Lasting Impacts
Three sites (Cook County, Illinois; Sacramento County, California and Multnomah County, Oregon) completed the JDAI project. One year out, their reform efforts seemed to have staying power.
In 1993, 5 counties accepted the Annie E. Casey Foundation’s challenge to commit to radical detention reform. The experiment—called the Juvenile Detention Alternatives Initiative (JDAI)—required a huge political risk, a staff paradigm shift and the development of new procedures and programs to better serve America’s troubled youth. Read their stories, struggles and successes, and find out if the initiative’s growing pains were worth the major effort. (Spoiler alert: The data say yes!)
Enter fresh ideas (and resistance to change). Cue new collaborations (and fierce public opposition). As this overview shows, the journey to juvenile reform isn’t simple or straight. But, the lessons learned along the way—and there are many—serve as a gritty glimmer of hope that we can all do better by today’s justice-involved youth.