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Casey's Ten Youth Probation Standards

These 10 standards are designed to guide youth justice systems away from practices that punish and isolate young people and toward approaches that strengthen young people’s family and community connections, expand opportunities and promote meaningful accountability.

A Roadmap For Change

Grounded in research and shaped by insights from practitioners nationwide, each standard highlights a core element of an effective youth justice system. While every jurisdiction begins from a different place, the standards provide a shared vision — and a practical roadmap — for change.

1

Partner with Youth, Families and Communities

Probation engages and partners with youth, families and communities, relying on community-based organizations as the primary vehicle for the delivery of services, support and interventions for young people.

Indicators
  1. The department maintains partnerships with community organizations and other caring adults in neighborhoods where young people on probation live. Probation staff rely on those non-system partners to connect young people with positive opportunities, such as exploring their interests, building skills and contributing to the well-being of their communities.
  2. The department employs or contracts with peer mentors or navigators to support families.
  3. Fines and fees are not imposed on young people or their families.
  4. Youth and families served by the system are involved in juvenile justice planning and compensated accordingly.
Resources
2

Expand Opportunity for All

The department’s policies and practices help ensure all young people can reach their potential.

Indicators
  1. Data is disaggregated by race and ethnicity, and results are analyzed to identify decision points where policy or practice changes could advance opportunity for all.
  2. A high-level committee or work group within the department is empowered to follow the data to identify, understand and propose strategies to correct disparities.
  3. The department develops and implements policy or practice changes that work to remove barriers that keep groups of young people from opportunity.
Resources
3

Lead Toward a Shared Goal

Probation leadership aligns training, budgeting and planning with continuous improvement in transforming juvenile probation, repeatedly asking “how are we doing?” and “could we do it better?”

Indicators
  1. Training programs for new probation staff include the essentials of probation transformation: expanding the use of diversion, minimizing out-of-home placements, limiting probation supervision time, regarding probation officers as coaches not as referees, focusing probation on promoting youth well-being, expanding opportunities for all, basing decisions on disaggregated data, and relying on community-based organizations, youth and families as true partners.
  2. System leaders approach annual budget processes as opportunities to support probation transformation and increase funding for positive youth development services.
  3. Probation leaders continually seek and respond to feedback from young people, families, staff and other stakeholders.
  4. Probation leaders hold annual convenings to evaluate and plan for probation transformation that include participation by staff, community members, family members and young people with lived experience.
Resources
4

Engage and Support Staff

Probation leadership engages and supports staff as key actors in probation transformation.

Indicators
  1. Probation leaders and supervisors include staff with active caseloads in planning for new or revised policies.
  2. Probation leaders and supervisors prioritize communication between staff and management and offer mechanisms to support it, such as team meetings.
  3. Probation leaders make trend data available to staff and encourage staff to share ideas, identify issues and hold leaders accountable for solutions.
  4. Probation leaders and supervisors support emerging leaders and provide incentives for staff to contribute to probation transformation.
Resources
  • Training
    Organizational Culture: An Online Training Course

    Take this free online course to learn how a department’s values and other aspects of organizational culture — including the broader system in which the department operates — can support probation transformation.

  • Getting Started With the Juvenile Probation Practice Survey

    Use the Casey Foundation's free Juvenile Probation Practice Survey and secure dashboard to gather information from probation officers, supervisors and leadership in 10 domains, including staff engagement, court conditions and family-centered practice. To date, more than 1,000 probation practitioners have taken the survey.

  • Changing Practice in Juvenile Probation: Leadership at All Levels

    Fostering staff buy-in is important for any successful implementation effort. This fact sheet from the Urban Institute describes a range of research-based strategies for generating and sustaining staff enthusiasm in transformation.

5

Rely on Probation for Most Serious Offenses

Probation policy, practice and structure aim to minimize out-of-home placement and conserve probation resources for youth with serious charges who pose a significant risk to public safety.

Indicators
  1. At least 70% of new probation cases are based on an underlying felony adjudication.
  2. Department policy and/or court practice provides that probation officers may not recommend disposition to an out-of-home placement until a family team meeting and/or case staff meeting has been convened to explore all possible alternatives, including emergency intervention strategies.
  3. Funding mechanisms at the county and state levels exist to incentivize the use of probation over placement, and local decision-makers leverage those funding mechanisms to maximize resources for community-based support and interventions.
  4. Department policy does not mandate out-of-home placement for any youth, regardless of offense or risk profile. Statutory mandates are narrowly applied and tracked annually.
Resources
6

Divert Young People from the System to Community

Law enforcement, prosecutors and the probation department partner with and direct adequate resources to local community-based organizations to steer young people away from the formal system and toward an array of community-led diversion options and services.

Indicators
  1. At least 60% of youth accused of delinquent conduct are diverted from juvenile probation, including all youth who do not pose a significant risk to public safety.
  2. Law enforcement and schools use alternatives-to-arrest for youth involved in disruptive behavior.
  3. Following an arrest, prosecutors, probation departments and/or court-based intake staff have options to divert young people away from juvenile probation and toward community-based support, services and accountability.
  4. Youth have access to an array of diversion options, which may include simple warnings, restorative justice interventions and referrals for individual services.
  5. There is no informal probation (whereby youth diverted from formal court processing are overseen by probation officers and required to comply with probation conditions).
  6. Diversion opportunities are not conditional (non-compliance doesn’t pull the youth back into the system).
Resources
  • Community-Led Diversion in Juvenile Justice

    Explore an in-depth tool kit that offers principles and strategies for developing community-led diversion.

  • What is Juvenile Diversion?

    Read an "explainer" blog post about juvenile diversion, including resources, examples and frequently asked questions.

  • Video
    Restorative Justice: Choice for a Change

    Watch a five-minute video explaining a collaboration between the Los Angeles Police Department and Centinela Youth Services, a community-based organization, to rely on restorative justice as an alternative to arrest. The video describes how restorative justice prioritizes victims' needs and safety.

7

Center Relationships in Probation Practice

Probation is a time-limited, relationship-based intervention, with probation officers serving more as coaches than referees.

Indicators
  1. Young people and families, defined broadly, are included in case planning.
  2. Case plans address identified needs, engage young people in positive youth development activities and contain realistic expectations and goals that are meaningful to young people and their families.
  3. The duration of probation supervision rarely exceeds six to nine months, and almost never exceeds one year.
  4. Case management prioritizes incentives to encourage positive behavior by offering opportunities and rewards valued by youth.
Resources
8

Limit Probation Conditions

Probation orders with standardized terms of probation have five or fewer conditions of probation.

Indicators
  1. In collaboration with the court, probation orders limit the number of conditions to five or fewer.
  2. Probation orders are framed in terms of individualized expectations and goals, rather than boilerplate conditions.
Resources
  • Sample Probation Order

    View a sample probation orderfrom the National Council of Juvenile and Family Court Judges. Annotations explain each provision.

  • Condition Setting and Enforcement in Juvenile Probation

    Browse a 50-state study and accompanying tool kit from the Council on State Governments, focused on how state laws and court rules can can shape the policies, culture and practices of juvenile probation condition setting and enforcement. Policymakers and system leaders can draw upon the findings to consider how their own state laws can best support effective probation practices.

  • Video
    Explainer Video: Transforming Juvenile Probation (video)

    Watch a three-minute video that describes the vision for transforming juvenile probation. Viewers learn what works with young people to set them up for success as adults and effective ways to promote personal growth and positive behavior change in young people while still holding them accountable.

9

Respond to Violations with Alternatives to Confinement

Detention is never used to respond to technical violations of probation.

Indicators
  1. The department uses a structured decision process that eliminates the use of confinement as a consequence for technical violations.
  2. A supervisory review, including an immediate discussion of available alternatives to confinement, is conducted for every youth who repeatedly violates probation rules.
  3. The department invests more heavily in person-based alternatives to confinement than in technology, such as electronic monitoring. Person-based alternatives to confinement include referrals to services, connection to a mentor, restorative practices and/or evening reporting centers.
Resources
10

Use Data to Monitor Results and Propel Innovation

The probation department relies on data for accountability and transparency, using data to continually assess practice and make improvements that enhance and promote probation transformation.

Indicators
  1. The juvenile probation department compiles annual statistics on basic measures, including incoming referrals, formal prosecutions, dispositions to probation and out-of-home placement, admissions to detention, and length of stay in detention, on supervision and in placement. Each of those basic measures is broken down in terms of race, ethnicity, gender, ZIP code and most serious alleged offense.
  2. In addition to quantitative data, the department uses surveys or focus groups to collect qualitative data from staff, family and young people. Qualitative data are reviewed, evaluated and used to inform policy, practice and programs.
  3. On an annual basis, the department conducts case reviews on a random sample of 10% of out-of-home placements to ask what policies, practices, programs or partnerships would have been required to avoid placement.
  4. On an annual basis, the department leads or participates in a root-cause analysis to identify underlying causes for racial and ethnic disparities and devises strategies to address imbalances in the quality, availability and cultural responsiveness of programs and services.
Resources
  • Pro-DATA

    Start using Pro-DATA, a free resource created by the Annie E. Casey Foundation to support data-driven decision-making and data transparency in youth justice at the local and state levels. This secure, online tool makes it easy to collect and analyze your department's data, while also allowing comparisons to similar jurisdictions.

  • Getting Started With the Juvenile Probation Practice Survey

    Use the Casey Foundation's free Juvenile Probation Practice Survey and secure dashboard to gather information from probation officers, supervisors and leadership in 10 domains, including staff engagement, court conditions and family-centered practice. To date, more than 1,000 probation practitioners have taken the survey.

  • Focus on Youth: A Guide for Conducting Focus Groups with Youth and Families Impacted by the Juvenile Justice System

    Explore a how-to guide about conducting focus groups with young people and their families. This guide was produced by Justice for Families, a family-led organization, and includes a facilitator's manual and other resources.