New York Plans to Increase Access to Community Programs  for Minority Youth 

A project aiming to grant more Black and brown youth entry to community-based programs that are an alternative to juvenile incarceration will be implemented in five upstate New York counties, reports the Juvenile Justice Information Exchange. The Policy Equity Academy, from August through October, will train those counties’ probation officers to identify intentional and unintentional bias in their ranks; and to analyze their data to determine the fairness of their decisions on which youth should be placed in community programs. The community-based, diversion programs are designed to address the mental, behavioral, social, economic and other issues linked to youths’ criminal behavior.

The probation departments of Albany, Monroe, Onondaga, Schenectady, and Westchester counties, which applied to participate in the federally funded trainings, are expected to work alongside community organizations; correction and police officers;  defense attorneys and the juveniles’ relatives to ensure that Black and brown youth are as equitably diverted to community programs as white youths convicted of similar offenses. The new academy is being run by the Washington, D.C.-based Center for Children’s Law and Policy and the New York State Youth Justice Institute. Each county will receive $50,000 from a $421,000 grant from the federal Delinquency Prevention Program and the Annie E. Casey Foundation. In 2019, about 800 children younger than 12 were arrested. Nearly 85 percent of those cases were resolved through diversion services.