Going Upstream: Tracking the Carceral Continuum to and through the Juvenile Justice System

• In Event: Roundtable: Rethinking Pretrial Practice and Building a National Research Agenda for the Front End of the Criminal Justice System

Abstract

This talk will present key findings from my yearlong study of three NYC juvenile delinquency courtrooms that uses standardized court observation instruments, ethnography, interviews, and court file data to capture the myriad social factors that impact young people’s legal outcomes, particularly the likelihood of pre-trial detention. The research hypothesis is that an adolescent’s involvement and achieved outcome within the juvenile justice system is, at least in part, a product of his or her interactions with key developmental institutions (i.e., family and schools) as well as the characteristics of the neighborhoods in which these institutions are embedded. If the research findings verify this hypothesis, the next step is to ascertain the particular institutional arrangements that lead to a greater likelihood of involvement with and placement within the juvenile justice system. This work addresses several limitations in the extant literature by moving beyond micro-level analyses of juvenile justice system contact to better understand the larger nexus of state-based interventions in the lives of urban youth.

Author

• Carla Shedd, Columbia University