Treat Children as Children

By Liz Ryan, OJJDP Administrator

One of OJJDP's key priorities is to ensure that children are treated as children. Children are not adults. As juvenile justice professionals, that is a mantra that we must live by. Children are biologically, neurologically, and developmentally different from adults. Whether they are in the halls of a school building or the halls of justice, children must be treated as children. 

Young people must be provided opportunities to learn and recover from youthful mistakes. To ensure that all children have access to opportunities to learn, grow, and mature without the burden of adult expectations and consequences, we must strive to prevent young people from entering the juvenile justice system from the outset, divert youth in the system back to the community whenever possible, protect young people from moving deeper into the system, eliminate harmful and ineffective practices, and safeguard vulnerable children. 

Preventing Kids From Entering the System

I am proud of OJJDP's ongoing commitment to innovative strategies and collaborative efforts aimed at ensuring that youth receive the support, resources, and guidance they need to thrive. One of the most effective ways of serving young people is to ensure that they never enter the juvenile justice system. To that end, in fiscal year 2024 OJJDP launched a new National Youth Violence Prevention Training and Technical Assistance program. This effort will provide the juvenile justice field with comprehensive resources and training materials to develop, implement, and expand effective and quality evidence-informed youth violence prevention and intervention initiatives. The program will include a web-based resource hub of tools and materials for anyone in the field seeking to address youth violence, including children’s exposure to violence. 

In 2024, our Office also expanded mentoring services for children who have an incarcerated parent. According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics' most recent data, nearly 1.5 million youth ages 17 or younger have a parent in state or federal prison and the average age of a minor child of parents in federal prison was 10 years old. Further, for minor children of parents in state prison, 1% were younger than age 1, about 18% were ages 1 to 4, and 48% were age 10 or older[1]. The Mentoring for Children of Incarcerated Parents initiative is designed to address the unique challenges faced by these children. The program prioritizes connecting children with trained, caring mentors; establishing a supportive community network that enables young people to overcome challenges as they arise; and enhancing their academic performance. OJJDP also held a series of listening sessions to learn more from young people about ways that we could better support them, their families, and their communities. 

Diverting Kids Away From the System

Equally important to our prevention efforts are the diversion programs and strategies designed to steer youth away from formal involvement in the juvenile justice system. This year we launched the Expanding Youth Access to Community-Based Treatment Program. This training and technical assistance effort will help communities divert at-risk youth from the justice system by strengthening community-based treatments to address their unique mental and behavioral health needs. 

Intervening To Prevent Deeper System Involvement

For youth already in the deep end of the system, OJJDP is addressing their complex issues with targeted interventions, individualized support, partnerships, and a commitment to rehabilitation rather than punishment. Preventing youth from entering adult jails, prisons, and the adult criminal justice system depends on robust partnerships and the collaborative efforts of many stakeholders—juvenile justice agencies working in collaboration with law enforcement, courts, schools, mental health and substance use treatment providers, and community organizations. 

To that end, we have developed partnerships with organizations representing key youth justice stakeholders. We support the National Sheriffs' Association in their efforts to provide their members with training and technical assistance to ensure that young people are not placed in adult jails and lock ups. Similarly, we are working with the National Partnership for Juvenile Services to help their members understand best practices to support youth who have engaged in status offense behaviors. Such behaviors include offenses (for example, running away from home or skipping school) that are considered illegal only because of the young person's age, and which communities are successfully addressing through non-judicial interventions. 

Eliminating Harmful and Ineffective Practices

To accomplish the monumental task of eliminating harmful and ineffective practices, OJJDP is engaged in collaborative reform efforts with states who are experiencing crises in their juvenile justice systems. We are engaging stakeholders in a comprehensive assessment of current practices, policies, and systems with a focus on facility-based activities. These efforts involve intensive training and technical assistance to support states and localities in enhancing outcomes for youth. This work is helping to ensure that resources are available and poised to effectively respond to emerging crises as they are identified, in a way that fully engages the jurisdiction in carrying out solutions and improving their system over the long term. 

Protecting and Safeguarding Vulnerable Children

Finally, OJJDP remains deeply committed to protecting our nation's most vulnerable children, including those who are abused, neglected, endangered, missing, or exploited. 

In FY 2024, OJJDP awarded more than $42 million to the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children to provide training and technical assistance to enhance law enforcement's efforts to locate missing and exploited children. OJJDP continues to maintain a dedicated website to publish resources and other information about missing children for the public, as well as for law enforcement and other child protection professionals, including The AMBER Advocate quarterly newsletter and When Your Child Is Missing: A Family Survival Guide.  We are also engaged with every state child welfare agency in the United States to share best practices for locating missing children from social service facilities. 

At the 2024 National Missing Children's Day event, we addressed the important issue of children who go missing while under state care. A panel of experts, including a youth with lived experience in the foster care system, examined the reasons why so many children and young adults run away while in care. Teens are reported missing from state-supported care at a rate four times higher than all teens. Panelists discussed risk factors, common vulnerabilities, and strategies for reducing incidents and enhancing child protection through stakeholder collaboration. 

As I close out my tenure as OJJDP Administrator, I remain optimistic about the future of this critical work. I believe that together we have the power to protect the progress we have already made and build on it to create a future where all young people are given the support and opportunities they deserve. That starts with treating all children as children.