by Eva McKinsey, Amelia Ashton Thorn, Minjee Kristin Kim and Catherine Gorey
Vol. 108 No. 3 (2025) | Problem-Solving Courts | Download PDF Version of Article
Research tells us that there are inextricable links between trauma and the juvenile justice system. Not only is trauma prevalent among system-involved youth (up to 90 percent report exposure to one or more traumatic events),1 but involvement in the system itself can also cause immense stress, and common consequences of system involvement (e.g., incarceration, family separation) can be traumatizing.2 Scholars, practitioners, and advocates promote a “trauma-informed approach” (TIA) to improve the experiences and outcomes of those who come in contact with the system.3
Despite these efforts, little is known about how youth experience court or the judicial behaviors that might shape that experience. In this study, we analyzed survey responses of 54 court personnel (juvenile defenders and juvenile court counselors) in a southeastern state about the experiences of adolescents appearing as defendants in juvenile delinquency court (often called “juveniles”) and judicial influence on that experience. The goal was to better understand the extent to which youths’ experiences and judges’ behaviors did (or did not) reflect a TIA.
We found that, when describing youths’ experiences, court personnel most commonly referenced the negative impacts that court involvement can have on youth (e.g., decreased self-worth, increased anxiety, and exacerbated mental health issues). There were fewer descriptions of the positive impacts of court (e.g., court involvement leading to connection to services) or neutral impacts (e.g., court not greatly affecting youth). Additionally, we found that court personnel believe that a few key realms of judicial influence can make a difference in youths’ court experience: decision-making, judge-youth interactions, judges’ engagement with others, taking a holistic approach, and accountability. But views varied on who should be held accountable and often contained little discussion of what accountability meant.
A TIA is rooted in the belief that people can overcome the impacts of trauma, that systems play a role in either exacerbating or resolving trauma-related issues, and that those systems need a TIA in order to effectively deliver their services.4 Judges play a particularly vital role in the integration of a TIA in courts, given the extent to which they interact with court-involved persons, their immense decision-making power, and the influence they hold over other court staff — all of which shape the overall courtroom environment and outcomes for court-involved youths.5
As laid out by the United States’ Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) — a leading voice in the development of a shared framework for a TIA — any program, organization, or system that is trauma-informed must center certain principles including safety, trustworthiness/transparency, peer support, collaboration/mutuality, empowerment/voice/choice, and cultural/historical/gender issues, as well as adhere to four key “assumptions” labeled the “Four Rs” of a TIA.6 They must (1) realize the pervasive impact of trauma and understand paths toward recovery; (2) recognize the signs and symptoms of trauma; (3) respond by comprehensively integrating knowledge about trauma into policies, procedures, and practices; and (4) actively attempt to resist retraumatization.
Court actors can promote the four Rs in various ways. For instance, trauma-focused educational programming can help foster greater knowledge among legal actors (e.g., lawyers, court staff, judges) of trauma impacts, signs and symptoms, and recovery7; the creation of trauma-informed court task forces can result in more trauma-responsive policies and procedures8; and primers and bench cards focused on trauma-informed practices can guide legal actors’ responses to and interactions with court-involved people in ways that recognize their trauma and resist retraumatization.9
But the ultimate indicator of a trauma-informed system is how it is experienced. Do people involved in the system feel safe, empowered, and like they have a voice and choice? Do they perceive trust, transparency, and respect from system actors? Does involvement in the system reduce or exacerbate trauma symptoms? Youths’ court experiences can help answer these questions, and greater insight into the specific judicial behaviors that influence youths’ experiences can promote greater alignment with a TIA.
Involvement in juvenile court is inherently stressful.10 A systematic review of qualitative literature published between 2006 and 2017 that directly consulted youth and their parents about their court experiences revealed that, among other findings, parents perceived court proceedings as confusing, unfair, and unjust, and that youth often found court disorienting and upsetting.11 While feelings of anxiety could be ameliorated by court support services, these services were not available everywhere,12 and youth and their families often felt they were not given the opportunity to participate in proceedings as much as they would have liked.13
Together, these studies begin to paint a picture of youth experience in court as one that is far from trauma-informed. Researchers have stressed that little is known about how youth experience court, and that judicial personnel might shed light on the question.14 Indeed, prior research has recognized court personnel as “insiders” who have unique glimpses into the processes and experiences faced by, and the perspectives of, system-involved youth.15
Despite a vast amount of literature emphasizing the crucial role judges play in shaping courtroom proceedings and environment16 as well as recommending specific judge behaviors that, for example, promote a TIA in court,17 little research has investigated the judge-specific behaviors that are perceived to most influence youths’ experiences in court.
The literature offers numerous practices that judges can engage in to become more trauma-informed, from inviting youth to speak during court hearings to relying on trauma assessments to inform decision-making.18 Many such practices are considered trauma-informed based on their general alignment with trauma theory and TIA principles (e.g., safety, transparency, empowerment).19 However, there is little research demonstrating how these behaviors relate to, and ideally improve, youths’ experiences in court. The few studies that have quantitatively examined associations between judges’ engagement with practices that align with a TIA and court-involved persons’ perceptions of court have either found no significant associations20 or associations that suggest nuanced and sometimes counter-intuitive impacts.21
Further exploration into judges’ behaviors that may meaningfully impact court users is warranted. Court personnel, who are in close contact with court-involved persons and who regularly observe judges on the bench, can help fill some of these knowledge gaps.
We had two research aims:
To do so, we surveyed two groups of court personnel: defenders (i.e., attorneys representing juveniles in juvenile delinquency court) and court counselors/supervisors (i.e., court employees who provide services and guidance to youth and families involved in juvenile delinquency court before, during, and after court involvement). Both groups closely interact with court-involved youth during the court process, suggesting they have insight into youths’ experience. We also asked the children themselves about their experiences, but — due to various less trauma-informed realities of the system, including unpredictable scheduling and defenders who declined to connect us with their clients for fear of retaliation from the judge — were not able to sample a meaningful number of their youths.22
We interpreted data through a trauma-informed lens by assessing how the youth experiences and judges’ behaviors described by court personnel align with a TIA.
We focused on court personnel’s perceptions of the experiences of youth appearing as defendants (“juveniles”) in juvenile delinquency court in seven urban counties in a southeastern state.23 In this state, as in many others, juvenile delinquency court is the system that handles complaints against children (i.e., any person under age 18 who is not married, emancipated, or in the military) who are alleged to be either delinquent (i.e., have engaged in conduct considered a crime if committed by an adult) or undisciplined (i.e., have engaged in conduct considered “inappropriate,” such as skipping school).
To recruit court personnel, we contacted lead defenders and chief court counselors with whom we had connected during previous stages of our research, asking them to participate and to forward our recruitment message to colleagues in their county. Eligibility criteria included that the respondents be either a defender or a court counselor/supervisor who had served in the county of interest for at least four months since April 2023 to ensure recency of data. We yielded a sample size of 54 for the current study.24
Of those 54, 24 identified as defenders and 28 as court counselors, with the remaining two preferring not to disclose which role they held or other demographic information. The 24 defenders came from five judicial districts (six counties) and responded to questions about 13 judges. The majority of defenders identified as White (62.5 percent), 20.8 percent as Black or African American, and the rest as a different race/ethnicity or preferred not to answer. Most defenders identified as women (66.7 percent), and nearly half had served as a defender for over ten years (45.8 percent), with the rest having served less than five years (25.0 percent) or between five and ten years (29.2 percent). The 28 court counselors who completed the survey came from six judicial districts (seven counties) and responded to questions about 15 judges. Half of the court counselors identified as Black or African American, 17.9 percent as White, and the rest as a different race/ethnicity or preferred not to answer. The large majority identified as women (71.4 percent), and half had served as a court counselor for more than ten years, 35.7 percent had served less than five years, and 10.7 percent between five and ten years.
Court personnel completed the survey online.25 After completing quantitative measures about their perceptions of youths’ court experiences (reported on separately),26 we asked participants several open-ended qualitative questions: (1) How do you think going to juvenile delinquency court makes juveniles feel about themselves? Why do you think that?; (2) Over the course of your career, what have you seen judges do that you think positively impacts juveniles involved in juvenile delinquency court?; and (3) Over the course of your career, what have you seen judges do that you think negatively impacts juveniles involved in juvenile delinquency court?
Participants also answered questions regarding personal information, including gender, race/ethnicity, role in the system, and years served in the role.27 Following completion of the survey, participants could sign up to receive a $20 electronic Amazon gift card.
We analyzed the open-ended qualitative survey data using thematic analysis, an approach for identifying patterns and themes in data.28 First, two authors established three primary categories based on survey questions and research aims: youth experience, positive judge influence, and negative judge influence. Then, following an iterative process, they created codes and coded content under each category.29 They then sorted the codes into themes, working together to name, define, and describe final themes. Lastly, they conducted crosstabs to check for differences in the frequency of themes between court counselors and defenders, assessing for representativeness of themes across subsamples.30
Below, we describe the three themes we identified related to youths’ experiences in juvenile court, ordered from most to least referenced: (1) court negatively impacts youth, (2) experiences vary, and (3) court promotes accountability. Table 1 presents the codes attached to each theme, the frequency of references within each theme, and the percentage of references coming from court counselors and defenders.
Court personnel primarily expressed the belief that going to court makes youth feel bad about themselves (e.g., “makes them feel like bad kids”), thereby lowering self-worth. Relatedly, they reported that court causes youth to experience a range of negative emotions; the most commonly mentioned was anxiety, but also anger, embarrassment, fear, and disorientation: “I think it makes them anxious the first time, because the atmosphere sometimes can be very hostile from the bench. I think hearing other cases and how disrespectful they can be from the bench causes anger and frustration to rise before individual cases are heard.”
In addition to these negative emotions, some court personnel noted how court can exacerbate youths’ mental health issues (e.g., “Anxious kids get more so, depressed kids get more so, angry kids get more so.”), and one noted how it can legitimize oppression: “As a whole, the system is designed to continue oppression of minority and/or impoverished children. This concept is visually confirmed to children who come into the courtroom and see a courtroom full of other minority children and families. . . . For the few white children that do find themselves in the courtroom, the oppression of minorities is sanctioned in front of their eyes.”
Defenders were more likely than court counselors to describe the negative effects that court can have on youth.
Many court personnel expressed the belief that youths’ court experiences often vary based on the behavior of court actors (e.g., judges), the charge severity, and/or the youth themselves. In describing this range of experiences, many distinguished between youth who exhibit concern toward the process and those who appear apathetic toward the court experience: “It depends on the juvenile: Some feel embarrassed and feel remorseful about coming to juvenile court whereas others are unbothered and unfazed.”
Although defenders more frequently acknowledged how youths’ experiences vary, the specific code representing the belief that most youth are apathetic toward the court process was more frequently referenced by court counselors (i.e., court counselors more frequently expressed the belief that most youth do not take the court process seriously or that going to court does not greatly impact youth).
Some court personnel reported that going to court encourages youth to take accountability for their actions or change their behavior. While some respondents did not explain what they meant by the accountability-related phrases they used (e.g., “They have done something wrong and have been caught and must account for it”), others discussed accountability as a process for youth to learn to engage with the world differently: “[Court] allows the individuals to understand, learn, and adapt. The individuals involved with [Department of Juvenile Justice] have been informed of their behaviors and how it has affected others causing them to learn from their mistake and adapt to their environments and new situations.”
Court counselors expressed the belief that going to court promotes accountability more frequently than did defenders.
Research Aim 2: What Judge Behaviors Influence Youth Experiences in Court?
We identified fives themes about the kind of judge behaviors that shape youths’ court experience and discuss them below from most to least referenced: (1) judge-youth interactions,
(2) decisions, (3) a holistic and individualized approach, (4) judicial approach to accountability, and (5) judge engagement with others. Table 1 presents the judges’ behaviors (i.e., codes) attached to each theme (separated into behaviors referenced as positively versus negatively influencing youth), the frequency of references within each theme, and the percentage of references coming from court counselors and defenders.
Judge-Youth Interactions Matter: “Recognize the child as an individual worthy of respect.”
Court personnel believe that the nature and frequency of judges’ interactions with youth affect how youth experience court. When referring to ways in which judge-youth interactions can negatively impact youth, court personnel most frequently described the situation in which judges decide not to engage with or listen to youth at all during the court process (e.g., “[Judges] speak about how bad [youth] are to the professionals without ever speaking directly to the kid.”). They also mentioned how hostile behavior from the judge, such as patronizing, shaming, or threatening the child, can cause harm: “Being dismissive, talking over them. Berating them. Siding with parents without acknowledging their feelings [negatively impacts youth].”
When describing positive judge-youth interactions, court personnel most frequently mentioned judges simply conversing with youth, with some noting how specific interactions during those conversations, such as showing respect, recognizing progress, and being transparent, can positively influence court-involved youth: “Speak to them (not just about them). Show respect to them and their wishes (even when not giving them what they want). Allowing/encouraging them to speak up for themselves. Actually listening when they do. . . . In short, treating them with the respect they would an adult [positively impacts youth].”
Defenders were more likely than court counselors to discuss the importance of judge-youth interaction (both positively and negatively) in shaping youths’ court experience.
Decisions Matter: “They will have completely unrealistic expectations and then punish the kid for being a kid.”
Court personnel expressed the belief that the decisions judges make, and the underlying assumptions attached to those decisions, can greatly impact youth. On the one hand, judges’ unrealistic, harsh, unfounded, or otherwise inappropriate decisions can negatively impact youth. Some respondents expressed concern about the future implications of judges’ decisions, stating that judges are setting youth up for a life in the criminal legal system. Within this theme, court personnel most often described judges ordering unrealistic or inappropriate consequences and making snap judgments about youth as negatively affecting youth: “Continuing to impose supervision or other ‘let’s keep an eye on you’ tactics instead of giving children the benefit of any doubt [negatively impacts youth]. I think the worst thing a judge can do is to assume the guilt of the child for the charge for which they are petitioned.”
On the other hand, court personnel expressed that when judges use their decision-making power to connect youth to services and encourage youth to make progress toward their goals, youth are positively impacted: “Some judges encourage the youth to make a change and order resources that will help them. Some of the judges go above and beyond to ensure that the juvenile is provided the resources necessary to make a change.”
Whereas defenders more often discussed the ways judges use their decision-making power to negatively impact youth, court counselors more often described the positive impact judicial decision-making can have on youth.
A Holistic and Individualized Approach Matters: “Not understanding the entire situation.”
Court personnel believe that judges’ ability to treat the youth as an individual with unique circumstances can affect youth. On the one hand, court personnel noted that judges’ failure to consider all the circumstances in a youth’s life negatively influences youth: “Many judges have a lack of empathy and understanding for the circumstances in which many of my juveniles are living. They continuously discount the effect that their home life is having on their behavior and belittle them for not being able to rise above circumstances that are not their fault.”
On the other hand, court personnel described how judges showing interest in youths’ lives outside the courtroom, evaluating broader influences on youth behavior, and treating youths as individuals (e.g., remembering names, resisting labels like “juvenile”) positively impacts youth: “Listening to how kids feel about the situation, whether reasonable or not, makes a difference. Acknowledging their frustration with their parents, friends, school is so important.”
Compared to court counselors, defenders more frequently discussed the influence that a holistic and individualized judicial approach can have on youths’ court experience.
Approach to Accountability Matters: “Something is said but not carried out.”
Court personnel expressed that judges’ ability to center accountability can affect youth, with the general sentiment being that making efforts to promote accountability positively influences youth (and that failing to promote accountability negatively influences youth). That said, respondents varied on who should be held accountable and what that accountability should look like. While some court personnel focused on the importance of the judge holding the youth accountable, others stressed the need for the judge to promote accountability among parents/guardians and court staff as well as to be accountable themselves (i.e., that judges needed to stick to their word).
For example, when discussing approaches to accountability that negatively impact youth, some court personnel shared ways in which they have seen judges failing to hold youth accountable by not being firm enough (e.g., “releasing from detention”), being too “soft,” or allowing too many second chances: “I have seen judges make excuses for the juvenile’s behaviors or otherwise give juveniles ways they can deflect responsibility for their actions. In my experience that is the worst possible involvement a judge can have on a case.” Others focused on the importance of judges holding other actors accountable (sometimes other legal personnel, but most commonly parents/guardians): “During detention hearings, the children are subjected to hearing nothing but negative things about themselves from all the adults in the room, while the adults in the room are rarely held accountable for constantly failing our children.”
Some court personnel also discussed how judges’ commitment to accountability positively impacts youth, whether those accountability efforts are directed at the youth, the parents/guardians or court staff, or themselves. For example, some described judges’ ability to keep their word as an influential factor for youth: “Judges following through on their orders is important. Kids need to know that if an expectation is set and they don’t follow it, there will be consequences.”
Court counselors were more likely than defenders to discuss the role that judges’ commitment to accountability, in all forms, can play in shaping youths’ court experiences.
Judge Engagement With Others Matters: “Treating it like a cold courtroom where the judge doesn’t seem to show any care for . . . the family.”
In addition to interactions with youth, some court personnel believe that how judges treat others in the courtroom (i.e., family and/or court staff) can influence the youths’ experiences. For instance, judges disrespecting family or interfering with court staff doing their job can negatively impact youth: “Judges that yell at parents for working 12-hour shifts and coming to court tired, or treating the parent with disrespect in open court has caused juveniles to react in anger and frustration.” Court counselors also shared how judges talking with and listening to courtroom staff, guardians, and attorneys can positively influence youth (though no defenders expressed this sentiment): “Listening to DJJ [Department of Juvenile Justice] and valuing their recommendations [positively impacts youth].” Court counselors were more likely than defenders to discuss the influence that judges’ engagement with others in the courtroom can have on the youths’ experiences.
Court personnel have much to tell us about how youth experience court, as well as how judges — the leaders of the courtroom — influence that experience. This knowledge is crucial to assessing and building a TIA in juvenile delinquency courts.
Court Personnel’s Perceptions Suggest Court Is Generally Not Trauma-Informed: The most prevalent theme related to our first research aim was that court negatively impacts youth. Indeed, our analysis revealed minimal evidence of perceptions/experiences associated with a TIA — such as feelings of empowerment, safety, transparency, and trust31 — and instead uncovered an abundance of references to negative impacts, such as decreased self-worth, increased anxiety, and exacerbated mental health issues. Many of these impacts described by court personnel reflect common responses to trauma (e.g., anxiety, confusion, anger, shame),32 substantiating prior research suggesting that the act of going through court itself can trigger and exacerbate trauma symptoms.33 This outcome runs contrary to a TIA, where a primary goal is to resist retraumatization.34 In short, our analysis reveals that juvenile court may be activating trauma instead of minimizing it.
Not all court personnel’s responses, however, were negative — some court personnel believed the court experience to be neutral or even positive because court can lead to accountability, behavior change, or connection with services. These latter outcomes, of course, greatly align with a TIA, which should facilitate access to resources and services that can promote healing and recovery from trauma.35 Even so, references to services were relatively few, calling into question the extent to which court involvement is actually achieving the TIA goal of appropriately responding to trauma by facilitating services. This result is particularly striking in the juvenile system, which explicitly promotes rehabilitation as one of its primary goals.36 After all, rehabilitation relies heavily on connection to appropriately tailored services, particularly for high-risk offenders.37 Going to juvenile court seems far from a trauma-informed experience for youth, thereby also limiting its rehabilitative potential.
Influential Judge Behaviors Tend to Reflect a TIA: Our analyses suggest a few key areas of judicial influence that court personnel believe can make a difference in youths’ court experiences. Most of these behaviors are also heavily discussed in the literature on trauma-informed courts, including judge-youth interactions (e.g., communicating with youth in respectful ways), decision-making (e.g., referring youth to treatment services to address past trauma), taking a holistic approach (e.g., seeking to understand the factors that contributed to youths’ court involvement), and engaging with other actors (e.g., collaborating with stakeholders to coordinate youths’ care).38
Accountability Matters, But How Does It Relate to a Trauma-Informed Approach?: However, the act of centering accountability, which court personnel indicated as a crucial area of judicial influence, is less present in the trauma-informed literature, and court personnel’s responses indicate a lack of consensus on how judges should promote accountability (including who should be held accountable). While some of these accountability-
related perspectives align with a TIA — such as that judges should keep their word (which can help promote the TIA principles of trust and transparency) — other views were not well-aligned, such as the perspective that detaining youth is a helpful route toward promoting accountability (when we know that detention can be traumatic for young people).39
In other words, some court personnel’s ideas about how judges should promote accountability are actually ideas that prior research tells us can harm or retraumatize youth — and are not consistent with a TIA. This finding is consistent with other research that highlights how legal actors’ concepts of accountability, which often conflate accountability with harshness and punishment, tend to run counter to a TIA.40 As such, there is a need for greater attention to the relationship between a TIA and accountability within the legal system, such as the exploration of what a trauma-informed approach to accountability looks like.
Defenders and Court Counselors Perceive Court Differently: Though not directly related to our research aims, our findings also demonstrate important differences in how our two subsamples — defenders and court counselors — perceive court. Namely, court counselors were more likely to discuss the belief that youth are apathetic to the court process, how judges use their decision-making power to positively impact youth, and the role that courts play in holding youth accountable, whereas defenders were more likely to discuss the negative effects court and judges’ decisions can have on youth, the weight of judge-youth interactions, and the importance of judges taking a holistic approach to understanding youths’ circumstances.
These findings align with role theory, or the idea that “human beings behave in ways that are different and predictable depending on their respective social identities and the situation.”41 Court counselors work directly for the court system; therefore, we would expect them to exhibit greater system buy-in overall, including its goals of promoting accountability and positive change among youth and the assumption that judges help achieve those goals. Conversely, defenders’ primary allegiance is to their clients (i.e., the court-involved youths), which may lead to greater attunement to the potential harm that system involvement can cause their clients and the importance of judges considering
bigger-picture factors (e.g., home life) when making decisions about their clients. In other words, both groups’ perspectives were likely influenced by unique biases attached to the roles they assume in the court system.
These different perspectives highlight the importance of including as many voices as possible in research evaluating court experiences, including court personnel in diverse positions and, perhaps most importantly, youth themselves. Though our efforts to collect robust data from court-involved youth for this study were unsuccessful, future research should address this gap, investigating the ways in which youths’ perspectives do (and do not) overlap with the court personnel’s perspectives identified in the present analysis. And despite these differences, many themes were referenced frequently by both groups, thereby suggesting their combined views offer valid insight into the court experiences of youth and the judges’ behaviors that shape those experiences.
Our findings should be considered in light of several limitations. First, we relied on data collected from court personnel, as opposed to youth, to better understand youth experiences in court — which meant we relied upon an imperfect proxy. For example, some court personnel expressed the belief that some youth are unfazed or apathetic about court; however, we know that dissociation, flat affect, and avoidance/numbness can be symptoms of trauma,42 suggesting court personnel may be misinterpreting youths’ experiences. Indeed, no respondents suggested this apathetic appearance might not actually match what the youth was feeling, much less be a symptom of trauma. This finding may suggest the need for further trauma education among court personnel, and it certainly reinforces the need for future research to collect data from youth themselves — perhaps through participatory data-collection methods and recruitment outside of court (e.g., through community organizations).43 Interestingly, though, other analyses of our quantitative survey data suggested that court personnel were decent proxies for youth regarding distress levels and perceived procedural justice — that is, court personnel’s perceptions of youth experiences often roughly matched what youth themselves told us they experienced.44
Second, our study sample only included court personnel from one state in the southeastern United States in a specific type of court (juvenile delinquency), limiting the generalizability of our findings. Future research should continue to explore the experience of court participants in other regions and other court contexts (e.g., in adult criminal court). Third and lastly, the study involved the analysis of only three open-ended survey items, limiting the comprehensiveness of our data and findings. That said, the analyzed responses offered an abundance of valuable insights into youth experiences and judicial behavior that can serve as a foundation for future research.
Despite efforts in recent decades to incorporate a TIA into juvenile court, this qualitative study of court personnel perceptions sends a clear message: There is still much work to be done. Our findings demonstrate that going to court often involves a range of negative emotions, reactions, and experiences for youth, including feelings of low self-worth, anxiety, and confusion, thereby suggesting that juvenile court is failing to embody many of the principles central to a TIA, such as creating feelings of safety, empowerment, and choice.45 Further, findings demonstrate that the court personnel who watch judges regularly perform have a host of insights regarding judge behavior, many of which (though not all) may help advance the adoption of a TIA in courts. Researchers, judges, and others working to create more trauma-informed courts should recognize the court personnel population as a rich — and perhaps untapped — source of feedback with good ideas to share about trauma-informed court practice and some views on accountability that merit further study.
Eva McKinsey, PhD, is an applied social and community psychologist. Her work focuses on interventions, programs, and movements aimed at building resilient, accountable, and healthy communities.
Amelia Ashton Thorn is a senior lecturer at Duke Law, articles editor for Judicature, and assistant director at the Bolch Judicial Institute of Duke Law, where she leads the Institute’s trauma-informed courts initiative.
Minjee Kristin Kim is pursuing a bachelor’s degree at Duke University in public policy studies with a global health minor and a child policy research certificate.
Catherine Gorey is a 2024 graduate of Duke Law School. Prior to attending Duke, Catherine graduated from Cornell University with a degree in Human Development.
The authors gratefully acknowledge the suggestions of Ernestine Briggs-King on a prior draft of this manuscript.
