It is time California ensures that emerging adults of all racial backgrounds receive probation terms that are aligned with positive youth development and rehabilitative principles, and structure probation such that it allows young people that demonstrate rehabilitation the opportunity to experience their formative years without the surveillance, stigma, and restriction of probation.

California took meaningful action in 2018 to affirm the idea that youth need care, not cages by committing a one-time expenditure of $37.3 million dollars to create the Youth Reinvestment Grant distributed over a three-year period to improve outcomes for youth accused of low-level or status offenses by increasing the availability of trauma-informed, and community and health-based interventions in lieu of arrest and incarceration.

This California legislation and accompanying $10 million budget request would create local county pilot offices of youth development and diversion (OYDD) to coordinate interagency collaboration, manage youth diversion programs, and fund community-based services as alternatives to arrest and incarceration to divert youth away from the justice system.

This proposal would allocate $100 million to create local youth diversion and development systems that are socially and fiscally responsible by treating all children arrested for low level offenses appropriately for their age, in community settings, with an emphasis on health and wellbeing. Under this initiative, nonprofit and community-based organizations will collaborate with public agencies to expand local youth diversion programs and deliver developmentally-appropriate, culturally-relevant services in under-served communities statewide.

SB 1391 is the first of many steps California needs to take to ensure our youth justice system is developmentally appropriate and encourages the healthy development and wellbeing of all of our children.