JJIE Hub: Resources — Reentry

Resources for Key Issues

What are Reentry and Aftercare and Why are They Important?

• • Core Principles for Reducing Recidivism and Improving Other Outcomes for Youth in the Juvenile Justice System is a white paper released in July 2014 that is focused on promoting “what works” for youth reentering the community.
  • Back on Track: Supporting Youth Reentry from Out-of-Home Placement to the Community is an issue brief that outlines principles and promising practices for effective youth reentry programs, suggests opportunities for improvements in public policy, and makes recommendations for federal leadership.
  • The Desktop Guide to Reentry for Juvenile Confinement Facilities guides practitioners in adopting a reentry focus and identifies ways to redesign institutional operations to facilitate reentry.
  • Reforming Juvenile Justice provides extensive information on how the goals, design, and operation of the juvenile justice system should be informed by knowledge about adolescent development, which has implications for effective aftercare.
  • The Dimensions, Pathways, and Consequences of Youth Reentry draws on a national roundtable on youth reentry to recommend the next steps in research and practice to ensure the successful transition of young people back to their communities. Though the roundtable was held in 2003, the recommendations remain relevant.
  • Policy Platform: Youth Reentry/Aftercare, from National Juvenile Justice Network, discusses the need for comprehensive youth reentry programs and recommendations for improvement.

What Challenges Do Youth Face Upon Release from Juvenile Facilities?

Collateral Consequences

• • • See these publications for details of the collateral consequences of juvenile justice system involvement in California, Delaware, Florida, Massachusetts,  Pennsylvania, and Washington.

Education and Employment

• • • Just Learning discusses the systemic obstacles to effective teaching and learning in juvenile facilities and the imperative to make education for youth held in them the primary tool of rehabilitation and prevention.
    • For more information about the educational challenges faced by youth in the juvenile justice system and recommendations for improvement, see Addressing the Unmet Educational Needs of Children and Youth in the Juvenile Justice and Child Welfare Systems.
    • The Models for Change innovation brief, Learn to Earn details how the lack of attention to education and career training in juvenile facilities and reentry has aggravated barriers to employment for youth, and discusses reforms made by the Pennsylvania Academic and Career/Technical Training Alliance (PACTT) to address this problem.
    • See the resources below in Addressing the Challenges of Reentering Youth for further education and employment resources.
    • From Surviving to Thriving provides various programmatic solutions that help support youth experiencing reentry, as well as address potential policy and system changes around equity, collateral consequences, and opportunities for the youth.
    • See Juvenile Offenders and Victims: 2014 National Report, by the National Center for Juvenile Justice, for data on the strong link between institutionalization in correctional facilities and dropping out of high school.

Housing
The Coalition for Juvenile Justice discusses the opportunities for collaboration and impact on the problem of youth homelessness and juvenile justice with improved reentry planning as one of the goals.

Mental Health and Substance Abuse
See the Mental Health and Substance Use Disorders Resources page for further resources.

Reconnecting with Families
See Improving Services for Youth/Family Engagement on the Mental Health and Substance Use Disorders Resources page for further resources.

Reentry after Short-Term Detention
See Chapter 4 of the Desktop Guide to Reentry for Juvenile Confinement Facilities for best practices on helping youth reintegrate from short-term detention programs.

Challenges Faced by Youth Returning from the Adult Criminal Justice System
You’re an Adult Now details the impact of adult-system involvement on youth, and the options for managing them in that system to obtain the best outcomes.

When to Start Reentry Planning and Critical Elements

• • Critical Elements of Juvenile Reentry in Research and Practice offers guidance from recent research and promising practices in juvenile aftercare.
  • For a better understanding of risk assessment tools in juvenile probation and probation intake, see Risk Assessment in Juvenile Justice: A Guidebook for Implementation from Models for Change.
  • For a thorough understanding of risk assessment instruments in juvenile detention, see Juvenile Detention Risk Assessment: a Practice Guide to Juvenile Detention Reform.
  • See the resources above in What is Aftercare and Why is it Important? for further resources on the critical elements for effective aftercare.

What Federal Initiatives are Focused on Youth Reentry?

• • The National Reentry Resource Center (NRRC), administered by the U.S. Dept. of Justice’s Bureau of Justice Assistance and established by the Second Chance Act, serves as a source of information and guidance on adult and youth reentry. The NRRC provides training and technical assistance to Second Chance Act grantees.
  • The Council of State Governments Justice Center website has information on the Second Chance Act, including specific programs and grantees.
  • For examples of a few juvenile reentry initiatives funded by the Second Chance Act, see this fact sheet.

Resources for Reform Trends

Theoretical Frameworks and Examples of Comprehensive Reentry and Aftercare Models

• • For a good description of the balanced and restorative justice framework and how it has been used in juvenile justice, see OJJDP’s Restoring the Balance: Juvenile and Community Justice.
  • Pennsylvania aligned their Juvenile Justice System Enhancement
    Strategy (JJSES) to correspond with Balanced and Restorative Justice principles. JJSES seeks to reduce harm by applying the best-known research to the principles and goals of BARJ.
  • Incorporating the Strengths Perspective into Intensive Juvenile Aftercare argues that incorporating a strengths-based perspective into juvenile aftercare programming, rather than the more traditional deficit-based approach, has the potential to reduce recidivism.
  • For a detailed description of reentry courts and the comprehensive planning process involved in setting one up, see Chapter 7 – "The Juvenile Reentry Court” of Graduated Sanctions for Juvenile Offenders – Volume II.
  • Reconnecting: The Role of the Juvenile Court in Reentry is a practical guide for planning, implementing, and operating a juvenile reentry court.
  • Advancing Competency Development in Pennsylvania is a resource guide that details competency development supportive resources across the state.
  • The Ohio Department of Youth Services has a good description of its reentry continuum on its website, with a number of helpful reentry resources, including a detailed action plan.
  • Washington DC's Young Men Emerging Unit mentoring program set out to empower the individuals currently incarcerated and change the culture of corrections. They do this by having those serving longer sentences mentor the younger incarcerated population and help them navigate the uncertainty of the justice system.
  • The California Justice Leaders (CJL) is a mentorship program that recruits previously incarcerated persons to support justice-involved youth and young adults. Mentors serve for a year or more and during their time in the program, they too get valuable professional development and training that they can carry into their career endeavors.

Using Reentry Thinking to Guide Placement Decisions

• • This Educational Aftercare and Reintegration Toolkit by the Education Law Center-PA and the Models for Change Initiative provide information and tools for juvenile justice professionals working on educational issues with youth in the juvenile justice system.
  • Juvenile Detention Risk Assessment by the Annie E. Casey Foundation’s Juvenile Detention Alternatives Initiative (JDAI) provides a thorough description of detention risk assessment instruments and how they can be used to achieve detention reform objectives.
  • See Risk Assessment in Juvenile Justice: A Guidebook for Implementation for a detailed description of risk assessment and risk assessment instruments, how they are used, and how to most effectively implement them.
  • Pennsylvania’s Probation Case Management Essentials for Youth in Placement details how the state has used its Joint Policy Statement on Aftercare for Delinquent Youth to drive aftercare reform efforts in the state.

Addressing the Challenges of Reentering Youth

• • See the U.S. Departments of Education and Justice’s Guiding Principles for Providing High-Quality Education in Juvenile Justice Secure Care Settings for best practices in correctional education and reentry, and the core activities underlying these principles.
  • Recommendations to Improve Correctional and Reentry Education for Young People details the policy recommendations that came out of a 2012 summit hosted by the U.S. Department of Education to address correctional and reentry education for youth and adults.
  • JustChildren provides a detailed analysis of the problems in school reentry and recommended policies in A Summary of Best Practices in School Reentry for Incarcerated Youth Returning Home.
  • See Pennsylvania Progress: Preparing Youth for Productive Futures for a detailed description of the educational challenges facing Pennsylvania youth and the work done to address them with the Philadelphia Reintegration Initiative.
  • This Models for Change Innovation Brief describes the Pennsylvania Academic Career/Technical Training Alliance to help incarcerated youth gain better education and job skills while in custody and once released.
  • Core Principles for Reducing Recidivism and Improving Other Outcomes for Youth in the Juvenile Justice System details many of the challenges for reentering youth and promising practices to address them.
  • Better Solutions for Youth with Mental Health Needs in the Juvenile Justice System is a white paper by the Mental Health and Juvenile Justice Collaborative for Change that discusses how to best help youth with mental health needs who come into contact with the juvenile justice system.
  • National Juvenile Justice Network’s Time for a Check-Up: How Advocates Can Help Youth in the Juvenile Justice System Get the Mental Health Services They Need, and the National Academy for State Health Policy’s Facilitating Access to Health Care Coverage for Juvenile Justice-Involved Youth provide information on the health care challenges of juvenile justice-involved youth and suggested reforms.
  • Family Involvement in Pennsylvania’s Juvenile Justice System identifies strategies and models at the local and state level to support family involvement in the juvenile justice system.
  • Youth Homelessness and Juvenile Justice details the problems of homeless youth in the juvenile justice system and suggests ways to assist them.
  • This toolkit from the National Council of Juvenile and Family Court Judges explains how to use an interactive court hearing checklist to identify youth experiencing homelessness. The checklist helps judges identify youth experiencing homelessness and understand what housing plans or programs are available to meet their needs.
  • See the National Juvenile Justice Network’s Policy Platform: Youth Reentry/Aftercare, for a discussion of the challenges confronting youth returning from facilities and recommendations for improving youth reentry.

Reducing the Collateral Consequences of a Delinquency Adjudication

• • See the Juvenile Law Center’s Failed Policies, Forfeited Futures: A Nationwide Scorecard on Juvenile Records for ratings and detailed information on the laws in each state and Juvenile Records: A National Review of State Laws on Confidentiality, Sealing, and Expungement for core principles of record protection.
  • Juvenile Records: A Know Your Rights Guide for Youth in Pennsylvania explains juvenile records and their consequences to youth and walks them through the expungement process.
  • Organizations in Illinois, Maryland, and Louisiana have developed web-based expungement tools, or apps, to help youth with the expungement process:
    • • Illinois: Expunge.io
      • Maryland: ExpungeMaryland.org
      • Louisiana: Expunge.LA

Supervision that Supports Youth

• • See the Illinois Juvenile Justice Commission's, Youth Reentry Improvement Report, for a thoughtful analysis of the problems incurred in a parole system based on an adult surveillance-oriented model and detailed recommendations for improvement that have applicability to many states.
  • The Central and Eastern Oregon Juvenile Justice Consortium provides detailed information on how its graduated response system works in A Graduated System of Incentives, Interventions and Sanctions for Youth Offenders on Probation.
  • See this Reclaiming Futures blog post for resources on graduated sanctions and incentives.
  • Many probation departments use graduated sanctions grids to help them standardize probation responses to infractions. Here are two sample grids: Reclaiming Futures and Baltimore City’s Graduated Responses Grid.
  • For further information on the benefits of a graduated response system and details regarding the system developed by the Maryland Department of Juvenile Services see their PowerPoint slides, Graduated Responses for Youth Under DJS Supervision.
  • Supervision Strategies for Justice-Involved Youth details three strategies that are most effective in supervising justice-involved youth.
  • The article, Case Now Strong for Ending Probation’s Place As Default Disposition in Juvenile Justice,
    by Dick Mendel, makes the case that the commonly used surveillance-oriented probation does not reduce recidivism and there are other more effective alternatives with proven power to reduce reoffending.

Using Evidence-based Practices in Reentry and Aftercare

• • See OJJDP’s Model Programs Guide on Detention, Confinement, and Supervision for ratings and information on programs for confined youth and aftercare.
  • CrimeSolutions.gov has evidence ratings, summaries, and more detailed program information on juvenile delinquency prevention programs and practices.
  • The Washington State Institute for Public Policy has many reports and charts of information on evidence-based, research-based, and promising juvenile justice programs, including cost-benefit analyses.
  • See the Evidence-based Practices Resources section for many more databases of programs rated for effectiveness.
  • Center for Juvenile and Criminal Justice's report Collaborating for Successful Reentry is a practical guide for juvenile justice practitioners to aid young people reentering their communities and aid in increasing positive outcomes and removing potential barriers to their future successes in life.

Strengthening Federal Initiatives to Support Reentry

• • See Back on Track for recommendations for federal leadership in youth reentry.
  • In Recommendations to Improve Correctional and Reentry Education for Young People, the Juvenile Law Center provides a number of federal legislative recommendations.

Evaluations of Reentry Programs

• • This report is based on a year-long benchmarking study of the Department of Labor’s employment-focused Reentry Employment Opportunities (REO) program. It includes data on several youth-focused programs.

Reentry Sections