A Minimum Age for California's Juvenile Legal System: Lessons on Collaborative Research to Drive Legislative Change

The policymaker We, an academic pediatrician and an academic social partners provided guidance on the research questions that worker with clinical and research expertise in youth justice, needed to be asked and the timeline needed for findings and describe our stakeholder–policymaker–academic partnered the dissemination approach to best reach lawmakers, and they research that led to the passage of. [...] Table 3 describes with youth involved in the juvenile legal system and their implications of the partnered research findings for the state families, along with networks of advocates, and served as policymaking process and elucidates how the partnered stakeholder partners throughout the research process.10 research process facilitated buy-in among all partners. [...] The research process was nership led to the formulation and passage of California SB designed to harness and build on existing scientific evidence 439, which established a minimum age of 12 for California’s relevant to young children who come to the attention of law Table 3. [...] A recent analysis reports on the criminalization and laws and practices related to young children who come to the overrepresentation of young Black children in the legal attention of law enforcement.13 The bulk of the research activi- system.15 In 2021, we partnered with the NJJN to create a ties occurred from 2016 to early 2017. [...] The stakeholder partners were crucial to ethefloor, #MinimumAge are now in the lexicon as we strive the research process as they educated the authors about together for change on behalf of young children and families the legal concepts necessary for pursuing the study and around the country.