More completely embrace the meaning and implementation of developmental youth justice

• In Event: Policy-Implications of DLC Research 1: Youth Justice Through a Life-Course Lens

Abstract

In its 2013 report, Reforming Juvenile Justice: A Developmental Approach, the National Research Council made a series of recommendations for how responses to delinquency could be improved using developmental science. I argue that at times the connection between developmental research and juvenile justice is assumed as opposed to fully demonstrated. This, in turn, affects implementation. This presentation will review juvenile justice policy and practice in parallel to DLC theories and research to enumerate underlying challenges in operationalizing developmental juvenile justice. For example, I will explore what life course criminology suggests about our approach to risk and needs assessment and use of dynamic risk and needs assessment as a working example to identify gaps between evidence, policy, and practice. This will include analyzing existing data to assess the prospects and challenges of implementing dynamic risk and needs assessment in a more developmental juvenile justice system. I will conclude the presentation by identifying some additional points of consideration in operationalizing developmental juvenile justice in a policy context that is more skeptical than it has been to this point in the 21st century.

Author

• Christopher J. Sullivan, University of Missouri-St. Louis