Justice system reform is at a pivotal moment where challenges intersect with opportunities for meaningful change. With 190,600 women and girls incarcerated in the United States on any given day and countless justice-involved youth cycling through systems ill-equipped to meet their needs, the urgency to rethink approaches has never been greater. Beyond punitive models, today's reforms embrace adaptive, evidence-based strategies prioritizing rehabilitation, health, and community safety.
Tools like screening tools and strength, risk, and needs assessments are central to this shift. These instruments help justice professionals create individualized, strength-based case plans that address root causes and reduce recidivism. As we look to 2025, trends such as holistic youth justice interventions, integrated mental health support, gender-responsive programming, and community-centered rehabilitation will lead the way.
By acknowledging these complexities and focusing on positive change, we can build a justice system that holds individuals accountable while restoring lives, families, and communities.
The juvenile justice system has long been a critical battleground for justice reform. Traditional approaches often treat young people as miniature adults, failing to recognize the developmental, social, and environmental factors driving their system involvement.
Early, accurate assessments offer a clearer picture of a young person's circumstances, providing a roadmap for youth interventions that promote positive outcomes and reduce recidivism.
The Youth Assessment and Screening Instrument (YASI) exemplifies this approach. YASI enables juvenile probation officers, caseworkers, and social workers to evaluate risk factors, protective elements, and trauma history, recognizing a justice-involved youth's challenges alongside their strengths and potential. This shift in focus—from asking, "What's wrong with you?" to "What happened to you?"—empowers young people to unlock their potential.
Holistic, strength-based case planning recognizes the importance of addressing trauma, mental health, and family dynamics alongside risk factors. When interventions are trauma-informed and personalized, they build resilience and life skills for reintegration. Community-based programs offering mental health services, educational support, and mentorship can stabilize at-risk or justice-involved youth before system involvement escalates.
Reentry programs for justice-involved youth must also evolve. Effective programs prioritize holistic rehabilitation, providing mental health care, educational pathways, and family reunification support. By embracing comprehensive risk, needs and strengths assessments and trauma-informed practices, we can ensure that justice involved youth receive the necessary support to thrive, fostering a system that champions rehabilitation and sets young people up for success.
Traditional justice models often treat mental health as an afterthought, perpetuating a cycle of incarceration without addressing underlying challenges. Now, mental health is increasingly seen as a central component of justice and community safety. This shift reflects a growing recognition that many justice-involved individuals face unaddressed mental health challenges that require support, not punishment.
Collaborative models between justice and mental health professionals allow for early identification of mental health needs, connecting individuals to appropriate services before they become entrenched in the system. Diversion strategies and community-based interventions prioritize care over incarceration, fostering more humane and effective outcomes.
Programs like Eugene, Oregon's CAHOOTS (Crisis Assistance Helping Out On The Streets) demonstrate the effectiveness of alternative response models. By dispatching mental health professionals instead of police to crises involving mental health, substance use, and homelessness, these initiatives de-escalate situations and connect individuals to long-term support. Similar models in Denver, Chicago, and Atlanta have successfully reduced jail admissions and improved community outcomes.
Recent federal law changes permitting Medicaid-funded health services to inmates up to 90 days before their release further facilitate smoother transitions from incarceration to community life. Continuous care during reentry helps address mental health needs and reduce recidivism.
Embedding mental health evaluations into justice-involved youth and adult risk-needs assessments while fostering collaboration between justice and health professionals creates a more humane system that addresses root causes and supports behavioral health.
Justice-involved women face unique challenges stemming from trauma, mental health struggles, substance use, and socioeconomic instability. Addressing these issues requires gender-responsive programming tailored to women's needs.
The Service Planning Instrument for Women (SPIn-W) addresses factors like family stability, trauma history, mental health, and substance use, guiding effective case planning and promoting successful reintegration. This tool highlights the importance of recognizing the specific needs of women to develop meaningful rehabilitation strategies.
Programs like Moving On and Girls…Moving On offers trauma-informed, strength-based interventions for women and girls that help develop healthier relationships and coping skills. For women with aggressive behaviors, Living Safely and Without Violence provides cognitive-behavioral strategies to foster adaptive responses.
Legislation such as Dignity Bills improves prison conditions by ensuring access to healthcare, hygiene products, and visitation rights. These measures acknowledge the impact of incarceration on families; with 58% of women in state prisons being parents, their imprisonment often results in family separation and long-term harm to children.
Family-centered approaches are also essential. Legislation in states like Tennessee, Massachusetts, and New Jersey mandates considering primary caregiver status during sentencing and ensures incarcerated parents are housed near their children. These efforts help mitigate the collateral damage of incarceration and support healthier outcomes for women and their families.
By embracing gender-responsive programming and interventions for women, the justice system can more effectively meet women's needs, reduce recidivism, and promote positive change.
The movement toward community-centered rehabilitation represents a fundamental shift from punitive models to restorative justice approaches. By focusing on the underlying causes of justice involvement, restorative justice creates pathways for individuals to reconnect with their communities and build sustainable, positive lives.
The Service Planning Instrument (SPIn) is critical in guiding individualized adult reentry plans. SPIn evaluates static and dynamic factors, such as criminal history, substance use, and family stability, while identifying strengths and protective factors. This approach ensures that adult reentry strategies are responsive to risk factors while leveraging the individual's unique resources and capabilities to reduce recidivism and promote long-term success.
Redirecting public funds from incarceration and policing to community-based services can help address the root causes of crime in overpoliced communities. Many of these communities lack essential resources like youth programs, affordable housing, and mental health support, which are critical for preventing crime without resorting to punitive measures. We can empower community-led initiatives focused on safety, reentry assessments, and harm reduction by reallocating state and local public safety budgets to community grant programs.
For example, Colorado's Community Reinvestment model allocated $12.8 million in 2021-22 to support services for reentry, crime prevention, and survivor assistance. Similarly, in 2022, Harris County, Texas, established the Youth Justice Community Reinvestment Fund, dedicating $4 million to justice-involved youth diversion and intervention programs. These initiatives demonstrate how investing in community resources can promote safety, reduce reliance on policing, and support long-term positive outcomes for individuals and neighborhoods.
Programs incorporating these strengths-based, trauma-informed principles prioritize mental health care, stable housing, and employment support as interconnected factors in the reentry process. By focusing on the whole person, these models reduce recidivism and mitigate the cycle of justice involvement that disproportionately affects underserved communities.
The shift to community-centered rehabilitation recognizes that sustainable change comes from empowering individuals and investing in communities. Through strategic tools like SPIn™ and the redirection of public funds, we can build a system that prioritizes healing and reduces harm.
As we approach 2025, the criminal justice system stands on the brink of unprecedented transformation. The National Institute of Justice has signaled a new era of research and innovation, prioritizing approaches that transcend traditional enforcement models. Emerging trends emphasize integrated, technology-enabled strategies, including advanced AI-powered assessment tools, sophisticated risk prediction models, community-based intervention technologies, and expanded telehealth and remote support services. Legislative priorities are evolving with a focus on implementing evidence-based rehabilitation and enhancing mental health and social support services for justice-involved youth and adults.
The most promising justice reforms recognize a fundamental truth: justice is not about controlling populations but nurturing individual potential and community well-being. From justice-involved youth intervention programs to gender-responsive interventions and mental health support, we are witnessing a profound reimagining of justice. This new vision calls for strategies that address root causes, promote healing, rebuild community connections, and foster pathways to positive change.
We have the opportunity to look beyond the labels of "offender" or "at-risk" and see the inherent dignity in every individual. By embracing evidence-based, compassionate approaches, we can create a justice system that genuinely supports human potential, offering everyone the chance to heal, grow, and meaningfully contribute to their communities. Together, we can build a future where justice is synonymous with opportunity, fairness, and hope.
Orbis Partners provides solutions for criminal justice and human services systems, specializing in designing and implementing services for at-risk client groups. Orbis’ risk, needs, and strengths assessment tools are designed to guide the casework process by incorporating an individual’s unique set of needs. For more information about our assessments, visit our Assessments page.