Call for Papers: 
Juvenile Justice:  Passages, Prevention, and Intervention
February 19 and 20, 2010

Deadline for proposals:  September 15, 2009

Juvenile Justice Project
Center for Children and Families
University of Florida Levin College of Law

In collaboration with the Center for Race and Race Relations, University
of Florida Levin College of Law
Co-sponsors:  Child Advocacy Project, Harvard Law School and Juvenile
Justice Clinic, Georgetown University School of Law

Plenary Speakers: Geoffrey Canada, founder of the Harlem Children’s Zone
Shay Bilchek, director, Center for Juvenile Justice Reform, Georgetown
University

Confirmed participants:  Jeffrey Fagan, Mark Fondacaro, Lonn Lanza
Kaduce,
Kenneth Nunn, Alex Piquero, Bob Schwartz, Elizabeth Scott, Christopher
Slobogin

Juvenile Justice:  Passages, Prevention, and Intervention
Children and youth become involved with the juvenile justice system at a
significant rate.  While some children move just as quickly out of the
system and go on to live productive lives as adults, other children
become enmeshed in the system, moving to deeper problems and even to the
adult criminal justice system.

This conference is focused on (1) avoiding this connection, whether
brief or deep, and (2) intervening in ways that most effectively prevent
further involvement with the system, address children’s issues, and
foster children’s success.

Prevention.  For many children, involvement in the juvenile justice
system is a link to other problems, difficulties and issues.  Those
might include:  the structure of work and family responsibilities and
supports; the educational system, and the “school to jail” pipeline;
family difficulties and the “dependency to jail” pipeline.  Papers might
also examine policies regarding school discipline, bullying, sexual
harassment, sex education, drug and alcohol education and abuse,
truancy, and ungovernability.  Various systems and statutory structures
impact on the ecology of children’s development:  we encourage both
broad and very specific analysis of existing structures or
proposals/strategies for change.  We seek to critique and disrupt
existing pathways to delinquency, in order to create the supports and
strategies for children to succeed, as well as identify model programs
and best practices.

Intervention.  Those children who can be identified as likely to become
involved in the system, or those initially involved in the juvenile
justice system, may be “turned around” or rehabilitated by effective
programs that are developmentally sound and seek the goal of restorative
justice.  As with the topic of prevention, the possible issues here may
be either very broad and overarching principles that must be recognized
and integrated into the system, or very specific models and programs
that require better statutory supports or funding or both.  In addition,
systems of evaluation and ongoing monitoring are critical to effective
intervention.  We encourage papers that address any part of the subject
of early intervention, either among juveniles who have not yet come into
the juvenile justice system, or those who are in the “shallow” end of
the system.  We seek to identify programs and strategies that have been
effective, or critique those that have failed, in order to explore and
identify better ways for diversion and intervention to operate to keep
children from further involvement with the system while effectively
addressing the problems and issues that they present.

Race, Gender, Class and Disability.  We aim to explore these issues with
respect to all children, and strongly encourage issues of race, gender,
class and/or disability to be addressed in the papers.  In addition, we
welcome papers that focus on one or more of these critical identifiers
with respect to juvenile justice and prevention or intervention.

Rehabilitation, not Punishment.  We hope to focus on strengthening the
rationa
le and operation of rehabilitative justice as the core principWhile this conference will be focused on issues of keeping children out
of the juvenile justice system and effectively dealing with children in
the early stages of involvement in the system, talking about the current
juvenile justice system may well be necessary as part of the focus on
prevention and avoidance.  The Juvenile Justice Project will be holding
a second conference focused on critique and reforms of the existing
juvenile justice system.

We aim to gather data, critique and models for juvenile justice, using
multi disciplinary approaches, connecting academics, practitioners and
policymakers. We mean to include the voices of children as well.  To
that end, we encourage you to respond to the call for papers either with
(1) an abstract describing research that you wish to present, or (2)  a
description of yourself as a practitioner or policymaker with specific
expertise to present or who would like to participate as a commentator. 
Our goal is to include academics and practitioners/policymakers in every
part of the conference.  Finally, (3) if you have experience in the
juvenile justice or work with children directly in a way that you could
bring your or their voice to the conference, please describe the “voice”
you can bring to the conference to work on the issues of avoidance,
prevention and intervention.

We hope to identify good systems, models and/or legislation.  We hope
also to be a sounding board for ideas, as well as a connecting place for
those who might enrich each other’s perspectives or assist in outcomes
if they work collaboratively.

Papers may include already published work or works in progress. 

Submission to respond to the call for papers:  Please include the
following

Name, position, and contact information

Abstract of no more than 500 words, as follows:

Researchers:  please describe the research and your planned presentation

Practitioners:  please describe your practice expertise and how you
would like to participate (presentation, commentator, or some other
role)

Policy makers (organization, legislator, legislative staff, government
agency):  please briefly describe your role, and how you would like to
participate (presentation, commentator, or some other role)

Keywords:  please select up to three key words to identify your proposed
participation (e.g., diversion, prevention, race, gender, school,
community, family, etc)

Please send this information to [log in to unmask], with the subject line
“Abstract for Conference” by September 15, 2009.  Submissions will be
reviewed and you will be notified by October 15, 2009, of your
acceptance for participation in the conference. 

Included in the conference will be a welcoming reception and a dinner
for all speakers.  The conference registration fee will be waived for
all speakers.  

Final papers must be submitted by January 15, 2010 to [log in to unmask] . 
Papers will be made available to attendees and abstracts will be
available online.  New York University Press is interested in publishing
a volume of selected papers from the conference.

Conference registration will be available on or before October 15, 2009.

For more detailed information paste the websites below into your browser

Juvenile Justice Project website: 
http://www.law.ufl.edu/centers/childlaw/

Conference website:  http://www.law.ufl.edu/centers/childlaw/juvenile
justice/conferences/