Program Areas

Juvenile Justice

Metis Associates helps Juvenile Detention Alternatives Initiatives sites to use data to improve the outlook for youth involved with the juvenile justice system.
© STEVE LISS
COURTESY OF THE ANNIE E. CASEY FOUNDATION

Metis has worked with the Annie E. Casey Foundation Juvenile Detention Alternatives Initiative since its inception in 1992, helping this influential reform initiative and its grantees across the county to collect and use data to reduce reliance on secure detention for young people.

Metis Associates has spent more than a decade applying its knowledge of juvenile justice, juvenile-justice information systems, and information technology to help reduce confinement of youth and improve their chances of success when they return to their communities. Much of this work has been conducted in the area of information technology for the Juvenile Detention Alternatives Initiative (JDAI) developed by the Annie E. Casey Foundation. Metis's work for JDAI has focused on helping grantees obtain and organize the data needed for planning and assessment and to develop infrastructure for data acquisition, maintenance, and analysis.

Metis's expertise in the evaluation of youth-development programs extends to programs that help young people who have been released from prison or jail to reenter the workforce and the life of their communities. The evaluation of the NYC Justice Corps implementation, for example, focuses on documenting and understanding the development of this innovative program model, and provides a base of knowledge for a rigorous outcome evaluation.