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/