In early November, Naomi Goldstein was sitting in a room in the grand National Academy of Sciences Building in Washington D.C., providing expert insight on how to evaluate programs designed to reduce crime among youth and adolescents.
A psychology professor and director of the Juvenile Justice Research and Reform Lab at Drexel University, Goldstein has spent decades improving outcomes for children who enter the juvenile justice system and finding innovative ways to keep them out of it. For this occasion, she had been asked to review a study of an initiative that provided jobs to youths. While the federal government rated the program as ineffective, Goldstein’s review of the research led to her conclude the program “seemed to offer real promise and potential.”
Goldstein offered this opinion as a panelist at the National Academy of Sciences’ Law and Justice semi-annual meeting on “Crime Solutions: What Works, What Doesn’t, What’s Promising.” The meeting explored ways to improve the process for rating programs on the National Institute of Justices’ CrimeSolutions website and clearinghouse. The programs are rated on their effectiveness based on scientific research and the rating system has not been updated in more than a decade.
Goldstein’s invitation to the meeting is just one example of how she is a leading, valued voice when it comes to empirically driven juvenile justice reform, providing research-based insights to shape policy and practice and improve the lives of adolescents.
Frequently invited to share her expertise at conferences and with the media, Goldstein is also a convener who brings together wide-ranging expertise to take holistic approaches to policy and programming. In addition to her research and teaching in Drexel’s Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, Goldstein is also co-director of the JD/PhD Program in Law and Psychology. A week after her trip to Washington D.C., Goldstein’s lab co-hosted an event on Drexel’s campus with Evident Change, a Madison, Wisconsin-based nonprofit that uses data and research to improve social systems across the United States and internationally.
Called “Dual-System Youth: Mapping an Agenda for Research and Policy,” the meeting was supported by funding from the William T. Grant Foundation and the Jessie Ball duPont Fund. The invitation-only gathering included leading researchers, experts, practitioners, funders, and individuals with lived experience at the intersection of the youth justice and child welfare systems. The goal was to work together over two days to design a research agenda that supports multi-system policy and practice changes aimed at preventing youth in the child welfare or youth justice system from becoming involved in the other.
“The kids who end up in both systems tend to suffer the greatest consequence and greatest harms,” Goldstein said in a recent interview. “Through the conversation we had at the convening, it was clear that there is a lot of great research happening at this intersection that truly gets at what the problems are, why kids are struggling, and what the issues are with each system. But there is much less data and research-based guidance about what policy and practice changes are needed and how to implement them effectively.”
Early Interest in Forensic Psychology
Goldstein took what she described as a “non-traditional path” to her study and research of forensic psychology. She was raised in New York with a mother who taught English as a Second Language at John Jay College of Criminal Justice and a father who was a professor of forensic psychology, who also served as the secretary and continuing education chair of the American Academy of Forensic Psychologists (AAFP). Both parents proved influential in Goldstein’s academic and career pursuits.
As a teen who was savvy with a word processer in the mid-1980s, Goldstein’s “chore” at home was to design brochures for AAFP and send them out when a request came in on the home answering machine. Her involvement wasn’t limited to those administrative tasks.
“I grew up going to AAFP conferences with my parents,” she said. “I went to many, many forensic workshops in high school and college and even taught forensic psychology summer classes for junior high and high school students while I was in college.”
When she attended college at Wesleyan University, Goldstein attempted to resist the forces that had shaped her youth. She was first a government major and then considered becoming a photography major. Both proved folly. Goldstein majored in psychology, earning a bachelor’s from Wesleyan and later a doctorate in clinical psychology from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst.
“I did get from my mother a love for teaching and working closely with students,” she said.
Goldstein’s interest in forensic psychology led her to focus on adolescents and the juvenile justice system. The juvenile justice system essentially grew out of the adult system, putting it at odds with adolescent brain development, science and research, Goldstein says. That put Goldstein on an academic and professional crusade to improve and change the system so adolescents can lead better lives.
“To design the system like that sets kids up to have a much more difficult path in life,” Goldstein said. “My work and research show there are better ways to help kids, keep them out of the system and provide services that can help them. There are some changes that are easier to make than others. There are components, such as changing culture and the way people think about adolescents, that are much harder to do.”
Making Inroads on Change
Experts who attended the Drexel-Evident Change convening are trying to drive some of that change. They identified policy issues and challenges kids in the juvenile justice and welfare systems are experiencing that lead to negative outcomes. They also sought to come up with potential solutions and action steps that can improve those outcomes. The goal is to use that information to guide a research agenda that identifies both short- and long-term opportunities to support policy and practice changes to improve youth outcomes.
“Collaborating with Naomi on the dual-system youth convening has been a great experience,” said Kathy Park, CEO of Evident Change. “I found that we share a deep passion for improving outcomes for young people and using research as a tool to help accomplish that. I’m excited to see what comes out of the convening and really proud of what our organizations accomplished together.”
While the pace of change can be slow, there are times when it can be expedited. “Some changes can be made really quickly when you have the leadership and ability to make that change,” Goldstein said.
That happened in the case of Kevin Bethel, Philadelphia’s new Police Commissioner. In 2014, when Bethel was Deputy Police Commissioner, he launched the Philadelphia Police School Diversion Program in collaboration with the Philadelphia Department of Human Services and School District of Philadelphia. The program sought to reduce juvenile arrest rates, improve school retention, provide community-based services to youth, and prevent the unintended consequences teens experience of justice system involvement.
Data and research, conducted by Goldstein and her lab, show the innovative program has been successful in dramatically disrupting the school-to-prison pipeline in Philadelphia. The annual number of school-based arrests has declined by 91% since 2013.
Goldstein seized upon Bethel’s recent appointment as police commissioner to highlight his program and the research that supports it. She and her colleagues wrote an article summarizing their academic research results in a simple-to-understand and easily accessible format for the public. Since its publication in early December, the article has been picked up and republished by multiple newspapers and media outlets across the country and included an NPR interview with Goldstein.
“Most importantly, this coverage has led police chiefs and other justice system stakeholders across the country to contact us about replicating the program elsewhere — hopefully, it will result in preventing thousands of kids from being arrested in schools,” Goldstein said.
Asked what’s next for Goldstein and her lab, Goldstein wasn’t sure where to begin with such a long list, but she shared multiple projects currently in progress and others about to be underway. She is working with the Philadelphia and Montgomery County district attorneys to evaluate and research their diversion programs. She created a curriculum series to coach school police and climate staff to work more effectively with students.
Goldstein also trains probation officers to use new approaches her team developed to help youth successfully complete probation and stay out of the system long term. She has expanded the lab’s focus on research to keep kids out of entering both the child welfare and juvenile justice systems. And the lab plans to continue and broaden its collaborations with Bethel and the police department.
“There’s just so much that we are doing,” she said.
And there’s going to be more. Moments before being interviewed for this article, Goldstein had a call with the William T. Grant Foundation about a new project they are planning.