Issue Brief #4 - Protect and Redirect: Effective Messaging to Promote Juvenile Diversion Reform

families, and community members with direct ex- perience in the youth justice system to tell their The recent momentum to expand the use of diversion in stories and highlight the importance of diversion in youth justice is long overdue. [...] In most cases, youth should be diverted to community-based responses outside of the justice system that can better address the issues that caused the problem behavior and help youth learn from their mistakes, repair the harm they have caused, and avoid lawbreaking in the future. [...] It is especially important to increase the use of diversion for youth of color: Powerful research shows that youth of color are far more likely to face arrest and formal court processing than comparable white youth, and this unequal treatment in the early stages of the justice system is a major driver of disparities in confinement later. [...] It moves them Arresting youth and dragging them into the justice from the logical connected part of their brain system for low-level offenses is overkill: It harms into a real reactive part of the brain that puts their well-being, jeopardizes their education, and them on the defensive and this real inability increases the odds they will re-offend and return to to sit with what they’ve done and gro. [...] 5 Which of these messages to employ? And to the victim advocates, I talked about respect and And with which audiences? the beginning of healing.”22 Messaging research by the Frameworks Institute20 and the Annie E.