Juvenile justice reform should start with decisions young people can understand

When we talk about juvenile justice reform, the conversation quickly moves to big questions: What should the minimum age be? Should diversion be expanded? When can a young person’s case move to adult criminal court? What role should restorative justice play? Those questions matter. But my comparative review of juvenile justice laws in 10 states suggests a more immediate test:

Do young people understand what happens next?

That is not an abstract demand for cleaner drafting. For a teenager — and often for a parent, guardian or other supportive adult — clarity about what will happen at the next decision point, who will make that decision and what can be done if the decision seems wrong can determine whether the young person sees an available option in time, understands its conditions, asks counsel the right question or seeks review. Whether family participation is required varies by jurisdiction and by the decision at issue, so the law should make that role clear rather than assume families know it.

Developmentally informed juvenile justice requires procedures that young people can realistically navigate at key points in the process. The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine’s 2019 report, “The Promise of Adolescence: Realizing Opportunity for All Youth,” describes adolescence as extending from approximately age 10 into the mid-20s and emphasizes that justice policies and practices should reflect ongoing development in decision-making, self-regulation and responsiveness to supportive interventions.

In practical terms, a developmentally informed process should make the decision-maker, criteria, consequences and available review understandable to the young person.

• Diversion. Diversion shows the problem clearly. States use deferred prosecution, consent calendars, informal supervision, civil citation, station adjustment and other mechanisms. But the existence of a diversion program does not tell us who actually gets access. The Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention’s review of diversion research underscores that diversion is meant to redirect youth away from formal processing, but the legal details still determine who can use that opportunity. Who screens the case? Are eligibility criteria written down? Must a denial be explained? Is participation voluntary? What happens after successful completion? A system can say it “has diversion” while leaving the most important access questions to local practice.
• Court assignment. The same is true when a case can move to adult court. Some jurisdictions rely principally on a judicial hearing. Others give prosecutors significant charging authority or use statutory exclusions that place specified cases in adult court by law. OJJDP has documented these three basic transfer structures. For a young person, the meaningful question is not simply whether the state “allows transfer.” It is who starts the process, what factors must be considered, whether an individualized hearing occurs, whether reasons are recorded and whether review is available.

Legislatures do not have to rewrite an entire juvenile code to make the system easier to navigate. They can focus on one decision point.

• Conduct a short visibility audit. Gather every governing rule and exception. Identify each decision-maker. Ask whether criteria are public, whether reasons are recorded, whether review exists and whether the state collects enough data to see how the rule is actually used.
• Ensure decision-point visibility across systems. That kind of audit matters beyond courts and lawyers. Young people often move across schools, child welfare, behavioral health services and community programs at the same time. When legal status or the next step is unclear, errors travel across systems. A school counselor, caseworker or community provider may act on an assumption that no longer matches the young person’s legal position. Clear decision points make coordination easier because different professionals can work from the same map.

Consider a state that wants to expand diversion. Adding more eligible offenses is only part of the job. Reformers should also ask whether families can find the criteria, whether youth are told that participation is voluntary, whether denials are documented consistently across counties and whether completion produces a clear legal result. Those details determine whether reform is experienced as a real opportunity rather than a promise on paper.

[Related: Star Trek understands emerging adults better than policymakers do]

Federalism means the 50 states will continue to make different policy choices. That is not the problem. Different policies should not require young people to decipher hidden decision structures.

Before beginning the next major reform push, legislators, court administrators and leaders of youth-serving systems should pick one high-stakes decision point and look at it through a young person’s eyes.

If professionals cannot quickly answer which rule applies, who has authority, what criteria govern or how the decision can be reviewed, the first task may not be to rewrite the law but to clarify the decision structure.

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Hanna Kotyk is a comparative legal researcher and founder of Juvenile Justice Innovation Initiative LLC. Her work focuses on juvenile justice legislation, comparative law and the systematization of legal mechanisms affecting children and young people.