Some youth avoid detention and rehabilitate at Central Oregon ranch

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.

Specialty dockets are used in some states to provide extensive follow-up and supervision to help juveniles end gang affiliations. The enhanced supervision usually includes a curfew, frequent unannounced home visits, regular courthouse meetings, and in depth mentoring. A federal grant recently made it possible for a Texas docket called Juveniles United Navigating Obstacles Successfully (JUNTOS) to also offer therapy services to at least 36 adolescents over 3 years. Gang re-entry data is scarce and there is a risk of focusing only on youth of color because the gang designation excludes white supremacy groups.

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.

All people between the ages of 14 and 21 in Washington, D.C., who are placed on probation for criminal convictions get assigned a probation officer, social worker, and a "credible messenger" – a mentor, usually with his or her own criminal past, who is paid by the city Department of Youth Rehabilitation Services to help ensure a successful probationary period. The cost is far lower than youth detention and is associated with a much lower rate of re-offending. The work is so intense that the highly trained messengers often need their own counseling to cope with the stress of turning lives around.

Restorative justice healing circles run by Cookman Beloved Community Baptist Church in West Philadelphia have helped resolve hundreds of disputes among youth over the past 15 years using dialogue instead of courts. Bringing together people who were harmed, those who harmed them, and members of the community leads to negotiated agreements that provide justice and reconciliation without leaving young people with a criminal record. Restorative-justice approaches to school discipline in Philadelphia have dropped the numbers of arrests from 1,600 to 384 per year.

When a California law shifted the costs of incarcerating youth from the state to its counties, judges suddenly sent 40% fewer youth to state-run juvenile facilities. That reduction began a long-term trend that combined with a state commitment to evidence-based approaches to rehabilitation instead of punishment, especially for less-serious offenses. The end result is that state juvenile jails have been all but phased out of existence and California, a longtime tough-on-crime state, now has what one advocacy group considers the nation's most humane juvenile justice system.

Choose 180 channels Seattle-area young people into an alternative to court and jail when they commit relatively minor offenses. This "offramp" from the traditional justice system, serving a disproportionately Black and brown clientele, helped 400 clients in 2019, 87% of whom did not commit new offenses. Research shows such diversion programs have a better track record for preventing future crimes. A Choose 180 "sentence" comes in the form of a workshop introducing young people to mentors and giving them a chance at the stability and frame of mind they need to seek more lasting change in their lives.

The 10-year-old Newark Youth Court has heard some 700 cases in which high school students serve as judge, jury, and lawyers in proceedings that avoid school discipline or criminal charges with creative exercises in personal accountability. Taking aim at fights, disruptive behavior, or more serious offenses involving weapons or drugs. the Youth Court seeks to encourage better life choices. Outcomes may exclude punishment altogether, imposing community service (including Youth Court jury duty) or other alternatives to jail, avoiding criminal records that can ruin someone's future.

Freedom Summer Camp allows for convicted young men to find a sense of community allowing them to connect to the world and fuel greater desires for achievement.

In the Boston area, the Roca organization intervenes before young men commit violence. Its "relentless outreach" approach is based on cognitive behavioral therapy, an approach that helps people recognize and change their destructive behavior and learn new skills to cope with conflict and stress – essential to keeping impulsive young men, many the victims of violent trauma, from committing violence. Researchers see evidence that the program, which has spread throughout the metro area and to Baltimore, makes people less likely to get arrested and more likely to get a job.