youth diversion

This month, Liberty Hill Foundation President Shane Goldsmith was awarded a $100,000 fellowship from the Durfee Foundation to focus on youth justice issues in the county. Goldsmith said she will use the money from the Stanton Fellowship to support the county’s nascent commitment to building a system of youth diversion.

A pair of recent reports examine the impact of juvenile diversion programs and youth arrests in Michigan. In a report from the Michigan Council on Crime and Delinquency (MCCD), authors Jason Smith and Michelle Weemhoff look at juvenile diversion programs in 69 of the state’s 83 counties, offer best practices and suggest policy recommendations to create more effective programs.

Back in 2014, voters in California strongly supported a ballot measure that hoped to siphon away funds earmarked for incarceration and invest them in community-based approaches to prevention instead. Prop. 47 downgraded some nonviolent drug and property offenses from felonies to misdemeanors and allowed the state to channel the cost savings into programs for mental health, job training, substance use disorder treatment, housing support and truancy prevention.

Under a new Los Angeles Police Department program, Los Angeles youth arrested for certain nonviolent offenses will get a second chance rather than a rap sheet. At a Tuesday meeting of the Los Angeles Police Commission, the LAPD announced that it would expand a partnership with Centinela Youth Services that uses restorative justice to prevent the risk of future arrests and further involvement with the justice system.

Socially conscious documentary film production company A Brave New Films recently released the first installment of its Restorative Justice Series. With over 8,000 children in California juvenile probation facilities, restorative justice has emerged as a more compassionate, more successful, and more cost-effective alternative to the punitive justice system currently failing our nation’s youths.