Across the United States, surging COVID-19 cases are risking the health and safety of youth in juvenile justice facilities. In November, the Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice (CJCJ) released a report examining a summer outbreak inside California’s state-run youth correctional system, the Division of Juvenile Justice (DJJ).
Shortly after our report was released, a second outbreak sparked. As of Nov. 30, confirmed COVID-19 cases spiked by 20 youth in a single week (97 total youth cases to date). DJJ’s first COVID-19 crisis serves as a warning: Lawmakers and service providers must step up to protect our nation’s youth.
Juvenile justice reforms, including the growing use of youth diversion programs that offer alternatives to youth arrest and incarceration, have helped contribute to a substantial decrease in the number of young people who are involved in the justice system in recent years. Despite this overall decrease, such reforms have also corresponded with a troubling increase in the juvenile justice system’s inequitable burden on youth of color and Black youth in particular.
Often differing from one another in their theoretical framework, structure and implementation, the constellation of justice reform strategies referred to as youth diversion vary widely in their ability to improve outcomes for participating youth or meaningfully reduce justice system involvement. When implemented well, with a clear theory of change grounded in youth development, collaborative design and oversight and data-driven protections against widening the net of justice system involvement, youth diversion can be an important tool for equity, justice and overall public health. When implemented poorly, however, youth diversion efforts are in danger of unintentionally deepening inequity. Before turning to strategies and tools that help promote equity in youth diversion, let’s consider two hypothetical youth diversion programs: Program A, designed with equity in mind as an explicit priority that therefore develops a social-ecological and social justice framework, and Program B, designed based on a solely individual-level theory of change.
In Program B, well-meaning program staff may make decisions based on assumptions that their program is beneficial for any young person and may change or grow reactively — setting eligibility guidelines, program requirements or reporting requirements based only on what particular partners are comfortable with at the time, for example, or expanding geographically only where requested.
As David Reeve approached the picnic, he knew he was the odd one out. After all, it took some convincing for the group to make an exception for him. Unlike the men barbecuing and swapping prison stories, Reeve never spent time in California’s juvenile justice system or its infamous Youth Training School, which the men dubbed the “Gladiator School.”
“They called YTS a gladiator school because you are going to learn and harden yourself into becoming a gladiator,” Reeve said. “You are going to learn to fight, to make deals and negotiate for survival because many of them were headed towards adult prisons like San Quentin or other hardened prisons.”
Among the picnickers who gathered at Yucaipa Community Park in Yucaipa, California, for the reunion were John Berge. He spent 22 months at YTS before returning as an adult, working as a vocational instructor and later as an institutional gang investigator, Reeve said.
In a long-awaited decision, California leaders have moved to close the state’s youth correctional institutions managed by the Division of Juvenile Justice (DJJ). Throughout its 80-year history, DJJ has come under harsh criticism for its prison-like conditions, rampant violence and dramatic racial disparities among youth behind its walls.
Recently, the rapid spread of COVID-19 inside DJJ facilities sparked community outrage. Youth at DJJ were already exposed to traumatic conditions. Now, amid the COVID-19 pandemic, they experience further isolation from family and peers as well as a severe lack of rehabilitative programming. This public health crisis exposes DJJ’s inherent flaws and patterns of neglect.
More than 115,000 Americans will be shot and 40,000 will die from gun violence this year alone — just like the year before and the year before that one. Gun violence in our country is considered one of the greatest public health crises of our lifetime, disproportionately impacting and traumatizing communities and people of color.
Far too often we see the disproportionate rates at which marginalized people in our country are the targets of hate, violence and injustice. COVID-19 and the recent peaceful protests are bringing to light the inequities that exist in our broken systems — but it shouldn’t take a pandemic and a nine-minute video of a man being murdered by police for systemic change. The data on these inequities has existed for decades.
As the only state-based donor collaborative investing in gun violence prevention in California, Hope and Heal Fund takes a public health, community-based approach through a racial equity framework to end gun violence. It harnesses the collective power of philanthropy, government, advocates, experts, researchers, community partners and individuals to invest in proven solutions and emerging strategies to intervene, interrupt and prevent trauma, injuries and deaths as a result of gun violence in the homes and communities in California.
We don’t just look at the gun violence making national headlines, like mass shootings.
The mammoth 85% decline in arrest rates of youths in California since 1995, along with the current coronavirus pandemic, have emptied California’s juvenile facilities. As of Aug. 8, just 2,800 people were incarcerated in state and local juvenile facilities, down from over 20,000 in 1995. As the state moves forward, we can continue spending vast amounts on incarceration and probation. Or, as outlined previously, California can use this unique opportunity to reshape its juvenile justice system.
I am a former gang member, who took the wrong course of action in joining a gang and decided to live a life of crime. My poor decisions consequently led me to commit a senseless murder and attempted murder on two innocent human beings. As a result of my actions and poor choices I am currently serving a life sentence in prison, as I am under the authority of California Department of Correction and Rehabilitation.
I write you this letter in the hope that it will shed some light into the dark and hidden dangers of gangs and the negative consequences of committing crime.
Being a part of a gang is serious and dangerous matters that have dire consequences. It’s like a deadly tornado that destroys everything and kills anyone who stands in its path.
The violent gang culture destroys countless innocent lives and creates a constant fear and intimidates the neighborhood. It also damages several families and communities in the most destructive ways.
For decades, criminal and juvenile justice reformers have fought to dismantle the policies, structures and funding schemes that make up the nation’s overly punitive justice system. Recently, these efforts have been gaining traction. Polls show growing public recognition that the juvenile and criminal justice systems are harsh, ineffective and biased against people of color.
Reform campaigns, many of which are led by justice-impacted people, have taken critical steps to repeal some of the “tough on crime” approaches that gave rise to mass incarceration and an overbuilt juvenile justice system. In the past several years, more than a million people with felony convictions have won the right to vote in Florida, 16- and 17-year-olds are no longer automatically tried as adults in New York and North Carolina, the nation’s largest death row (California’s) has halted executions and progressive district attorneys have been elected in Boston, Philadelphia and San Francisco. Yet success in state legislatures or at the ballot box can be fragile.
Probation in California has the responsibility of treating and supervising our community’s most high-needs and high-risk youth. We take our role in promoting healthy, prepared and positive adolescents seriously and provide each youth the supervision and support services they need to help guide them into adulthood.
The use of individualized, evidence-based practices to advance the long-term well-being of youth is foundational to our work. We rely on practices and tools such as risk and needs-based assessments, cognitive development, counseling, therapy, and trauma-informed care and evidence-based supervision models.
Our rehabilitative and health-centered focus has been proven successful.
Since 2007, California’s juvenile justice system, led by local probation departments, has successfully decreased juvenile detention rates by 60% and juvenile arrest rates by 73%. In addition, we safely treat 90% of youth in the justice system in our communities, and have diverted nearly 67% of youth. When the COVID-19 pandemic arrived in California this year, county probation departments remained focused on keeping our youth safe both in the community and in our secure facilities while still creatively providing the supports and services each youth needed for stability and their individualized growth.
Fresh shell casings are still scattered in the streets. Multiple sets of dice are still rolling like rocks in an avalanche. Bottles of liquor are still wet. Broken hearts with painful memories of gunshot victims remain fresh. Even in the midst of a global pandemic, the hood is still the hood.
