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The brief examines one aspect of the Job ChalleNGe grants – the goal of serving more court-involved youth. It draws on findings from multiple data sources including two rounds of site visits, a background information form, a follow-up survey with Job ChalleNGe participants, program records, and postsecondary and criminal justice administrative records.

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Key Takeaways

• None of the grantees substantially changed their recruitment strategies. Grantees continued to use previous recruitment strategies that attracted some court-involved youth. Staff from two programs reported maintaining previous relationships with justice system partners including the Department of Juvenile Justice, family courts, and local judges. Recruitment staff at these programs discussed how they were continually conducting outreach and trying to foster new connections with the justice system. However, these changes were already underway and were not driven by the new Job ChalleNGe grant.
• All grantees reported struggling to operationalize “court-involved.” The grant guidelines were layered on top of existing Department of Defense (DoD) guidance on Youth ChalleNGe eligibility criteria. Staff reported confusion around activities that classify youth as “court-involved” but do not lead to their exclusion from the program based on DoD eligibility guidelines. DoD criteria required that the youth were “not currently on parole or probation for other than juvenile status offenses, not awaiting sentencing, not under indictment, accused or convicted of a felony; and cannot have any pending court dates after the program starts.”
• Some staff revealed concerns about the potential stigma associated with the term “court-involved,” but researchers were unable to document the exact number of staff with this concern. Reacting to these concerns, programs did not focus on court-involved youth in public marketing and did not distinguish between court-involved and non court-involved youth within the program to avoid stigmatizing youth among their peers.
• Forty-one percent of Youth ChalleNGe participants reported some prior justice system involvement on the study-administered background information form (Exhibit 1). Among the Youth ChalleNGe participants, 29 percent reported that they were ever arrested or taken into custody, and 18 percent reported a conviction. Seventeen percent had been detained in a juvenile facility, and 5 percent in an adult facility. Researchers are not able to measure whether the enrollment of court-involved youth increased under the grant. Prior to the grant, the Youth ChalleNGe programs did not track the number of court-involved youth who enrolled.

Citation

Berk, J. (2020). Mathematica. Building on an Evidence-Based Program Model to Improve the Education and Employment Outcomes of Court-involved Youth. Chief Evaluation Office, U.S. Department of Labor.

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The Department of Labor’s (DOL) Chief Evaluation Office (CEO) sponsors independent evaluations and research, primarily conducted by external, third-party contractors in accordance with the Department of Labor Evaluation Policy and CEO’s research development process.