OJJDP Family Listening Sessions: Executive Summary - Office of ...

Questions and Responses
Based on the questions posed, family members provided insight on a range of areas related to
their experience with the juvenile justice system, including:
• Prevalence and consequences of disproportionate minority contact with the system.
• Barriers to parental advocacy for children.
• Barriers to maintaining parent-child relationships.
• Barriers to youth obtaining needed services.
• Positive experiences and related factors.
Summaries of the participants’ responses and several representative comments follow each of the
questions below.
Question 1—Involvement With the System
Think about when your child and your family first got involved with the system. What did
you expect it to be like and how was it different
Uniformly, family members reported that they expected better communication with system
officials, more information about the process, more and better resources to provide support and
guidance, and greater access to their child throughout the process. Several families also cited
barriers, including systemic racism and being stereotyped as “bad” parents.
Key Comments/Highlights
• I was one of those parents that tried to be proactive. I saw my son getting into trouble and
called a friend who worked in the correctional system. I thought that having my friend share
the reality of what it would be like for my son if he entered the system would act as a
deterrent. Despite my intervention, my son still got into trouble. I often think that it had a lot
to do with my lack of presence in my son’s life. I was working two, sometimes three jobs to
make ends meet.
• When we first got involved with the system, the thing that most baffled us was the lack of
communication. At no point did anyone in authority tell us what was happening with our
child. We were uninformed and didn’t know the questions to ask and we didn’t know our
rights; even worse, we were made to feel like we didn’t have any. Our child was transferred
from one facility to another, and no one ever told us where they were taking him.