenile justice system:

Justice Policy Institutewww.justicepolicy.org

National Center for JuvenileJusticewww.ncjj.org

National Council of La Razawww.nclr.org

Youth Law Centerwww.ylc.org


The photographs on the cover and on pages 5, 13, 14, 18, 19, and 21 are by photographer Steve Liss, who gainedunprecedented access to a juvenile detention center in Texasfor his book No Place for Children: Voices from JuvenileDetention (University of Texas Press 2005).

Two police officers read a “crimereport” describing the same sce-nario: A -year-old boy withno prior record has been

accused by a convenience store managerof stealing worth of toys. The youthdenies the crime. There are no witnesses.

Asked how they would handle the situation if they were called to the scene,one officer says he would let the suspect offwith a warning. The other says he wouldarrest the youth on felony burglary charges.

What accounts for the difference?Although the scenario makes no mentionof race, experiments conducted by SandraGraham, a member of the MacArthurNetwork on Adolescent Development andJuvenile Justice (see page ), stronglysuggest that the answer is unconsciousracial stereotyping.

The role of stereotypesGraham, a developmental psychologist atUCLA, and Brian S. Lowery, of StanfordUniversity’s School of Business, presentedtwo groups of police officers with theshoplifting scenario and another involvingassault. First, though, the officers weregiven what they were told was a “mind-clearing” computer task. As they carriedout the task, focusing on the center of thescreen, words were flashed on the periph-ery of their visual field at a speed too fast for conscious awareness. One groupwas primed with words associated withAfrican Americans, such as Harlem,dreadlocks, and basketball. The othergroup was exposed to race-neutral wordslike mosquito, laughter, and virus.

The researchers found that, comparedto the neutral group, officers primed withrace-related words described the offender

as having more negative traits and beingmore “adult-like” — and thus moreblameworthy; they also endorsed harsherpunishments for the youths.

The experiment was repeated withjuvenile probation officers — whobecause of their role in rehabilitatingyouth have a different perspective thanarresting officers — yet similar resultswere yielded. Most notably, the findingsheld true regardless of the officers’ race.

Objective data, like that generated by Graham’s research, is an importantanchor for discussions about why disparities exist.

“Racial stereotypes permeate oursociety,” says Graham. “We all pick themup, and we’re all influenced by them —including African Americans and otherswho don’t consciously subscribe to racist attitudes.”

Practical solutionsGraham and Lowery make suggestionsabout how to address the problem. Oneapproach, they say, would be to developobjective instruments to assess an individ-ual’s risk of re-offending, along with protocols to determine what type ofintervention is most appropriate and likelyto produce positive results, rather thanrely on individual impressions and poten-tially biased judgments. Another is toimprove interpersonal relations betweenjuvenile justice decision-makers and theyouths they deal with.

“Recognizing that we are all subjectto automatic stereotyping is a first step,”Graham notes. “The next step is to realizethat ‘automatic’ doesn’t mean ‘unchangable.’People can break their negative associa-tions and build new ones.”

Network research on biases

How decision-makers judge minority youth


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Over the past few years, there has been a growing recognitionof the large numbers of youngpeople with mental

illnesses or substance abuse problems in thecountry’s juvenile justice systems. Thecrackdown on juvenile crime in the sand s, combined with dwindling fundsfor public residential mental health servicesfor children, has meant that many youngpeople with psychological or behavioralproblems are finding themselves confined insecure detention and youth correctionsfacilities. In fact, young people caught up inthe juvenile justice system are three to fourtimes more likely to suffer from a diagnos-able psychiatric disorder than adolescents inthe general population.

Although child advocates agree that thejuvenile justice system is not and should notbecome the nation’s new child mental healthsystem — it is not designed for that role and it doesn’t have the financial or profes-sional resources to do so — they agree thatit should be equipped to tend to the mostcritical needs of youth in its care, includingthe appropriate diagnosis of and treatmentfor those with mental health needs.

“There are many tools available toassess the mental health status of adoles-cents, but their usefulness within thejuvenile justice system is limited,” says Dr.Thomas Grisso, a clinical psychologist andprofessor of psychiatry at the University ofMassachusetts Medical School. Grissoexplains that the ethnic, cultural, and racialbackground of youth in the juvenile jus-tice system tend to differ greatly fromthose for whom most assessment instru-ments were created, and the toolsthemselves often are inappropriate for set-tings in which the staff training and financial support are limited (as is the casein most juvenile detention and correc-tional institutions). This has meant thatmany young people in the system whosuffer from mental health disorders havegone undiagnosed, which poses a risk to their well-being, safety, and the safety of others in the facility.

Finding the right toolsIn the mid-s Grisso and his colleagueDr. Richard Barnum, a psychiatrist anddirector of the Boston Juvenile CourtClinic, created a diagnostic tool to helpjuvenile justice detention and correctionalofficials determine at intake whether ayouth has mental health needs. The tool —MAYSI-2, short for the MassachusettsYouth Screening Instrument-SecondVersion — was quickly adopted for use inmany juvenile facilities across the nationand is becoming a primary source of datafor influencing whether and how juvenilejustice facilities provide appropriate treat-ment for youth with mental illnesses.

“There was a huge need for this tool,”says Grisso. “The frontline staff in juvenilefacilities were seeing more and more kidswith what appeared to be serious mentaldisorders, and they needed some kind oftool that would allow them to say this is akid who we need to pay special attention toor divert to inpatient psychiatric services.”

MAYSI-2, developed and distributedwith MacArthur funding, is a question-naire that helps identify youth who maysuffer from a substance abuse, anxiety,mood, or disruptive disorder. The ques-tionnaire can be administered bynon-clinical staff and takes less than minutes to complete. If a youth’s answersindicate reason for concern, he or she isasked a series of follow-up questions todetermine what response is needed — forexample, whether to be placed on suicidewatch or referred for a full mental healthassessment. Using data captured throughMAYSI-2, Grisso and his colleagues areseeking to better understand how — orwhether — the adoption of the newscreening tool has affected the provision ofmental health services and treatment.

Although identifying the mental healthneeds of detained and incarcerated youth is a major step forward, providing themwith appropriate treatment continues topose a challenge. “There is an increasingawareness that many of the youth in thejuvenile justice system don’t belong there,”

says Dr. Joseph Cocozza, who runs theNational Center for Mental Health andJuvenile Justice, a clearinghouse for infor-mation about the mental health needs of youth in the juvenile justice system anda member of the Models for Changeresource bank (see story page ). “Manyare in the system for relatively low-levelcrimes or because they couldn’t accessmental health services in the community.”

Community-based optionsWith MacArthur support, Cocozza andanother resource bank member, theCouncil of Juvenile CorrectionsAdministrators, are providing technicalassistance in states that are part of theModels for Change initiative to improvethe coordination of and access to mentalhealth services for youth in the juvenilesystem. They hope to press for an increasein the number of community-basedoptions for young people with mentalhealth needs and to improve access to theservices and treatment needed to help getyoung people who have run into problemswith the law back on track. “Everybodyhas to realize that getting these youthseffective services in the community willhave a much better impact not only on theindividual youth, but also on the wholecommunity.”

Massachusetts Youth Screening Instrument

Meeting the mental health needs of juvenile offenders


Selected Grants in Juvenile Justice

National

American Bar AssociationJuvenile Justice Center, Washington, DC$549,130 to disseminate and implement a training curriculum on adolescent developmentand juvenile justice for juvenile court personnel, including efforts in targeted states.

Coalition for Juvenile Justice, Washington, DC$400,000 to sponsor the National Network of State Juvenile Justice Collaborations andpromote a Nationwide Partnership for StateJuvenile Justice Reform.

Council of Juvenile CorrectionalAdministrators, Braintree, MA$375,000 in support of organizational develop-ment activities and for work for juvenile justice reform in targeted states.

Justice Policy Institute, Washington, DC$300,000 in support of policy advocacy andcommunications planning to promote juvenilejustice reform in targeted states.

National Council of Juvenile and FamilyCourt Judges, Reno, NV$1,250,000 for the National Center for JuvenileJustice, in support of juvenile justice systemreform in targeted states.

National Juvenile Defender Center,Washington, DC$275,870 to disseminate and implement a train-ing curriculum on adolescent development andjuvenile justice for juvenile court personnel,including efforts in targeted states.

Policy Research, Delmar, NY$1,200,000 in support of the National Centerfor Mental Health and Juvenile Justice and forefforts to improve policy and practice in theFoundation’s targeted states.

Temple UniversityDepartment of Psychology, Philadelphia, PAFive grants totaling more than $11 million insupport of the Research Network onAdolescent Development and Juvenile Justice.

University of MassachusettsDepartment of Psychiatry, Worchester, MA$671,000 in support of the National YouthScreening Assistance Project.

Youth Law Center, Washington, DC$975,000 in support of the Building Blocks forYouth initiative’s activities to reduce racial disparities, including work in targeted states.

Illinois

Chicago Area Project, Chicago, IL$250,000 to develop and pilot a model demon-stration project to provide community-basedalternative sanctions for youth in contact withthe juvenile justice system.

Community Panels for Youth, Chicago, IL$375,000 to expand the diversion program forjuvenile offenders, and to position the programas a community-based juvenile justice model.

Juvenile Justice Initiative, Evanston, IL$375,000 in support of efforts to improve thejuvenile justice system of Illinois.

Loyola University of ChicagoChild and Family Law Center, Chicago, IL$300,000 in support of activities to develop and implement the work plan to improve thejuvenile justice system in Illinois.

Northwestern University School of Law,Chicago, ILFour grants totaling $2,335,000 in support ofthe Cook County Juvenile Court Clinic and itsevaluation.

Northwestern UniversityChildren and Family Justice Center,Chicago, ILTwo grants totaling $1.76 million in support ofgeneral operations.

Tides Center Girl Talk, Chicago, IL$225,000 in support of Girl Talk, to expandprogramming, education, and advocacy onbehalf of girls and young women involved inthe juvenile justice system.

Pennsylvania

Council of Juvenile CorrectionalAdministrators, Braintree, MA$450,000 in support of project management inthree pilot counties in Pennsylvania to delivermental health services to youth involved in thejuvenile justice system.

Defender Association of PhiladelphiaNortheast Juvenile Defender Center,Philadelphia, PA$105,000 in support of training and technicalassistance on effective representation and aftercare advocacy in Pennsylvania.

Education Law Center, Philadelphia, PA$150,000 to provide training and technical assistance on aftercare to juvenile probationofficers in Pennsylvania.

Juvenile Court Judges’ Commission,Harrisburg, PA$276,000 to provide technical assistance andtraining to judges and probation officers inmodel aftercare approaches.

Juvenile Law Center, Philadelphia, PA$625,000 in support of activities as the lead entity coordinating efforts to improve the juvenile justice system in Pennsylvania.

Juvenile Law Center, Philadelphia, PA$270,000 in support of technical assistance tothree pilot counties in Pennsylvania to plan andimplement comprehensive model approaches to aftercare.

Mental Health Association of PennsylvaniaPennsylvania Collaborative for Youth,Harrisburg, PA$105,000 in support of the PennsylvaniaCollaboration for Youth.

Pennsylvania Department of PublicWelfare, Harrisburg, PA$125,000 to develop accredited professional certificate programs for state employees in juvenile justice facilities.

Philadelphia Department of HumanServices, Philadelphia, PA$240,000 in support of the ReintegrationReform Initiative.

Philadelphia Family Court, Philadelphia, PA$120,000 in support of the development andimplementation of improved aftercare servicesand supervision.

Youth Law Center, Washington, DC$240,000 to provide technical assistance toPennsylvania counties to become models for the collection and use of disproportionateminority contact data and information tochange practices that contribute to the over-representation of minority youth in thejuvenile justice system and in disparities in their treatment.


MacArthurFoundation

JuvenileJustice


The Models for Change initia-tive makes grants to nationalorganizations that togetherconstitute a national resource

bank — a treasury of knowledge andtools, training and technical assistance,advocacy and public education strate-gies — that those working on juvenilejustice system reform at the state andlocal levels can draw upon. Current ini-tiative grantees, which include some ofthe leading experts and practitioners in the field, are listed below, grouped by their areas of substantive expertise.

Corrections and ProbationCouncil of Juvenile CorrectionalAdministratorswww.cjca.net/sitecode/cjca_home.html

Child Welfare League of Americawww.cwla.org


Systems IntegrationChild Welfare League of Americawww.cwla.org

Council of Juvenile CorrectionalAdministratorswww.cjca.net/sitecode/cjca_home.html

Juvenile Law Centerwww.jlc.org

Mental HealthNational Mental Health Associationwww.nmha.org

National Center for Mental Health andJuvenile Justicewww.ncmhjj.com

The University of Massachusetts Law andPsychiatry Program (The National YouthScreening Assistance Project)www.umassmed.edu/nysap

Child and Adolescent DevelopmentResearch Network on AdolescentDevelopment and Juvenile Justicewww.mac-adoldev-juvjustice.org

Training and ProfessionalDevelopmentNational Juvenile Defender Centerwww.njdc.info

Community Organizing andAdvocacyJuvenile Law Centerwww.jlc.org

National Council of La Razawww.nclr.org

National Mental Health Associationwww.nmha.org


Policy AnalysisJuvenile Law Centerwww.jlc.org


CommunicationsCoalition for Juvenile Justicewww.juvjustice.org

Justice Policy Institutewww.justicepolicy.org

Research, Statistics, and Technical AssistanceNational Center for Juvenile Justicewww.ncjj.org

Despite deep and troubling flaws,the nation’s juvenile justice sys-tems offer opportunities to make areal difference in the lives of

young people, especially those of color andfrom disadvantaged communities who comeinto contact with the law.

Since the Foundation began work in thisfield a decade ago, we have seen courts, com-munities, and individuals struggling to do theright thing — and we have seen that change ispossible.At the same time, we have learnedthat no single solution will fit every system;each state has a distinctive social, cultural, his-torical, and political context that must serve asits starting point for reform.

In the years ahead, we will encouragemore states to place a high priority on juvenilejustice reform — to give their systems thescrutiny and resources they need, and todemand of them justice, fairness, and account-ability.To succeed, they will need to lookbeyond the courts and focus attention on allchild- and family-serving institutions: ensuringthat school systems do the job of educatingchildren; that child welfare systems ensure theirsafety and security; and that health care systemskeep children and their families well.

The Foundation will continue to workthrough multiple strategies — supportingresearch, policy, and practical interventions — to help the juvenile justice system reclaim itsfounding principles: the recognition that chil-dren and adolescents are different from adults,that they have individual abilities and needs,and that, with rehabilitation and treatment —and community and family support — theyhave the potential to be successful members oftheir communities.

Julia StaschVice PresidentProgram on Human and Community Development

Vice President’s MessageThe National Resource Bank

Program on Human and Community DevelopmentAt the direction of Julia Stasch, LaurieGarduque and Craig Wacker work on Juvenile Justice initiatives. For more information, please call () -or e-mail [email protected].

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The John D. and Catherine T.MacArthur Foundation

140 South Dearborn StreetSuite 1200Chicago, Illinois 60603 USA

PRESORTEDFIRST-CLASS MAILU.S. POSTAGE PAID

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’05.3MacArthurFoundation

Juvenile Justice:New Models for Reform

work’s protocol has helped us refine ourevaluation procedures, and we’re passing iton through our training program for juve-nile forensic psychologists.”

The manual also has helped Kruh and his colleagues explain their work topolicymakers. “When forensic evaluationwork hit Washington’s juvenile justicesystem, the system just adopted the adultstatutes wholesale,” Kruh explains. “But achild forensic mental health evaluation is more complex and requires moreresources than a similar evaluation for anadult. The manual lays out very clearlyhow a good evaluation is conducted. It’shelped us enormously in explaining to the state government what we need and why we need it.”

Network member Amy Holmes Hehn,senior juvenile prosecutor in the Portland,Oregon, District Attorney’s Office, says that

prosecutors, too, have welcomed theresearch and are considering how to incor-porate the findings into their practice.Hehn is part of a group working on legisla-tion that is addressing how competencechallenges should be raised in juvenilecourt, and what the court’s dispositionaloptions should be.

“Oregon’s juvenile code is silent on theissue,” Hehn says. “As a result, if a youthcan’t assist in his own defense, even a veryserious offense often becomes a depend-ency case, and the youth is handed over tothe child welfare agency. That raises con-cerns about public safety. So the legislativegroup is trying to set standards for what agood competence evaluation should looklike and who should do it. The networkwill have a very important impact on this.”

More broadly, she says, the network hashelped the courts and legislatures by

reframing the issues. “It’s no longer justabout punishment, but about helpingyouths understand the consequences oftheir actions, teaching them about responsi-bility and restitution, and providing themwith opportunities to gain the competen-cies they need. That means looking at eachkid individually, taking development intoconsideration, and focusing on interven-tions that are going to work.”

That’s exactly what the network ishoping for, as work continues not only on competence and culpability questions,but on what can help youths turn awayfrom crime.

“What we’d like,” says Steinberg, “is to see the world reaffirm its commitment to treating adolescents like adolescents,not like adults. We’d like to see a return tothe founding principles of the juvenile justice system.”

For more information about theFoundation’s efforts related to juvenile justice, or for an electronicversion of this newsletter, visit our Web site at www.macfound.org,or call (312) 726-8000.

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