This report outlines a comprehensive strategy to transform California’s juvenile justice system by creating viable higher education pathways for incarcerated youth. It highlights the risk factors leading to youth incarceration, the negative outcomes post-incarceration, and the potential of higher education to alter these trajectories positively. The report reviews proven and promising educational interventions, emphasizing the need for a supportive facility climate, qualified instructors, and effective instructional practices. It also addresses the challenges of implementing these pathways, such as limited economies of scale, inadequate funding, and probation staffing shortages. The document concludes with detailed recommendations for building higher education pathways, including dual enrollment, guided pathways, and reentry support, aiming to help incarcerated youth achieve meaningful educational and career outcomes.
This report was developed by Forward Change for the California Office of Youth and Community Restoration. The report involved an extensive scan and synthesis of the research literature as well as a total of 72 semi-structured interviews were conducted with an array of field stakeholders connected to higher education for youth in secure confinement in California. Field interviews were designed to address key issues raised in the research literature as well as how those issues might be relevant to stakeholders in a California context. The range of stakeholders included those who have experienced juvenile confinement and have pursued or completed higher education pathways, instructors in juvenile detention facilities, faculty at colleges and universities, staff and administratorsat County Offices of Education, managers of higher education programs targeting youth in juvenile justice facilities, youth justice advocates, researchers, chief probation officers and their staff, staff at district attorneys’ offices, staff at public defenders’ offices, juvenile facility behavioral health specialists, and administrators at the California Department of Juvenile Justice.