Past EAJP Projects
The EAJP conducts action research projects and provides strategic research support to help transform laws and policies with the goal of creating developmentally appropriate justice systems. The below list includes some of the EAJP’s past projects.
Hybrid Systems
Hybrid systems (also known as “youthful offender laws”) create a distinct path for emerging adults (ages 18-25) by lessening some of the harm imposed by the adult system and extending some of the rehabilitative opportunities of the juvenile system to support the healthy transition to adulthood. Please visit the interactive webpage of our national study, Time for Change: A National Scan and Analysis of Hybrid Justice Systems for Emerging Adults, to learn more about this versatile policy reform tool.
Raise the Age
One of the most important and significant policy innovations being considered and implemented in the burgeoning field of emerging adult justice is raising the upper age of juvenile jurisdiction to include emerging adults. Several states are or have consider legislation to bring about such a change and in 2018 Vermont enacted legislation, which has included 18-year-olds and will include 19-year-olds in the juvenile system.
To learn more about about the EAJP’s Raise the Age work, see here.
International Summit
On June 11-12, 2019 policymakers, researchers, judges, elected officials, attorneys, directly impacted people, and advocates convened at the Columbia Justice Lab’s Emerging Adults & Justice Reform Summit to address reforms of the justice system’s interaction with emerging adults.
To see an overview of the summit, click here, or check out EAJP Director Lael Chester’s presentation slides here.
Learning Community
The Emerging Adult Justice Learning Community (EAJLC) was a carefully organized collaborative learning environment that brought together researchers, practitioners, policymakers, and advocates twice a year over a three-year period to create more developmentally appropriate, effective and fairer criminal justice responses for young people ages 18 – 25. Participants of the Learning Community are all engaged in some aspect of this work in their professional pursuits. The Learning Community’s goals were to provide researchers and policymakers access to one another to increase learning, practice, and policy innovations by translating academic research into effective policies and developing opportunities to research burgeoning practices that contribute to a more equitable treatment of emerging adults.
To learn more about the EAJLC, click here.