HR²: Effective Services and Supports for Youth Who are High Risk and Hard to Reach

By David Muhammad, Mikaela Rabinowitz, and Vincent Schiraldi. Research and contributions from Patricia Garcia Iruegas and Jeremy Page

Over the past two decades, the United States has made historic progress in reducing youth incarceration and juvenile justice system involvement. Youth detention has declined by approximately 75% since 2000, as juvenile arrests have fallen sharply and research has made clear that incarceration can cause lasting harm to young people. Despite these gains, a very small subset of youth remain involved in serious and violent conduct and are difficult to engage in traditional services. These youth who are High Risk and Hard to Reach (HR2), pose a disproportionate challenge to youth justice systems and reform efforts. HR2 youth often experience multiple, compounding risk factors, including chronic trauma, family instability, community violence, school disengagement, mental health and substance use issues, and repeated justice system contact. While the overall number of youth in the system has declined, a growing share of those who remain have higher levels of need and more complex circumstances. Highly publicized offenses committed by a small number of HR2 youth have fueled misperceptions that youth crime is widespread, threatening to undermine decades of reform and prompting calls for punitive responses that are ineffective and harmful. This group of young people, often numbering no more than 25 in a mid-sized city, stymie juvenile justice officials and community-based organizations. HR2 youth can exhaust system resources and evade even the best programs. The outsized attention they receive can also thwart justice reform efforts, with elected officials and community members mistakenly believing the group is larger in size and therefore increased incarceration is necessary. In some jurisdictions, responses to this population are threatening to roll back the enormous gains made in the youth justice field. Existing evidence shows that community-based, trauma-informed, and relationship-centered interventions can reduce recidivism, but many established models struggle to meet the needs of HR2 youth. In response, a growing number of programs have adapted credible messenger and intensive life-coaching models, often combined with cognitive behavioral approaches and wraparound supports. A few programs highlighted in this brief demonstrate promising outcomes, including significant reductions in violent reoffending, improved school engagement, and increased accountability without reliance on incarceration. At the same time, these initiatives reveal persistent gaps in knowledge and practice. Key challenges include determining how to respond to unsafe or unstable home environments and adapting adult-focused violence intervention models to the developmental realities of youth. There is also a need to better understand which combinations of services – life coaching, cognitive behavioral interventions, family support, group work, and incentives – are most effective, for whom, at what duration, and under what circumstances. This brief argues that the next phase of youth justice reform must focus on intentionally and effectively serving HR2 youth. Doing so will require moving beyond strict replication of existing evidence-based programs toward innovation informed by data, transparency, and rigorous evaluation embedded in practice. Policymakers and practitioners must invest in specialized, culturally grounded interventions, support sustained research-practice partnerships, and center the lived experiences of HR2 youth and their families.

Annie E. Casey Foundation, 2026. 20p.