With additional supports, supervision and structure, many youth, especially racialized young women, can and should be integrated into community-based, non-custodial or residential settings. And, those who are identified as having significant mental health and/or cognitive needs should be provided with more particular skill-building supports and services, not regressive restrictions and isolation.

There is still very little consensus and few empirical or qualitative studies that provide guidance as to the best means of addressing the classification and community integration needs of young people. The evidence points to the importance of having separate classification systems for youth, as opposed to merely continuing to attempt to adapt systems based upon and biased toward, by and for adult males. Furthermore, a skill-based and capacity-oriented positive behavioural classification system rather than one focussed on the concept of risk would be preferable for young people. In addition to the obvious need articulated here and in other literature regarding the failures of the justice system, the new opportunities for innovative and youth-specific approaches provided by the principles and provisions of the new , should inspire renewed interest in this area.

Increasingly, particularly in the United States, researchers such as Barbara Bloom and Covington are discussing entirely different approaches to classification. These and other researchers, professionals and practitioners are proposing that such areas as the "pathways" of women and girls into the juvenile justice and adult systems be monitored and analyzed as a means of improving the effectiveness of interventions to assist those who are criminalized. They also recommend that we similarly monitor, presumably so that we may discern ways to attempt to replicate for others, the pathways used by women and girls to exit the criminal and juvenile justice systems.

According to Kelly Hannah-Moffat and Margaret Shaw, there is a growing body of international research which reveals the gendered and racialized nature of current risk assessment tools, while simultaneously questioning the appropriateness of adopting tools developed on and for male prisoners as though they are a homogenous population.

There is also no doubt that correctional staff, the front-line officers or guards, are the staff who are given the responsibility of administering intake assessment tests. Given the relatively limited training and different life experiences of various prison officers, it is not surprising that the application of the assessment and classification tools by staff often results in different interpretations of the meanings of questions as well as the reality that some staff will change questions and responses which they do not understand or with which they take issue. In addition, although there are staff who are sensitive to gender, race, and class issues, they lack the authority and/or ability to administer the assessment tools in a manner that take such realities into account.

Increasingly, at the international level, discussions are focussing upon the importance of developing approaches to working with women and youth which are designed to assist those being assessed to identify their own learning styles as well as their positive attributes and growth potential. Such new approaches, designed to tailor programming and services to women's learning styles, are strength-based and aimed at skill development. There is also a strong move toward what is referred to as "wrap-around services" to assist women and youth.