Understanding and Addressing Facility Learning Space Perspectives of Youth Served in Juvenile Corrections and Agency Supporters Before, During, and After COVID-19: A Community-Partner Perspective

A positive juvenile justice facility learning environment is one that promotes maximal outcomes for both youth and staff. To address facility learning environment (i.e., climate), a bi-directional community partnership was formed among juvenile justice facilities, a juvenile justice agency, and researchers to better understand how to positively strengthen facility climate through amplifying youth voice. Youth completed facility climate surveys at three timepoints (before, during, and after COVID-19) to assess their perspectives on prescribed tenets of learning environment climate (i.e., Expectations, Acknowledgement, Discipline, Safety, Respect, Connections). In between the second and third timepoint, when daily operations were returning to more typical conditions, agency-level climate supporters participated in a focus group to better understand their perspectives on facility climate (defined using the same climate tenets) and to learn how their efforts were affected by COVID-19. Youth survey responses across the three timepoints were descriptively synthesized by climate tenet. The agency-level focus group was analyzed using a constant comparative analysis, and four themes created. Behavioral learning theory and labeling theory were used as lenses for further analyses of the themes. Suggestions for strengthening facility climate are provided within the context of both survey and focus group data paired with descriptions of our partnership activities.