Transforming Juvenile Probation

Over the past two decades, juvenile justice systems in the United States have seen significant advancements—juvenile arrest rates have dropped to historical lows, and incarceration rates have been halved. Despite these gains, however, recidivism rates remain unacceptably high for youth under system supervision, and resources invested in supervision and services have not consistently produced improved outcomes.

A key reason that jurisdictions struggle to improve outcomes for youth in the youth juvenile justice system may be that the most common disposition—probation—remains largely unexamined and unchanged. Although some states and locales have made efforts to employ more research-based supervision strategies, few have fundamentally shifted the role of probation toward one that promotes the personal growth and long-term success of youth.

Once on probation, youth face a litany of rules and orders disconnected from the offense as well as system responses that are counterproductive, such as being detained for technical violations despite not presenting increased dangers to public safety. Further, as an overarching issue, current probation practice often fails to provide positive youth development opportunities that assist youth in achieving the developmental milestones of adolescence and perpetuates racial and ethnic disparities. Youth justice systems cannot expect to improve public safety and youth outcomes, employ resources more efficiently, or reduce the disparate treatment of youth of color by simply making minor adjustments to current approaches.

Achieving better outcomes for youth and improving public safety requires a fundamental shift in probation culture and practice. This new vision of probation demands reshaping approaches to focus on promoting youth’s personal growth, positive behavior changes, and long-term success. It also requires incorporating the core principles of fairness and equity, positive youth development, and empowerment of youth, families, and communities.

Achieving system-wide transformation requires agencies and leaders who are committed to implementing a strategic approach to organizational change. This session will highlight key elements of effective transformation, including using research and data to evaluate and inform practice, empowering staff at all levels to become champions of probation transformation, utilizing staff training and targeted communication approaches to facilitate staff and stakeholder buy-in, and implementing ongoing efforts to promote sustainability and quality improvement.

This module addresses the role of the probation officer and what it means to be an agent of change to support, strengthen, and empower youth. In order to achieve this shift from a “control” probation model to one that features “coaching,” this module also discusses staffing policies and practices such as hiring, messaging, retention, and performance management, as well as training and probation caseloads and workloads.

Nearly all youth justice systems have the opportunity to expand and improve the use of diversion. This module focuses on the importance of community-based and community-led services, including discussions on how to keep young people in the community through a maximized use of diversion, and as an alternative to out of home placement. The module also explores restorative justice principles as well as effective diversion conditions and services.

Disposition decisions are central to promoting success for youth involved in the juvenile justice system. Specifically, probation officers, attorneys, and judges must collaborate to incorporate strengths-based opportunities, evidence-based risk and needs and behavioral health/trauma assessments, and youth/family partnership to make the right disposition for a youth. This module will examine the fundamentals of probation practice, including the purpose of supervision conditions and how to approach decisions about the length and intensity of the probationary period.

In order to maximize the effectiveness of community-based services, probation must partner with youth, families, and community stakeholders in core probation practices (e.g., by including teaming, case planning, and credible messenger strategies), as well as in the court process. Amplifying the voices of youth and families will improve probation and court practice and promote the importance of procedural justice.

Transformative probation practice must incorporate an equity framework, beginning with an understanding of the impact of racial trauma and implicit bias across race, gender and ethnicity, and acknowledging institutional and structural racism. Probation practice must also incorporate gender and culturally responsive strategies to identify and reduce disparities.

During and after the Capstone period, teams will receive additional TA, courtesy of the Casey Foundation, to support the implementation of their Capstone Project and ongoing probation transformation work. This additional engagement will include an in-depth examination of current organizational structures and practices, establishing common system metrics with regard to probation outcomes and processes, and broadening and deepening stakeholder engagement in the effort to transform juvenile probation.

As part of the ongoing technical support, jurisdictions will be asked to:

• Establish collaborative and inclusive work groups or committees to ensure progress and forward movement.
• Designate a lead point person or coordinator to work with the assigned TA team leader and facilitate ongoing connections with site leaders, including community partners.
• Work with the TA team to participate in and inform convenings, virtual sessions, and/or on-site activities designed to launch, education, and broaden engagement and partnerships within the jurisdiction to promote ongoing probation transformation efforts.
• Participate in cross-site calls bi-annually to assist in forming a peer-to-peer learning network across jurisdictions.
• Submit baseline and ongoing annual performance measure data to the Pro-Data dashboard to capture changes in referrals, diversion, formal filings, probation, placement and institutional detention and commitments.

The intensive, specialized TA will support sites as they implement well-designed, innovative ideas contributing to the national probation transformation reform effort, which may include:

• Creating a community-led diversion continuum
• Building and sustaining community partnerships, including the development of an array of research-based services and supports to promote youth’s positive development
• Applying principles of adolescent development to juvenile probation practice (general training on adolescent development and TA on use of graduated responses and incentives)
• Strength-based, family- and youth-centered case planning training
• Using a race/ethnic equity and inclusion framework in probation practice
• Family/youth partnership and engagement
• Data collection, reporting, and performance management to promote data-driven system change
• Analytic support of annual data submissions of cross-site probation transformation measures, with the goal of sustained data utilization
• Transforming organizational culture within probation
• Supervisory training (supervising in a reform environment)

• Core Probation Team
  • Chief Probation Officer;
  • Field Probation Supervisor/Deputy; and
  • Line Staff Member
• Judge (Presiding Juvenile/Family Court Judge or Designated by Presiding)
• Prosecutor (e.g., District Attorney, County Attorney)
• A youth of family representative who has personal experience with the youth justice system
• Youth Justice Community-Based Organization Leader (someone who is viewed as a leader among the CBO community and is committed to cross-system collaboration and positive youth development)
• Defense Attorney (e.g., Public Defender or Youth Defender)

• Chief Juvenile Division Law Enforcement Official
• Public Information Officer or Communications Director (e.g., Probation PIO, County PIO)
• County Commissioner/County Manager
• Human Services Agency Leader
• State Agency Representative
• Researcher/Data Analyst