Shaping the Future: Conversations on Advancing Youth Justice

The Center for Juvenile Justice Reform is delighted to invite you to the return of the in-person Janet Reno Forum on April 24, 2025! The Forum will bring together communities, partners, and leaders for conversations around urgent topics in youth justice, and how best to drive system transformation forward, together. Our goal is not to present a series of slide decks, but to encourage real talk about issues facing youth-serving systems, communities, and the youth themselves.

The Forum will be held in-person on Georgetown University's new Capitol Hill Campus. The 125 E Auditorium provides a large but comfortable setting, allowing participants to be a part of the conversation. We will be avoiding "panel tables" in favor of a more conversational, collaborative, and interactive approach, and utilize the technology in the room for multi-media elements.

Coffee, beverages, and refreshments will be available, and attendees are free to enjoy the beautiful Capitol Hill neighborhood for lunch and a bit of a stretch in the springtime air!

Check back here for updates and information on potential hotel room blocks; if you are interested, please contact Natasha Kinmont at [email protected]. As well, please contact us if you have any specific disability accommodations that we can address. The new building is fully equipped to meet your needs.

How can we advance youth justice in 2025 and beyond? How can we, together, shape the future of youth-serving systems and communities?

On April 24, we will drive the conversation forward with agency, community, and thought leaders in the field. Alongside a host of high-profile keynote speakers and expert presentations, we will spotlight opportunities for change in a series of topical conversations:

• Conversations on Racial Equity will feature an open discussion of where we've been, where we are, and where we're headed as we grapple with racial equity in the youth legal system, and what we can collectively do to engage in difficult dialogues.
• Conversations on Youth and Family Partnerships will spotlight not only the critical importance of including those who are impacted the most by the youth legal system, but concrete, implementable strategies on how to become active partners with them, led by youth and family lived experts themselves.

• Conversations on the Future of Youth Justice, finally, will bring together leaders in the field for a deep-dive into the current state of youth justice, and how to shape the future, together.

In the coming weeks, we'll be announcing speakers, unveiling the full agenda, and diving deeper into each session's topics, including providing pre-conference resources to help prep each conversation.

The first featured speaker we're thrilled to announce is former OJJDP Administrator, Liz Ryan, who will be participating in a conversation on the future of youth justice!

BIOGRAPHY

Liz Ryan was the Administrator of the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, following an appointment by President Joseph R. Biden. Prior to leading OJJDP, Ms. Ryan served as president and CEO of the Youth First Initiative, a national campaign focused on ending the incarceration of youth by investing in community-based alternatives. Ms. Ryan founded the Youth First Initiative in 2014; under her leadership, it achieved the closure of youth prisons in six states and redirected more than $50 million to community-based alternatives to incarceration.

Ms. Ryan founded the Campaign for Youth Justice in 2005 and served as its president and CEO until 2014. The national, multistate initiative sought to end the prosecution of youth in adult criminal courts and the placement of youth in adult jails and prisons. During Ms. Ryan’s tenure, the campaign’s work led to legislative and policy changes in more than 30 states, a 60 percent decrease in the number of youth in adult courts, and a greater-than 50 percent decrease in the number of youth placed in adult jails and prisons.

A staunch advocate for youth, Ms. Ryan cofounded and cochaired Act 4 Juvenile Justice, a campaign to reauthorize the Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act. She also served as advocacy director for the Youth Law Center, national field director for OJJDP’s Juvenile Court Centennial Initiative, and as an advocate for the Children’s Defense Fund. She has written extensively about juvenile justice reform, including articles, editorials, reports, and chapters of books.

Since 2020, Ms. Ryan has worked as a student investigative journalist with the Louisiana State University Cold Case Project, focusing on the murders of African Americans by the Ku Klux Klan during the civil rights era. She collaborated with other Cold Case Project students on Killings on Ticheli Road, a four-part narrative investigating the murders in 1960 of four Black men in Ouachita Parish, LA. The reporters reconstructed the day of the murders and questioned local authorities’ failure to prosecute the killer: the murdered men’s employer, a white man who later became a statewide Klan leader. For their work, Ms. Ryan and the other Cold Case Project reporters were named semifinalists for the 2022 Goldsmith Prize for Investigative Reporting, an award by the Harvard Kennedy School for reporting that impacts U.S. public policy. They were the only students recognized.

Ms. Ryan also worked with families of the Martinsville Seven and other advocates to obtain posthumous pardons for seven young Black men who were executed in Virginia in 1951 for the alleged rape of a white woman. Ms. Ryan and her colleagues revisited the convictions, ultimately asserting that they were tinged by systemic racism, a rush to judgment, and a lack of due process. The Virginia Governor issued posthumous pardons in 2021, saying the men did not deserve the death penalty.

Ms. Ryan earned a bachelor’s degree from Dickinson College and a master’s degree in International Studies from George Washington University.

The Center for Juvenile Justice Reform at Georgetown University supports and educates leaders across systems of care to advance a balanced, multi-system approach to improving outcomes for, and promoting the positive development of, youth at risk of legal system involvement. Shay Bilchik, one of the country’s most influential voices in the juvenile justice arena, founded the Center in 2007. Michael Umpierre, the current director, works closely with Georgetown’s other policy centers and departments in leading the Center’s efforts.

A research center within the McCourt School of Public Policy, the Center is in a unique position to provide strong and sustained national leadership in identifying and highlighting the research on policies and practices that work best to reduce delinquency and achieve better outcomes for this nation’s children. A particular focus of the Center is on youth known to both the child welfare and juvenile justice systems, also referred to as “crossover youth.”

The Center works to focus the nation’s youth justice and related systems of care on the key principles embodied in an evidence- and outcomes-based youth justice reform agenda, utilizing a multi-system approach. These include:

• An effective balance of prevention and intervention services
• An individualized system of justice for youth
• Implementation of proven and effective practices
• Strong linkages to the community
• Significant public engagement and building of public and political will

Beyond providing information on these key principles, the Center also provides guidance and instruction on how to implement this reform agenda through the adoption of sound policy and practice. In this regard, the Center supports the development of stronger leaders in the juvenile justice and related systems of care and helps them to achieve better outcomes for the young people in their care.

You can find more information at our webite at: https://cjjr.georgetown.edu

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