Submitted for Consideration: NJJDPC Recommendations to the Administration on Juvenile Justice Related Issues: Guidance on Police-Youth Interactions
Policy Director Gabriella Celeste submitted recommendations to the for the new presidential administration. They read in part:
We urge the next administration to provide technical assistance and support to local law enforcement to develop a comprehensive policy concerning police youth interactions. This comprehensive Youth Policy would ensure police-youth interactions are informed by principles of child and adolescent development, an understanding of juvenile specific law, and a commitment to positive role-modeling and relationship building between law enforcement and youth consistent with procedural justice, and community, problem-oriented and bias-free policing.
We further urge the next administration to provide technical assistance and support to local law enforcement to incorporate principles of developmentally-informed policing into its management, recruitment, training, personnel evaluations, resource deployment, tactics, data collection and accountability systems in order to adequately implement a comprehensive Youth Policy. Specifically, the law enforcement training should be designed with child and adolescent development experts and include a youth dialogue component, and be implemented to ensure effective communications an interactions between police and youth, including developmentally appropriate de-escalation techniques, age-appropriate language and practices in stops, juvenile Miranda warnings, questioning, and interviewing, searches and arrests of youth, use of force practices that are objectively reasonable as necessary to control a minor, and trauma-informed practices and strategies.