Pursuing a National Estimate of Dual System Youth, Illinois, New York, Ohio, 1992-2014

Across the country, child welfare and juvenile justice systems now recognize that youth involved in both systems (i.e., dual system youth) are a vulnerable population who go unrecognized because of challenges in information-sharing and cross-system collaboration. These challenges currently prevent the development of accurate estimations of the number of dual system youth nationally and limit understanding of best practices used by jurisdictions implementing integrated systems models. OJJDP funded this secondary analysis study to address this gap in knowledge.

All data used in the Dual System Youth Design Study were owned or accessed by various partners. No primary data collection occurred in the study. In addition, most of the data accessed by the study partners was confidential, de-identified data that required memorandums of agreement and/or court orders to access and use. Some sites have ongoing or standing agreements with the public agencies who own the data which allow access and use for specific projects. Because, most frequently, the data are owned by the public service agencies and include sensitive information the data are not available to be publicly archived. Instead, here a descriptive overview is provided of the data used and accessed by each study partner as well as contact information of a person at each site that will be able to share syntax and/or coding parameters for those who are considering to replicate the findings or methods.

Researchers interested in inquiring the data and syntax used in this project should refer to the study partners section of the downloadable study documentation. Data provider agency names along with the specific study data that were requested are listed in the documentation.