The Critical Case File Approach: A Novel Tool for Critically Analyzing Mixed-Method Data as Exemplified in a Juvenile Legal Setting.

Current criminology and corrections research is limited in its ability to fully conceptualize and analyze inequities in the legal systems' response to young people, particularly those with multiple marginalized identities. This article presents a novel methodological framework-the Critical Case File (CCF) approach-to advance methodological innovations in criminal and juvenile legal system research. Specifically, the CCF approach leverages the rich multisystem information available within case file data and analyzes it through a critical lens to examine (a) the structural factors (e.g., economic and housing precarity) undergirding legal system contact and (b) how the legal system responds to these structural factors to perpetuate the well-documented disparities that exist across the legal continuum. In this article, we present the CCF approach, which systematizes best practices for capturing the breadth of information available within case files. We first propose a six-step methodological process to describe how information from legal system-impacted people's case files can be extracted, analyzed, and disseminated with an equity-oriented lens. We then exemplify how the CCF approach differentiates from other methods typically used in social science and criminology research. Practice and policy implications are presented to demonstrate the ways that the CCF approach can leverage case file data to generate novel, meaningful, and data-driven solutions that illuminate structural factors that may drive and exacerbate legal system contact and delineate the potential of research-practice-policy partnerships to reduce structural disparities.

Exploring the needs of girls of color in the juvenile legal system: A latent class analysis.

Girls of color are overrepresented in the juvenile legal system and experience high levels of unmet needs. Assessing and meeting girls' needs may prevent system contact or deeper involvement by providing for these needs in community-based settings, rather than through juvenile legal systems. This study used a structured interview-based assessment adapted from an advocacy intervention to examine girls' self-identified needs and perceived effectiveness and difficulty of accessing resources for these needs. Descriptive analyses found that girls reported needing resources beyond those typically assessed and supported in existing programming, such as technology, extracurriculars, and employment. Latent class analysis revealed four subgroups of girls with distinct but overlapping areas of needs: (1) High Employment, Current School, and Logistical Needs, (2) Low Overall Needs, (3) High Employment Needs, and (4) High Employment, Current School, and Social/Emotional Needs. Girls also reported wide variation in their ability and difficulty accessing needed resources, with employment being most difficult to access and school and social/emotional resources being the easiest to access. These findings suggest that more comprehensive and individualized approaches to programming and community services for system-impacted girls of color are essential.

"Roses have thorns for a reason": The promises and perils of critical youth participatory research with system-impacted girls of Color.

Scholarship on girlhood-especially for girls of Color-is often relegated to studying risk and emphasizing individual deficits over humanizing girls and centering their voices. This approach to generating scholarship renders oppressive systems and processes invisible from inquiry and unaddressed by practice, with particularly insidious consequences for youth in the legal system. Critical youth participatory action research (YPAR) is acknowledged as an antidote to these conceptualizations because it resists deficit-oriented narratives circling systems-impacted youth by inviting them to the knowledge-generating table. In this paper, we present an empirical analysis of the promises and perils that emerged as we conducted a year-long critical YPAR project alongside five system-impacted girls of Color. Our thematic analysis of process notes (30 meetings, 120 h) documents the stories posited by girls, in a democratized space, about the injustices of interconnected institutions, and unearths a complicated tension for both youth and adult coresearchers around the promises and perils of engaging in YPAR within the academy. These findings underscore the importance of using intersectional, collaborative research to challenge perceptions around how we legitimize knowledge. We describe lessons learned in conducting YPAR in academic settings and highlight recommendations to grow youth-adult partnerships within oppressive systems to share power.

A Treatment-To-Prison-Pipeline? Scoping Review and Multimethod Examination of Legal Consequences of Residential Treatment Among Adolescents.

OBJECTIVE: Toward the overall goal of interrogating systems that contribute to racial inequity in child and adolescent psychology, we examine the role and function of Residential Treatment Centers (RTCs) in creating or exacerbating race and gender inequities using the language of mental health and the logic that treatment intentions justify children's confinement. METHODS: In Study 1, we conduct a scoping review to investigate the legal consequences of RTC placement, attending to race and gender in 18 peer-reviewed articles, encompassing data for 27,947 youth. In Study 2, we use a multimethod design focusing on RTCs in one large mixed-geographic county to examine which youth are formally charged with a crime while in RTCs, and the circumstances under which these charges occur, attending to race and gender (N = 318, 95% Black, Latine, Indigenous youth, mean age = 14, range = 8-16). RESULTS: Across studies, we find evidence for a potential treatment-to-prison pipeline through which youth in RTCs incur new arrests and are charged with crimes during and following treatment. This pattern is pronounced for Black and Latine youth and especially girls, for whom use of physical restraint and boundary violations are recurring challenges. CONCLUSIONS: We argue that the role and function of RTCs via the alliance between mental health and juvenile legal systems, however passive or unintentional, provides a critical exemplar of structural racism; and thus invite a different approach that implicates our field to publicly advocate to end violent policies and practices and recommend actions to address these inequities.

Mixed methods in community psychology: A values-forward synthesis.

Mixed methods research (MMR) combines multiple traditions, methods, and worldviews to enrich research design and interpretation of data. In this virtual special issue, we highlight the use of MMR within the field of community psychology. The first MMR studies appeared in flagship community psychology journals over 30 years ago (in 1991). To explore the uses of MMR in the field, we first review existing literature by identifying all papers appearing in either Journal of Community Psychology or American Journal of Community Psychology in which the word "mixed" appeared. A total of 88 publications were identified. Many of these papers illustrate the pragmatic use of MMR to evaluate programs and to answer different research questions using different methods. We coded articles based on Green et al.'s classifications of the purpose of the mixing: triangulation, development, complementarity, expansion, and initiation. Complementarity was the most frequently used purpose (46.6% of articles), and nearly a quarter of articles mixed for multiple purposes (23.86%). We also coded for any community psychology values advanced by the use of mixed methods. We outline three themes here with corresponding exemplars. These articles illustrate how MMR can highlight ecological analysis and reconsider dominant, individual-level paradigms; center participant and community member experiences; and unpack paradoxes to increase the usefulness of research findings.

Persistent Paternalism: The Instantiation of Gendered Attributions in the System Response to Girls.

Prior research suggests that the juvenile legal system does too little to address the sources and underlying reasons for girls' court referrals. Drawing on attribution theories, the current study examined perspectives that characterize the response of the system to girls' behaviors. Data from this study were derived from a multimethod, qualitative study on system-involved girls. We find that court actors hold gendered attributions of girls' delinquency, in turn informing their decision-making about how to treat and sanction girls. Paternalism remains a persistent feature in how the system locates, defines, and responds to girls through varying gendered attributions. The findings lend further support to attribution perspectives that suggest implicit gender-biases influence court actor decision-making, exacerbating the challenges girls face in and out of the juvenile legal system. By extension, this study offers concrete policy and practice implications for systems change and improving its response to girls.

Perceiving fairness in an unfair world: System justification and the mental health of girls in detention facilities.

Psychologists in the helping professions have long accepted the idea that cognitions have implications for mental health and wellbeing. Community psychologists have further established the importance of context and systems in the etiology of mental health problems. In this paper, we argue that as a discipline that prioritizes social justice, community psychology should consider associations between cognitions about structural and systemic inequality and individual mental health, particularly in marginalized populations. As one illustration of this argument and its complexities, we asked if and to what degree mental health was concurrently associated with adolescents' beliefs in societal fairness (i.e., system-justifying beliefs), attending to gender differences. Our findings were informed by a sample of 196 adolescents residing in detention facilities (49.50% girls; 51.75% Black/Caribbean, 21.68% multiracial; 15.38% Hispanic/Latine; 27.98% LGBTQ+). These youth represent an understudied group in the research literature addressing fairness beliefs and their influence on wellness. Results suggested that boys were more likely to endorse societal fairness compared to girls, but these beliefs were unrelated to their mental health. However, we found a significant gender moderation such that girls who perceived society to be fair reported lower levels of internalizing and externalizing mental health problems. We discuss implications for theory, research, and intervention.

When Diversity is Not Enough: An Intersectional Examination of How Juvenile Legal System Actors of Color Experience the System's Welfare Mandate for Girls of Color.

System actors of color are considered a key intervention to reduce disparities in the juvenile legal system precisely because they share intersectional experiences of oppression similar to those experienced by system-involved youth. In this study, we interrogate the assumption that diversifying the workforce can remedy intersectional disparities in youth outcomes. Grounded in intersectionality, we analyzed semi-structured interviews with 17 (12 women, five men) actors of color-eight at the frontline, five at the mid-level, and four at the top level. Specifically, we examined their narratives of lived oppressions, juxtaposed these narratives with their articulations of how well the system meets its welfare mandate, and examined actors' sense of their ability to contribute to girls' welfare, attending especially to how these experiences vary by their positions in the system's hierarchy. Our findings suggest that actors of color indeed share experiences of oppression as system-involved youth, particularly along axes of race and gender. Further, across all levels of institutional positionality, actors articulate a disjunction, revealing the system's accountability to bureaucratic and funding structures rather than girls; they respond to this disjunction through resistant actions-with different degrees of effectiveness-anchored in accountability to girls, and by envisioning how, given their roles and relative power, the system can meet its social welfare mandate.

Predictors of Sexual and Reproductive Health Among Girls Involved in the Juvenile Legal System: the Influence of Resources, Race, and Ethnicity.

Girls involved in the juvenile legal system are at among the highest risk for sexual and reproductive health (SRH) challenges. Yet, few studies focus on girls or examine multiple predictors of their SRH in tandem. In addition to individual and familial-level risk factors (e.g., trauma, substance use, parental monitoring), this study also examines the influence of structural disadvantage on girls' SRH by assessing the degree to which girls' self-identified resource needs and access challenges across multiple areas (e.g., housing, employment, healthcare) predict SRH risk. Cross-sectional data collected from 269 girls involved in the legal system and their caregivers were analyzed using hierarchical regression analyses. Findings suggest that, over and above individual and familial level predictors, resource access challenges significantly predict girls' SRH, while high resource needs and access challenges predict Black girls' SRH specifically. Implications for programming, policy, and research are delineated.

Traumatic Incidents and Experiences of Racism and Sexism: Examining Associations with Components of Critical Consciousness for System-Involved Girls of Color.

Scholarship identifies critical consciousness as a key developmental asset in promoting the well-being of adolescents experiencing multiple socio-structural axes of oppression. Girls of color at acute risk for legal system involvement or re-involvement are absent from this literature. They are a critical population in which to examine this construct given their experiences of oppression and the myriad benefits of critical consciousness. The current study addresses this gap by examining traumatic incidents and experiences of racism and sexism as correlates of critical reflection and action among a sample of girls (N = 220; Mean age = 14.5 years; SD = 1.3 years). Using path analysis and multigroup modeling, we examine direct associations between these three manifestations of structural oppression and critical consciousness and explore the interplay of traumatic incidents, and racism and sexism in girls' critical consciousness development. Findings suggest that experiences of sexism and racism, uniquely and positively predict critical action, but not critical reflection. Surprisingly, girls' experiences of traumatic incidents do not predict reflection or action. Finally, multigroup analyses show no evidence that these associations vary by the interplay of traumatic incidents, racism, and sexism. Implications for community psychology values and juvenile legal system practice and policy are discussed.

A role for social media? A community-based response to guns, gangs, and violence online.

Social media represents a relatively novel environment for prevention efforts targeting youth gun and gang violence, and associated trauma. The aim of this study is, therefore, to present findings from a novel intervention designed to complement existing, community-based violence prevention efforts. In doing so, we focus on the role of adult empathy in the relationships between youth and the adult credible messengers (CMs) who deliver the program. Guided by the purpose of complementarity, our mixed methods data analyses combine insights gained from CM's quantitative reports of 145 instances of risky online behavior with qualitative analyses of three focus groups addressing their experiences. Results underscore the complexities of social media as a context with the potential to simultaneously contribute to, and serve to prevent, trauma. Results also indicate that empathic concern and perspective taking were important in informing the type of intervention tactics employed by CMs. Relatedly, CM's perspective taking mattered not only in their responses to risky and/or trauma-related content, but also in their identification of some relevant social media posts.

A Meta-Analysis of Program Characteristics for Youth with Disruptive Behavior Problems: The Moderating Role of Program Format and Youth Gender.

There is high variability in efficacy for interventions for youth with disruptive behavior problems (DBP). Despite evidence of the unique correlates and critical consequences of girls' DBP, there is a dearth of research examining treatment efficacy for girls. This meta-analysis of 167 unique effect sizes from 29 studies (28,483 youth, 50% female; median age: 14) suggests that existing treatments have a medium positive effect on DBP (g = .33). For both boys and girls, the most effective interventions included (a) multimodal or group format, (b) cognitive skills or family systems interventions, and (c) length-intensive programs for (d) younger children. Boys demonstrated significantly greater treatment gains from group format interventions compared to girls, which is particularly important given that the group program format was the most prevalent format for boys and girls, with 14 studies involving 10,433 youth encompassing this category. This is the first meta-analysis to examine the effect of program characteristics in a sample of programs selected to be specifically inclusive of girls. Given that girls are underrepresented in intervention research on DBP, findings are discussed in terms of gender-responsive considerations and elucidating how key aspects of program structure can support more effective intervention outcomes for youth.

Factor structure of the critical consciousness scale in juvenile legal system-involved boys and girls.

The Critical Consciousness Scale (CCS) is a recently developed and validated measure for use with low-income, diverse adolescents. However, research on the psychometric properties of this scale with juvenile legal system-involved youth is lacking. This study examines the psychometric properties of the critical reflection subscales of the CCS in a cross-sectional sample of 206 youth (48% girls) involved in the juvenile legal system to investigate (a) the factor structure of the critical reflection subscales of the CCS compared to existing adolescent samples, and (b) the extent to which critical reflection demonstrates measurement equivalence between boys and girls. Findings indicate (a) congruence with the previous literature on critical reflection but for system-involved girls, and (b) a difference in the structural relationships between perceived inequality and egalitarianism by gender. This study contributes to the nascent, psychometric literature on measures of critical consciousness in an underrepresented and unique adolescent population.

Contextualizing pubertal development: The combination of sexual partners' age and girls' pubertal development confers risk for externalizing but not internalizing symptoms among girls in therapeutic day schools.

OBJECTIVE: Early pubertal development is associated with negative health and mental health outcomes. Research on the influence of puberty on mental health underscores a need to examine the interplay between puberty and exposure to environmental risk. This study investigates a more rarely studied aspect of girls' environments - romantic relationships with boyfriends. Specifically, this study examined sexual partner age and the timing of girls' pubertal development in relation to externalizing and internalizing symptoms among female students attending therapeutic day schools in the United States, a population at elevated risk for negative mental health outcomes. METHODS: A total of 121 13 to 19-year-old adolescent girls (Mean age = 15.4; SD = 1.5) reported on the relative age of their past 3 sexual partners, their age of pubertal onset, and mental health challenges via clinical assessments of externalizing and internalizing symptoms. RESULTS: Forty-three percent of participants qualified for at least one mental health diagnosis. Earlier pubertal onset predicted greater internalizing symptoms, and this effect did not depend on the age of girls' sexual partners. However, early-developing girls who also reported having a sexual partner more than 2 years older than them were at increased risk for externalizing symptoms. CONCLUSIONS: Findings underscore that sexual relationships are an important risk factor for early-developing girls already at risk for mental health problems. Early developing girls with older partners may experience stronger social pressure to stay in relationships that expose them to partner violence and delinquency-related pressure, which combine with interpersonal stress to predict externalizing symptoms.

Psychopathic Traits, Pubertal Timing, & Mental Health Functioning in Justice-Involved Adolescents.

Although psychopathic traits and pubertal timing have garnered a great deal of attention as potent risk factors for antisocial trajectories, very little research has examined how these processes may be related. We investigated whether psychopathic traits were related to deviations in pubertal onset in a clinically-relevant sample of youth detained in juvenile detention facilities. One-hundred and thirty-seven adolescents (ages 12-17) completed surveys of pubertal timing, psychopathic traits, and mental health functioning. As predicted, psychopathic traits were found to be associated with pubertal timing, and the psychopathy facets evidenced differential associations with the onset of puberty. Trait disinhibition was associated with relatively earlier pubertal timing, whereas trait boldness appeared to confer protection against early pubertal onset in this sample. Symptoms of alcohol/ substance use and anger/ irritability were positively related to psychopathic traits, but only among youth who reported average-/late-pubertal development. These findings implicate psychopathic personality traits as individual difference variables that may influence the onset of pubertal timing and interact with pubertal timing to place justice-involved youth at risk for poor mental health.

Policing Education: An Empirical Review of the Challenges and Impact of the Work of School Police Officers.

Public concerns regarding school safety and zero-tolerance education policies have contributed to the growth of a workforce of school police, or frontline school safety professionals who are typically placed in schools with the authority to arrest students (Brown, 2006). Thus, school police represent a workforce positioned at the nexus of multiple systems, including education and juvenile justice, and whose work likely brings them into contact with underserved youth and families. Despite national representation of this growing workforce (e.g., National Association of School Resource Officers), little is known about the responsibilities, roles, training, and influence of school police. This manuscript aims to (a) advance understanding of the school police workforce, including in relation to school police training, needs, roles, and influence, through a systematic review of scholarship in the social sciences, with a focus on peer-reviewed research in education, psychology, social work, criminology, and juvenile justice; and (b) generate empirically supported recommendations integrating key conclusions that pertain specifically to targeting the challenges faced by the school police workforce and identifying the best strategies to enhance safety-related goals while mitigating disproportionate legal and educational consequences for underserved youth and families.

Theorizing Safety Informed Settings: Supporting Staff at Youth Residential Facilities.

Each year approximately 48,000 youth are incarcerated in residential placement facilities (YRFs) in the United States. The limited existing literature addressing the workforce in these settings paints a complicated picture. The YRF workforce is highly motivated to work with legal system involved youth. However, YRF staff report high rates of burnout, job fatigue, and work-related stress. The current paper proposes solutions to persistent problems faced by staff in these settings by integrating literature from criminology, organizational psychology, trauma-informed care, and community psychology. In doing so, we highlight previously overlooked aspects of intervention for trauma-organized settings and respond to recent calls for community psychologists to take a more active role in the adaptation of trauma-informed care in community settings. We conclude by advancing three recommendations, drawn from setting-level theory and inspired by the principles of trauma-informed care, to transform YRFs.

The Praxis of Decoloniality in Researcher Training and Community-Based Data Collection.

In this paper, we detail our praxis of decoloniality in the context of a community-based study that employs a quantitative experimental methodology to evaluate an intervention for girls involved in the juvenile legal system. We resist the essentializing of methodology that positions quantitative paradigms as impermeable to reflexivity and decoloniality, and describe a model for training and supervising researchers engaged in an experimental randomized controlled trial of an advocacy program for girls, most of whom are girls of color and about half of whom identify as LGBT. In this way, we consider researcher training as a critical teaching context and describe the ways in which our training, community-based data collection, and supervision structure are anchored in de/anti/post colonial and indigenous scholarships. Specifically, our praxis is centered on conducting research as a site of resistance to hegemony, and practicing a critical compassion rooted in remembering complex personhoods. We further discuss the boundaries and limitations of our own epistemic power in relation to two central questions: how can researchers influence how knowledge is produced? How can researchers influence how knowledge producers are themselves produced?

Negotiating Ethical Paradoxes in Conducting a Randomized Controlled Trial: Aligning Intervention Science with Participatory Values.

In this article, we describe ethical tensions we have faced in the context of our work as intervention scientists, where we aim to promote social justice and change systems that impact girls involved in the juvenile legal system. These ethical tensions are, at their core, about resisting collusion with systems of control while simultaneously collaborating with them. Over the course of designing and implementing a randomized controlled trial (RCT) of an ecological advocacy intervention for girls, called ROSES, ethical paradoxes crystalized and prompted us to engage in critical reflection and action toward the aim of moving away from conducting research on legal-system-involved girls and moving toward a more democratic, participatory process of inquiry with girls. Our experience revealed two intertwined paradoxes that ultimately served generative purposes. First, in collaborating with legal system stakeholders, we observed a single story of girls' pathology narrated for girls, without girls, and ultimately internalized by girls. Second, in reflecting critically on the ethical implications of our study design, it became clear that the design was grounded in a medical model of inquiry although the intervention we sought to evaluate was based, in part, on resistance to the medical model. We describe emergent ethical tensions and the solutions we sought, which center on creating counternarratives and counterspaces that leverage, extend, and disrupt our existing RCT. We detail these solutions, focusing on how we restructured our research team to enhance structural competence, shifted the subject of inquiry to include the systems in which youth are embedded, and created new opportunities for former research participants to become co-researchers through formal roles on an advisory board.

Affect recognition among adolescents in therapeutic schools: relationships with posttraumatic stress disorder and conduct disorder symptoms.

BACKGROUND: Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and conduct disorder (CD) symptoms often co-occur in adolescence, but little is known about whether they show common or distinct emotional processing deficits. METHOD: We examined the effects of PTSD and CD symptoms on facial affect processing in youth with emotional and behavior problems. Teens enrolled in therapeutic day schools (N = 371; ages 13-19) completed a structured diagnostic assessment and the Diagnostic Analysis of Nonverbal Accuracy-2 facial affect recognition task. RESULTS: PTSD symptoms were associated with deficits in the recognition of angry facial expressions, specifically the false identification of angry faces as fearful. CD symptoms were associated with greater difficulty correctly identifying sadness. CONCLUSIONS: Findings suggest specificity in the relationships of PTSD and CD symptoms with emotional processing.