News
The Department of Justice awards $425,000 to School of Medicine and Wilder School researchers to reduce risk for girls in the Juvenile Justice system
September 29, 2020
Kellie Carlyle, Associate Professor in the Department of Health Behavior and Policy and Research Scientist for Sexual and Domestic Violence in the Institute for Women’s Health and Dr. Sarah Jane Brubaker, Professor in the L. Douglas Wilder School of Government and Public Affairs, will lead a multidisciplinary research team for the project entitled, "Disrupting the Trauma-to-Prison Pipeline for Girls in Virginia: A Multilevel Intervention." Carlyle and Brubaker are also members of the core faculty of the iCubed Disrupting Criminalization in Education project, along with Co-Investigators Dr. Danielle Apugo, Assistant Professor in the School of Education, and Dr. Jamie Cage and Dr. Nicole Corley, both Assistant Professors in the School of Social Work.
The three-year grant begins October 1 and the research team will partner with the Virginia Sexual and Domestic Violence Action Alliance and Virginia Department of Juvenile Justice (DJJ) to provide prevention programming for girls involved in various stages of the juvenile justice system, provide training on trauma-informed responses for DJJ staff who work with girls, and provide opportunities for girls to develop leadership skills by engaging in efforts to build community capacity in high poverty areas to change the social contexts influencing public safety and the criminalization of trauma. The goal of this comprehensive program is to support and enhance the experiences and opportunities for some of Virginia's most marginalized girls and change the narrative for young trauma survivors.