JUVENILE JUSTICE DIVERSION

The majority of restorative justice programs in the metro Detroit area focus on juvenile populations, specifically through juvenile court diversion and school-based programming.

In the city of Detroit, a new initiative to divert juvenile cases through a restorative process was announced in December of 2019. The program, called "Talk it Out", will divert first-time offending juvenile cases to a victimoffender mediation process, whereby at the conclusion of the process charges against the child will be denied. Eligibility for the program mandates that there be no more than one identified victim for a low-level offense.

In the city of Lansing, the Resolution Services Center operates a juvenile diversion program called the Juvenile Accountability Restorative Project (JARP). The program receives referrals from municipal and school officers for low-level citations. Youth are offered the option of a restorative justice conference, as well as parent and child life skills training Once complete, the ticket is voided and no fee is assessed.

In Ann Arbor, Neutral Zone, a local youth organization facilitates a juvenile probation diversion program, whereby youth who have violated their probation conditions are offered the option of participating in youth-centered programming (including restorative justice) as an alternative to incarceration.

These are a few examples of the prominent model of RJbased juvenile diversion programs in the metro area However, they almost all exclusively attend to low-level offenses. The present assessment failed to locate existing juvenile diversion programs that extend their eligibility to violent offenses.