Soliciting customer feedback to improve products and services has long been an American business practice. In August of 2022, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP) adopted a similar approach to improving the services and outcomes of the American juvenile justice system.

Recognizing the importance of incorporating input from youth and families directly impacted by the juvenile justice system, OJJPD Administrator Liz Ryan said, “Young people understand their own needs, wants, and expectations. They know the best ways to frame messages intended for their peers, and the best forums for delivering them. To be legitimate, OJJDP’s work must be informed by youth.”

In alignment with Administrator Ryan’s message, the practice of listening to and involving young people and families who have lived experience with youth-serving systems has become an essential part of all OJJPD programs, activities, funding initiatives, and events.

With input from these young people, their families, and other stakeholders, OJJDP is developing new recommendations for best practices, determining how best to apply them, and updating guidance for the field to help OJJDP awardees incorporate authentic, sustainable youth and family partnerships in their programs and projects.

OJJDP is gathering this feedback from a variety of sources, including roundtables, their recently launched Youth and Family Partnership Group, town halls and regional listening sessions, as well as at meetings of the Coordinating Council on Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, an independent body of the Federal government’s executive branch which examines how federal, state, and local government programs can be coordinated to better serve at-risk children and juveniles.

Incorporating Lived Experience in All Programs

OJJDP is also integrating young people and family members with lived experience into their peer review programs and is developing a consultant pool of experts with lived experience. A separate Youth Leadership track, with workshops developed and led by young people, will be added to their 2024 National Conference.

Among the many takeaways from the listening sessions were the importance of culturally relevant programs and training for individuals with disabilities. Participants also heard about the need for a robust reentry system that extends into early adulthood and includes housing, food, and transportation, as well as valid ID for employment and enrollment in services and schools.

Another issue raised in OJJDP meetings with individuals involved with the juvenile justice system was the harmful impacts that fines and court fees have on young people and their families. The children, who are in school full time, can’t earn enough to cover the costs, and parents were forced to choose between paying for food and other necessities or the fines.

In addition to undermining economic stability and eroding public trust in youth-serving systems, these fines and fees were generating long-term debt for youth and their families, impeding youth reentry and undermining outcomes. This input, supported by research and data, helped inform the DOJ’s formal policy guidance on court fines and fees.

New Insights and Needed Changes

An additional topic brought up by family members is their frustration with trying to simultaneously navigate multiple state-level systems, such as juvenile justice, child welfare, housing, public benefits, and treatment, which tend to be siloed because of a lack of coordination.

At a December 2023 Coordinating Council meeting, Sue Badeau, a writer and consultant who specializes in issues related to juveniles, noted that families of children who are involved with the juvenile justice system usually have needs in more than one area—and when they seek help, they often get misdirected or slip through the cracks.

“If they can get the right help at the right time, justice system involvement can be decreased,” she said, calling for the establishment of a national family information and peer navigation clearing house with the support of state affiliates.

Meeting directly with individuals who have lived experience with the juvenile justice system has led to many valuable insights, as well as some surprises. One of these was that communicating by email, which Federal government agencies tend to rely on, doesn’t work with kids. To meet them where they are, OJJJDP is now communicating more through group chats, text messages, GroupMe, LinkedIn, Instagram and other social media platforms that young people use.

Another discovery came from inviting young adults with lived experience to be peer reviewers of grant applications: OJJPD staff saw that they did as good a job as the OJJDP reviewers did.

Youth Participation is an Integral Component of Funding Solicitations

To ensure that the programs OJJDP supports are centered on the voices of lived experience, their funding solicitations ask applicants, who are typically states, tribes, localities, law enforcement, universities, and community and faith-based groups, to describe in their applications how they will integrate and sustain meaningful youth and family partnerships in their proposed program or project.

OJJDP also created a YouTube Webinar called Effectively Partnering with Youth & Families in OJJDP–Funded Programs and Projects. According to OJJDP Senior Policy Advisor Julia Alanen, the office saw a significant increase in the number of organizations incorporating lived experience in their programs since the webinar’s release in January 2023.

The webinar’s recommendations for developing a program that includes youth and families include the following:

• Look for families who are leaders in the community, some of whom might seem like unlikely partners because they are always complaining or advocating for improvements.
• Plan together, don’t just develop a plan and then ask what youth/families think.
• Determine how you will compensate family and youth for their time and (lived-experience) expertise.
• Create opportunities for youth or young adults to lead projects, not just inform the work.
• Provide continuous professional development and learning opportunities to help young people gain transferable skills for employment.
• Address barriers to parent and youth participation, such as childcare, transportation, lack of paid time off, lack of trust, trauma, and racism.

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