Introduction to the Innovation Lab

The American youth legal system is intended to provide rehabilitation and support for young individuals who have come into conflict with the law. Yet, beneath this aspiration is the unsettling reality that despite decades of national attention and reform efforts, there are deep and persistent racial and ethnic disparities (R/ED) within and across youth legal systems. Nationally, Black, Latino, and American Indian youth are overrepresented at every stage of the youth justice process (OJJDP). Biases at the heart of policies, practices, and decision-making are critical to this overrepresentation.

The numbers paint a frightening picture. Black youth are five times more likely to be arrested than white youth, Indigenous youth are three times as likely, and Latino youth are twice as likely (The Sentencing Project, 2021). Also, while incarcerated, non-white youth serve longer sentences and receive harsher punishment than their white peers (The Sentencing Project, 2021). The effect of these disparities spills over into other institutions, such as education and social services. For example, Black and Latino youth in school are punished more than white children, resulting in a school-to-prison cycle (Civil Rights Project, 2020). Systemic biases undermine ideals of justice and fairness and entrench cycles of poverty and criminalization among youth from marginalized communities.

Aware of the urgency of these problems, the Center for Reducing Racial and Ethnic Disparities in Juvenile Justice offers the Innovation Lab to catalyze this needed change by facilitating a space where stakeholders work collaboratively, innovatively, and within a community development framework. The purpose of the Lab is to use, develop, and implement innovative approaches to reduce racial/ethnic disparities within youth legal systems. This initiative also seeks to promote upstream equity within and across the youth legal and youth development sectors, including but not limited to child welfare, education, and health.

The three primary goals of the R/ED Innovation Lab are for state, territorial, Tribal and local governments to learn how to:

Support jurisdictions in developing and implementing evidence-informed and research-informed interventions that produce demonstrable outcomes in reducing R/ED across multiple youth legal system contact points.

Support a series of cross-jurisdictional virtual convenings that promote peer learning and the design of new solutions to reduce R/ED. Encourage participating jurisdictions to participate and pilot test proposals for reforming systems using grant funding.

Convene interagency teams across sectors – including youth justice, family advocacy, Community providers, and behavioral health – to create comprehensive solutions infused by implicit bias reduction, broad-based adoption of data-driven reforms, and courageous conversations about race, leading to effective R/ED interventions.