Esperanza’s structural reform efforts involve examining juvenile case-processing to identify potential alterations that can reduce the reliance on out of home placement and encourage the use of community-based interventions. 

Reform recommendations can vary in scope and include vast efforts, such as facilitating complete system overhaul, and more narrow ones, such as identifying key decision-making points in the process where incremental reforms can be introduced.

One example of our past work in this area includes working with the NYC Department of Probation and researchers from the Vera Institute of Justice to create and implement a structured assessment tool that guides the recommendations that Probation Officers make regarding dispositions (sentencing).