Legal/Government Policy Resource: New Online Juvenile Justice Reform Tracking Tool

New from the National Center for Juvenile Justice (NCJJ).
From a NCJJ Announcement 

A new website is introducing powerful tools to help policy makers, advocates, researchers and the media to chart nationwide change in juvenile justice policy, practices, and statistics.
The Juvenile Justice GPS (JJGPS – Geography, Policy, Practice & Statistics) site monitors juvenile justice system change by examining state laws and juvenile justice practice, combined with the most relevant state and national statistics.
JJGPS is organized in six main sections that will be rolled out in sequence. The first to be launched is the section on jurisdictional boundaries—laws that transfer juvenile offenders to criminal court to be tried as adults. Later this summer two other sections will roll out: juvenile defense and system integration. Juvenile defense will deal with issues like the right to counsel and representation for youth with no financial resources. The systems integration section will describe the varied ways that state juvenile justice and child protection systems collaborate and integrate resources.

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Hunter Hurst, JJGPS project director, commented, “The JJGPS project involves legal research, scanning the practice landscape through interviews with juvenile justice stakeholders, searching the web for data published by state agencies, and developing statistical displays that help tell the stories or at least begin telling them when new information is brought to bear.”
“Some information on JJGPS updates work NCJJ has been doing for years and was literally filed away in databases and file cabinets,” Hurst added, “but in other areas we are assembling new knowledge with hopes it will be tracked and improved into the future as its utility becomes apparent for juvenile justice stakeholders, advocates, and policy makers.

Direct to Juvenile Justice GPS

Additional Resources

• Juvenile Justice Resource Hub

• Juvenile Justice Bill Tracking Database (via NCSL)

The National Center for Juvenile Justice is the research division of the National Council of Juvenile and Family Court Judges and receives funding from The MacArthur Foundation.

Filed under: Data Files, Digital Preservation, Funding, Interviews, News