Juvenile Diversion in the Juvenile

Juvenile Diversion

In the juvenile justice system, diversion programs are often used to help keep the young offender from getting a record, even a juvenile record, and to transfer him or her to a program that will offer needed assistance in order to prevent further legal infractions, to offer counseling and training as required, and generally to divert the offender way from the court and into programs that will have a better outcome than would incarceration. Sometimes such programs are contingent on certain outcomes so that if the offender completes the program successfully, he or she is released, while if he or she does not, a return to court and to incarceration may be the outcome. California has a number of such programs, some statewide and some in different jurisdictions as authorities try to cope with the growing problem of juvenile crime.

Probation has been an alternative for some time, but probation has come under fire as being a sign of "leniency" that neither punishes nor rehabilitates offenders. The new approach is a sort of "new justice" model that provides alternatives in the form of halfway houses, weekend incarceration, diversion programs, restitution, and community service. Nadell-Hayes and Macallair (1995) note how youth corrections in California has reached a crossroads as the people see a system that costs too much and often fails to reform. What is being sought is "a more effective, rational, and humane system of juvenile corrections for California" (p. 2). Programs considered for replication are the Juvenile Diversion Program and the Watsonville City Juvenile Diversion Program in Santa Cruz, located at the Santa Cruz Police Department and staffed by a country probation officer. For this program, the officer meets with the young person and his or her guardian to decide how the intervention will be handled. The goal is to divert the young person from entering the formal probation and criminal justice system. Another program cated is that in Watsonville, where a non-profit student assistance agency called the Parajo Valley Prevention and Student Assistance program serves students within the school district. In this program, a probation office reviews all juvenile arrest reports and citations, then meets with all first offenders in person before determining the need for counseling and intervention services (p. 34).

When a young offender is arrested for anything other than a first offense, the intake officer investigates to determine whether he or she can be released prior to a court hearing. This officer has the option of using community serice hours, counseling, essays, Peer Court, Neighborhood Accountability Boards, educational classes, diversion through the police department, or referral to the District Attorney for serious cases. There are also three options for custody, these being juvenile hall, home supervision, and electronic monitoring through the Youth Community Restoration Program (Y-CORP). If the offender is in fact detained beyond ten days, he or she has a needs assessment to determine whether he or she requires mental health counseling, substance abuse counseling, anger management, a victim awareness program, a life skills program, a job development program, or a pre-placement program (Nadell-Hayes & Macallair, 1995, p. 34).

These various possibilities are all designed as alternatives to full adjudication and incarceration, and many of the programs try to address specific causes of juvenile crime that may be involved in the given situation. Similar programs can be found throughout the state and have been offered for some time. Johnston (1979) reports on fourteen such programs in Los Angeles County to see what they offer to the community, assessing these programs on the basis of delinquency reduction and a reduction in the number of juvenile offenders referred to the justice system. Data was gathered for arrests and outcomes from 1972 to 1977. The analysis of the data showed that diversion projects may indeed be effective in achieving the objectives. Arrest rates were shown to be lower after diversion for the project areas, though not for regions where these projects were not in force. The reduction was therefore not overall but only in the areas where the diversion programs were in force. This sort of study was used to increase the number of such programs and to maintain them to this day.

A diversion program in Riverside County also includes several different agencies and program structures. The juvenile diversion system was established with funding from the Riverside County Juvenile Justice Crime Prevention Act of 2000, approved by the California Board of Corrections. This was a multi-year evaluation research project and was divided into five distinct areas to evaluate programs approved by the Board of Corrections, these being the Community-Based Probation Diversion, Youth Accountability Teams, the Gang Prevention-Project BRIDGE, and the Family Violence Prevention Program-P.A.C.T., Youth Accountability Boards, and Youth Courts. The evaluation was meant to collect baseline data and follow-up data to measure the success of each program, with the data including juvenile arrest rates per 100,000; arrest rates for program participants; incarceration rats; rate of completion of probation; probation violation rate; rate of completion of restitution; rate of completion of community service; and rates of truancy and family violence for those to which these apply. Performance benchmarks were to be developed for each program (Riverside County Juvenile Justice Crime Prevention Act (a.B. 1913) Projects, 2007, paras. 1-4).

In this way, the program could be assessed and shown to be effective in reducing arrest rates, more for participants than for the population at large, but noticeably for the region as a whole. These different programs offer different sorts of diversion for youthful offenders. In addition to keeping the young offender out of the larger justice system, the programs offer specific assistance for different issues. For instance, the Police Action Counseling Team (PACT) is a program designed to minimize the harmful effects of exposure to violence on children, primarily domestic violence, and clinicians on the scene assist the children and counsel them. The program was found to have a positive effect the understanding of child psychology by deputies. Youth Accountability Teams help with the diversion of youths for minor, non-criminal acts, for first offenders, and for those best managed by local social service agencies. The target population consists of pre-delinquents and misdemeanor referrals form age 12 through 17, notably those at risk for substance abuse, truancy, family conflict, mental health, school adjustment, or gang involvement.