Envisioning the future of youth justice: A focus group study with youth, family, frontline staff, and subject experts

Despite a wave of recent progressive reforms to the US juvenile legal system (JLS), ongoing concerns about punitive, inequitable, and developmentally inappropriate aspects of these systems persist, and the path forward is highly contested. Drawing on the concept of claim-making from scholarship on contentious politics, this study compared a diverse group of actors’ priorities for the future of youth justice. A series of 9 focus groups were conducted with 92 participants from multiple regions of the United States, including 1) frontline JLS staff, 2) system-impacted youth and their families, and 3) JLS professionals/subject experts. The analysis produced one overarching theme: youth justice systems should build a pathway for youth success where the larger community ensures youth can access resources to thrive. Under this overarching theme, five sub-themes describe participants’ claims about how to enact this goal: “challenge criminalization of youth,” “strengthen the surrounding environment,” “humanize youth,” “teach accountability,” and “implement intentional staffing.” Two sub-themes were contentious in the subject expert/professional groups (challenge criminalization, strengthen surrounding environment) and two varied in salience between groups (challenge criminalization, implement intentional staffing). Results point towards a shared vision of the larger community creating a youth justice system that guides youth towards long-term success, and to some tensions and diverging priorities about specific elements of system change. Findings can inform directions for coalition building, dialogue, and continued research on institutional change.