Juvenile Justice Training in Police Academies

“Over the past decade, police have become a ubiquitous presence in the lives of many youths, particularly those living
in disadvantaged communities. They are now routinely deployed in public schools. As social and mental health services have been scaled back, police are frequently the first responders in domestic disputes involving juveniles.”

A recent Strategies for Youth survey on the state of training about juveniles available in police academies reported that, among other findings :

• In 37 states, academies spent 1% or less of total training hours on juvenile justice issues.
• 40 states’ juvenile justice curricula focus primarily on the juvenile code and legal issues and provides no communication or psychological skills for officers working with children and youth.
• The majority of academies do not teach recruits how to recognize and respond to youth with mental health, trauma-related and special education-related disorders.
• In spite of the number of young officers assigned to schools right out of the academy, only one state provided specific training for officers deployed to schools.

According to the report, “This training gap for police officers has serious long and short-term consequences. Police officers’ lack of understanding about adolescent behavior and development and ignorance of a host of promising practices and interventions limits the tools and strategies available to them when dealing with youths. This fact is confirmed by the number of juvenile arrests each year – 2.1 million – of which only 12% are for serious or violent felonies. Arrests have profound and long-term harmful consequences for youths, their families and communities, risk the safety of officers, and put a strain on our communities’ already overstretched public resources and institutions.”

Strategies for Youth is recommending that police academies increase the scope, depth, and focus of training to equip police with a variety of tools and strategies for encounters with youths. They specifically recommend that all police recruits should be taught:

• To understand how developmental capacities of children and teenagers differ from those of adults and therefore require a set of approaches and strategies appropriate to their development;
• Communication and behavioral skills that are most effective for working with youth to reduce, rather than increase, the likelihood of conflict or violent response; and
• To recognize triggers and key indicators of trauma, exposure to violence, and other mental health issues among children and youth, particularly those who live in areas of concentrated disadvantage, and how to use alternatives to arrest for these children.

To access a copy of the complete report, please visit:

Strategies for Youth: If Not Now, When? A Survey of Juvenile Justice Training in America’s Police Academies (5 FEB 13)

Media report:

Boston Globe: Training gap cited for police on youth (12 FEB 13)

Background information:

Strategies for Youth