Diversion as a pathway to improving service utilization among at-risk youth.

Abstract

Despite the high rates of mental illness among youth in the juvenile justice system, many justiceinvolved youth do not receive adequate behavioral health services. We examined differences in health service utilization outcomes between youth who were diverted through a community-based, precomplaint program (Safety Net; n = 41), and youth with juvenile justice involvement in neighboring cities (n = 154). Individual arrest and health care records were combined to evaluate the rate of health care service utilization before and after initial police contact. A difference-in-differences approach with propensity score weighting was used to evaluate the impact of Safety Net on health service use, including inpatient, outpatient, emergency department (ED), and primary care visits. Compared to their nondiverted counterparts, Safety Net youth had a significant increase in psychiatric outpatient visits (average treatment effect [ATE] of 26%; p , .05) and psychiatric outpatient and primary care visits among those with a diagnosed mental illness (ATE of 19% and 12%, respectively); p , .05). There were no significant differences in ED or hospitalization outcomes. Results suggest that precomplaint diversion through Safety Net fosters access to outpatient behavioral health and primary care services that address the underlying issues that put youth in contact with police.

Promising Services for Justice-Involved Youth: A Scoping Review with Implications for the Los Angeles County Juvenile Justice Crime Prevention Act

“…Resource officers were trained in juvenile mental health needs, and youth who committed an arrestable offense could be diverted from formal system involvement by the resources officer and instead be connected to needed services. Findings showed that youth participating in the program experienced increased outpatient service utilization compared with the reference group (Barrett et al, 2022); recidivism was not measured in this study.…”

“We're not your traditional police department.” A qualitative implementation evaluation of a juvenile diversion program

“…Indeed, many school policing programs have been associated with increases in juvenile arrests and dropouts which furthers the school-to-prison pipeline (Hemez et al, 2020). In contrast, the Safety Net Collaborative has been able to demonstrate success in reducing juvenile arrests (Barrett & Janopaul-Naylor, 2016), reducing recidivism (Barrett et al, 2019) and connecting diverted youth to behavioral health services (Barrett et al, 2021;Janopaul-Naylor et al, 2019). While the quan-titative data has demonstrated support for cities and towns adopting diversion models similar to Safety Net, what has been missing from the evidence base are the stories of lived experience from police officers involved in Safety Net, community partners and participating families.…”

“…The Safety Net Collaborative is comprised of nine specially trained Youth Resource Officers (YROs), a psychologist, a social worker and community partners from the schools, afterschool programs and community social services providers. The goal of the program, Safety Net Collaborative, is to reduce involvement in the juvenile justice system, increase graduation rates, improve relations between the community, at‐risk youth, their families, and law enforcement, and increase collaboration between the police department and community partners (Barrett et al, 2021; Barrett & Janopaul‐Naylor, 2016). To accomplish this goal, Safety Net works at the juncture of the criminal justice and behavioral healthcare systems, identifying behavioral health problems and building connections to appropriate services, especially when arrestable offenses may be triggered by underlying behavioral health issues.…”

“…This study seeks to build upon the past quantitative evaluation of SN by utilizing qualitative data to demonstrate that police can influence youth and their future outcomes positively. Specifically, prior evaluations of SN that have examined youth's use of mental health services through SN before-and after-police contact found that diverted youth had more outpatient mental health treatment visits after diversion compared to pre-diversion and more visits than their counterparts that were arrested or summoned (Barrett et al, 2019(Barrett et al, , 2021Barrett & Janopaul-Naylor, 2016;Janopaul-Naylor et al, 2019).…”

Mortality and Cause of Death Among Youths Previously Incarcerated in the Juvenile Legal System

“…Community-based diversion and treatment-oriented programs that redirect youth offenders from the legal system are found to be more effective at preventing recidivism compared with the conventional prosecution process. 53 , 54 , 55 Diversion programs based on restorative justice models are shown to be particularly promising. A meta-analysis found that youths participating in restorative diversion programs were more than 75% less likely to be rearrested in the year or 2 following diversion than court-processed youths.…”