The challenge and opportunity of parental involvement in juvenile justice services

The active involvement of parents – whether as recipients, extenders, or managers of services – during their youth's experience with the juvenile justice system is widely assumed to be crucial. Parents and family advocacy groups note persisting concerns with the degree to which successful parental involvement is achieved. Justice system providers are highly motivated and actively working to make improvements. These coalescing interests provide a strong motivation for innovation and improvement regarding family involvement, but the likely success of these efforts is severely limited by the absence of any detailed definition of parental involvement or validated measure of this construct. Determining whether and how parental involvement works in juvenile justice services depends on the development of clear models and sound measurement. Efforts in other child serving systems offer guidance to achieve this goal. A multidimensional working model developed with parents involved in child protective services is presented as a template for developing a model for parental involvement in juvenile justice. Features of the model requiring changes to make it more adaptable to juvenile justice are identified. A systematic research agenda for developing methods and measures to meet the present demands for enhanced parental involvement in juvenile justice services is presented. •Consensus is high that parental involvement in juvenile justice services is crucial.•Meaningful advancement is limited by the lack of agreed upon definitions or measures.•A valid measure would be beneficial in both applied and research contexts.•We propose a research agenda to advance methods and measures of involvement.