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Nebraska Probation's Emerging Adult Justice Innovation
SESSION INFO
Tuesday, August 26, 2025
3:45 PM - 5:15 PM
Session Type: Workshop
The Administrative Office of the Courts and Probation were awarded a grant through the Annie E Casey foundation to collaborate with the Emerging Adult Justice Project, integrating more developmentally appropriate responses into adult probation practices. Through partnering with local provider RISE Prison Re-Entry, Nebraska is able to incorporate emerging adults' voices into the innovation through focus groups and feedback loops. We are excited to share early reflections on the intervention to better inform other jurisdictions of opportunities they may have to improve outcomes with emerging adults.
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SESSION PRESENTERS
Lael Chester
Previous Director of the Emerging Adult Justice Project, The Annie E. Casey Foundation
Lael served as the Director of the Emerging Adult Justice Project at the Columbia University Justice Lab from 2017–2024. She continues working at the Justice Lab before its planned closure at the end of 2025, and is also currently collaborating with the Annie E. Casey Foundation. A graduate of Barnard College and Harvard Law School, she worked as the Albert Martin Sacks Clinical Fellow at the Criminal Justice Institute at Harvard and then was an Assistant Attorney General in the Civil Rights and Civil Liberties Division of the Massachusetts Attorney General’s Office. For 12 years, she served as Executive Director of Citizens for Juvenile Justice (CfJJ), a statewide non-profit dedicated to improving the juvenile justice system. She then served as a Research Fellow at Harvard Kennedy School’s Program in Criminal Justice Policy and Management, where she focused her research on emerging adults (ages 18 – 25). She has continued this work at Columbia University and more recently as a consultant, conducting cutting-edge action research projects in collaboration with other researchers, practitioners, policy makers, advocates and people with lived experience from around the country to increase learning and drive transformative innovations in this burgeoning field.
Eric Maly
Director of Adult Field Services, NE Supreme Court Office of Probation Administration
Eric serves as the Director of Adult Field Services for the Nebraska’s Administrative Office of the Courts and Probation. He currently manages Nebraska’s emerging adult innovation pilot project and supports the leadership and implementation teams in Omaha, Grand Island, and Kearney, Nebraska. From 2019-2022 he served as probation’s Alternatives to Incarceration Programs Specialist, overseeing probation’s post-release supervision population and identifying ways to help support the re-entry outcomes for individuals coming out of Nebraska’s prison system. Prior to his work for the state, he served as the Director of the International Youth Center in Chicago, a staff secure facility that provided developmentally appropriate programming and supportive services to adjudicated immigrant youth. Eric started his career as a mentor at an after-school non-profit organization in his hometown of Lincoln, and has over 20 years experience working with justice involved youth. Eric believes that applying data driven decisions can help build safe and thriving communities.
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