This module discusses SHIFTING ROLES, RESPONSIBILITIES, AND RESOURCES TO COMMUNITIES AS PARTNERS IN YOUTH JUSTICE and sets forth action steps for sharing authority and capacity with communities.
Leaders of youth justice systems can and should implement many reforms within their areas of responsibility and authority, especially those that will reduce the likelihood of harm to young people. And some leaders are already working hard to engage young people, their families and communities. For the most part, these efforts are directed toward the important goal of strengthening the youth justice system’s array of services and supports and providing community alternatives to youth prisons. True transformative change, however, requires new forms of partnership with community leaders and community-based service providers.
Very few youth justice leaders have worked intensively with communities to reimagine fundamental changes in the roles and responsibilities played by community leaders and other residents, neighborhood providers of services and supports, other community groups, including faith-based and business organizations, and young people and their families.
A reimagined youth justice system that values communities in promoting youth well-being and relies on them as central actors in delivering youth justice supports can help to strengthen communities in several ways. With community-based, credible organizations leading many youth justice functions, youth justice leaders can partner with young people, their families, community organizations and residents to design new solutions to reduce youth crime. They can also support the development and strengthening of community-based service providers, promoting a greater support network for youth as well as positive jobs in neighborhoods that often have the highest rates of unemployment and disconnection from the formal economy.
While institutional and centralized bureaucratic service systems end up exerting a kind of centrifugal force on communities—pulling families and neighborhoods apart—a strong web of community-based, family-focused, and youth-centered services and supports can re-knit the relationships and networks that keep families and neighborhoods together. This can provide a kind of triple return on investment: better outcomes for young people impacted by law enforcement and the criminal legal system; economic development for neighborhoods that have seen decades of disinvestment; and reductions in crime in those neighborhoods.
This discussion covers why strong community-based supports serve as foundation for helping young people thrive in their communities.
Explore how young people and their families most directly affected by the justice system can be centered in transformation from the onset.
Explore the why and how of working across stakeholder groups, and with groups who have diverse backgrounds to create a shared vision for the future.
Explore the why and how of working across stakeholder groups, and with groups who have diverse backgrounds to create a shared vision for the future.
Explore how young people and their families most directly affected by the justice system can be centered in transformation from the onset.