President Trump announced his intention to appoint former Arkansas prosecutor Caren Harp to serve as administrator of the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, the division of the Justice Department that oversees federal funding and standards related to juvenile justice.
Harp has been an ardent supporter of the community prosecution model, which eschews adjudication as an end goal. According to Harp’s own work on the issue, community prosecution is defined by three things:
- Community participation in identifying problems to focus on and possible solutions.
- Prosecutor-led attempts to solve problems, focusing on the use of “nontraditional enforcement efforts,” such as restorative justice.
- Partnerships with law enforcement, business, schools and other community organizations.
Recently, Harp has publicly raised concerns about the reliance on emerging science about the spur to juvenile justice reform. She presented on the subject at a recent conference of the National Council of Juvenile and Family Court Judges, and in May penned an op-ed for the website Juvenile Justice Information Exchange:
"Much of the brain science that is influencing the justice system hasn’t been offered into evidence in a courtroom. It hasn’t been subjected to rigorous challenge, or its limits defined or tested. Instead, through an avalanche of media and advocacy campaigns, it has simply been accepted as fact. The problem with this is that researchers working with neuroscience and neuroimaging report that the science is still being developed, and it is not ready for policymakers or the courtroom."
To read more of John Kelly's article, please click here.
Comments (0)