As politicians search for a solution to our city’s growing violent crime rate, they should start by looking close to home for a compassionate and common-sense policy that will help protect San Francisco youth and families.

By reforming our juvenile justice system, and keeping our children out of the dysfunctional statewide youth prisons run by the Department of Juvenile Justice,  we can lower crime rates and improve lives by preventing troubled kids from becoming both the victims and the students of dangerous criminals.

San Francisco is well placed to become a pioneering county in changing the manner in which juvenile justice reaches the community. Already, Santa Cruz County has made great changes within its probation department to reduce detention numbers and rely more heavily on alternatives that keep youth in the community.  San Francisco must also continue to reduce its reliance on detention and develop a framework to incorporate the resources of the community into the lives of youthful offenders.

The horrors of the youth prisons run by the Department of Juvenile Justice are well known. While the state has worked to address some of the most egregious abuses – such as literally keeping kids in cages during their school sessions – the “prison culture” of these institutions still stresses punishment, rather than rehabilitation.

The Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice, a San Francisco based non-partisan, non-profit organization, has developed a Plan for Effective Juvenile Justice that relies on the innovation of local community based organizations (COBs), recognizing that they are best suited to provide services to the city’s youth.

Under the proposed system, resources would be directed primarily toward youth who chronically offend and are at the highest risk of re-offending.  Secure detention would remain a viable option; however, it would become a rarely utilized element of a full range of proven services.

Instead of sending kids away to the Department of Juvenile Justice, or incarcerating them locally, we would keep more kids at home under the supervision of local groups and agencies that have the skills to help return these kids to a positive path.

Community-based organizations, with their special knowledge of local communities, are the most appropriate means for delivering services to youth and adhering to the premise that guides juvenile justice: rehabilitation. The broader spectrum of services provided would include all the ingredients essential to ensure success for these young people well beyond the period a youth remains under an agency’s jurisdiction. And, by utilizing probation as a brokerage for services, more funding will become available.

By utilizing probation as a brokerage for services, more funding will become available.  Community-based organizations, with their special knowledge of local communities, are the most appropriate means for delivering services to youth and adhering to the premise that guides juvenile justice: rehabilitation.

Juvenile justice experts have long recognized that intervention by the juvenile justice system may perpetuate delinquency by processing children and youth into a system designed for older, more hardened criminals, when a more successful remedy may be accessed in informal settings within the community. 

The Plan for Effective Juvenile Justice is necessary now as California struggles to identify safe and humane options for youth who offend.  The state’s youth prison system has been labeled both abusive and a failure in recent years, and at least five counties have chosen to reject DJJ placement as an option for their youth.

San Francisco is fortunate to support experienced and dedicated community based organizations that have worked with youth for decades.  The advocates and frontline workers at these organizations are interested in collaborating to create alternative services and structures for the city’s youth.  Local reform of the juvenile justice system can become a model for other cities in the state, and provide insight to California policymakers as they seek to fix the DJJ.

The plan will attempt to recognize the inherent self-interest of government programming.  In order to effect true system change, the instinct to preserve an institutional culture must be shifted toward a new goal: that youth are rehabilitated within their communities. Probation and CBOs must align to ensure that result.

Unfortunately, although the Juvenile Probation Department recently hired a chief interested in reducing the juvenile hall population, San Francisco’s juvenile detention numbers have skyrocketed in the last year.  The increase coincides with a funding decision reached by Juvenile Probation earlier this year: to cut funding to community-based case management and in-home supervision services in favor of allowing probation officers provide services.  The decision has been met with great disappointment by San Francisco’s CBOs, who find themselves marginalized as the city attempts to internalize juvenile services without providing training or transition planning to facilitate the change.

Restructuring juvenile justice at the local level will provide a model for other municipalities statewide to follow to improve services and rehabilitative treatment for juveniles.  It is CJCJ’s hope that the plan will promote discussion and dialogue about the need and steps necessary for reform.

For More Info:
Listen to CJCJ’s Executive Director Dan Macallair speak on the current state and future of juvenile justice as part of the Wadsworth Thomson Learning Lecture Series.

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