Opal West is a senior associate with the Annie E. Casey Foundation’s Juvenile Justice Strategy Group. She leads partnerships with national organizations to advance juvenile probation transformation, including efforts to strengthen training on adolescent development, family engagement and effective responses to youth behavior, among other topics. Her work has supported resources such as the American Probation and Parole Association’s Ten Core Principles of Youth Probation, the National Council on Juvenile and Family Court Judges’ tool kit for judges to lead local probation transformation and the Coalition on Juvenile Justice’s guide on youth partnership, as well as site visits that help local leaders learn from jurisdictions investing in opportunities for young people.
West joined the Foundation in 2018 after working for state government in Louisiana. There, she led efforts to improve conditions of confinement in youth detention centers across the state, including developing standards of care for both state-run and local facilities. She also led statewide expansion efforts for the JDAI® approach to building a better and more equitable youth justice system. She began her career as a juvenile probation and parole officer.
West is a graduate of the University of Louisiana at Lafayette with a bachelor’s degree in criminal justice.