Harnessing Implementation Science to Reform Juvenile Services: A Roadmap for Change

The research-to-practice gap in juvenile services is substantial, as it is in most other fields. This gap contributes to adverse psychosocial outcomes for youth that are juvenile-legal service and system-involved, such as mental health concerns. Implementation science emerged to reduce discrepancies between research and practice. This article introduces implementation science and explains how it may be harnessed to enhance youth outcomes and bring about systemic change in the juvenile-legal services sector. An overview of implementation science is provided, with a particular emphasis on accelerating the adoption of evidence-based practices, like restorative justice as a diversionary tactic and graduated response as an alternative approach towards probationary youth, within the juvenile-legal system. Given the field's focus on implementation, we emphasize opportunities for researchers and practitioners to incorporate implementation science into practice and research, and we offer helpful examples and suggestions for juvenile services practitioners looking to integrate evidence-based methods in their contexts.