Band of Others: Breaking patterns of violence

As part of a revamp of its juvenile justice system, Connecticut launched youth treatment centers where residents meet regularly with counselors and mental health professionals. The centers focus on providing individualized care and a more welcoming atmosphere than traditional juvenile detention programs.

Youth in Oregon who get court-ordered rehabilitation as an alternative to youth detention might end up at the J Bar J Ranch, which despite its name is less a working ranch than a boarding school with individual counseling aimed at helping troubled young people change themselves. Success takes many forms – high school diplomas, reconnecting with family, setting and meeting personal goals – but first the youth must earn a place at the ranch, which can only take 28 at a time.

New Hampshire's 40-year-old system of diverting many juvenile prosecutions away from courts and incarceration, and into community-based restorative justice programs, has saved public money, lowered youth crime rates, and changed lives. By addressing root causes of lower-level offenses, the programs provide treatment to youth who apologize and atone for their offenses, and who then often perform community service projects to erase their arrest record. But there are many fewer resources now than at the program's start, creating an uneven and inequitable patchwork of available services statewide.

A new Juvenile Justice Center that will focus on trauma-informed treatment of children rather than simply jailing them is still more than one year from completion. But, in the years leading to its opening, the county's family courts have cut in half the numbers of children held in detention by emphasizing rehabilitation programs over jail. Many of the services are based on the "Missouri Model" of juvenile justice, which has been shown to reduce incarceration and prevent crime through evidence-based approaches that are more therapeutic than punitive.

The approach of some state detention directors to juvenile justice has evolved at Henley-Young Juvenile Justice Center. Research shows that traditional detention is simply not working as a deterrent to youth crime—and can actually increase it. Administrators, county and special-interest groups have chipped away at antiquated practices to make room for rehabilitation and therapy. These efforts attempt to address the core issues that culminate in youth crime, delinquency and recidivism.

Alternative programming that involves "restorative justice" models - such as having youth within the criminal justice system create art as a means of self expression instead of detaining them in a prison-like facility - are much more effective at preventing antisocial and criminal behavior in youth than involvement in the juvenile-justice system.

Multnomah County, Oregon, experienced a surge of gang activity between 2013 and 2014. To curtail crime and violence, a group of pastors intervened with the 11:45 program. The program provides services and mentorship to gang-involved youth in the criminal justice system through outreach programs.

Juvenile Hearing Boards in Rhode Island divert first-time youth offenders from traditional detention to community-based volunteers who assign restorative sanctions like community service and counseling, resulting in a recidivism rate of less than 10% compared to the state's overall 33% three-year recidivism rate.

Marin County's Peer Solutions program is a youth court designed to help keep students out of the juvenile justice system. In addition to attending personal development classes and completing volunteer hours, teens in the program attend "hearings" where other participants act as the jury to facilitate discussions around accountability and ways to move forward.

A former North Carolina prison has been reclaimed by the nonprofit Growing Change to teach sustainable farming to youth who otherwise might be doomed to their own prison terms without an effective intervention. The 9-year-old program, while small, is meant to serve as a model for reusing many other shuttered prisons as the nation’s incarceration numbers fall. Boasting positive effects on recidivism, the program’s focus is the racially diverse youth of the rural, impoverished eastern part of the state – the same people who disproportionately get imprisoned.