Nashville Juvenile Court Judge Sheila Calloway is ready to do just about anything to change public opinion about the justice system.
Calloway, who oversees Davidson County’s juvenile court, is a skilled communicator, and the rare judge to publicly share her perspective while on the bench. Among her efforts are appearances at the celebrated Moth Radio Hour and a TedX event, where she serenaded an appreciative crowd with a few lines from Prince’s 1984 “Purple Rain” anthem.
“I never meant to cause you any sorrow,” an expressive Calloway crooned in 2017, emphasizing how little space youth who’ve committed crimes are afforded to seek forgiveness and to heal.
Following a career as a public defender, Calloway, 55, has spent two decades in the juvenile justice system, first as magistrate and, for the last decade, as the head of Davidson County’s juvenile delinquency court. During her 2014 election, Calloway ran on a platform that included a restorative justice diversion program for teenagers arrested by police that allowed them to avoid felony charges and jail time.
Under the model that exists today, teenagers must successfully complete a rigorous, months-long program that includes the completion of counseling and other services, as well facing their victims and repairing the harms of their actions.
According to a recent report by The Sentencing Project, nearly half of all states now use juvenile diversion programs as an alternative to arrest or prosecution. But unlike models that only focus on smaller, misdemeanor crimes, the Davidson County program allows some youth who’ve committed serious and violent offenses to participate. A partnership between Calloway’s juvenile court, the district attorney, law enforcement, the public defender and nonprofit Raphah Institute, the restorative justice diversion program handles youth charged with felonies such as aggravated burglary, felony theft, vehicle theft and robbery.
Early returns show promise. From 2017 to 2019, just 4% of youth who completed the restorative justice program were subsequently convicted of another crime. By contrast, a report this year by the Tennessee Department of Children’s Services found that Davidson County had a juvenile recidivism rate of roughly 23%. In a survey after the program was completed, 80% of the victims who participated expressed satisfaction with the process and the outcomes, while 20% rated their experience as neutral.
But implementing restorative justice instead of court for offenses that cause harm to victims can sometimes be a tough sell, even in a liberal city such as Nashville. Calloway is using her talents as a communicator and a belief in transparency to open up awareness of juvenile court practices — including diversion — to the wider public.
Earlier this year, the six-part HBO documentary series “Justice, USA” featured one of her cases. In March 2021, a 13-year-old joyriding in a Dodge Dart collided with David Cheatham’s car, killing the 71-year-old father and husband. In the final episode, filmmakers showed what happens in a restorative justice circle as Cheatham’s family grapples with his death and the boy’s future.
“We literally box kids up in cages and expect them to become better. That makes no sense whatsoever,” Calloway said in another episode of the documentary series.
In an interview with The Imprint, Calloway shared her thoughts on the challenges of setting up Davidson County’s restorative justice program, what most people don’t understand about the juvenile court and how she explains youth crime trends to the public.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Before you were a judge, you served as a public defender in the adult justice system. How did that shape your perspective on accountability and the role of victims?
There are a couple of cases that I specifically remember when I was a public defender, where the voice of the person harmed was not particularly heard by the district attorneys at the time. In both of these domestic violence cases, I was representing the person who caused the harm or was alleged to have caused the harm. And the victims wanted an opportunity to speak with the district attorney to say that they didn’t want to go forward with the case, or they didn’t want to testify, or that things were better, and they wanted to remain as a couple.
In both cases, the district attorney pretty much ignored their voices. There could have been many ways we as a system could have done better. The persons harmed were relying on me as a defense attorney to try to get their point across to a system that wasn’t really listening.
In other cases, my goal as a public defender was to make sure that cases against my client were dismissed. But there should have been a different goal, though restorative justice. As a public defender, if I’m doing my job and zealously representing my client, a person who’s harmed gets on the stand to say “It really made me feel bad,” or “I really was unhappy.”
And I would object and say, “Objection, your honor, that’s not part of the crime.” That person walks away frustrated with the system because they didn’t get an opportunity to really be heard about what they were feeling, what they needed. And so in a regular criminal justice system, it doesn’t work for the victims. For me, it was kind of an eye-opening moment.
“There is definitely a portion of the community that doesn’t understand clearly what diversion means or what restorative justice looks like and thinks we’re always going easy on kids.”
— Judge Sheila Calloway
After making restorative justice-based youth diversion part of a pledge in your 2014 campaign, was it difficult to set up the program in Davidson County?
When we first started, we were going to just focus on home burglaries — kids who break into people’s homes. We thought that would probably have the most impact, because when your home is burglarized you’re just traumatized, and the kids don’t necessarily understand how bad that can be for the homeowner and the entire community.
We started pulling numbers, and, the year before, we had like four kids who had broken into homes. So we were like, well this is going to be a very small pilot program. And so we immediately said, we’re gonna have to increase the type of cases that we take. We didn’t want to incentivize kids to go break in more cars or something by only allowing very specific offenses.
Ultimately, we decided on pretty much any felony, as long as the child didn’t have a previous history and there weren’t any weapons or any injuries involved. I think we were trying to stay on the safe path so that we could slowly figure out what we’re doing before expanding it. That also did not generate a whole lot of cases. And we wanted to figure out how we could strategically add more cases.
“I want people to come into the court and see everything that we do to help to explain why, I believe, juvenile crime is mostly down.”
— Judge Sheila Calloway
Was it hard to get law enforcement on board with the diversion process at this point, when you are trying to tackle more serious and potentially violent offenses?
Steve Anderson was our police chief at the time, and he was the one who suggested that we should include cases where kids are stealing cars to find guns. He said that was a problem that his officers were having in the streets, and we really needed to address these kids.
But it was the DA that was a little reluctant to open it up to that category, because I think he was concerned about, if it didn’t go well, or if we weren’t able to be successful in the restorative justice circles, then that would be a big community pushback because we’re letting kids that have guns just go through a program and not deal with them through the court process. He was reluctant for a while. But we are now doing those kinds of cases as well.
Now, literally, anybody is eligible for a referral for restorative justice. The current agreement is that the DA can make an objection to a case going to restorative justice, and if not, then it would ultimately be my decision as a judge whether it should go forward or not.
Aside from law enforcement, how do you present this to the public?
There is definitely a portion of the community that doesn’t understand clearly what diversion means or what restorative justice looks like and thinks we’re always going easy on kids.
There’s a social media site called Scoop: Nashville. Whenever a youth gets arrested, there’s always an attempt to tag me and declare that nothing’s gonna happen to this kid: “Judge Calloway is going to give them cookies and milk and send them home.” And there’s a perception that restorative justice doesn’t include any justice or accountability.
Our vision is to prevent problems, to promote the positive potential of everybody, and pursue fairness and hope. One of the things that I definitely learned when I was campaigning was that there was a lot of misbeliefs about what really goes on in juvenile court, because nobody really comes to court unless you were told you had to come to court or you’re a party in a case. Nobody came in to see exactly what was going on, so it’s like a cloud of secrecy about what really happens there.
What do you do to change that perception of the juvenile court, a place that sometimes needs to operate away from politics and social media?
We formed a community outreach team, and we are constantly scheduling people to come to learn more about what we do. For example, we have a partnership with the Vanderbilt University Medical Center to bring in their residency program to observe everything that we do, as well as various schools and community programs. We just had a sister court from Memphis visit — they have a new judge and new administration, and they’re trying to kind of update some of their programs.
One of my goals is that I don’t want people to say, “Yeah, we don’t know what Judge Calloway is doing down there.” I want them to say, “Oh, my God, did you see all these things that Judge Calloway and our team are doing? That’s why our youth crime numbers are down.”
It’s a countrywide thing, where juvenile crime is down. Nobody knows that, if you look at the papers, but every interview I do, I say, “Oh no, no, juvenile crime is down.” And I want people to come into the court and see everything that we do to help to explain why, I believe, juvenile crime is mostly down.
What do you wish that the public understood about restorative-based diversion programs?
People want to live in safe communities where they’re not afraid their cars are going to get broken in at any whim, or that their house is going to be broken in. People deserve to live in safe places and without having to explain to a child how the fact that you went rummaging around cars late at night has this entire neighborhood scared to death.
They don’t get that same sense of understanding when I just put them in a jail cell. When they’re in a jail cell, there’s no opportunity for true reflection. They get visitation, so once a week, their mom comes and tries to talk sense into them and tells them positive things, but they don’t get to hear the true depth of hurt that a lot of the parents have.There’s not much opportunity for them to hear how others were paying for their decisions.
When we do our restorative circles, it includes the child who caused the offense, plus their guardians, whoever wants to be a part of the process. And so they get to say, I can’t believe you did this. Look how it’s affecting our family.
I don’t think that people truly understand the work that’s done on both sides of the diversion process and the true depth of accountability that happens in those kinds of circles. And it’s the fact that this focuses on the person who was harmed and what they need, and how this child is going to help repair those needs.
You don’t get that in the regular criminal system, and so I don’t think people understand that this process has more power and more ability to help change behaviors and attitudes than locking someone up and putting them in a cage can ever do.
