Vera Institute of Justice

Overview

Family Court judges and other decision makers must weigh whether arrested youths are likely to reoffend or fail to appear if allowed to go home prior to their court date. To help guide these decisions, staff from Vera’s Center on Youth Justice partnered with juvenile justice stakeholders in New York City to create and implement a research-based detention risk-assessment instrument (RAI) for use alongside a continuum of community-based alternatives to detention. This report describes that process and early results from the RAI’s implementation.