JDAI Site Updates
Local reformers convene at state conference
Over 250 people gathered in Pasco, Washington in March to address two key issues in juvenile justice: disproportionate minority contact with the system, and the need to develop alternatives to juvenile detention. But over two days of intensive presentations, workshops, focus groups, and conversations, a much larger passion became evident – that the real purpose of the juvenile justice system is, as Dennis Yule, Benton-Franklin Superior Court Judge, said, "not to lock kids up, but to lift them up."
This passion – shared by the judges, juvenile court administrators, attorneys, and leaders and staff in child welfare and juvenile detention – was the cause of both celebration and frustration. For every report of progress, there were multiple reports of inertia, roadblocks to reform, and resistance to change.
The theme that arose time after time, in workshops and hallway conversations on a variety of topics, was the chronic under-investment in school, community, and family-serving programs that could prevent young people’s entry into the juvenile justice system.
But the conference itself was a powerful antidote to the temptation to retreat from the challenges faced by both young people and the juvenile justice system. As Mark Soler, executive director at the Center for Children's Law and Policy in Washington, D.C, noted, "You don’t have to solve the problem of racism to make an impact on DMC. Incremental change, sustained over time, can be transformative, for both kids and for the system as a whole."
Every workshop offered new tools, ideas, and evidence about how to make and sustain change. Workshops focused on building cultural competence, establishing rapport with Latino communities, understanding the gender-specific needs of girls, dealing effectively with school truancy and probation violations, improving case management, and community-based gang prevention and intervention. Woven into the workshops were stories of struggle and success, and a determination to connect the dots – to tackle not just single, specific problems, but to find the synergy that could truly produce better overall outcomes for youth, families, and communities in every corner of Washington.
The conference’s closing speakers were two girls – alumnae of the juvenile justice system – who approached the podium stiff with fear but brimming with the determination to tell their stories. One had participated in Arts Connect, a program for girls on probation at the Tacoma Glass Museum. The Arts Connect Program helped her learn to express herself, and to look forward to her future, which now includes an internship at the museum and enrollment at Tacoma Community College.
Nothing could have been a more fitting capstone to two intense days of thinking and talking about how to make the system work for youth. Seeing success in person made all the lessons learned come to life, and shrank all the frustration down to size. Participants went home from this conference knowing that their work is worthwhile, that change and improvement are possible, and that kids back home are waiting for them to make it happen.
By Jill Severn
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