Exploring Faculty and Staff Members’ Cultural Literacies in Shaping Climate and Supporting Justice-Involved Youth

The United States has nearly 200,000 youth who are “justice-involved,” meaning that they are school-age minors with a wide range of relationships and interactions with juvenile justice system services and facility entities. However, though there are large bodies of literature examining topics related to justice-involved youth, few researchers have focused on the adults (e.g., facility staff and administrators) who shape these facilities and youths’ experiences related to facility climate. Furthermore, few researchers have focused on understanding these adults’ cultural literacy practices as relevant to everyday operations within these facilities, including their connection to strengthening and improving facility climate – the overall safety of learning spaces. This paper is a qualitative study that draws from two focus groups featuring participants from four states and representing 10+ juvenile justice facilities to consider how the connections between discursive and cultural practices offer important opportunities to examine juvenile justice facilities, and the ways that those practices might better support and humanize justice-involved youth.