← Youth Justice Transformation in Action
Youth Justice Transformation in Action
Bridging the Gap: Exploring Emerging Adulthood Research, Outcomes, and Effective Strategies
00:40:00
Loading summary
Transcript35 lines
- [00:00]
Lisa Jacobs
Foreign.
- [00:06]
Jody Martin
Welcome to Season three of Youth Justice Transformation in Action. We are the RFK National Resource center for Juvenile justice and we are on a mission to transform the youth justice system by partnering with people like you who are passionate about improving outcomes for youth, families and communities you serve. I'm Jody Martin, Deputy Executive Director.
- [00:26]
John Toole
And I'm John Toole, Executive Director. As we embark on Season three of Youth Justice Transformation in Action, we're diving deeper into crucial areas that shape our approach to juvenile justice. This season, we're thrilled to explore special topics that have a profound impact on the lives of young people within the justice system, including the complexities of emerging adults, the pivotal role of family engagement, the transformative power of growth, focused case management, and many more. Through insightful discussions, expert interviews and real life stories, we aim to shed light on innovative practices, challenges and opportunities in the realm of youth justice. Together, let's continue our journey toward creating a more fair, just and supportive system for our youth, families and communities.
- [01:12]
Jody Martin
In today's episode, Bridging the Gap, Exploring Emerging Adulthood, Research Outcomes and Effective Strategies, John engages in a thought provoking conversation with Lisa Jacobs, the Associate Director of the Legislation and Policy Clinic at Loyola University Chicago School of Law. Together, Lisa and John delve into the critical distinctions between adolescence, emerging adulthood and full adulthood, contemplating the necessity for legal and youth serving systems to adapt to the unique needs of young people between the ages of 17 and 24. Listen as they explore what it truly means to navigate this pivotal stage of life and strive to get it right in supporting emerging adults along their journey. Journey John Take it away.
- [01:53]
John Toole
Welcome everyone to Season three of our podcast series for the Robert F. Kennedy National Resource center for Juvenile Justice. We are privileged today to welcome a guest, a longtime colleague, an expert in the field in so many areas, and a good friend, Lisa Jacobs. Lisa, welcome. Could you introduce yourself to the audience, tell us a little bit about your current title and role and experience in the field.
- [02:17]
Lisa Jacobs
Good afternoon. It's great to be with you. I am a lawyer by training, but I feel like I've had the best legal career in the world because it has taken me through the judicial branch, the executive branch, and working on legislation and policy in Illinois over the last couple decades plus. And today I'm a Clinical professor of Law at Loyola University Chicago's Law School in our Child Law center where I focus on legislation and policy around areas of the law that affect children, families, young people and young adults. So really that portfolio can be very, very broad, but really with a focus on the areas of law that affect Families and communities across the state and across the country.
- [03:04]
John Toole
Thank you, Lisa, and indeed welcome. Today we're going to be focused on what is often called emerging adults and draw from your experience, your expertise, and your perspectives for the audience to learn a little bit more about emerging adults in our youth justice systems. But before we actually get into that level of expertise, I really am interested. What drew you to the field of youth justice?
- [03:26]
Lisa Jacobs
Law? Students sometimes ask me that question, and I have to answer honestly that it wasn't my plan. I didn't know what I wanted to do when I graduated from law school, and I ended up working in the domestic Relations division of the Circuit Court of Cook county, which is at that time, and I think still the largest unified court system in the country. So a massive, massive court system. And I was working in the domestic relations division, and I really saw firsthand as a young lawyer how those systems, how that court system, how that statute and that area of law really fundamentally affected people's lives. And that's where I first realized the power of these legal systems that we have created to affect the lives of families and then our whole communities. And that's really where I got the bug, to think deeply about how we've constructed laws, the laws we've written, how those play out in the lives of young people and their parents and caregivers and their families, and really trying to understand what it would look like to get it right. Also, in that first job, I had the opportunity to work with the best of the best, the best judges who cared deeply about what was happening to families in our courtrooms, and the lawyers who cared deeply about their clients and the clients on the other side of the courtroom, and to really see the power of lawyers and advocates to do good and also the harm that still happened even when we were trying our best to do good. So that's where it kind of started. And from there, I went on to work in youth programs and youth services in our state Department of Human Services, which I think is, John, where I first met you many years ago, and supporting our state advisory group, the Illinois Juvenile Justice Commission, and interacting with OJJDP at the federal level around issues of youth justice. That's where I really first started to understand the juvenile legal system, which is related to, but in some ways different than our family legal system. But that's really where I started to understand the impact and the reach of the juvenile justice system or the juvenile legal system. And from there, I've been hooked. And I also had a chance to work for our Illinois Supreme Court overseeing the state's judicial education programs. And I will say, although that responsibility included all areas of law, what really always had my heart was the areas of law that affected people the most, in their families, in their homes, in their communities. And so everything sort of keeps coming back to youth justice. And now where I've landed with Loyola and the amazing colleagues at the Child Law center and our really remarkable students at the Child Loss center and beyond at Loyola, again focusing on how the law intersects with the lives of young people and families. So I didn't plan it, but it turns out everything, when you look backward, really does center around our legal systems and their impact on people.
- [06:32]
John Toole
Well, indeed, Lisa, that is a rich history. We did meet when you were working, as I was, in the Models for Change, Systems Reform and Juvenile Justice Initiative. You already had an impressive background, but your law degree resulted in you developing policy practice program approaches that improve the lives of youth and their families, for the most part, across the state of Illinois. But you've also served our interests at the RFK National Resource center through your consultation skills for many jurisdictions across the country as well. It is a rich body of expertise, and we're anxious to mine it, particularly today with regard to emerging adults. If you could for the audience. How do you define what we are terming emerging adults?
- [07:14]
Lisa Jacobs
The short answer to that question is 18 ish to 25 ish. You'll hear the ish, and that's doing a lot of work in that definition, and hopefully that'll become clear why that is. But the short answer is 18 to 25 or so, and there's a much longer answer to what a young adult is or an emerging adult. And even where that term comes from, when we look at the overlap between social science and developmental psychology and neuroscience, just two disciplines that really affect what we know about how we define emerging adulthood and the implications for our legal systems across the country. So 18 to 25 ish is the definition.
- [07:56]
John Toole
So I'm taking a quote from, I believe, some information that you frequently refer to. But the paradigm around this 18 ish to 25 ish over the last decade, plus perhaps, or at least there's an emphasis on shifting that, and it really does identify that previous ways of thinking about the emerging adults no longer works. And there was a hunger for a new conceptualization to impact this population. So can you talk a little bit about what that new conceptualization looks like, Lisa?
- [08:30]
Lisa Jacobs
Sure. And I think when we look at the developmental science and the social science around human development, adolescent development, I think it's really interesting, just what you said, that the term and concepts for emerging adulthood are fairly recent. But the leaders in developmental science were really hinting at the fact that the way we thought about childhood and adulthood weren't working. We needed a new construct, a new way to think about this. As far back as the 60s, Erik Erickson was talking about there being something between adolescence and adulthood. He used terms like prolonged adolescence, during which there was a psychosocial moratorium on responsibilities. In the 70s, Keniston was talking about again this period between adolescence and adulthood as a time when there was tension between the individual and society and that many young people just weren't ready for what he called socialization. Daniel Levinson in the late 70s talked about the age between 17 and 30 or so as a novice phase of adulthood, during which time we're seeking stability in our identity, we're figuring out who we are, especially in relation to our peers and the world around us. And it wasn't until an article in American Psychologist in May of 2000 that Jeffrey Jensen Arnett first used the term emerging adulthood and first said, I'm going to just lay out this new theory of development in the social sciences. And he said, there's a quote in that article. He said, I propose a new theory of development from the late teens through the 20s. So you can see where that ish comes in the late teens through the 20s, with a focus on ages 18 to 25. This is not adolescence nor adulthood, but it's theoretically and empirically distinct from them both. When many different directions in life remain possible, when little about the future has been decided for certain, and when the scope of independent exploration of life's possibilities is greater for most people than it will be at any other period during their life course. So that's what Jeffrey Jensen Arnett said he was talking about. And he called this emerging adulthood. And one of the most striking quotes in that article that I often refer to and I think about, and I think when we're talking criminal, legal and juvenile legal responses to young people. He said, when adults later consider the most important events in our lives, we most often talk about things that happened during emerging adulthood. So it's a really profound period of development when what happens to us and what we experience shapes our life's course.
- [11:25]
John Toole
This shift has also been informed by the synthesis of the adolescent brain science as well. So toward the shift or the better methodology that might have a greater impact on this population, how has the brain science informed these opportunities?
- [11:42]
Lisa Jacobs
I think it's really notable when Social sciences and neuroscience, for example, or physical science, or what some people called hard science, when they overlap so clearly and tell us so clearly the same things we really ought to be taking note in law and policy. And the developmental science and the neuroscience, I think, are very, very much in alignment here. And the short answer there is the neuroscience makes it crystal clear that our brains are not fully developed. The mid-20s at least. And depending on what's happened in our lives, especially the impact of trauma, for example, it may be even later that our brains continue to develop and adapt to our surroundings. So this is where the neuroscience and the developmental science are right on par. We're talking about maturation that continues well into the 20s.
- [12:33]
John Toole
And so some of the behavioral characteristics that you would assign to emerging adults based on that science, how do those emerge in the conversation about this population?
- [12:43]
Lisa Jacobs
Lisa Some of the headlines that policymakers and practitioners in this field, juvenile justice or criminal justice specifically, really need to understand from the neuroscience is that different parts of our brain mature at different phases. It's not like our brain and all of its regions with all of its functions comes online all at the same time. Different parts of our brain are maturing at different stages. What that can tell us is that maturity in one area of our brain, or specifically one type of function, doesn't necessarily mean maturation or maturity in another. And one example of that is that cognitive maturity or intelligence, you know, the ability to take in new information, so things like speaking languages or I always often think back to what I was attempting to do at this age. Physics and organic chemistry, like our brains are really attuned to being able to acquire that information and synthesize and hold onto it. Very intelligent during this period of development. It doesn't tell us anything about developmental maturity and the kind of behaviors that we might exhibit. Another thing that tends to be really counterintuitive for practitioners, I think, and sometimes policymakers, is that physical maturity tells us nothing about the developmental capacity of a younger young person. We can be physically mature in adolescence or emerging adulthood and not developmentally mature. And that seems kind of like a no brainer, but it isn't. It's something that I think trips us up a lot, is thinking about young adults being physically mature, sometimes strong, and looking very mature in a courtroom or in a probation office, for example, but just not being developmentally mature yet. The last thing I really want to add into this category of headlines from the neuroscience is that many serious psychological disorders emerge for the first time during this period of life. So things like bipolar Disorder or anxiety disorders or schizophrenia, for example. Those serious psychological disorders are starting to emerge during this phase of young adulthood. And we can see the ramifications pretty clearly for criminal legal systems in interacting with young people experiencing the first onset of serious mental health disorders, as well as caring for them if they are system involved. So those are some of the big headlines from the neuroscience. And we can dig in to each one of those, I think further and have to as practitioners in these systems, but those are the headlines.
- [15:20]
John Toole
Excellent explanation. I think it's time during this conversation to include the synthesis of the findings that were included in certain Supreme Court decisions did not speak to an absence of accountability in this equation, but they did speak to diminished culpability during this period of development. For much of our audience, when we share these concepts, they would argue, you're just talking about we don't need to hold them accountable or we can't hold them accountable. That is not the discussion that you would promulgate around emerging adults, nor interpret from this science, is it?
- [15:56]
Lisa Jacobs
Not at all. I mean, I think what we're talking about is understanding the origins of some of the behaviors that can get young people in trouble. We've talked about the developmental science a little bit, but the neuroscience is also really crystal clear that the structure and function of the maturing brain has an impact on the kind of behaviors we should expect to see. One of them is just this ability to self regulate. And the neuroscience and then the science that flows from it tells us that young adults just aren't quite there when it comes to self regulation. Our brain is maturing, which gives us the capacity to use all of those regions of the brain which I mentioned, specifically the prefrontal cortex, to anticipate the impact of our actions, to understand the effect of our behaviors and what we do on other people. So we're increasingly able to self regulate and make good decisions, but it's not there yet till our brain is fully mature. A second thing that the neuroscience tells us we should expect to see in young adults is being exquisitely attuned to rewards. The idea that something novel might happen or a really intense experience, for example, thrill seeking. We should expect to see that among young adults because our brains are attuned to that possibility of these sensations and what are perceived as immediate rewards. So during this age, risk is attractive, it just is. And we see it in all of the data from the insurance industry. For example, we know that risky behaviors like binge drinking are highest in emerging adulthood. Risky sexual behaviors, unprotected sex, those Behaviors are highest in young adulthood. And drag racing, driving dangerously, for example, all of those behaviors, because our brains are attuned to risk and thrill and sensation. But that's decreasing as we mature and as we get into our mid-20s. The last thing that is really important to understand about young adult behavior is this response to arousal. So young adults, we should expect them to respond in a lot of ways like younger teenagers, to things like aggression or anger, especially among peers, disapproval of peers. So we should just be expecting young adults to respond like younger teenagers and less like mature adults, to arousing situations. All of that tells us that young adults can get themselves in trouble in ways that are not indicative of their character or who they're going to be when they fully mature. And I think that's exactly what the Supreme Court was cautioning us about in their youth decisions.
- [18:46]
John Toole
And I think in many of our social environments, where those triggers are present around every corner, that violence is an attraction that can produce some tragic outcomes for many of our youth at this stage of their lives. I would argue also, Lisa, that what you just laid out suggests that there's a range from early adolescence, which is also ill defined by the science, but early adolescence, to 25ish, given what we see in the way systems operate, which is to flip a switch when you're 18 and expect that you just move from the youth justice into the criminal justice system. It doesn't align with what the science is suggesting, how we might achieve the greatest amount of success in intervening with those 18 ish to 25 ish population your work supports, as we laid out at the outset, reform that involves laws, that involves policies and practices for this population. Can you pivot a little bit and provide some examples of the good news around addressing emerging adults?
- [19:52]
Lisa Jacobs
And I think the good news abounds, including the good news of emerging adulthood. So, so far, I've really focused on some of the aspects of development, social development, and brain development that make emerging adulthood risky. But the converse is also true. And Lawrence Steinberg, in his work around this population of youth, for example, in writing about it, he really talks about adolescence as a time of tremendous opportunity, and then urges us to remember that in this context, we're talking about adolescents reaching into the mid-20s. So when we think about things like risk taking, thinking about things like impulsivity, and being really attuned to peer influence, those are risky things that can get young adults in trouble. But it's also exactly what we're supposed to be doing during that period of life. We're Supposed to be building relationships with peers and figuring out how we relate to peers. You know, when I look at law students, for example, that I'm teaching, many of them have moved across the country without knowing anyone to study the law, to do what it is that they are going to do for the rest of their lives. That's a big risk, right? Like, I'm not sure I would take those kind of risks during at the age I am. But that's the kind of risk you're taking when you're a young adult. You're meeting new people, you're experiencing new things, you're trying new things. So it's that kind of opportunity and potential that young adults bring us, even when they've made mistakes and been in contact with the law. So that's one of the very, very that I think we have to remember. And I think your reference to the Supreme Court jurisprudence around youth is very applicable to young adults. There is no magic line at 18, even though many of our legal systems draw a bright line at 18. But we've got a time of tremendous opportunity working with young adults in contact with our systems well above the age of 18.
- [21:51]
John Toole
So, Lisa, I've looked at some of the outcomes for this emerging adult population. And currently probation revocations for age 17 to 25 has higher rates of revocation than all others in the criminal justice system. Reconvictions on three years post discharge significantly higher. Nearly double failed in drug treatment. This population more so than all others, even in the prison population of 17 to 24. Higher re arrests for violent offenses and higher returns to prison within three years for this young adult population. You're laying out an incredibly solid foundation for a new paradigm, a new way to look at these youth, these young people, these emerging adults that might give us a better chance of success in working with these youth. So it's hard to refute that there might be a better way given those kind of data. What are some of the key components of that better way that you would include in that paradigm or in that which would provide supports to emerging adults?
- [22:55]
Lisa Jacobs
So before I answer that question, I'm going to take a step backward and really say that I think you're spot on to focus on the data. And one of the first things that we see is that a lot of places across the country don't know what their data can tell them about young adults. So let's just create stark borders. 18 to 25, for example. Most places don't break out their data and look at young adulthood. And when you Do. What we see is data everywhere. It might look slightly differently, a few percentage points differently, but the pattern that emerges is really clear about the urgency, the urgency of getting it right with young adults. Because one of the first things the data tells us is the really significant overrepresentation at every single stage of contact. From arrest to jail admissions to probation caseloads, court caseloads, incarceration or prison caseloads and reentry caseloads. At every single point of contact, we see young adults significantly overrepresented, usually at about twice their rate in the general population. So I think when people really crack open their data, they'll see this significant overrepresentation. Another thing that we should expect to see is significant racial disparities that are even more pronounced and more profound when it comes to emerging adults than the rest of the criminal legal population that they're looking at. And so those are just two really stark lessons from the data right off the bat that tell us how urgent it is to get it right. The second thing is exactly what you referenced. Most places do not know what their outcomes are with young adults simply because we don't differentiate between all other adults in 18 to 25. When we do, we see exactly what you are alluding to, that our outcomes are worse across the board for young adults. And it is, it's things like higher rates of probation revocation and reincarceration if they were incarcerated, failure in treatment programs of different kinds. And I think here the tendency, if we're not careful, is to think that that tells us about young adults and their failings. And certainly what we just talked about in terms of the developmental science tells us that young adults are different in some key ways than either younger adolescents or older adults. But that kind of data around so called failures I think tells us as much or more about our systems and the fact that we have not yet tailored them to have success with young adults and to tap into that malleability of young adulthood and really that traumatic tremendous promise and potential of young adulthood. And when our systems don't do that, whether it's in law for things like diverting as many young adults as possible from prosecution and incarceration, when we fail to tailor our legal responses, our programmatic responses, it really shouldn't be any surprise that we see those poor outcomes across.
- [25:57]
John Toole
The board and you've captured the diversion opportunities are coupled with targeted interventions that will ameliorate the future risk. It's not only one or the other, it's in combination. If we're going to be successful with that front end decision point ultimately, Lisa, and thanks for pivoting back there. That's very important information. Let me ask just flat out your opinion on that, which the research seems to support. So what would you say would enable us to get it right when we're interacting with this population?
- [26:27]
Lisa Jacobs
One of the most important ways I think of getting it right is keeping young adults out of our system altogether. And it's one of the lessons from the juvenile justice work that you referenced early on. I think juvenile justice stakeholders and policymakers and legislators and probation officers all recognize the importance of not involving adolescents so younger teenagers in these systems, if at all. And we've developed a lot of strategies, both legal and programmatic, to keep younger adolescents out of the system altogether. And then I think in the juvenile system we've done a better job of tailoring responses to the development of younger adolescents and then focusing on getting them out and keeping them out safely. And I think there's a lot of lessons for young adults and policy making around young adulthood there too. But I don't want to lose sight of that lesson around the importance of front end interventions and deflections and diversion.
- [27:27]
John Toole
Again, it's a great point. There's such a polarized discussion across our nation at this point about some of the circumstances confronting communities and community safety. It loses the balance of what it is that you're presenting. This front end opportunity is still a very real opportunity to impact this portion of our youth population, our young adult, emerging adult population. I'll say this. I think there's room for our youth justice and criminal justice system to respond to certain offenders, certain youth that make mistakes and break the law. There is room and there is proven, effective methodologies for us to impact those youth and protect community safety and attend to victims rights. What we're talking about is another part of that equation that focuses on the larger portion of the population that doesn't need that heaviest hand of our sanctions. And I think what you've laid out, Lisa, is just a very sane approach based on the research, the science, the evidence. You made a reference here, and I just want to get your comment on this. You made a reference to what we've learned from the youth justice system, certainly around the adolescent brain science. But what getting it right includes is that we are concerned about the safety of those youth and the safety of communities. We're concerned about their peer relationships because they still have that impact. I can run down several factors that are foremost among the way in which we intervene with youth justice population it's pro social opportunities, it's engagement of those youth. It's truly a rewards approach. Do you say that's part of the equation that can still be applied to the emerging adults as well for a best practice fit?
- [29:04]
Lisa Jacobs
Absolutely. So I think one of the pieces of challenging news is we don't have a full portfolio of so called evidence based practices with young adults, not yet. So that's the challenge. The good news is I think that there is momentum building among practitioners around getting it right with young adults. Just one way we see that is the national scans. My colleague Sarah Free, who was a law student at Loyola at the time, and I were able to do a national scan of emerging adult law policy practice and programs across the country in 2021 that was done in partnership with the National League of Cities and that built on a prior national scan done about five years earlier. The good news is there's incredible momentum around law and policy and programs focused on the unique characteristics, challenges and opportunities that young adulthood presents to us. So the good news is there's a lot of building momentum. The challenge is, I think two. One is that, as I just mentioned, there's not a lot of evidence based practices yet. And the second is it tends to be practices focused on youth who are already deeply enmeshed in the justice system. So it's things like problem solving, courts, or specialized correctional care and specialized reentry. Those are all really critical pieces of a continuum, critical pieces of getting it right. But we see this gap at the front end where we could keep more young adults out of our systems altogether if we focused on what brings them into contact with the system. And so when we look at that kind of data, we see things like family conflict, which again is very similar to what we see in youth justice and juvenile justice systems. Family conflicts drive young adults into contact, into arrest situations and scenarios, for example. So we could get it right if we better supported families who are in stress or experiencing crises without an arrest, without a system referral, without a stay in jail. What we know about young adults is what we know about all people, but particularly young adults and younger youth is contacts with our system are not benign. The experience is not benign. The experience of being arrested, either detained or placed in jail, for example, it's not a benign experience and it causes trauma and exacerbates the trauma that so many young people have already experienced. So if we can avoid that altogether, not to mention the obstacles that are created by getting arrest records or system records when we're in young adulthood, so we Have a lot of opportunity to build on what we do on the front end while also doing better with youth who are already involved in our systems. There's been some really exciting work in Cook county and beyond where we were looking at. Okay, so what do system involve young adults need? And one of the really striking findings from this work is that so many young adults who are involved in our legal systems need survival resources. So this is where young adults and younger adolescents are actually different. There are parents or caregivers who are legally required to care for a youth. They don't always get it right, and our child welfare systems don't always get it right. But there's somebody who's responsible for caring for that young person. At 18, there usually isn't anyone. And so so many of our system involved young people need survival resources, housing, food, mental health and trauma responsive care before they can begin to engage in our system responses and the kind of programming that we might make available.
- [32:50]
John Toole
That's a really key observation, Lisa. I appreciate you sharing that. Can you comment on impact of procedural justice about getting it right as well?
- [32:59]
Lisa Jacobs
Absolutely. We just talked about the need to be attentive to survival and safety for young adults who are system involved. I would say immediately after that, then we have to be attentive to how our systems feel for young adults and whether they feel fair and just. There's a really tremendous body of research around procedural justice and how important it is for people going through legal systems of any kind. I mentioned family law cases or traffic cases, whatever they may be. For young adults, procedural justice is critical. And what that means, in a nutshell, is that our systems have to be and feel fair. Which also tells us that coercion is just not likely to be successful for young adults to force them to do things for fear of punishment. Fairness is going to go a long way toward getting young adults to engage in the way we want them to and access the kind of services and supports. Respect of young adults and who they are and how they want to be seen is going to be much more effective than trying to exert power over them. So respect in comparison to exercising power. And lastly, something that I think is really hard for systems to do is to show that we care about what happens to young adults in these systems. And sometimes caring is seen as a luxury. It's not efficient, so to speak. If young adults don't feel cared about in all of their interactions with our systems, from the very front end to court status hearings, for example, conversations with probation officers, the interactions they have with treatment providers, for example, if they don't feel cared about as humans, we're really unlikely to have the kind of better outcomes that we seek. And I think it's one of the reasons our systems are not really set up to do these things, to be fair and respectful and exhibit caring. And it's one of the reasons that I think we don't get the good outcomes with young adults that we should be seeking.
- [35:05]
John Toole
Lisa, an incredible wealth of information. I would argue what you have laid out is research, informed, research based. There's evidence, there's data. It's a thoughtful approach. It's smart, not soft, as some may allege. We want results for this emerging adult population. We want positive results. And I think what you've laid out are critical concepts on the ground practices and a paradigm or a schematic for people to consider certain questions around this population and begin to construct successful approaches to the emerging adult population. I think you've offered the audience a lot to think about, and I'd ask for your notion of what else might you lay out for the audience as they try to move forward in addressing emerging adults with success?
- [35:50]
Lisa Jacobs
Well, I think we've talked about the urgency that becomes clear when we look at the data, the urgency that's clear when we think about the developmental science and what it tells us about young adults and the reasons that they can get themselves in trouble, but also how we can build on the promise of young adults. And I think I come back to what folks in the field in communities tell us about working with young adults, and that is this idea of relentless engagement, meeting young adults where they are recognizing their state of development, so to speak, as well as just the promise that so many young adults have, even when they've made mistakes, and the obligations of those of us working in systems to engage with them over and over and provide the kind of supports they need, building relationships with them, supporting the relationships they have with their communities. If we know anything from the research about young adulthood, it's the power of relationships to support young adults and to build and bring out that potential. So I would really hope that in the next phase of law and policy and practice, we shift away from punitive responses because they're not necessary and they really don't work to get us the kind of outcomes we want, not just for young adults, but for their families and for our communities across the country. So to shift away from this punitive approach and really focus on engaging with young adults to build the potential they have when we get it right with young adults we all reap the benefits for decades to come.
- [37:30]
John Toole
Thank you, Lisa. I want to close out giving you a little more bandwidth or a little more range to share your incredible history of commitment and passion to the youth justice system to these emerging adults. Just let the audience know, if you could change one thing about youth justice, what would it be?
- [37:46]
Lisa Jacobs
To remember again that young people, whether they're younger adolescents or frankly even children, because so many of our systems like Illinois have no minimum age of bringing children into these systems. So children, youth, young adults, emerging adults, really remembering that they are not fully mature adults in miniature. And we have to craft law and policy accordingly to treat young people as the individuals they are and to really maximize the potential they have. So that's what I would hope Youth justice continues to do and really increases the focus on in the years ahead.
- [38:26]
John Toole
We want to thank Lisa for a long standing partnership with the RFK National Resource center and the youth justice system at large. Lisa's expertise has enlightened the field on behalf of dual status youth diversion and alternatives to formal prosecution, fairness and procedural justice, and overall probation and youth justice system reform. Her dedication and passionate concern for our nation's youth and families is unmatched and we are grateful for her information and knowledge shared in today's podcast episode.
- [38:55]
Jody Martin
And that wraps up this episode of the Youth Justice Transformation in Action podcast. Before we go, we want to remind you that the publications mentioned throughout our podcast and our entire online resource library are available on our website at www.rfknrcjj.org. we make all of our publications and resources available for free to support the transformation of youth justice in all communities communities. We'd also love to receive your feedback about the podcast and to connect with you on social media. Links to our website, contact info and social media accounts are available in the Show Notes. If you enjoy the podcast, we'd be grateful for your support. Please take a moment to leave us a five star rating and a review on your favorite listening platform and share the podcast with your network. Thank you for joining us today.
- [39:45]
John Toole
SA.