Evaluation of Judicially Led Responses to Eliminate School Pathways to the Juvenile Justice System

OJJDP has a specific mission to develop and disseminate knowledge about what works to prevent juvenile delinquency and violence and improve the effectiveness of the juvenile justice system. The Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act of 1974, 42 U.S.C. § 5601 et seq authorizes the Administrator of OJJDP to conduct research or evaluations and undertake statistical analyses on a wide range of juvenile justice matters. OJJDP also provides funding to states and localities to carry out research, evaluation, and statistical analyses.

Researchers at the National Council of Juvenile and Family Court Judges are evaluating a three year project entitled: Judicially Led Responses to Eliminate School Pathways to the Juvenile Justice (School Pathways Project) that is currently funded by Atlantic Philanthropies, Open Society Foundation, and Public Welfare Foundation. This project provides selected jurisdictions struggling with school disengagement issues with intensive, judicially-led training and technical assistance to improve disciplinary practices. The evaluators will monitor quantitative data related to outcome measures, including suspension rates, expulsion rates, and juvenile justice referrals by race/ethnicity where data is available. The population of interest is secondary students in 16 geographically and population diverse jurisdictions in the United States. With OJJDP funding to support the enhancement of the evaluation design, the researchers will randomly assign 8 of the participating secondary schools to the treatment group and 8 to the control group (for delayed intervention) to better assess the impact of this intervention on self-reported stakeholders' behaviors and attitudes regarding the retention and attrition of students, suspensions, expulsions, and referrals. The enhanced evaluation proposed here will help develop additional evidence to guide the field to eliminate the school-to-juvenile justice pipeline.

NCA/NCF