A Micro and Macro-Level Assessment of Juvenile Justice Placement Reform in Ohio, 2008-2015

Much of the analysis of juvenile justice reform to date has focused on assessing particular programs and their impacts on subgroups of cases at a particular point in time. While this is instructive as to the effects of those initiatives, it is essential to evaluate the impact of policy across multiple levels and with multiple stakeholders in mind. Ohio has implemented a series of initiatives in its juvenile justice system designed to reduce reliance on state custody of youth in favor of local alternatives. In doing so, they have focused on multiple segments of the population of justice involved-youths throughout the state. The main vehicle for these shifts has been the state's Reasoned and Equitable Community and Local Alternatives to the Incarceration of Minors (RECLAIM) legislation and a series of initiatives that have followed from its inception. Other steps were followed and programming modifications were made during the study period as well. This research project focused on these initiatives as a case study of juvenile justice reform initiatives in order to provide insights about the impact of those recent reforms across multiple dimensions that were viewed as relevant to the discussion of juvenile justice reform. The data set analyzed at the individual level included the records of more than 5,000 youths sampled from cases processed from 2008 to 2015. First, presumed reductions in the number of youth committed to state residential correctional facilities in favor of community-based alternatives were analyzed. The relative effectiveness of residential facilities and community-based alternatives in terms of youth recidivism were then assessed with a subsample of 2,855 case records from randomly-selected counties. A third research objective focused on county-level trends and variation. Specifically, the longitudinal trends in key juvenile justice inputs and official juvenile crime rates across Ohio's 88 counties were formally modeled using data from public reports, data collection with counties, and official juvenile arrest data archived by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Elements of the previous analyses (especially comparative recidivism rates) and cost data collected from existing sources and public reports were used in a preliminary fashion to quantify the potential return on investment that accrued from Ohio's investment in these juvenile justice initiatives. This deposit contains two datasets: Individual Level Data and County Level Data. The Individual Level Data contains the following demographic data: age at admission, sex, and race (White, Black, Asian, Native American, and other).

迄今为止，对青少年司法改革的分析主要集中于评估特定项目及其对特定时间点上案件子群体的影响。虽然这有助于了解这些举措的效果，但评估政策在多个层面以及考虑多方利益相关者的影响至关重要。俄亥俄州在其青少年司法系统中实施了一系列旨在减少对青少年国家监护依赖，转而支持地方替代方案的举措。在此过程中，他们关注了全州范围内涉及司法的青少年群体多个细分市场。这些转变的主要载体是州立《理性与公平社区及地方替代青少年监禁》（RECLAIM）立法及其随后的一系列举措。在研究期间，还采取了其他步骤，并对项目进行了调整。本研究项目以这些举措为案例研究，探讨青少年司法改革，旨在从多个维度提供关于这些近期改革影响的见解，这些维度被视为与青少年司法改革讨论的相关性。分析的个人层面数据包括从2008年至2015年处理的案件中对超过5000名青少年的记录进行抽样。首先，分析了相对于社区为基础的替代方案，青少年被送往州立居住矫正设施的数量假定减少的情况。接着，利用从随机选择的县中选取的2855个案件记录的子样本，评估了居住设施和社区为基础的替代方案在青少年再犯罪方面的相对有效性。第三项研究目标集中于县级趋势和差异。具体而言，使用来自公共报告、与县的数据收集以及联邦调查局存档的官方青少年逮捕数据，对俄亥俄州88个县的关键青少年司法投入和官方青少年犯罪率的纵向趋势进行了正式建模。在初步分析中（特别是比较再犯罪率）以及从现有来源和公共报告中收集的成本数据被用于量化俄亥俄州对青少年司法举措投资的潜在投资回报。本存档包含两个数据集：个人层面数据和县级数据。个人层面数据包括以下人口统计数据：入学时的年龄、性别和种族（白人、黑人、亚洲人、美洲原住民和其他）。