Juvenile Justice & Assessment
Juvenile justice systems need ways to identify youths’ mental health and rehabilitation needs across various settings (such as pretrial detention, juvenile court clinics, probation, and juvenile corrections). They need assistance to adopt best practices for mental and behavioral health screening and assessment.
Our work focuses on improving the identification of and response to the mental health and delinquency risk needs of youth in juvenile justice systems. We help juvenile justice systems to adopt best practices for the screening and assessment of youth to address their mental and behavioral health needs and to decrease the likelihood that they will offend in the future.
We are interested in:
- The assessment of the mental health issues and needs of youth in juvenile justice settings
- The assessment of potential for serious re-offending of youth
- Integrating mental health or risk for re-offending screening and assessment procedures into juvenile justice systems
- The development of callous-unemotional traits in youth and young adults
- The assessment of forensic issues and national policy to assist judicial decisions, such as youths’ competence to stand trial
- Substance abuse and adolescent brain development
Ongoing Research Projects
Title: National Youth Screening Assistance Project
Dates: 7/1/2012 - 6/30/2014
Funder: John D. & Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation
PI: Thomas Grisso, Ph.D.