Historical Context of the OCJS-OSU Partnership: As both a producer and consumer of criminal justice research, the Ohio Office of Criminal Justice Services (OCJS) has taken an interest in the applicability of the web-based Global Risk Assessment Device, developed through OSU’s Center for Family Research (CFR) as an assessment tool for use by juvenile justice professionals. To date, the GRAD’s use in county juvenile courts has resulted in a database containing information on over 4,500 court-involved youth and their families.

During the 2004-2004 academic year, generous support provided by OCJS allowed the CFR to create two student research assistant positions dedicated to the use of the GRAD database in order to examine topics related to specialized dockets, with special emphasis on issues related to mental health and substance abuse in at-risk adolescent populations. Each research assistant was responsible for the development of criminal justice-oriented deliverables related to the OCJS-OSU partnership, including the development of a codebook for the GRAD database, a set of fact sheets about specialized dockets, and research papers that focused on the family context of mental health and substance abuse concerns.

Click here to see the fact sheets created by students involved in the CFR/OCJS partnership.

OCJS also funded two graduate research associate (GRA) positions at the CFR in the 2005-2006 academic year. Each GRA position had a set of expectations that were specifically geared to the following interest areas:

• One position is dedicated to the advancement of work conducted in the 2004-2005 academic year concerning issues related to the family context of mental health and substance abuse issues in at-risk adolescent populations. This work augments current use of the GRAD database, and continues to emphasize issues of concern to specialized dockets, especially work related to mental health and substance abuse issues.
• A second position is dedicated to the exploration of issues related to parental incarceration. This work includes consideration of the linkages among family cohesion and related factors, violence (including domestic violence), substance use, and incarceration of mothers and fathers, as well as the intersection of ethnicity, poverty, and other aspects of community context.