Policies Governing and Programs Available to Teen Parents in the Juvenile Justice System

Because teen parents are at risk of adversities, they have been the focus of policy and support efforts. These efforts have traditionally focused on the general population, though. We know little about the programs available to support, and the policies that govern, teen parents in the JJS. Using publicly available information on all 50 state-wide JJS websites in the United States, the goal of this study is to identify these policies and programs. The results indicate that the most common policies were security- and healthcare-related policies, and the most common programs were parenting courses, although there were state-level differences.