Reimagining Youth Diversion through Holistic Approaches
C A S E S T U D Y
A collaboration with the Mayor’s Office of the City of Chicago, youth, and community leaders to create visions and principles that will define a new youth diversion model—limiting youth’s interactions with police and connecting them with services they need.
S E E K I N G
D E E P E R U N D E R S T A N D I N G
O F T H E N E E D
Research Question
What challenges and barriers are youth encountering in the current system? How does youth define safety, well-being, and justice? How do we incorporate community voice into decision-making?
“There are a lot of anti-youth practices against Black
and Brown kids, so even though we say we’re asking the youth for solutions, the youth of color are removed
from the conversation.”
— Workshop Participant
New Youth Diversion Model Framework
W H A T W E C O - C R E A T E D
To effectively address youth diversion, there is a need to address systemic inequities like structural racism, inequitable distribution of resources to communities, inadequate career opportunities, etc., that create a barrier for youth to succeed. The common threads that emerge from these workshops are accountability and community-centric. These workshops provided the visions (the plans for the future model), the principles (the foundations for the future model), and community recommendations (the new approach to achieving the visions).
S E E K I N G
D E E P E R U N D E R S T A N D I N G
O F T H E N E E D
The Process
We achieved this project’s goals by engaging our workshop participants to co-create the framework through a two-step process. Incorporating these critical stakeholders into the design process informed the project's direction. It specified the needs of community members for a community grounded in safety, justice, and well-being.
Project
Objectives
To discover and understand how participants define safety, justice, and well-being.
1
To outline supports and infrastructure needed for keeping a community physically, mentally, and emotionally safe.
2
To identify and share systemic conflict resolution best practices.
3
CBD
Methodology
Conduct a landscape survey of youth diversion at a local and national level—the challenges
and barriers and also the existing holistic approaches to creating services and preventative care
for youth.
1
Engage stakeholders in a co-design workshop series: future framing and prototyping.
2
Engage Chicago residents, youth, and community leaders through virtual town halls hosted by the Office of the Mayor to share the project and receive feedback.
3
Future Framing Workshop
First, we virtually convened a Design Committee of nine - four organizational leaders and parents and five youth leaders - to articulate the values and principles of community safety through co-designing a vision for a future community.
Prototyping Workshop
In the second co-design session, two organizational leaders and five youth leaders tested these values and principles’ desirability and feasibility by prototyping a new justice-centered space for our community today.
P R O J E C T
D E T A I L S
City of Chicago
Juvenile Intervention and Support Center
PARTNER
Systems Transformation
PROJECT/SERVICE TYPE
1 month
PROJECT TIMELINE
2 virtual workshops
OUR PROCESS
2 virtual townhalls
R E F L E C T I O N S A N D
N E X T S T E P S
Without question, this is a multi-layered topic. There are nuances and many factors that lead to youth involvement with the juvenile justice system, which must be considered when creating diversion pathways. This design process has clarified that youth justice efforts must be preventive, restorative, and youth-led. In addition, there should be a focus on empathizing, understanding unique needs, and promoting accountability.
When considering developing a new youth diversion model and justice-centered space, the visions and principles shared in this report provide a critical foundation to ensure it is community-centric and promotes justice
and well-being.
To learn more about this project,
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