PbS Announces National Juvenile Justice Award Winners

Nashville, TN — Performance-based Standards (PbS) held their annual PbS Awards Night on Aug. 13, 2021, honoring and celebrating the many efforts of our juvenile justice partners to improve the lives and opportunities of young people in their care.

The PbS Awards Night — sponsored by the PbS Education and Employment Foundation — announces the recipients of the PbS Barbara Allen-Hagen Award, which is given to correction, detention, assessment and community residential programs who best exemplify PbS’ commitment to treating all youths as one of our own. The winners are selected for demonstrating extraordinary leadership and commitment to ensuring safe and healthy facility cultures, effective programming and achieving positive outcomes for young people, staff and families using data as the foundation for making and sustaining positive changes. PbS is pleased to announce the finalists of the 2021 PbS Awards:

• 2021 PbS Barbara Allen-Hagen Award Finalist – Correction: Ferris School, Wilmington, DE
• 2021 PbS Barbara Allen-Hagen Award Finalist – Correction: North Dakota Youth Correctional Center, Mandan, ND
• 2021 PbS Barbara Allen-Hagen Award Finalist – Detention and Assessment: Maricopa County Juvenile Detention Center – Durango, Phoenix, AZ

The winners of the 2021 PbS Barbara Allen-Hagen Award are aspirational leaders in the field that have gone above and beyond to embed that founding belief and met the challenges of the pandemic, staff shortages and increasingly complex needs of young people. The winners of the Award honored at the PbS Awards Night are:  

• 2021 PbS Barbara Allen-Hagen Award Winner – Correction: Naselle Youth Camp, Naselle, WA
• 2021 PbS Barbara Allen-Hagen Award Winner – Detention and Assessment: Illinois Youth Center – Warrenville Reception, Naperville, IL

The PbS Awards Night also celebrates the recipients of the PbS Education and Employment Foundation's three awards — the Scholarship, Employment Matching and Reentry Awards — established to help young people finish college degrees or earn credits, gain job skills and work experience and purchase basic living necessities when they leave residential placements.

The evening ended with the highlight of the night, a spectacular live performance by the 2021 PbS Kids Got Talent contest winner from Green Hill School in Chehalis. This year and despite the many challenges, there were many outstanding entries – 37 entries from 40 young people in 14 juvenile justice facilities across 13 states – who showcased their many and varied talents.

For more information about the PbS Awards, please visit www.pbstandards.org/awards.  

About PbS

Since 1995, Performance-based Standards’ (PbS) has worked with juvenile justice agencies across the country with the simple theory: the best way to turn around young lives is to treat all youths in custody as one of our own. Our work has integrated research into daily practices in facilities that ensure young people are safe, the programming is effective and the culture is healthy and nurturing. We do this through national standards and performance outcome measures. The vast majority of young people incarcerated come from communities of color and have faced disadvantages of violence, poverty, homelessness, abuse, unemployment and trauma that led to their incarceration. We believe every young person deserves the chance to succeed.