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The concentration of high-risk and high-service needs youth in juvenile secure confinement facilities has greatly challenged facility staff and administrators. Reform initiatives focused on helping facilities manage the challenges of this smaller, more high-risk population of incarcerated youth are based on a body of literature that has limited translational applications. Motivated by the challenges of supporting the population of incarcerated youth in tandem with the limited juvenile justice literature, this article provides a critical review of the family engagement, youth empowerment, and staff support literatures as they apply to juvenile confinement facilities. Using case studies from the Youth in Custody Practice Model, one facility-based reform initiative, we highlight how the existing research has been applied to juvenile confinement facilities and the gaps in the literature that remain. In order for research to keep pace with reform efforts in the field, we advocate a research agenda guided by interdisciplinary perspectives to move the field forward in theory and in practice. What is the significance of this article for the general public?Reform initiatives in family engagement, youth empowerment, and staff support domains are based on a body of literature that has not been applied to confinement contexts. We critically review the existing literature in these three areas and offer directions for future research. Using one evidence-based reform initiative, the Youth in Custody Practice Model, we demonstrate how the limited literature challenges reform efforts in the field.

Several states have proposed changes to how their legal system responds to young or emerging adults. Scholars, policy makers, and advocates have highlighted the developmental and behavioral similarities between juvenile and emerging adults when arguing that emerging adults should be treated differently from adults. This experimental study relies on data from 277 participants recruited via Amazon Mturk to examine how lay people respond to the presentation of developmental science evidence as support for such policy changes. The results indicate that science may be an effective tool for motivating some people's perceptions, but not all. Liberals who reviewed developmental science evidence were more likely to support general policy changes targeting emerging adults. Liberals were also more likely to find emerging adults less culpable after reviewing developmental science evidence. Moderates and conservatives were not responsive to developmental science evidence supporting policy change. Furthermore, while many were in favor of treating emerging adults differently than older adults, very few thought they should automatically be treated within the juvenile justice system.

The recent explicit and abrupt rift between science and federal policymaking governance highlights the somewhat tenuous relationship between the 2. As a discipline, the question of engaging public policy asks when, how, and under what conditions. However, simply producing more science or informing policymakers about our science is insufficient and ineffective (John, 2017). This paper argues that psychological scientists interested in engaging with public policy would benefit from 3 broad understandings. First, we must understand policymaking as a complex system with multiple individual and organizational stakeholders. Second, we must consider the policymaking process as more than a simple linear or even circular process, and instead as a dynamic recursive process. Finally, we must know what is considered "research" and how research might or might not be used in that complex system process. Controversies over engagement, objectivity, and advocacy should not deter psychologists from engaging with the policy process.

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