Center for Civility hosts conference on community-led approach to youth justice

When it comes to America’s reliance on mass incarceration as punishment or a deterrent to crime, I’m an open book. Our standing as the world’s No. 2 jailer, behind China, is troubling and wrong.

But the idea of incarcerating youth — especially for low-level offenses — sets my hair on fire.

Data shows that its overuse is ineffective, undermining public safety. And it’s harmful to youth, damaging their physical and mental health and crushing prospects for future success.

Some jurisdictions around the country have adopted a different approach to youth justice.

Community-based diversion strategies keep youth in trusting, caring relationships and steer them away from punitive systems, while holding them accountable.

Tomorrow in San Diego, the Applied Research Center for Civility (a partnership between the National Conflict Resolution Center and UC San Diego), will be hosting a conference called “Community-Led Diversion: Building a New Paradigm in Youth Justice.” More than 150 people are expected to attend, including government leaders and juvenile justice practitioners from around the country.

The conference is sponsored by the Annie E. Casey Foundation (AECF), based in Baltimore, Md., and The Conrad Prebys Foundation.

In advance of the conference, the Center for Civility issued a preliminary impact paper on best practices in juvenile diversion, culminating two years of work. It reflects the expertise and contributions of dozens of individuals and organizations across the country that are supporting efforts for community-led diversion.

As described in the paper, community-led diversion initiatives center the things that make neighborhoods safe, reallocating funds from arrests, detention and incarceration into investments that enhance community well-being. Flipping the traditional juvenile justice model has been shown to reduce recidivism rates, mitigate racial disparities and be more cost effective than punitive approaches like incarceration. Ultimately, a community-led approach can prevent youth from system involvement in the first place but improves outcomes even for youth who have had previous encounters.

Nate Balis, director of the Juvenile Justice Strategy Group at AECF, will deliver the conference keynote. AECF has been working for many years to reimagine youth justice. When the pandemic began, they wanted to know how it would affect youth detention practices in systems around the country.

Balis, along with Marc Schindler, assistant secretary and chief of staff for the Maryland Department of Juvenile Services, recently shared AECF’s findings in The Imprint.

After declining to their lowest number in January 2021, detentions have crept up and now exceed pre-pandemic levels by 5 percent. Average detention time is nearly 40 percent longer. Deep, decades-old racial and ethnic disparities have only gotten worse, with Black youth detained at eight times the rate of White youth.

While it paints a discouraging picture overall, AECF found significant differences between communities across the country. One-third of jurisdictions made steep reductions in juvenile detention, averaging 30 percent. Many of them are investing in community-based diversion.

As Balis and Schindler wrote, there is a throughline from the pandemic — and prolonged isolation — to increasing rates of victimization and violence among youth. During a pivotal time, the authors explained, teens “lost caregivers and loved ones, lived through parents’ job loss and uncertainty, and fell behind in their studies … hitting young people of color the hardest.”

It magnifies the urgency of building community capacity to support youth and creating a system based on trust. The current system is failing, even in progressive states like California. In the April 15 edition of “Closing Argument,” a newsletter of the nonprofit The Marshall Project, Jamiles Lartey described a 2020 reform law that was supposed to “remake the way the California juvenile justice system looks, feels, and even smells.”

The law phased out state-run juvenile facilities in favor of county-run ones. But county officials across the state have pushed back, arguing that the new law lets the state “off the hook” when it comes to funding and accountability for youth detention.

And so, today, conditions in the Los Angeles County youth facilities are so poor that California Attorney General Ron Bonta asked a state judge to sanction local officials. Bonta noted increased drug use by youth and understaffing that has at times left young people without guards to escort them to the bathroom — forcing them to relieve themselves in their cells.

Now is the time for alternatives to systems that subject troubled youth to illegal and unsafe conditions. We must keep them connected to — and help strengthen — their support networks at home and in the community.

Tomorrow, we will discuss ways to put community-led diversion theory into practice, for the benefit of youth across the country. I couldn’t be more excited.

Dinkin is president of the National Conflict Resolution Center, a San Diego-based group working to create solutions to challenging issues, including intolerance and incivility. To learn about NCRC’s programming, visit ncrconline.com