New Thinking, from the Center for Justice Innovation

QUEST Futures is a juvenile mental health initiative that seeks to establish a comprehensive, coordinated response
to youth with mental illness involved in the juvenile justice system in Queens, New York. Here, researcher Josephine
Hahn discusses the findings of an impact
evaluation of the program. (February 2014)

SARAH SCHWEIG: Hi, I’m
Sarah Schweig, of the Center for Court Innovation, and today I’m talking with Josy Hahn, the author of new research
about a special program that works with kids with mental illness, who are involved in the juvenile justice system.
The publication, Mental Health and Juvenile Justice, records
the findings of the impact evaluation of QUEST Futures. Thanks for speaking with me today and welcome.

JOSY HAHN: Thanks, Sarah.

SARAH SCHWEIG: So, QUEST Futures operates out of a community-based
alternative to detention program. QUEST stands for Queens Engagement Strategies for Teens, so this is in Queens,
New York. And QUEST Futures, specifically, works to engage kids with mental illness and their families in specialized
services. So, now that this program, which was launched in 2008, has been in operation for about five years, maybe
you can start off talking a little bit about the model, what the goal of the program was and the structure, and then
we can get to talking about the evaluation.

JOSY HAHN: Absolutely. So the QUEST Futures program
is so important. We know that youth in the juvenile justice system experience mental health illness at really high
rates, up to 70 percent, and that’s compared to 20 to 25 percent of youth in the general population. There is a huge
need, and yet there are very few resources in the juvenile justice system. So, juvenile detention and jail actually
become the default, which is alarming. Here in New York, QUEST was launched by the Center for Court Innovation—and
it was in collaboration with a number of juvenile justice and mental health agencies—and the overarching goal is
to reduce recidivism among youth in the juvenile justice system by addressing mental health needs. And there are
a couple other key features. One is that they engage with families early on in the case: so pre-adjudication phase.
Another is that really comprehensive individualized treatment plan that provides direct services on-site and also
a vast network of referrals. And then finally, the purpose of QUEST Futures is to increase the capacity of the juvenile
justice system to provide alternatives to detention, which is incredibly important.

SARAH SCHWEIG:
Maybe give us an idea of what QUEST Futures looks like.

JOSY HAHN: So, it’s either through a judicial
mandate, so the judge mandates the program, or a voluntary referral. So in our study, all of the QUEST Futures youth
comes from QUEST ATD referrals. QUEST ATD serves youth with juvenile delinquency cases in the Queens family court,
and they are classified as moderate risk of re-offending, or failure to appear in court. And they are deemed eligible
for community supervision, and that can mean anything from curfew checks and school attendance monitoring, to after
school programming and required services in the community. But in terms of QUEST Futures, every single youth is given
a diagnostic predictive scale, and that’s a mental health instrument that screens for 18 different mental health
disorders—mania, bipolar, depression, post-traumatic stress disorder, and anxiety. If they flag on the DPS and meet
criteria for impairment, they are eligible to go to QUEST Futures. So there’s an intake set up with QUEST Futures
staff and youth and families. There’s a full bio-psycho-social assessment, and this includes a psychiatric evaluation
and supplemental information from home visits, and interviews with the youth support system: so, a parent, caregivers,
other family members, teachers, etc. And then, based on all of that information, program staff are working with youth
and families to build trust and collaborate on what works best to meet the needs of the youth. A feature of QUEST
Futures that’s really impressive is how multi-disciplinary its staff is, from the social workers, case managers,
youth developers, court liaison, a consulting psychiatrist and the senior staff, of course. But then also how often
they’re communicating and working closely with the judge, the prosecuting and defense attorneys, and the community
service providers.

SARAH SCHWEIG: There are many moving parts to that. So, maybe you can talk
a little bit about this evaluation. Maybe you can talk a little bit about the kind of data you collected and the
process for that.

JOSY HAHN: Sure. So, there’s very little research on ju...

Tshaka
Barrows, deputy director of the Burns Institute, discusses his organization’s collaborative and community-centered
approach to addressing and eliminating racial and ethnic disparities in the justice system. Barrows spoke with Robert
V. Wolf, director of communications at the Center for Court Innovation, after participating in a panel on Race and
Procedural Justice at Justice Innovations in Times of Change on Sept. 30, 2016.

TSHAKA BARROWS: We
call it a system, but it really isn’t a system. It’s much more of a grouping of semi-autonomous agencies
that have very little accountability to each other.

ROB WOLF: Hi I’m Rob Wolf, Director of
Communications at the Center for Court Innovation and today I’m in North Haven, Connecticut at the Justice Innovation
in Times of Change conference. Sitting down with me is TShaka Barrows who is Deputy Director of the W. Haywood Burns
Institute, which works to address racial and ethnic disparities in the justice system. The institute is based in
Oakland, California. You’ve come a long way to attend the conference and participate and to sit and talk with
me, thank you very much.

BARROWS: I’m glad to be here.

WOLF: Let’s
talk about the work of the Burns Institute and in particular, how you work with jurisdictions to reduce racial and
ethnic disparities in the justice system. You have a specific approach you take to looking at this issue and trying
to address it. Maybe you could summarize for me what that approach is.

BARROWS: At the Burns Institute,
our approach is to build a collaborative of the different agencies that make up the justice system and I always tell
people, I just told the group, we call it a system, but it really isn’t a system. It’s much more of a grouping
of semi-autonomous agencies that have very little accountability to each other. The whole notion of trying to address
disparities has to be done with that context in mind because much of one agencies decision bump into the next, bump
into the next and the impact is felt by the individuals who are going through it and we see it in the disparity numbers.
To really create a strategy to address it you have to have all those key players from each of those agencies as a
part of your collaboration. We also fundamentally don’t think that just having those kind of traditional stakeholders
is enough. Our process requires that we engage meaningful participation from community stakeholders who’ve had
experience with the justice system, who live in the neighborhoods that our data shows are the target neighborhoods,
where more people are coming from, so that they can both bring that experience from having traveled through the system,
though the various agencies, being passed from one to the other, but also what it’s like living in the community
that is targeted for higher involvement for various reasons, policies, policing policies, could be that there’s
a lack of resources, any number of conditional factors.

This whole notion of creating more fair
notion of procedural justice can’t be done without accounting for that fact that certain neighborhoods are much
more highly representative in the system, our process we really aim for participation with community stakeholders,
which is very different. People are a little bit afraid of that. The idea that you’re sitting in a meeting sharing
data with people who are upset with the agency, who did not feel that they were treated fairly, who are angry about
the realities that folks in their community face, is a threatening notion for most traditional stakeholders who already
a conversation of race in this country, typically is a bit unnerving for people, it’s not like that’s a
regular practice that we have.

WOLF: And you literally bring everyone together in the same room?
That’s the process, it’s like, “Let’s all sit down together.” What does that look like,
how many people are actually sitting around a table or in a auditorium?

BARROWS: That’s a
great question. We build a collaborative and it’s a process to even build it. We don’t try to just come
in with a cookie cutter kind of prescription. We want to understand from the local players. Justice happens locally,
there’s culture. Who do they think are the key people they need to be there and how many? So sometimes we may
get huge representation from one agency, where it’s like, “You guys are kind of dominating the meeting.”
and we may need to adjust that so there’s a need to attend to the actual formation. Typically it’s, I’d
say, between 10 to 20 stakeholders d...

Peacemaker Administrator Anna Francis-Jack discusses tribal history and how The Confederated Tribes of the Colville Reservation in Washington State have
launched and grown their peacemaking program. May 2012

ROBERT V. WOLF: Hi, I’m Rob Wolf, director of communications at the Center for Court Innovation. During
a visit to the Colville tribes in Washington State, I had a chance to interview a number of different people about
peacemaking, which is a traditional Native American approach to justice. In earlier podcasts, I spoke with two elders
and a client about their experiences with peacemaking, and in this podcast I talk with Anna Francis-Jack, who coordinates
the program. One of the first things we talked about was the building we were sitting in, which allowed Anna to talk
a bit about her tribe’s history.

Thanks for taking the time to talk to me.

ANNA
FRANCIS-JACK: Yes, of course.

WOLF: Why don’t you say where we are actually.

FRANCIS-JACK:
We are at the Nesperse Long (sp?) house, which is one of the very last living legend of the Nesperse that went to
war, and we were exiled here as—my forefathers were exiled here as prisoners of war.

WOLF: And
approximately when was that?

FRANCIS-JACK: Late 1800’s.

WOLF: Okay.

FRANCIS-JACK: So some of the tribes refused to talk to us because—well refused to talk to my forefathers
because they had blood on their hands, because some of the tribes here on the Colville reservation never went to
war. That’s one of the intergenerational family traumas that still goes on today.

WOLF: And
this was a war against the whites, against the government?

FRANCIS-JACK: Yes, yes. but because
of who the chief Joseph Nesperse were, when they came here they weren’t quite welcome, so at one point I called
myself an Indian without a country because you know, we are still here despite all the odds. This is the only Long
House on the Colville reservation that practices tradition. We chose our religion, we chose our language—well not
me personally but my family, my forefathers, ancestors, and the ones that came before me. It’s what I was born
into.

WOLF: Why don’t you tell me how did your program get off the ground? You found some
peacemakers and you trained them? You trained each other?

FRANCIS-JACK: They gave me a resolution
that authorized the creation of the peacemaking circle program, and a list of elders.

WOLF: And
this was from the tribal council?

FRANCIS-JACK: Yes. So I began from there and I did a mail-out,
of course. I managed to get like 15 people to inquire. We started having meetings. I went off to Green Bay to the
traditional peacemaking, and I went to one of Fillmore Blue House’s presentations there and then I came back,
and then I started putting together information and sharing it with the elders, and then they would come and they
would give me things. And so everyone was doing research on peacemaking.

WOLF: And trying to look
at traditions.

FRANCIS-JACK: Yes.

WOLF: A traditional way of resolving conflict
and dealing with criminal behavior or misbehavior.

FRANCIS-JACK: Yes, but first we had to figure
out exactly what peacemaking was, and then they could relate it back to their different tribes within this specific
Colville reservation, since we’re a confederation—we have 12 tribes. And as I explained earlier, it’s the
prayer, it’s the smudging, it’s the talking, healing circle, and it’s the elders coming together,
you know, with the best needs of the client in mind at all times, trying to make him feel welcome, trying to make
him feel equal, trying to make him feel at ease, trying to make him trust. They have to search within themselves
to find that place that they can say, okay, I did this. I can be responsible. I can stand up and I can tell the elders
yes, I did this, yes, I was wrong. And maybe initially they just may mouth it but somewhere later on down the line,
they actually start conveying it. It’s not just words anymore.

WOLF: So just to be clear,
what you said before and what you just reiterated was that it starts, there’s a prayer involved, and then there’s
the ceremony, the smudge ceremony if someone wants to do that, and there’s a talking piece which can be handed
around and whoever holds the talking piece then speaks?

FRANCIS-JACK: Yes.

WOLF:
So what are some, what are the typical issues or offenses that are brought to a peacemaking circle?

FRANCIS-JACK:
Peacemaking was originally formed to handle juvenile cases but we don’t have an active juvenile code. But the
peacemaker was still created so don’t ask me why.

WOLF: But you do work with ju...

A multi-faceted partnership to lower violence in one of Brooklyn’s most beleaguered neighborhoods gets a major
boost with the announcement of $599,000 in funding from the U.S. Department of Justice. Among those speaking at a
press conference to announce the grant are Denise E. O’Donnell, director of the U.S. Bureau of Justice Assistance,
New York City Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly, U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of New York Loretta E.
Lynch, and Brooklyn District Attorney Charles J. Hynes. September 2012

ROB
WOLF: While crime is down across New York City, residents of some neighborhoods still fear gunfire and gangs. One
of those neighborhoods is Brownsville, Brooklyn, site of several new programs launched by the Center for Court Innovation
to address violence and strengthen community responses. I’m Rob Wolf, director of Communications at the Center
for Court Innovation and in this New Thinking podcast, the focus is on the Brownsville Anti-Violence Project, which
was the subject of a press conference September 26, 2012, in which the director of the Bureau of Justice Assistance
of the U.S. Department of Justice, announced that the project would receive nearly $600,000 in funding out of $11
million in grants distributed to 15 neighborhoods across the U.S. With a siren in the background reminding the audience
what was at stake, the Bureau of Justice Assistance Director, Denise O’Donnell, said that the grant was not
about the federal government dictating priorities but about empowering communities.

DENISE O’DONNELL:
This program is not about the federal government changing neighborhoods. It’s about community members and stakeholders
working together to identify priorities and solutions to persistent crime problems.

ROB WOLF:
O’Donnell was joined at the podium in the Heritage Room of the Stone Avenue Branch of the Brooklyn Public Library
by a number of officials, including New York City Police Commissioner Ray Kelly, who said his department was always
willing to test new ideas.

RAY KELLY: You know, when it comes to driving crime down or saving
lives, I can assure you that the New York City Police Department is open to new ideas. Anything that has the potential
to save lives and make this community safer, we’re for it, and we see in the Brownsville Anti-Violence Program
some very strong potential.

ROB WOLF: District Attorney Charles J. Hynes described call-ins, a
key feature of the Brownsville Anti-Violence Program, in which recent parolees are offered services and encouragement
while, at the same time, being reminded of the serious consequences they face if they get into trouble again.

CHARLES HYNES: The past two months we have partnered with the Center for Court Innovation, United States
Attorney Lynch, Commissioner Kelly, and the NYPD in implementing an evidence-based gun violence reduction strategy
with Project Safe Neighborhoods call-in forums. These call-in forums send a clear message to those with violent pasts
who are reentering the Brownsville community after incarceration, to desist from picking up guns, that gang life
is a dead end, and that we stand ready to help anyone who wants to be on the productive trail.

ROB
WOLF: The real life importance of the grant was underscored by Mark Tannis, a community leader.

MARK
TANNIS: With this grant, in conjunction with VJA, we can have a coordinated effort to get guns off the street. Stop
the gun violence. By far, the large majority of our community want safe streets and a sense of peace, where they
all call home. Unfortunately, too many times that tranquility is shattered by senseless gun violence.

ROB
WOLF: The Brownsville Anti-Violence Program works closely with the community, according to James Brodick, director
of the Brownsville Community Justice Center.

JAMES BRODICK: We started to do a community wide
survey and focus groups. And time after time after time we hear common themes. Theme number one is a lack of opportunities
for young people. And we understand that it’s very clear that we need to get our young people better education, job
readiness, and actual jobs. But what we also hear is that there are real issues with gangs and guns, and unfortunately
as much as people say one of the ways of solving this problem is opening up more after school centers, or opening
up you know, opening up a community center, if young people don’t feel comfortable to cross Van Dyke to the
Brownsville Houses, we can’t get past that. And again, you know, one of the things that the Center for Court
Innovation is here to do today, is what we bring to the table is an expertise in research and expertise in trying
to convene people to solve problems, but we’re not the ones who are going to solve the problem by ourselves.<...

Angela Irvine, director of research in the Criminal Justice Division of the National Council on Crime and Delinquency,
sat down for this podcast interview after participating in a research roundtable on youth courts that was sponsored
by the Center for Court Innovation and the Lowenstein Family Foundation on July 18, 2012. Irvine also discusses
research into lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender justice-involved youth.

ROBERT V.
WOLF: I’m Rob Wolf, director of communications at the Center for Court Innovation. In this New Thinking
podcast, I’m with Angela Irvine, director of research of the criminal justice division of the National Council
of Crime and Delinquency. And I have the good fortune to have a few minutes with her just as she’s finished
participating in a research roundtable on youth courts that the Center for Court Innovation hosted here today in
Manhattan, at the law firm of Skadden Arps. So thanks, Angela, for taking the time to talk with me.

ANGELA
IRVINE: Thank you for having me.

WOLF: Are there particular challenges that researchers
face when looking at a justice program geared for youth?

IRVINE: I’m not sure if
there are different challenges. I think that people, in a lot of ways, have given up on adult criminals. In a lot
of ways I find research on adults challenging because it’s hard to engage a public, or to find a source of sympathy
for adult criminals. I think that what’s actually exciting about doing research in the juvenile justice arena
is that we have the possibility of engaging sympathy for different populations of youth who are engaged in the system.
I think if you look at girls in the juvenile justice system, researchers have done a really good job of sort of highlighting
the links between past traumatic experiences and how that drives young people into the juvenile justice system, and
how therefore we, as a society, need to take responsibility for creating firewalls so that girls who have experienced
trauma don’t end up in the juvenile justice system. And what I’m really interested in, moving forward, is thinking
about ways to engage the public in becoming more sympathetic to boys of color who are in the juvenile justice system
who’ve also experienced trauma.

WOLF: One thing I hear you saying is that there’s
a greater, perhaps, societal interest in research of justice programs that focus on youth, and that is because it’s
easier to have empathy for youth?

IRVINE: I think so, yes, compared to adults.

WOLF: And is it also because there’s this general sense that there’s a greater possibility
of rehabilitation?

IRVINE: I think that there is so much fear of boys of color, in particular—in
public schools, in public spaces, and so I’m not sure how much the general public thinks about wanting to rehabilitate
that population. In theory I think that the juvenile court system was developed to rehabilitate young people in a
different way than the adult criminal justice system has been, but I think that we’re caught in a little bit of a
quagmire right now. If you look from the ’80s on, I think that that’s when super-predators in urban Chicago,
urban New York, started to take over media. You know –

WOLF: Like “wilding,” that kind
of thing?

IRVINE: Yeah, exactly. And I think that it’s really important for us
to sort of stop the fear of those young people, and to try to move back in time, to a time when we really do think
of the juvenile justice system as different than the adult criminal justice system, and a system that does seriously
invest in the rehabilitation of those young people, because they’re all our kids.

WOLF:
And do you think researchers have a role to play in helping to change that orientation?

IRVINE:
Researcher always have a role in identifying which program should be invested in. So if researchers identify programs
that effectively reduce recidivism or improve graduation rates, I think that the government, the federal government,
state governments always justify their investment in programs based on research. I think that it’s really important
to think about who the researchers should be doing this work. I think it’s really important that we try to recruit
researchers of color who come from the neighborhoods where we are arresting most of the people, so that we can have
a richer discussion about what the findings are, but also have a richer discussion about what the possible solutions
are because in my experience, researchers who are more familiar with low-income communities of color come up with
more realistic solutions in terms of effectively changing behavior, essentially.

WOLF:
You’ve done a lot of research with lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender youth, and they face a number of
problems that make...