How Los Angeles County Expanded Youth Diversion

A new guide from Los Ange­les Coun­ty describes how com­mu­ni­ty out­rage over youth incar­cer­a­tion and over­crim­i­nal­iza­tion led activists and prac­ti­tion­ers to trans­form the way the legal sys­tem responds to young peo­ple in trou­ble with the law.

Design­ing Youth Diver­sion and Development

The guide tells the sto­ry of the even­tu­al col­lab­o­ra­tion among com­mu­ni­ty-based orga­ni­za­tions, young peo­ple, advo­cates and pub­lic sys­tems on a plan to sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly steer youth in Los Ange­les Coun­ty away from the legal sys­tem at the point of arrest — or into com­mu­ni­ty-based ser­vices in lieu of for­mal court pro­cess­ing. It makes the case for dra­mat­i­cal­ly expand­ing diver­sion by exam­in­ing why so many young peo­ple were land­ing in the juve­nile sys­tem in the first place. 

The guide was writ­ten with input from young peo­ple, com­mu­ni­ty mem­bers and advo­cates, pro­duced by the Los Ange­les Coun­ty Divi­sion of Youth Diver­sion and Devel­op­ment (YDD) and fund­ed by the Annie E. Casey Foundation.

“This guide tells an impor­tant, trail­blaz­ing sto­ry about the capac­i­ty of com­mu­ni­ties and their young peo­ple to not only apply pres­sure as activists but also to be viable part­ners in the design and imple­men­ta­tion of new approach­es to juve­nile jus­tice reform,” says Jaqui­ta Mon­roe, Casey Foun­da­tion senior asso­ciate. ​“The Casey Foun­da­tion sup­port­ed the chron­i­cling of this sto­ry to inspire juris­dic­tions across the coun­try who may be seek­ing to sig­nif­i­cant­ly expand diver­sion for young peo­ple, and cen­ter and uplift youth lead­er­ship in the process.”

The guide exam­ines a decade-long push from young peo­ple and com­mu­ni­ty groups for col­lab­o­ra­tive solu­tions to school tru­an­cy, youth incar­cer­a­tion and the over­rep­re­sen­ta­tion of Black and Lati­no youth among those pushed out of school and into the harsh­est end of the jus­tice sys­tem. The guide describes how this per­sis­tent advo­ca­cy led to a new approach to reform among local juve­nile jus­tice prac­ti­tion­ers, com­mu­ni­ty-based orga­ni­za­tions and oth­er stake­hold­ers — one that pri­or­i­tized input from the young peo­ple affect­ed by jus­tice sys­tem involvement.

What the guide covers

The guide covers:

• how the YDD mod­el came to be and how it works;
• a chronol­o­gy of what it took to design and imple­ment the approach;
• how com­mu­ni­ties can invest pub­lic dol­lars to sup­port youth development;
• how to fos­ter col­lab­o­ra­tive plan­ning and account­abil­i­ty among coun­ty part­ners; and
• ways to cen­ter young peo­ple affect­ed by the jus­tice sys­tem in pro­gram and pol­i­cy design — and how to sup­port their involve­ment through­out the lengthy, non­lin­ear process of sys­tem reform. 

“Peo­ple shouldn’t just get this oppor­tu­ni­ty because they hap­pen to live in [Los Ange­les] coun­ty. Right now, if they live one mile over in any giv­en direc­tion, they could see a dif­fer­ent response,” says Refu­gio Valle, direc­tor of the Divi­sion of Youth Diver­sion and Devel­op­ment. But the guide, he adds, offers impor­tant insight on how peo­ple in oth­er places can get start­ed. ​“The steps we took might need to look dif­fer­ent for your com­mu­ni­ty, but this is how we did it. It’s some­thing that can be done.”

Pre­serv­ing and empow­er­ing youth and com­mu­ni­ty voice

The guide includes quotes, insights and draw­ings from some of the young peo­ple who helped set the vision for and plan the expan­sion of diver­sion in the coun­ty. Many of those young peo­ple have per­son­al involve­ment with the jus­tice system.

Kent Men­doza, man­ag­er of advo­ca­cy and com­mu­ni­ty orga­niz­ing for the Anti-Recidi­vism Coali­tion and par­tic­i­pant in the YDD devel­op­ment process, affirmed the val­ue that young peo­ple who have served time in secure facil­i­ties bring to pol­i­cy or reform dis­cus­sions. ​“If we’re try­ing to talk about undo­ing any sys­tem or any­thing like that, we have to learn from peo­ple who actu­al­ly lived this expe­ri­ence,” Men­doza says. ​“They’ve been the clos­est to the prob­lems and are the clos­est to the solutions.”

“L.A. County’s sto­ry val­i­dates com­mu­ni­ty mem­bers’ expe­ri­ence with the sys­tem as the very exper­tise nec­es­sary to reform it,” says Bur­gun­di Alli­son, the Foundation’s asso­ciate direc­tor for diver­sion and prevention.

What Diver­sion Looks Like in Los Ange­les County

The YDD mod­el works this way: In lieu of arrest, for­mal fil­ing of a peti­tion in court or even adju­di­ca­tion by a judge, the young per­son may be referred to com­mu­ni­ty-based orga­ni­za­tions by law enforce­ment, the coun­ty dis­trict attorney’s office, pro­ba­tion or the courts. YDD iden­ti­fies these ser­vice providers and pro­vides fund­ing, coor­di­na­tion and oversight.

The most com­mon cat­e­gories of ser­vices and activ­i­ties that youth have asked for so far are school-relat­ed sup­port, con­flict res­o­lu­tion, recre­ation­al and arts activ­i­ties and work readi­ness and career devel­op­ment. The orga­ni­za­tions are expect­ed to pro­vide pro­gram­ming that speaks to youth, with staff that have sim­i­lar cul­tur­al back­grounds as the young peo­ple and are skilled in build­ing trust­ful rela­tion­ships with them. Also, the ser­vice providers address the harm or trau­ma that the youths may have expe­ri­enced in their lives. The length of time a young per­son spends with the orga­ni­za­tion depends on the youth’s goals and can be any­where from three months to a year, with the aver­age length being about six months. They are suc­cess­ful once they sub­stan­tial­ly com­plete their goals.

The county’s diver­sion mod­el is based on evi­dence that avoid­ing arrests and for­mal court pro­cess­ing typ­i­cal­ly improves youth well-being and leads to few­er harm­ful out­comes. An illus­tra­tion in the guide shows youth who are arrest­ed are more like­ly to be charged again than sim­i­lar youth who are referred to deten­tion. The chances of a young per­son being charged with anoth­er crime after they are arrest­ed and adju­di­cat­ed in court are 20% to 30%. That drops to 11% to 15% for youth who are arrest­ed but not for­mal­ly processed in court and drops fur­ther to just 5% to 10% for youth who are divert­ed by law enforce­ment before they are arrested.

What Led to Los Ange­les County’s Dra­mat­ic Expan­sion of Youth Diversion

A report by the Los Ange­les Coun­ty­wide Crim­i­nal Jus­tice Coor­di­na­tion Com­mit­tee Youth Diver­sion Sub­com­mit­tee and the Los Ange­les Coun­ty Chief Exec­u­tive Office explains that before the 2019 launch of the YDD mod­el, young peo­ple in Los Ange­les Coun­ty were drawn into juve­nile court sys­tems for infrac­tions as sim­ple and com­mon as being late to class, stay­ing out past cur­few or jump­ing a sub­way turnstile. 

Respons­es were inequitable: Black and Lati­no youth were more like­ly to be arrest­ed and face more puni­tive con­se­quences than their white peers. Schools around the coun­ty had become prime entry points for the juve­nile sys­tem; Comp­ton and Los Ange­les Uni­fied school dis­tricts even had their own police departments.

What’s more, with­out a cen­tral def­i­n­i­tion or over­sight struc­ture, attempts at youth diver­sion were pro­duc­ing uneven results. Young peo­ple either were leav­ing the sys­tem with­out con­nec­tion to sup­port­ive pro­grams or being fun­neled into boot-camp style pro­grams that have been proven to lead to even deep­er involve­ment in the jus­tice system.