Committee: Juvenile Justice

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Senior Associate, The Annie E. Casey Foundation

Opal West is a senior associate with the Annie E. Casey Foundation. As part of the Foundation’s Juvenile Justice Strategy Group, her work focuses on youth probation, the disposition most often imposed on young people who enter our nation’s juvenile justice system. West is helping to transform youth probation nationally into a focused intervention that promotes personal growth and long-term success for youth who pose significant risks for serious offending. She also guides juvenile justice agencies to treat families as partners. West began her career as a juvenile probation and parole officer in Louisiana. Working for state government there, she led efforts to improve conditions of confinement in detention centers across the state. She also led statewide expansion efforts for the JDAI® approach to building a better and more equitable youth justice system. She was appointed to serve on a task force to develop standards of care for state-run secure facilities and local detention centers. West is a graduate of the University of Louisiana at Lafayette with a bachelor’s degree in criminal justice.