Diversion as Class Advocacy: Taking the Back Door to Structural Change

Traci Schlesinger

Associate Professor of Sociology

DePaul University

On October 24 2015, black and Latino youth from Black Youth Project 100 (BYP100), Assata’s Daughters, We Charge Genocide, #Not1More and Organized Communities against Deportations (OCAD) protested a Cook County budget meeting. Youth stood outside the Daley Center with a pie chart that illustrated that Cook County spent 40 percent of its budget on police, juvenile incarceration, and jails while spending miniscule amounts on social services. [1] While police killings of young black men and women and subsequent cover ups have received some media cover up, less well known is that the city had, during that same period, shut down dozens of community mental health centers and scores of public schools. There were protests, building take overs that lasted months, and hungers strikes related to these austerity measures. Youth linked these two movements elegantly with their banner which read #StopTheCops #FundBlackFutures.

In an age of austerity, in a city where violence is still commonplace for many of the young organizers despite nationwide trends of decreased crime, it did not take much for marginalized young people to link their experiences of closing schools and their experiences of ubiquitous policing. In response, they have demanded that Cook County shift its budget priorities away from punitive concerns and toward social services, job creation, and quality education. “The police chiefs …have a debt to pay for the lives and the resources they’ve stolen and we’re here to collect,” Charlene Carruthers, BYP100 National Director, made clear. Young activists, overwhelmingly black and brown, spend dozens of hours a week for years, working with commitment and stamina, organizing not just against police violence but for futures where they can imagine themselves, their grandparents, their lovers, and their children having all the resources they need to thrive and live full lives. At times, they have been willing to risk experiencing police violence and arrests to keep community mental health centers or junior high schools open (McDonald 2015)[2]. They do this because they experience increasing austerity on/in their bodies. Thus if diversion is, as it is on its face, about providing at-risk youth with services—we are in luck! At-risk, marginalized, black and Latino youth, from the most segregated neighborhoods of the most segregated city—a city with an intractably high homicide rate, making these youth at-risk for untimely death among other things—are demanding services. We can simply say: here they are! Why is this not the case? What is the ‘mismatch’ and can it be addressed by better policy?

This article addresses five interrelated research questions. It uses a meta-analysis of the literature paired with descriptive and analytic/regression analysis of two datasets: the Census of Juveniles in Residential Placement, 1997 to 2010 (CJRP) and the Risk Management of Sexually Abusive Youth in Massachusetts, 1998 to 2004 (RMSAY).[3]

1.  Who diverts? What role are intake officers, cops on the streets, SROs, social workers, and family members playing in contemporary diversion? Meta-analysis.

2.  Whom? Are youth who are diverted those who would have had no juvenile justice interaction in the absence of diversion programs, those who would have been informally processed to minor sanctions, or those who would have been formally processed. What are the barriers to finding out these answers? Meta-analysis plus analysis of CJRP and RMSAY datasets.

3.  Through what mechanism? What role do civil citations, drug courts, mental health courts, sex worker courts, youth courts, and other diversion mechanisms play in the contemporary juvenile diversion field? Meta-analysis plus analysis of CJRP.

4.  To what services? While we know there are a plethora of diversion services, what success has been made in mapping the field? What role does counseling, drug treatment, education, mentoring, restorative justice, or community service play in juvenile diversion field? Moreover, in any given county, what do each of those programs look like? What are the limits of our knowledge at this point? Meta-analysis plus analysis of CJRP.

  1. mental health and drug diversion programs versus mental health and drug policy best practices for youth

5.  With what impact? Does diversion help, harm, or have no impact on youth’s future justice contact, school completion, mental health, physical health, drug use / drug related health outcomes, or violent behaviors? What questions are researchers asking? What are the limits of our knowledge at this time? Meta-analysis plus analysis of RMSAY.

[1] https://www.facebook.com/BYP100/photos/?tab=album&album_id=998016206916377

[2] http://nyti.ms/1NfT8HI

[3] The CJRP includes information on a sample of youth in residential placements throughout the country. The study will examine the CJRP to examine which youth, in terms of their demographics and in terms of the extent and type of their prior juvenile justice contact, are being diverted to which “services”? If there are demographic predictors (such as gender) and prior contact predictors (such as prior run away) that outweigh current charge predictors of type of service, do these predictors interact? The RMSAY contains information on youth diverted into a program for youth engaging in sexually coercive behavior in Massachusetts. The study will examine the role of demographics and previous and current non-behavioral mental health problems in predicting the likelihood that intake officers will recommend youth be removed from their communities or other arguably more punitive treatments. It will also examine how the likelihood that youth will engage in another sexually inappropriate behavior “post-treatment” varies with demographics, treatments, mental health and interactions between these characteristics.