Multisystem Involved Youths’ Experiences of Reactive Social Safety Nets within the Juvenile Legal System

• In Event: Evolving Challenges in Juvenile Justice

Abstract

Sociolegal research demonstrates how US Juvenile Legal Systems (JLS) are increasingly serving as social safety nets, offering mental health services, housing, food, and other necessities for survival in the absence of robust community-based social services. This study draws on semi-structured interviews and Reflexive Thematic Analysis to investigate how youth and young adults (N=31) involved in both the Massachusetts child welfare system (CWS) and JLS conceptualize, navigate, and make use of social services across their system trajectories. Findings suggest that vital social services are more accessible to study participants both through and after involvement with the JLS than in any proactive capacity within communities or social service settings, including the CWS. Participants also delineate additional and complicated dimensions of care accessed within the JLS, in the form of daily regimentation of life (care as structure) and relationships with staff and youth in the JLS (care as relationships). These findings extend previous scholarship on social services behind bars for adults, suggesting that social safety nets may be further entrenched within carceral systems for youth populations. As jurisdictions appropriately expand their youth diversion programs, the findings underscore the need for developing proactive and robust social services within communities and without reenforcing youth criminalization.

Author

• Noor Toraif, University of Pennsylvania