A Research Report prepared by the VERA Institute of Justice 

With support from the Edna McConnell Clark Foundation, in April 2009 researchers from the Vera Institute of Justice’s Center on Youth Justice (CYJ) started a year-long process evaluation of the DYRS secure placement reforms. Drawing on documentation supplied by DYRS, as well as interviews and focus groups with DYRS leaders; personnel from New Beginnings; DC family court judges; trainers from the Missouri Youth Services Institute (MYSI), who served as consultants in the reform process; and staff from the Maya Angelou Academy (the school at New Beginnings), CYJ researchers sought to map DYRS’s reform strategy and identify factors that either negatively or positively affected implementation.