Juvenile Justice Information Exchange (https://jjie.org/tag/diversion/page/4/)
The pianist jammed on the Steinway with such force, he stood up to play it. The rest of the orchestra swayed with the Songs of Solomon and Wadleigh High School choirs onstage at Carnegie Hall, singing a student composition about outcasts seeking change and second chances.
“We were trying to make a difference,” says former Rikers Island correctional officer Jamel Shabazz. Now that he’s retired, he still is, as are other people connected to the justice system.
Youths on probation who participated in a community mentorship program run through the New York City Department of Probation had a lesser chance of recidivism than those who didn’t, according to a study published this week.
The work done during the Models for Change Initiative (funded by the John D. & Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation) has embedded structural and practice improvements that continue to influence policy change in juvenile justice toward a more developmentally oriented and equitably responsive system.
The highly controversial Los Angeles County Probation youth program known colloquially by critics as voluntary probation is now reportedly scheduled to be shut down — at least in part — by April 1, with the rest of the program likely to be shuttered by the end of the school year in June.
This is an excerpt from the new book “Trapped in a Vice: The Consequences of Confinement for Young People.”
In Arkansas, juvenile justice reform has long proved elusive. While most neighboring states have reduced their youth incarceration rates by double digits since the 1990s, Arkansas’ confinement per capita confinement numbers remain stubbornly high.
Would a law enforcement officer hand a private citizen a gun and ask them to uphold the law without the completion of an officer’s standards and training course? The answer is a resounding no, because that would put people's lives in jeopardy.
Arkansas has long trailed most of the rest of the nation in reducing juvenile incarceration.
Over the past decade, two counties in Northwest Arkansas have drastically reduced their juvenile incarceration rate.