About the Brief

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In 2014, law enforcement agencies in the United States made nearly 1 million juvenile arrests. Roughly half of the cases formally processed resulted in youth being adjudicated delinquent. Youth with convictions face lasting collateral consequences such as decreased access to education, employment opportunities, and certain social welfare benefits, like Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) or Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), aside from more direct consequences like fines, fees, or imprisonment. Recognizing this, the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) awarded Face Forward grants to programs that give “youth a chance to succeed in the workplace and avoid the stigma of a juvenile record.” The grants fund education and workforce development services, diversion services, and supportive services—including assistance with expungement—for court-involved youth.

The Face Forward grants are emblematic of an increased interest in diversion as a way to reduce juvenile justice system costs, reduce recidivism, and improve the lives of young people and their communities. Diversion reduces juvenile justice system costs by limiting the number of youth detained and reducing burden on law enforcement, the courts, and community corrections. For youth, diversion can avert the collateral consequences associated with formal processing and subsequently increase their labor market prospects and decrease their chances of recidivism.

To understand more about the diversion services the Face Forward grantees are offering, the study team interviewed five grantees and conducted site visits to two grantees and their partners. The brief describes the Face Forward grantees’ approaches to diversion, the challenges they encountered, and lessons they gleaned from their experiences.

Key Takeaways

• Partnerships with the justice system and local education system were essential both to the programs’ success and to their designation by the state as official diversion programs.
• Being designated as an official diversion program had benefits (steady source of referrals and close collaboration with justice partners) and limitations (lengthy and cumbersome process might have limited the populations grantees could serve or constrained the services they could provide).
• Although all partners had the stated goal of limiting punitive contact with the juvenile justice system, the justice partners (not the grantees) maintained discretion about when to refer youth to diversion programs. As a result, programs varied as to when in the overall judicial processing timeline youth entered diversion services.

Citation

Gutierrez, I., Leshnick, S., Stein, J. (2018). Mathematica. Minimizing Youth Involvement with the Courts: A Profile of Face Forward Grantees’ Diversion Services. Chief Evaluation Office, U.S. Department of Labor.

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This study was sponsored by the Employment and Training Administration, Office of Policy Development and Research, Division of Research and Evaluation, and was produced outside of CEO’s standard research development process.