What happens to youths when they break the law?
Over the last 50 years, the criminal justice system has evolved, especially when it comes to dealing with minors who have committed a crime. Previously, teenagers who have committed a crime might have been stamped with a criminal record, at least until they are 18.
However, what if they want to seek employment or are applying for college? Evidence of a criminal history could severely impact their future, which is why the idea of diversion has emerged as a form a restorative justice.
In an article discussing Durango School District 9-R’s school resource officers, Durango police officials heavily endorsed the idea of diversion for youths who have been involved in minor criminal activity.
Diversion is a series of programs that implement strategies to help younger people avoid the criminal justice system. There are aspects of social work and counseling where youths would receive help for substance abuse and to ensure they don’t go down a path of criminal activity.
One of the main purposes of diversion is to ensure youths are not recommitting crimes and are staying away from the prison system. To put it in simpler terms, it is an attempt to halt the “school-to-prison” pipeline.
The school-to-prison pipeline is defined as the disproportionate tendency of incarcerating youths and young adults from disadvantaged backgrounds because of increasingly harsh school and municipal policies.
Colorado’s diversion programs started in 2010 and across 20 state programs, nearly 10,000 youths were served and 85% successfully completed diversion. A program evaluation released by the state in 2020 showed that fewer than 15% of youths repeatedly returned to jail during diversion or in the year after.
In 2020, the majority of crimes committed by youths in Colorado were petty drug offenses. Examples of these crimes included possessing up to 2 ounces of marijuana, possessing a controlled substance in something other than the container it came in, or possessing drug paraphernalia.
For La Plata County Youth Services in Durango, it has experienced a similar phenomenon. The majority of cases that social workers oversee involve substance use, mostly marijuana use.
“Our mission is to always meet the client where they're at in their life,” said La Plata Youth Services Diversion Manager Chris Braun, adding it’s as simple as working with their schedules “to make the intake work” and working with the parents’ schedules.
La Plata Youth Services will often receive referrals directly from the Durango Police Department, either from School Resource Officers or from officers on patrol. Youths may also be referred for diversion by the courts.
Youth advocate Elena Torongo said where kids are referred from depends on the time of year. When kids are in school, often they are being referred from school resource officers. During the summer months, the organization sees more referrals from the court system.
From the social workers’ perspective, they make it clear to their clients that diversion is a privilege that allows youths to learn from mistakes and redirect them on the right path.
“Our main criteria for a case plan is just repairing harm to self, family and then community or school. There's wiggle room within that one to do service learning as opposed to community service,” Braun said. “Service learning is focusing more on being involved in organizations that have meaning behind it.”
Torongo said she views it as “more of how did we get here and how can we prevent it from happening again?”
She said this could be done through different avenues like therapy, mental health resources or connecting them with activities they could do after school.
Youth advocate Erin Barnes with La Plata Youth Services said youths’ behavioral problems can sometimes cause financial limitations or may be that they’re using substances to manage anxiety, adding that diversion can connect them to programming that’s not discussed in school or in their homes.
“It’s like, ‘OK, maybe sports is what you really need. Here’s a way we can connect you to get these emotions out, or work is what you really need instead of stealing,’” she said.
Braun said La Plata Youth Services had around 90 diversion referrals last school year, and only three of the clients reoffended within the year.
For students who are arrested for possession or struggling with substance use, LPYS diversion offers “ReThinking Substances” classes that discuss why the youths may be using and what the dangers could be. The course is more about addressing the reason for using rather than using scare tactics to keep them away from drugs.
Dylan Pierce, restorative justice and juvenile diversion coordinator for Montezuma and Dolores counties, said a majority of cases involving youths he oversees are for minors in possession offenses. He said diversion looks at why a person (especially youths) commit a crime rather than just administering a punishment.
“The way I explain it, I like to use the example of a kid who steals a car radio because he's hungry,” Pierce said. “Under retributive justice or (a) traditional system, that kid gets arrested. (They get) taken to court and passively accepts punishment, right? (They) just show up and the judge is like, ‘You broke the law.’”
However, under a restorative justice approach like diversion, social workers will often broker a meeting between the two parties to discuss how the crime affected the victim, comparable to how a person would give a victim impact statement in a trial for a more severe crime.
“That victim got to express maybe how they felt and how they felt about the process, and this teenager for the first time in their life is taking meaningful accountability for their actions,” Pierce said “ … Instead of just passively punishing someone, we actually have them actively work to repair what they did.”
Pierce oversees around 100 diversion cases each year in both counties as part of the 22nd judicial district.
In response to those who may feel more punitive measures might be needed, Pierce says parents should be responsible for punishing their children.
“We return the rights of parenting and disciplining a child to the parent. We give them support to maybe do it properly,” Pierce said.
An example was when Pierce had a client who stole money, and as a result the parents decided the boy wouldn’t be allowed to play basketball anymore because of his actions.
Pierce said the punishment had the potential to be problematic because it took the child out of a situation where they’d participate in an activity that would keep them out of trouble.
He then had a discussion with the parents about the ramifications of that punishment. After they shared some concern about the child taking accountability for their actions, it was decided that they would allow the child to practice, but they had to confront the person they stole money from and do community service.
“We put him out in public at the food bank for 10 hours. He had to face people who asked him ‘why are you doing this?’ He's like, ‘I got in trouble and wanted to make up for it.’ I think that's a way more effective punishment for him in order to take meaningful accountability,” Pierce said.
He added that getting youths involved in some form of extracurricular activity can help them stay away from troublesome behavior.
However, Pierce said diversion struggles with resources, and that is one of the pitfalls of the program.
“Ideally, we'd love it if they never came back and I think that's where sometimes I feel that this fails. I think that because of our limited size, and limited resources that there's some kids that we just can't help enough,” he said.
A majority of Pierce’s cases are referred to him by either a school resource officer with Monetzuma-Cortez School District or from Montezuma District Court.
tbrown@durangoherald.com
