Juvenile Probation
Overview
Our goal is to learn how youth and families experience juvenile probation so that we can enhance their experiences and outcomes.
The YJL is working on three projects supported by the Annie E. Casey Foundation and the National Science Foundation (NSF).
Family-Youth Engagement Survey Project
Professor Fine and the Juvenile Probation Departments in Maricopa and Pinal Counties are working together on a family-youth engagement project. We survey youth and their families to learn about their experiences with juvenile probation. The goal is to elevate their voices so that we can enhance their experiences.
The Youth Justice Lab's Role
The Youth Justice Lab is working closely with the jurisdictions to design the surveys, implement them, and assess parent/youth engagement in juvenile probation.
Bring it to your jurisdiction!
Currently, we are working with the Juvenile Probation Departments in Maricopa and Pinal County. If you are interested in implementing the program in your jurisdiction, please email Professor Fine (adfine@asu.edu).
Family Engagement Assessment Tool
The YJL and Justice for Families are conducting a family engagement project funded by the Annie E. Casey Foundation. The project's purpose is to create a free, open-access tool that enables probation departments to gauge their engagement in building authentic juvenile probation officer-family partnerships.
Stage 1: Interviews and Tool Creation
The first stage involves interviewing probation officers across the country to learn more about what specifically takes place during the case planning and management meetings in juvenile probation, particularly with respect to potentially engaging families in various ways. Our goal is to ensure that the free and public access tool we create down the line is more useful to folks across the country, so we are having off-record, information-gathering conversations with folks from across jurisdictions so that we can learn more about how things work on the ground in various locales. Then, we'll create the first draft of the tool.
Stage 2: Interviews and Tool Improvement
This project is guided by the philosophy that a tool is useless if no one will use it. As such, it is necessary to get feedback from jurisdictions on the structure, content, and usability of the tool. Moreover, the tool must reflect youth and families' lived experiences. Justice for Families will lead focus groups with system-involved youth and their families to get their perspective on the tool and solutions. The feedback will be used to improve the free, public-access tool.
Join Us!
If you are interested in joining the conversation, please email Professor Fine (adfine@asu.edu).
NSF CAREER AWARD: Developing and Testing the Integrated Youth Development Model Framework
To advance the health, prosperity, and welfare of justice-involved youth and move the field into the future, juvenile justice system policymakers, practitioners, and researchers need a guiding framework that illuminates how interdisciplinary approaches can be integrated to promote youth thriving and a structured set of tools and approaches that can test the framework.
We need a model framework for organizing and guiding the field, new tools for measuring youths’ success rather than just their deficits and recidivism, and a model program that can be replicated easily in other jurisdictions to promote youth success. That is the goal of this NSF CAREER Award.
Learn more here.
