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Empowering Family Voice: Using Youth, Family, and Staff Insights to Strengthen Juvenile Probation
SESSION INFO
Monday, August 25, 2025
9:15 AM - 10:45 AM
Session Type: Workshop
Juvenile probation has the potential to transform lives. Family engagement is critical to this mission, yet it remains difficult to implement consistently. This session highlights two complementary research-practice partnership projects from the Youth Justice Lab at Arizona State University, supported by the Annie E. Casey Foundation. The first, Staff Insights, helps jurisdictions understand how probation officers and supervisors perceive family engagement—surfacing frontline strengths, challenges, and opportunities for improvement. The second, Empowering Family Voice, collects real-time, ongoing survey data from youth and caregivers during and after probation, offering a localized, firsthand view of family experiences and probation’s impact on youth outcomes. Together, these projects provide customizable tools to assess internal practices and elevate the voices of staff, families, and youth. Participants will explore how these insights can drive data-informed reforms that strengthen family engagement and improve outcomes. Real-world examples and interactive dashboards will guide discussion on tailoring these tools to local priorities.
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SESSION PRESENTERS
Allison Cross
Graduate Researcher, Arizona State University
Allison Cross, M.S., is a Law and Psychology doctoral candidate. Her research examines procedural justice, legitimation of legal authorities, and legal cooperation across youth and adult justice systems. In adult contexts, she explores public perceptions of police legitimacy and effective strategies for enhancing police-community relationships. In juvenile justice, her work focuses on how procedural justice shapes youths' experiences with probation and peer-led diversion programs like Teen Court to improve outcomes for justice-involved youth.
Adam Fine
Professor of Criminology & Criminal Justice, Arizona State University
Adam D. Fine, Ph.D., is a Professor in the School of Criminology & Criminal Justice at Arizona State University. He received his Ph.D. from the University of California, Irvine, specializing in Developmental Psychology and Quantitative Methods. His work has been supported by a variety of funders, including the National Institute of Justice, the Annie E. Casey Foundation, and a CAREER award from the National Science Foundation. He is the director of the Youth Justice Lab.
Mr. Dante Edward Green, Jr.
Program Associate, Juvenile Justice Strategy Group, The Annie E. Casey Foundation
Dante Green is a program associate at the Annie E. Casey Foundation. His focus on youth probation and juvenile justice system transformation includes helping design and administer the Foundation’s Applied Leadership Network (ALN). ALN seeks to equip lead¬ers with the skills and strate¬gies need¬ed to advance pow¬er¬ful, mea¬sur¬able and equi¬table results, such as reducing the system's footprint, decreasing out-of-home placement, promoting healing and strengthening partnerships with community groups.
Before joining Casey, Green was a mentor for Thread Baltimore, a nonprofit organization that supports young people with system involvement. Green earned a master’s degree from the University of Baltimore Graduate School of Public Affairs. While there, he interned at the Office of the State’s Attorney for Baltimore City. In his role with the Conviction Integrity Unit, he contributed to the exoneration of three African American men who had been imprisoned for nearly 30 years.
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