Butts, Jeffrey A., Kathleen Tomberg, Jennifer Peirce, Douglas N. Evans and Angela Irvine (2016). Reclaiming Futures and Organizing Justice for Drug-Using Youth. New York, NY: Research & Evaluation Center, John Jay College of Criminal Justice.

When researchers examined new survey findings from communities that participated in the Reclaiming Futures initiative over a ten-year period, the data suggest that communities with the strongest engagement in Reclaiming Futures tend to have more positive perceptions of their youth justice and substance abuse treatment systems, including key facets of administration, collaboration, and overall system quality. In communities where the survey scores increased significantly during the early years of Reclaiming Futures, improvements were sustained through 2015. Thus, robust implementation of Reclaiming Futures may be associated with lasting improvements in system operations.