New Thinking in Community Corrections V E R I TAS

HARVARD Kennedy School

Program in Criminal Justice

Policy and Management

Executive Session on 

Community Corrections 

This is one in a series of papers that will be 

published as a result of the Executive Session on 

Community Corrections. 

The Executive Sessions at Harvard Kennedy 

School bring together individuals of independent 

standing who take joint responsibility for 

rethinking and improving society’s responses to 

an issue. Members are selected based on their 

experiences, their reputation for thoughtfulness 

and their potential for helping to disseminate the 

work of the Session. 

Members of the Executive Session on Community 

Corrections have come together with the aim of 

developing a new paradigm for correctional policy 

at a historic time for criminal justice reform. The 

Executive Session works to explore the role of 

community corrections and communities in the 

interest of justice and public safety. 

Learn more about the Executive Session on 

Community Corrections at: 

NIJ’s website: www.NIJ.gov, keywords “Executive 

Session Community Corrections” 

Harvard’s website: http://www.hks.harvard.edu/ 

criminaljustice/communitycorrections 

 

 

 

 

SEPTEMBER 2015 • NO. 1
 

Community-Based Responses to Justice-Involved Young Adults 

Vincent Schiraldi, Bruce Western and Kendra Bradner 

Foreword

This paper raises important questions about the 

criminal justice system’s response to young adults. 

Recent advances in behavior and neuroscience 

research confirm that brain development continues 

well into a person’s 20s, meaning that young adults 

have more psychosocial similarities to children 

than to older adults. This developmental distinction 

should help inform the justice system’s response to 

criminal behavior among this age group. 

Young adults comprise a disproportionately high 

percentage of arrests and prison admissions, and 

about half of all young adults return to prison within 

three years following release. At the Office of Justice 

Programs (OJP), we see the opportunity to reduce 

future criminal activity — and consequently the 

number of future victims — by having a justice 

system that appropriately responds to criminal 

behavior, helps young adults rebuild their lives, and 

is not overly reliant on incarceration. 

The authors outline a number of thoughtful 

recommendations aimed at making our justice 

system more developmentally appropriate in its 

response to young adults. At OJP, we are committed 

to collaborating with our local, state and tribal 

partners on this important issue so that we can help 

all of our communities become safer, stronger and 

more stable. 

Karol V. Mason 

Assistant Attorney General 

Office of Justice Programs 

U.S. Department of Justice 
Cite this paper as: Schiraldi, Vincent, Bruce Western and Kendra Bradner. 

Community-Based Responses to Justice-Involved Young Adults. New Thinking 

in Community Corrections Bulletin. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of 

Justice, National Institute of Justice, 2015. NCJ 248900.

 

 

2 | New Thinking in Community Corrections 

Introduction and History 

In the late 1800s, the Progressive movement 

mounted a campaign on behalf of America’s 

children. Child labor laws, kindergartens and 

compulsory schooling were proposed to draw 

a new generation of immigrants into American 

society and open social opportunities to 

their children. This movement — to expand 

opportunity for disadvantaged youth and 

integrate them into the mainstream of social life 

— also spawned the juvenile court. 

The juvenile court of the early 20th century 

represented a clear alternative to adult criminal 

justice. The new court relaxed the adversarial 

posture of court procedure, was built on a 

jurisprudence of diminished capacity and 

rehabilitation, provided individualized case 

management, guarded youthful lawbreakers’ 

confidentiality, and relied overwhelmingly on 

community-based supervision instead of the 

penitentiary. The early juvenile court recognized 

that childhood was a distinct stage of life for which 

different procedures and solutions were needed. 

The objective of the court was unapologetically 

progressive: to help build citizenship and social 

membership, and promote opportunity for a 

disadvantaged population still at the starting gate 

of the life course. 

These reformers set the age jurisdiction of these 

juvenile courts at around 18, based on the mores 

of the time. However, over a century’s worth of 

experience, along with more recent research on 

adolescent brain development, now enables us 

to better understand the adolescent maturation 

process and demonstrates the need to revisit this 

strict adherence to an outmoded understanding 

of maturity to adulthood. This new research 

shows that the brain and its capacity for mature 

decision-making continue to evolve well past 

the teenage years. It also shows that brain 

development is disrupted and slowed for those 

exposed to trauma in childhood. 

The passage to actual adulthood has also shifted 

over time. Particularly for disadvantaged youth, 

this transition now unfolds more slowly. Young 

adults are more detached from the socializing 

institutions of work and family, and more 

dependent on advanced education, than in 

previous decades. 

Our new understanding of the developmental 

process through young adulthood and historical 

shifts in the early life course demand new kinds 

of institutions. Young adults are malleable, and 

systematic changes that positively affect their 

lives can have long-lasting, perhaps permanent 

impacts on them and, subsequently, on their 

communities. 

In this paper, we propose a different kind of 

criminal justice for young men and women. We 

propose new institutional methods and processes 

for young adult justice, for those ages 18 to 24, 

that can meet the realities of life for today’s 

disadvantaged youth involved in crime and the 

criminal justice system. What we envision seeks 
Community-Based Responses to Justice-Involved Young Adults | 3 

to extend the reach of the juvenile court while also 

using it as a basis for a new system that reflects 

a modern understanding of the transition into 

adulthood. Our central recommendation is that the 

age of juvenile court jurisdiction be raised to at least 

21 years old1 with additional, gradually diminishing 

protections for young adults up to age 24 or 25. 

Such a system recognizes the diminished capacity 

for responsible decision-making in youth while 

harnessing the opportunities presented by their 

ability to grow, adapt and change. Additionally, 

such a system would recognize the diminished 

opportunities and greater demands that now face 

young adults, particularly in the disadvantaged 

communities that supply the adult correctional 

system. 

Like the juvenile court of the early Progressive 

era, this justice system for young adults aims to 

promote opportunity as much as public safety. It 

aims to integrate young men and women into the 

mainstream institutions of work and family while 

building robust public safety in poor communities 

to foster order and predictability in daily life. 

Because the goal of young adult justice is socially 

integrative, it is primarily community-based, 

providing supervision and programming amid the 

social institutions that can ultimately draw young 

men and women into prosocial adult roles. 

Why Young Adults Are a 

Distinct Population 

Recent neurological research shows that brain 

development for adolescents continues well 

into young adulthood, and the decision-making 

capacity of young adults shares much with the 

impulsiveness of younger teenagers. Moreover, the 

transition from childhood to adulthood has slowed 

in some respects and has become more challenging, 

particularly for young disadvantaged men. New 

research on young adult development and historical 

changes in the transition to adulthood motivate a 

new, community-based strategy for young adults 

in the criminal justice system. 

Brain Development in Young Adults 

Young adults are developmentally distinct from 

older adults. Recent scientific work suggests that 

the human brain continues to develop well into 

the 20s, particularly in the prefrontal cortex region, 

which regulates impulse control and reasoning 

(Giedd et al., 1999; Paus et al., 1999; Sowell et 

al., 1999, 2011; Gruber and Yurgelun-Todd, 2006; 

Johnson, Blum and Giedd, 2009; Konrad, Firk and 

Uhlhaas, 2013; Howell et al., 2013). Several studies 

suggest that people do not develop adult-quality 

decision-making until their early 20s (Scott and 

Steinberg, 2003; Barriga, Sullivan-Cossetti and 

Gibbs, 2009; Bryan-Hancock and Casey, 2010), and 

others have shown that psychosocial capacities 

continue to mature even further into adulthood 

(Steinberg, 2007; Colwell et al., 2005; Grisso and 

Steinberg, 2003; Cauffman and Steinberg, 2000). 

Moffitt characterized this gap between cognitive 

and psychosocial capacities as the “maturity gap,” 

where cognitive function develops in advance of 

the executive function (Moffitt, 1993; Galambos, 

Barker and Tilton-Weaver, 2003). Because of this, 

young adults are more likely to engage in riskseeking behavior, have difficulty moderating their 

responses in emotionally charged situations, or 

have not fully developed a future-oriented method 
4 | New Thinking in Community Corrections 

of decision-making (Monahan et al., 2009; Mulvey 

et al., 2004). 

This group is also distinct, though less so, from 

juveniles. For one, cognitive function is, on 

average, more developed for this age group than 

for juveniles; within this age group, 24-year-olds 

have more developed cognitive functioning than, 

say, 18-year-olds. However, despite the increased 

cognitive development, they are more likely to 

engage in risk-seeking behavior than juveniles, 

which places them at higher risk for physical 

injury and at greater risk for becoming justiceinvolved (Steinberg, 2004, 2007). Furthermore, 

the social contexts that young adults operate 

within are different from those of juveniles: Young 

adults are more likely to be influenced by peer 

groups, have different sets of social expectations, 

develop a greater degree of independence 

from family, and have greater access both to 

employment opportunities and to alcohol or 

controlled substances. 

The transition to adulthood is especially 

challenging for young men and women who 

are involved in crime, as they are more likely to 

have personal histories that can further disrupt 

psychosocial development. Justice-involved 

individuals are more likely to have experienced 

a traumatic incident, including sustaining a 

traumatic brain injury (TBI) — more than twice 

as likely as the general population, by some 

measures (Wolff et al., 2013; prevalence of TBI 

among prisoners measured as high as 60 percent: 

Bridwell and MacDonald, 2014). In addition, 

justice-involved youth and young adults have 

a higher likelihood of parental incarceration, 

poverty, foster care, substance abuse, mental 

health needs and learning disabilities, all of 

which have been linked to impeding psychosocial 

maturity.2 Moffitt (2006) linked life-coursepersistent offending to harsh parenting practices, 

low IQ, hyperactivity, rejection at school and 

reinforcement of poor behavior. If young adults 

have a history of involvement with the juvenile 

justice system, there is a higher likelihood that 

they may be developmentally delayed or have 

untreated mental health needs (Sampson and 

Laub, 1997). 

The Changing Context of Adulthood 

Life-course criminologists see the transition to 

the adult roles of worker and householder as key 

stages on the path to criminal desistance. Steady 

employment, in the context of a stable family, 

builds routines in everyday life and develops a 

stake in conformity that ultimately diverts youth 

from crime. However, this transition to adulthood 

has changed in recent decades. Youth in their late 

teens and early 20s are more detached from the 

socializing institutions of work and family than 

in the past.3 Moreover, the dislocation of young 

adulthood is more prevalent among males, and 

disadvantaged males in particular. 

The transition to young adulthood has been 

transformed by the changing structure of the 

American family. U.S. marriage rates declined 

from the 1960s through the mid-1990s. These 

trends vary with race and income. Marriage rates 

have always been much lower among AfricanAmericans than whites, and the decline in 

marriage has been largest for African-American 
 

Community-Based Responses to Justice-Involved Young Adults | 5 

men and women. Most of the decline in marriage 

has been concentrated among low-income people 

with little schooling. As marriage rates have 

declined, the nonmarital birth rate and rates of 

single parenthood have increased (Ellwood and 

Jencks, 2004). In 2012, over 40 percent of all U.S. 

births were to unmarried mothers (Martin et al., 

2013). For young adults, these trends in marriage 

and single parenthood mean that more men were 

living separately from their children and their 

children’s mothers. These young nonresident 

fathers made up a large proportion of men with 

no more than a high school education, especially 

young African-American men with relatively 

little schooling. 

Although marriage and parenthood contribute 

greatly to the structure and routine of the daily 

life of young men without college education, 

the economic environment 

graduates, both black and white median earnings 

slightly increased. 

The subsequent detachment of young adults from 

mainstream institutions has been described as 

a problem of “disconnection.” We can define 

the proportion of disconnected youth as the 

fraction that were out of work and out of school.4 

We can measure the trend in disconnected young 

adults, ages 16 to 24, with census data showing 

the percentage of those out of work and out of 

school over a five-decade period from 1960 to 

2012 (see figures 1 and 2). Among young women 

in 1960, many who were out of work and out of 

school were married and at home, often raising 

children. The large decline in the fraction that 

were out of work and out of school reflects the 

increasing movement of young women into 

higher education and the increasing female 

has also become more difficult 

(Danziger and Ratner, 2010). 

Over the past four decades, the 

earnings of young men without 

college education have declined 

significantly. Among white noncollege men in their 20s and early 

30s, median earnings declined 

in real terms from over $40,000 

a year in 1973 to around $30,000 

a year in 2007. Among AfricanAmerican men of the same age 

and education, median earnings 

declined from about $34,000 to 

$25,000 a year in that same period. 

Among female high school 

Figure 1. Females out of school and not working, ages 16-24, by race and ethnicity, 

1960-2012 

Percent

50

40

30

20

10

0

White Black Hispanic

Source: Data for 1960 to 2000 are from the U.S. Census. Data for 2012 were taken from the American 

Communities Survey (ACS). Census and ACS microdata were obtained from Ruggles et al. (2012). 

1960 1970 1980 1990 2000 2012
 

6 | New Thinking in Community Corrections 

college education, particularly Figure 2. Males out of school and not working, ages 16-24, by race and ethnicity, 


1960-2012 young men of color with little
 

Percent schooling. It is in this group that 

50

incarceration has also increased 

most dramatically in the past 

40

two decades. These levels of 

demographic disconnectedness 

30

and the increasing need for 

higher education to compete 20

meaningfully in the labor market 

add to the neurobiological 10

findings, compounding the 

challenges for this age cohort. 0

White Black Hispanic Current Outcomes for 

Source: Data for 1960 to 2000 are from the U.S. Census. Data for 2012 were taken from the American Justice-Involved Youth 

Communities Survey (ACS). Census and ACS microdata were obtained from Ruggles et al. (2012). 

In 2012, over 200,000 young 

1960 1970 1980 1990 2000 2012

labor force participation rates. For young men, 

the trend in the percentage of those out of school 

and work can be more properly interpreted as a 

measure of disconnection. Among white men, the 

percentage disconnected has increased from 9.8 

to 14 percent from 1960 to 2012. Strikingly, among 

African-American young men, the percentage 

disconnected has significantly increased from 

less than 20 to 27 percent. These increases in 

“disconnectedness” are probably understated by 

these data; they exclude the much higher number 

of young men who are incarcerated today than 

were incarcerated in 1960. 

In short, historic shifts in the structure of daily 

life have left young adults more disconnected 

from the institutions of family and the labor 

market. The historically new challenges of young 

adulthood appear most serious for males without 

adults between the ages of 18 

and 24 either entered or left the prison system. 

Nearly 130,000 youths between the ages of 18 

and 24 were admitted to state or federal prison, 

21 percent of all admissions that year (Carson and 

Golinelli, 2013, appendix table 3). Another 97,500 

between the ages of 18 and 24 — 15 percent of 

all prison releasees — were released from state 

or federal prison back to their communities. For 

those who were released, the recidivism rates 

are significantly higher than for the population 

of prison releasees as a whole (Carson and 

Golinelli, 2013, appendix table 5). Roughly 78 

percent of those released will be rearrested 

within 3 years.5 Clearly, the current system is not 

effectively reducing future criminality among 

this age group. This matters, because relatively 

few justice-involved individuals commit their 

first offense past the age of 25, so the outcomes 
 

 

Community-Based Responses to Justice-Involved Young Adults | 7 

the same age, and nearly 2.5 times Figure 3. The ratio of black to white male imprisonment rates, by age group, 2012 

the rate for Hispanic men of the 

Age group same age. 

18-19 

20-24 

25-29 

30-34 

35-39 

40-44 

45-49 

50-54 

55-59 

60-64 

>64 < Race disparity for all ages 

These large disparities are the 

result of the high incarceration 

rate for minority men. More 

than 1 in 12 black men between 

20 and 24 were being held in a 

secure facility in 2010 (Glaze, 2011, 

appendix table 3). Cumulative 

risk of imprisonment is especially 

high for prime-age black men 

4 5 6 7 8 9 10 who dropped out of high school 

Source: Carson and Golinelli (2013, table 18). (Western and Pettit, 2010; 

for this population have large and long-lasting 

consequences for future offending, and for public 

safety as a whole. 

Rates of criminal justice system involvement 

are markedly higher for minorities, particularly 

young black men, than for other groups. Among 

men in prison in 2012, the black-to-white ratio 

in imprisonment rates was about 6:1 and the 

Hispanic-to-white ratio was almost 3:1. Carson 

and Golinelli reported figures showing that the 

black-white disparities are highest among the 

18-19 and 20-24 age cohorts (see figure 3). The rate 

of incarceration in 2012, either in state or federal 

prison, was more than 9 times greater for black 

males ages 18-19 than for white males of the same 

age, and nearly 3 times the rate for Hispanic men 

of the same age (Carson and Golinelli, 2013, table 

18). For black males ages 20-24, the incarceration 

rate was almost 7 times greater than for whites of 

Western, 2006). Nearly all of those 

incarcerated in the United States 

will be released back to the community eventually. 

In addition, the most recent estimates suggest 

that around 26 percent of those on probation are 

between the ages of 18 and 24 (around 1 million 

people) (Bonczar, 1997; Maruschak and Bonczar, 

2013). 

Justice-involved youth are likely to enter the 

justice system significantly behind their peers in 

many of the markers of adult life — attachment 

to work, stable relationships, housing, and 

educational attainment. They are more likely 

to have had a parent incarcerated or to have 

lived in a foster home, and more likely to report 

regular drug use than young adults in the 

general population.6 About 20 percent of young 

inmates report having some kind of disability. 

There is also a drastic difference in educational 

attainment between incarcerated populations 

and the general public. In the general public, 
 

8 | New Thinking in Community Corrections 

more than 70 percent of males ages 18-24 have 

attained at least a high school diploma or GED; 

among incarcerated men of the same age, the rate 

is less than 20 percent. Two-thirds (68 percent) 

of African-American male high school dropouts 

have been imprisoned by the time they reached 

age 35. 

Studies suggest that incarceration worsens these 

disadvantages, creating additional barriers to 

educational attainment, stable employment, 

housing, health care and relationships. The 

multiple disadvantages that these young people 

face suggest that correctional programming, both 

in secure facilities and in the community, must 

include more robust options than skills training 

alone. Young adults must also build the prosocial 

skills to succeed in adult roles — exercising 

impulse control, emotional self-regulation, 

and better interpreting others’ intentions — in 

addition to the technical skills of their work 

(Chung, Little and Steinberg, 2005). 

Young adults incarcerated in adult prisons are 

especially at risk for negative outcomes, as adult 

facilities often function as “schools for crime” 

where youths are “likely to learn social rules and 

norms that [legitimate] domination, exploitation, 

and retaliation” (Bishop and Frazier, 2000: 263­

264; see also Howell et al., 2013). For those who 

spend part or all of their transition to adulthood 

incarcerated, they miss out on key opportunities 

to take on adult social roles or prepare for the 

future through educational and employment 

experience. Not only does this put these young 

adults “off-time” in achieving these markers but 

it also has significant negative consequences for 

their lifetime earning potential and the outcomes 

of their future families.7 

Implications for an Age-Responsive 

Criminal Justice System 

Our jurisprudence fully accepts that adolescents 

are entitled to a separate system of justice, with 

separate facilities, confidentiality protections, 

and more individualized treatment in a more 

robust network of rehabilitative programming. 

Yet, the choice of age 18 (in most states) as the 

line of demarcation of the jurisdiction of the 

juvenile court was a relatively arbitrary one, 

based more on 19th-century customs and mores 

than rigorous scientific analysis. As we have 

seen from our review, today’s neurobiological 

and developmental research suggests that young 

people ages 18-24 are more developmentally 

akin to juveniles than fully mature adults. 

Sociologically, young adults today are in far more 

need of support — for education and employment, 

for example — to successfully enter adulthood 

than they were 40 years ago (not to mention 116 

years ago, when the juvenile court was founded). 

In comparing adolescence and young adulthood 

in the 19th and 21st centuries, it is no exaggeration 

to say that 22 is the new 16. 

If young adults are developmentally similar 

to juveniles and the path to adulthood is more 

challenging today, and if the need for a separate 

court for adolescents is well-established, then 

it must follow that a substantially different 

response to lawbreaking by young adults is 

required. Our central recommendation is that 

the age of juvenile court jurisdiction be raised to 
 

Community-Based Responses to Justice-Involved Young Adults | 9 

at least 21 years old8 with additional, gradually 

diminishing protections for young adults up to age 

24 or 25. This reform would extend much of the 

flexibility of the juvenile court to a stage of the life 

cycle that now faces many of the same challenges 

as adolescence. 

An extension of the age of jurisdiction is, however, 

just one reform for a fundamentally more ageresponsive criminal justice system. Regardless 

of whether reforms are made in the juvenile 

system, the adult system, or a mix of the two, we 

envision an age-responsive system as necessarily 

community based. At each stage, priority 

should be placed on keeping young adults in 

the community whenever possible, where 

they are able to maintain and build prosocial 

relationships through education, housing, family 

and employment. To achieve this, we propose a 

variety of supplementary reforms that go beyond 

the court’s function,9 to promote public safety, 

better life outcomes, greater social integration 

and more fairness. We describe these reforms at 

each stage of criminal processing. 

Pre-Arrest and Arrest 

A more age-responsive system must necessarily 

involve police as well as social service programs 

for troubled young people that prevent them 

from entering the system in the first place. With 

police and community programs working in close 

cooperation, young adults could be diverted to 

social services in lieu of arrest. Elements of this 

proposal can be found in Seattle, where the 

Seattle Police Department implemented a type of 

prearrest diversion for those whose involvement 

in crime was clearly related to needs for substance 

abuse treatment, mental health services and 

housing.10 For low-risk young adults, we also 

recommend the exploration of citations that might 

obviate the need for a court appearance altogether. 

Probation-run “diversion” or “adjustment” 

currently allows juvenile probation departments 

in many jurisdictions to divert some juvenile cases 

from formal court processing. Such diversion 

options should be applied to less serious cases of 

young adults as well.11 

Pretrial 

The key objectives here are to minimize the life 

disruption of a criminal proceeding by moving 

quickly to trial and taking full advantage of 

community-based options instead of putting 

the offender in pretrial detention. The first step 

toward fulfilling these objectives is the use of an 

age-sensitive risk assessment that recognizes the 

behavioral malleability of young adults and their 

potential for change. Dynamic risk assessment 

instruments that measure behavioral change 

have special utility here. In setting bail, courts 

should recognize the relatively weak financial 

position of young adults and their more tenuous 

attachment to employment. Pretrial release could 

be used more expansively where community 

resources are enlisted — in the form of mentors 

and family or community members — to provide 

social supports in a specialized young adult 

caseload. 

If pretrial detention is used, enhanced mental 

health and trauma assessments will be needed, 

along with work-force development and 
 

 

 

10 | New Thinking in Community Corrections 

opportunities for education programming. 

Additionally, detained young adults should be 

housed separately from older, more sophisticated 

inmates whenever possible. Initiatives like the 

Annie E. Casey Foundation’s Juvenile Detention 

Alternatives Initiative — which collaboratively 

examines data on juvenile pretrial populations 

before creating policies and programs that safely 

reduce the use of pretrial detention — could 

readily be retooled to focus on young people 

in the adult criminal justice system (National 

Research Council, 2013).12 

Courts 

The expanded juvenile court should be supported 

by experts with backgrounds in adolescent and 

young adult development. Human development 

experts could help to develop case plans aimed 

at promoting social integration and a smooth 

transition to stable adult roles. Such case 

plans would be bolstered by the availability of 

developmentally appropriate alternatives to 

incarceration that are able to build life skills and 

address the specific needs of justice-involved 

young adults. Partnerships between the court 

and community organizations facilitate the 

quick transition to programs, accelerating release 

from supervision and promoting specialized 

treatment. 

Such partnerships could be realized through a 

family court model with extended jurisdiction 

up to at least age 21, through “specialty courts” 

affecting 18- to 24-year-olds, or through a hybrid 

model of both courts. With all their imperfections, 

juvenile courts are far more likely to attempt to 

rehabilitate, to dispense procedural justice, and 

to individualize sentencing decisions than adult 

courts are. Courts with specially trained judges, 

prosecutors, defense attorneys and probation 

staff, and which have access to adequate 

resources geared toward the special needs of 

this population (particularly education, workforce development, and cognitive-behavioral 

training) would go a long way toward legitimizing 

the adjudicatory process for young adults, which 

has been shown to improve outcomes. 

Community-Based Programs 

Whenever possible, young adults should be kept 

in the community. This means that probation 

and parole departments, along with their 

community-based programming partners, have a 

crucial role to play in the lives of justice-involved 

young adults. Periods of community supervision 

should be shorter and, with the savings from 

reducing supervision periods, more rehabilitative 

programs should be made available to young 

people during periods of supervision. Case 

plan structures and staff preparedness must be 

achieved within a framework that recognizes 

not only the need for integration between 

agencies and community partners but also the 

opportunities inherent in young adults’ potential 

to grow, learn and adapt. 

There are, currently, programs that demonstrate 

the feasibility and power of this approach in 

both mandated and nonmandated settings. San 

Francisco’s Transitional Age Unit (see sidebar, 

“San Francisco Adult Probation Transitional 

Age Youth Unit”) relies on uniquely trained staff, 
 

 

Community-Based Responses to Justice-Involved Young Adults | 11 

San Francisco Adult Probation Transitional Age Youth Unit 

Since 2009, the San Francisco Adult Probation Department has maintained a special unit for 18- to 25-year-old 

young adult probationers, called a transitional age youth (TAY) unit. This unit has a dedicated supervisor as well 

as seven officers who collectively handle 500 cases per year. The TAY unit selects officers based not only on 

their skill for creating professional alliances but also on their demonstrated passion to provide support for this 

age group. Officers are trained in cultural competency for this age group. 

The unit provides staff enrichment to maintain a positive culture that allows the officers to harness opportunities 

for change in their young adult clients, even under complex and challenging circumstances. Officers are coached 

to see the volatility of their young clients, not as a problem but as the foundation for rehabilitation. Additionally, 

four of the TAY unit officers are certified as Thinking for Change (T4C) facilitators. These officers run a TAYspecific T4C class, which requires a unique awareness of the cognitive-behavioral challenges that exist within 

the TAY unit’s target population. 

The TAY unit uses a risk-needs assessment to develop case plans and refer young adult probationers to 

various services. Within the unit, cases are divided into low- and high-risk categories, and there are additional 

specialized caseloads for women and Pacific Islanders. The staff work collaboratively with each client to develop 

an individualized treatment and rehabilitation plan (ITRP) based on the risks, needs and potential emotional 

development of each client. The design of ITRPs is based on the philosophy of “dosage” probation, which calls 

for plans to be successfully completed in the shortest effective time — preferably within two years for each client. 

In order to monitor progress and identify setbacks, cases are reviewed every six months. Goals that are set and 

completed within the ITRP framework can result in a reduction in reporting requirements, early termination of 

supervision, or possible expungement of records for the young probationers. 

The TAY unit’s success is derived, in large part, from its collaboration with partners throughout the city and 

county. The unit works closely with the Mayor’s Task Force on Transitional Age Youth. Thirteen of the 25 slots 

in each cohort of the Mayor’s Interrupt, Predict, Organize employment program are set aside for TAY unit clients. 

This year-long program targets high-risk 18- to 25-year-olds who are deemed most likely to be involved in gun 

violence. Those who successfully complete the program are assisted in obtaining long-term employment. 

The unit also works with an Alternative Sentencing Planner in the San Francisco District Attorney’s office, who 

helps in the development of alternative sentencing recommendations to be used by prosecuting attorneys. 

Additionally, the unit, in collaboration with the Sheriff’s Department and the District Attorney, created two 

classrooms within the Probation Department that provide high school diploma, GED and Adult Basic Education 

classes as well as other enrichment and elective courses. Educational goals are integrated into the definition of 

success, as courses can satisfy reporting requirements and community service hours, and can also serve as 

the basis for term reductions. 

All of this work has led to some remarkable results for the TAY unit. In the previous fiscal year, the unit reported 

a 73-percent successful completion rate. By identifying young probationers, training staff both thoughtfully 

and comprehensively, developing appropriate case plans, and collaborating with local partners, the TAY unit 

has demonstrated an ability to turn significant disadvantages into meaningful opportunities for rehabilitation 

and long-term community integration. 
12 | New Thinking in Community Corrections 

Roca: A Model Community Program for High-Risk Young Men 

Roca is a Massachusetts-based nonprofit that specializes in helping court-involved young men, ages 18-24, stay 

out of jail and get jobs. Roca’s work with high-risk young men has reduced recidivism by two-thirds and doubled 

employment rates. Roca’s path to today’s success was the product of years of hard work, self-examination, and 

a rigorous commitment to high standards and outcomes data. Initially founded in 1988 as a program to reduce 

poverty, violence and teen pregnancy, Roca shifted its focus to offering services to justice-system-involved 

young men. There was, and in many ways still is, a conspicuous gap in services for these youth, as neither the 

nonprofit sector nor the justice system were built to adequately serve this population — a population that was 

responsible for much of the violence and gang activity in and around Boston. 

Combining research from the medical and mental health fields, with best practices from community corrections, 

substance abuse treatment and cognitive-behavioral therapy, Roca’s model is built around the premise that 

high-risk young people ages 17-24 are developmentally capable of change and therefore need the support and 

opportunities to overcome their destructive behaviors over time. The difficult process of behavior change cannot 

and will not happen overnight. 

Roca engages young men in two years of intensive programming and two years of less intensive follow-up. Given 

the organization’s primary target population — young men with a high propensity for criminal involvement and 

adult incarceration — Roca focuses on achieving two long-term outcomes for the group: reduced incarceration 

and increased employment. To measure these outcomes and a range of short and intermediate benchmarks, 

the program uses a customized, Web-based data tracking and performance-based management system, which 

provides Roca staff with a critical feedback loop for both individual participant outcomes and staff efforts as 

well as the ability to analyze patterns in aggregate, organizationwide data. 

The Roca Model has four major components: (1) relentless street outreach and engagement; (2) data-driven case 

management; (3) stage-based programming in education, life skills and employment; and (4) work with engaged 

institutions, focused on partnering with myriad law enforcement, judicial, corrections and government agencies. 

Last year, in a study conducted by Roca evaluation staff — in collaboration with the Harvard Social Impact Bond 

Lab and the Massachusetts Department of Administration and Finance — approximately 900 high-risk young men 

served by Roca over a five-year period were compared to a control group of juvenile and adult justice-systeminvolved young men across Massachusetts. Compared to the control group, Roca’s outcomes with young men 

showed a 65 percent reduction in recidivism and a 100 percent increase in employment. 

intensive community collaboration, and a deep 

understanding of the problems affecting justicesystem-involved young adults in developing 

programs for young probationers. The model 

of attempting to fully reintegrate young adults 

back into the community over the course of 

their probationary period should be a model 

for all community supervision programs. Roca, 

Inc., a program for youth in Massachusetts (see 

sidebar, “Roca: A Model Community Program for 

High-Risk Young Men”), provides an important 

example of community partnerships that lead 

the courts and law enforcement to seek out 

nonmandated, community-based alternatives 

to the adult criminal justice system. 

With respect to case plans, they should be 

individualized, developed in collaboration with 
 

Community-Based Responses to Justice-Involved Young Adults | 13 

the client, and structured around achievable 

goals. Setting small, achievable goals helps young 

adults gain confidence and optimism about their 

own abilities. Case plans should focus, not on 

surveillance, but instead on building, finding and 

utilizing concrete support for young adults within 

the community. A case plan should encourage 

and assist the search for housing, employment 

and education opportunities. 

However, supervision is an important element 

of case plans and must be carefully structured. 

Supervision expectations must be compatible 

with prosocial goals. In setting the locations for 

check-in and service delivery, departments must 

recognize and adapt to work, school and family 

schedules of the supervised young adults. For 

example, the case plan could allow for checkins outside of work or school hours, or close to a 

family home. Additionally, departments should 

prioritize colocation of their services by placing 

them in areas in which other prosocial services 

are offered, such as community centers, churches 

and recreation areas. 

Case plans should be built to anticipate and 

withstand relapse into previous destructive 

behaviors, and should recognize this as a natural 

occurrence within the process of maturation and 

behavioral change for justice-involved young 

adults. Whenever possible, actions that could be 

disruptive to full reintegration should, instead, be 

opportunities for staff to further understand the 

needs of their clients, and therefore should not be 

used to automatically find clients in violation of 

probationary terms. 

Positive growth and behavior should also be 

anticipated, and incentivized. Case plans 

should be structured to allow for frequent and 

tangible rewards for positive behavior. Decreased 

reporting frequency, shortened supervision 

terms, or possible expungement of records are 

examples of rewards that can be granted for 

positive progress. 

A case plan should also recognize that, for 

its duration — and beyond — young adults 

will need assistance in thinking strategically 

about how to use their time, especially if they 

are transitioning out of a highly structured 

incarcerative environment. Community 

supervision officers can help create a plan for 

young adults to structure their time productively, 

pursue prosocial activities, and develop a 

positive routine. This reduces the temptation to 

use downtime to reestablish connections with 

negative influences, such as gang affiliates, other 

violent offenders, or environments that led to 

prior criminal behavior. 

Given the levels of attention and understanding 

necessary for a successful case plan, staff should 

be trained to understand the psychosocial 

development and social contexts of young adults 

and also be trained in facilitating evidencebased cognitive-behavioral programs for this 

age group.13 This level of expertise is required, 

as probation or parole officers must present 

themselves to their clients as legitimate, helpful 

and committed partners in the process of 

reintegration. Additionally, staff should develop 

positive professional relationships with clients 
 

 

 

14 | New Thinking in Community Corrections 

and use techniques, such as motivational 

interviewing, to collaboratively help the young 

adult build goals that are relevant to him or her. 

To do their jobs effectively, well-trained probation 

and parole officers (as those most closely involved 

in the lives of these young adults) should be 

granted broader discretion. They should have the 

ability to craft and amend supervision conditions, 

shorten supervision terms for good behavior, and 

divert cases to community services or treatment, 

where appropriate, based on a young adult’s riskneeds assessment or progress toward prosocial 

goals. 

Incarceration 

Incarceration is the most expensive and least 

effective sentencing option for young adults. 

However, for cases in which incarceration is the 

final outcome, sentence lengths should be shorter 

and more intensely rehabilitative. When youth 

are incarcerated, “youth discounts” that reduce 

sentence lengths for young adults should be 

considered.14 

For those who are incarcerated, we recommend 

specialized housing (see sidebar, “Future 

Facilities”) where programs are available 

for treatment, education and work-force 

development. These facilities should have 

specially selected and trained staff, be designed 

or rehabilitated to reflect a more youthfriendly and less correctional atmosphere, and 

emphasize education, work-force development 

and cognitive-behavioral training (see Welsh et 

al., 2012; National Research Council, 2014).15 Any 

period of incarceration for young adults should 

Future Facilities 

Specialized, rehabilitative-robust facilities 

focused on the developmental needs of young 

adults are being planned in several large 

jurisdictions in the U.S. 

New York City Department of Corrections 

Commissioner Joseph Ponte announced in 

2014 that he will be opening a specialized facility 

for young adults ages 18-21 and has begun 

planning to improve in-facility programming and 

educational and mental health services, provide 

specialized training in adolescent development to 

his staff, and create alternatives to incarceration 

and improved reentry planning for the young 

inmates (Ponte, 2014). 

In California, a group of juvenile justice advocates 

led by renowned Hollywood Producer Scott 

Budnick is organizing an effort to create a 

new young adult facility focused on education, 

treatment and vocational training. The California 

Leadership Academy (CLA) is planning on opening 

in 2016 with two 300-bed campuses, one each 

in Southern and Northern California. The CLA 

will be operated by a nonprofit organization and 

the living units will be staffed by social workers 

and treatment professionals. CLA residents will 

be drawn from California prison inmates 18-24 

years old. The CLA is looking to the successful 

Missouri model as a guide to developing these 

new facilities, which enjoy the support of the 

Governor and the California Department of 

Corrections and Rehabilitation. 

The authors stress that any facilities devoted to 

young adults should be repurposed, and that 

this is in no way intended as an endorsement of 

system expansion. 

be married with brief but robust, specialized 

aftercare services pairing specially trained parole 

agents with community-based supports for young 

parolees. Young inmates and parolees should be 

incentivized with “merit time” provisions that 
 

Community-Based Responses to Justice-Involved Young Adults | 15 

reduce their terms of incarceration or parole 

for participation in promising educational, 

vocational or rehabilitative programs. 

Collateral Consequences 

Because the collateral consequences of justice 

involvement are especially severe for young 

adults, we recommend expanding confidentiality 

protections to age 24. We envision a continuum 

of such protections that could range from 

greater to lesser protections, depending on a 

youth’s age, offense severity, and prior record 

and rehabilitative efforts. Several states have 

“youthful offender laws” granting judges the 

discretion to maintain the confidentiality of 

young adults up to age 21 and seal their records 

after conviction. 

Recent research on criminal desistance shows 

that after five to seven years without a subsequent 

arrest, first-time arrestees are statistically 

indistinguishable from the general population 

in their risk of arrest (Blumstein and Nakamura, 

2009). This principle, that a period of five to 

seven years without incident is indicative of 

one’s reintegration with the general population, 

should be applied to justice-involved young 

adults. In other words, for justice-involved young 

adults, a similar time period without incident 

should warrant their ability to earn a clean 

record. Therefore, we submit that record sealing 

or expungement after five years without a new 

conviction would not only be appropriate but 

would also — obviously — significantly mitigate 

the collateral consequences of involvement with 

the justice system. 

A less complete form of protecting young 

people from collateral consequences could be 

a “certificate of relief from disabilities” that 

could be granted immediately upon conviction 

or, similarly, a “certificate of good conduct” that 

could be granted after a period of good behavior. 

Such certificates signal — to colleges, public 

housing boards, and regulatory bodies that grant 

licenses and other professional certificates — 

that, while not completely spared from having 

to reveal their record, these youth are worthy of 

special consideration due to their youthfulness 

and rehabilitative progress. 

Conclusion 

Our criminal justice system is currently 

mismatched with the human development 

and social context of young adults. This places 

disadvantaged young people — particularly 

young men of color with little schooling — in 

a context in which the risk of incarceration is 

great, with the potential for enormous longterm damage not only to them but also to the 

communities from which they originate. 

We propose a different kind of criminal justice 

for young men and women. The system we 

envision shares much with the juvenile court. It 

is motivated by recognition of the diminished 

capacity of young adults in their late teens and 

early 20s whose brain development is continuing 

and who are confronting a transition to adulthood 

that is historically challenging. Its key objective 

is to promote the process of human development 

and the transition to stable adult roles that we 

ultimately believe will contribute to improved 
16 | New Thinking in Community Corrections 

public safety and other positive outcomes. In 

our model, incarceration is used sparingly, 

and community organizations are enlisted as 

partners to promote the social integration of 

criminally involved young men and women. 

The waste of young lives and public resources to 

lifetimes of incarceration lends moral urgency to 

the project of young adult justice. Institutions that 

treat the apprehension of a young person involved 

in crime as an opportunity for intervention and 

assistance can promote socially integrative 

public safety that also alleviates the social 

costs of punitive criminal justice in our poorest 

communities. 

Endnotes 

1. This suggestion mirrors the recommendation 

of Rolf Loeber and David P. Farrington who, 

after chairing a National Institute of Justice 

panel on justice-involved young adults, stated, 

“We recommend raising the minimum age for 

referral of young people to adult court to age 

21 or 24 so that fewer young offenders are dealt 

with in the adult criminal justice system” (Loeber, 

Farrington and Petechuk, 2013). Velazquez (2013) 

discusses similar rationales. 

2. For parental incarceration and foster care 

issues, see Uggen and Wakefield (2005); for 

poverty issues: Lynam et al. (2000); for substance 

abuse issues: Chassin et al. (2010); for mental 

health needs: Davis and Vander Stoep (1997); and 

for complex factors: Palmer and Hollin (2000). 

3. Empirical evidence on changes in family 

structure, labor market status and other social 

indicators is reported by Berlin, Furstenberg and 

Waters (2010). 

4. Similar definitions have been proposed by 

Wald and Martinez (2003). 

5. Durose, Cooper and Snyder (2014, table 2). 

Rearrest within three years for 2005 releasees as 

a whole was 71.6 percent. The 24-and-younger age 

group had a higher recidivism rate than any other 

age group. 

6. Uggen and Wakefield (2005) describe 

characteristics of young adults returning to the 

community from incarceration. 

7. For impact on earnings and lifetime outcome, 

see Grogger (1995); Western, Kling and Weiman 

(2001); Pager (2003); Huebner (2005); Kling (2006); 

and Western (2006). 

8. See endnote 1. 

9. Recognizing that raising the age may 

not be feasible for some jurisdictions, the 

recommendations that follow could be applied 

to 18- to 24-year-olds in a jurisdiction that retains 

a cutoff for adult court jurisdiction at age 18. 

10. See Collins, Lonczak and Clifasefi (2014). 

Evaluation indicates that participants in the 

LEAD program were 58 percent less likely to be 

arrested than a typically processed control group. 
Community-Based Responses to Justice-Involved Young Adults | 17 

11. For example, New York City diverted 36 percent 

of all juvenile arrestees in 2012; 88 percent of those 

diverted successfully completed their diversion 

conditions (see New York City Department of 

Probation, 2013). In Illinois, probation officers 

can divert cases from court proceedings through 

probation adjustments for juvenile offenders 

charged with misdemeanor offenses. Extending 

that power to include young adult offenders (18­

24 years old) would significantly reduce the jail 

population and potentially improve the outcomes 

of young adults (Ishida, 2015). 

12. In their 2013 consensus report, Reforming 

Juvenile Justice: A Developmental Approach, the 

Committee on Assessing Juvenile Justice Reform, 

appointed by the National Research Council 

of the National Academies, provides a helpful 

review of the Juvenile Detention Alternatives 

Initiative and how the program uses data to lower 

commitment rates and provide developmentally 

appropriate interventions for juveniles. 

13. The U.K.-based organization Transition to 

Adulthood has an excellent guide, Taking Account 

of Maturity: A Guide for Probation Practitioners, 

that discusses methods for staff to understand 

the complexities of maturity when dealing with 

young adults (Barrow Cadbury Trust, 2013). 

14. Barry Feld writes extensively about the 

concept of youth discounts for juveniles, wherein 

youthfulness is formally incorporated as a 

mitigating factor in sentencing policy. See, for 

example, Feld (2013). A similar practice of “youth 

mitigation” is available in Sweden for young 

adults under 21, with proportional reductions in 

sentences based on the age when an offense was 

committed. See pp. 3-4 of Barrow Cadbury Trust 

and the International Center for Prison Studies 

(2011) for additional international examples. 

15. The evidence base is sparse for programs 

specifically targeting young adults. However, 

available research suggests that validated 

interventions of educational, vocational or 

employment programs; cognitive-behavioral 

therapy; drug treatment; and treatment for sex 

offenders should be effective with young adults 

as well. 

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24 | New Thinking in Community Corrections 

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Author Note 

Vincent Schiraldi is Senior Advisor to the Mayor’s 

Office of Criminal Justice in New York City. He 

has formerly served as Commissioner of the New 

York City Probation Department and as Director 

of the District of Columbia Department of Youth 

Rehabilitation Services. Bruce Western is Faculty 

Chair of the Program in Criminal Justice Policy 

and Management at Harvard Kennedy School, 

and Daniel and Florence Guggenheim Professor 

of Criminal Justice at Harvard University. Kendra 

Bradner is Project Coordinator of the Executive 

Session on Community Corrections at Harvard 

Kennedy School. 

The authors would like to thank Molly Baldwin, 

Christine Cole, Brent Cohen, Marie Garcia, Amy 

Solomon and Wendy Still for their insightful 

comments on earlier versions of this paper. 

Findings and conclusions in this publication are those of the authors and do not 

necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice. 



NCJ 248900

Members of the Executive Session on Community Corrections

Glenn E. Martin, President and Founder, 

JustLeadershipUSA

Anne Milgram, Vice President of Criminal 

Justice, Laura and John Arnold Foundation

Jason Myers, Sheriff, Marion County 

Sheriff’s Office

Michael Nail, Commissioner, Georgia 

Department of Community Supervision

James Pugel, Chief Deputy Sheriff, 

Washington King County Sheriff’s 

Department

Steven Raphael, Professor, Goldman 

School of Public Policy, University of 

California, Berkeley

Nancy Rodriguez, Director, National 

Institute of Justice

Vincent N. Schiraldi, Senior Advisor, 

Mayor’s Office of Criminal Justice, New York 

City Mayor’s Office

Sandra Susan Smith, Associate Professor, 

Department of Sociology, University of 

California, Berkeley

Amy Solomon, Senior Advisor to the 

Assistant Attorney General; Co-Chair, 

Federal Interagency Reentry Council Staff 

Working Group, Office of Justice Programs, 

United States Department of Justice

Wendy S. Still, Chief Adult Probation Officer 

(retired), San Francisco Adult Probation 

Department

John Tilley, State Representative, Kentucky 

Legislature

Steven W. Tompkins, Sheriff, 

Massachusetts Suffolk County Sheriff’s 

Department

Harold Dean Trulear, Director, Healing 

Communities; Associate Professor of 

Applied Theology, Howard University School 

of Divinity

Vesla Weaver, Assistant Professor of 

African American Studies and Political 

Science, Yale University, Institution for 

Social and Policy Studies

Bruce Western, Faculty Chair, Program in 

Criminal Justice Policy and Management, 

Harvard Kennedy School; Director, Malcolm 

Wiener Center for Social Policy; Daniel and 

Florence Guggenheim Professor of Criminal 

Justice, Harvard University

John Wetzel, Secretary of Corrections, 

Pennsylvania Department of Corrections

Ana Yáñez-Correa, Executive Director, 

Texas Criminal Justice Coalition

Molly Baldwin, Founder and CEO, Roca, Inc.

Barbara Broderick, Chief Probation Officer, 

Maricopa County Probation Adult Probation 

Department

Douglas Burris, Chief Probation Officer, 

United States District Court, The Eastern 

District of Missouri, Probation

John Chisholm, District Attorney, 

Milwaukee County District Attorney’s Office

Christine Cole (Facilitator), Executive 

Director, Program in Criminal Justice Policy 

and Management, Harvard Kennedy School

George Gascón, District Attorney, San 

Francisco District Attorney’s Office

Adam Gelb, Director, Public Safety 

Performance Project, The Pew Charitable 

Trusts

Susan Herman, Deputy Commissioner for 

Collaborative Policing, New York City Police 

Department

Michael Jacobson, Director, CUNY Institute 

for State and Local Governance; Professor, 

Sociology Department, CUNY Graduate 

Center, City University of New York, Institute 

for State and Local Governance

Sharon Keller, Presiding Judge, Texas 

Court of Criminal Appeals

Marc Levin, Policy Director, Right on Crime; 

Director, Center for Effective Justice, Texas 

Public Policy Foundation

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