Juvenile Law Series: ACE Tests

Hi, everyone. Ashley Saenz here with another juvenile series video here at Whalen Law Office. Today, I’m going to be talking about an ACE test and why I think it is so important in the juvenile justice system.

An ACE test stands for Adverse Childhood Experiences. Basically what the test does is it’s a series of 10 questions, and it just tries to help us figure out what has this individual experienced that could be a potentially traumatic event in their life. I think the way that that helps us in the juvenile justice system, or it could help us, is just by being able to see what have these kiddos been through and how might their actions that ended them up in the juvenile justice system be related to some of these experiences that they have gone through at such a young age that some people never go through.

I think the test could be an invaluable tool to just giving us a little bit of insight into what’s going on in a child’s life, what they might have in their life that they might not have dealt with in the healthiest way possible, and how we can turn that and educate them on ways to deal with the conflict that they’ve experienced. As you can see, I think that’d be very helpful in the juvenile justice system, especially when it comes to recidivism and how to keep these kids from coming back; and more importantly, how to keep them out of the adult criminal justice system in the future.

If you have any experiences or any questions about the ACE test, please feel free to reach out to me. You can find an ACE test that I made a copy of and put on our website, and I will link it here to this video. I look forward to talking to you guys again soon.