initiatives

Juvenile Detention Alternatives Initiative

Area: Youth Development

Description: The Twin Cities Christian Foundation is helping to mobilize the community to partner with Hennepin County’s Department of Community Corrections as well as community and faith-based organizations in order to eliminate inappropriate incarceration of youth. While detention is an appropriate measure in certain cases, the facts are clear that for many children and youth, detention is often employed for unnecessary or technical violations as opposed to any threat to community. This public/private partnership is committed to the following objectives:

• Minimize failures to appear in court among participating juveniles.
• Significantly reduce incidences of delinquent behavior within the population of African American juveniles selected for participation.
• Significantly reduce racial disparity in juvenile detention.

Our role is:

• To assist the County and others in increasing public awareness of juvenile detention;
• To assist the community in coalescing around the mission of reducing inappropriate incarceration of youth;
• To assist the community in formulating value-based actions; and
• To connect individuals and groups to community-based Juvenile Detention Alternatives.

Approach/Solution Design:
The Juvenile Detention Alternatives Initiative helps to connect and leverage the community’s assets for optimal impact with the participants. Through this approach, we intend to reconcile the tasks of serving our youths’ developmental issues and keeping them out of jail. While focusing specifically on simply getting the juveniles to make appointed court appearances and to refrain from illegal behavior, the partnership also positions the community to help youth seize opportunities to develop into healthy, productive adults. This is consistent with the Annie E. Casey Foundations’ Juvenile Detention Alternative Initiative philosophy.

TCCF will convene residents, public servants, service organizations, educators, pastors, and business leaders to address the issues associated with juvenile detention. The meetings, one in the North-metro and a second one in the South-metro, will yield the following outcomes and produce proactive and remedial actions as follow:

• The community at large will discover that a significant number of juvenile arrests and detentions result from failure to appear in court. Parents, congregations, and youth organizations will have better information to form alliances with the schools, parks, libraries and police. Together, they will respond with improved solutions;
• Congregations will recruit volunteers for Hennepin County’s designated JDA sites;
• The JDA sites will discover more about the faith-based organizations in community;
• The community-based assets will be in a better position to cooperate in serving our children beyond the focus of JDAI;
  • Wrap-around services
  • TCCF is available to work with willing parties to establish a technology platform for multidisciplinary case-management

Partners:
Lead Organizations
Hennepin County Department of Community Corrections
The Twin Cities Christian Foundation

Projected Outcomes:

1. The community at-large will have a deeper understanding of the disparities and challenges within the Juvenile Justice system.
2. There will be increased involvement of local churches with the community-based Detention Alternative Centers in Brooklyn Park, North Minneapolis, South Minneapolis, and Richfield.
3. Participating congregations and community based organizations will increase their capacities for youth service by aligning their programs
4. Interested parties will come together to address the issue in a more comprehensive fashion.

Staff:
Rev. Richard H. Coleman - Partnership Director
Sarah Trenda - Manager of Partner Relations

Executive Committee:
Brian Smith - Hennepin County
Jay Bennett - Twin Cities Christian Foundation
Richard Coleman - Twin Cities Christian Foundation

Advisory Board:
Darcie Corbin
Mark Harden, Ph.D.
Dr. Diane Thibodeaux
Pr. Sam Nero
Joyce Hayden

How you can help:
Volunteer
This project depends on the efforts of committed, trained service workers, intercessors, mentors, and professionals. If you are considering giving a portion of your time, please contact Sarah Trenda at (612)-288-2286, or strenda@kingdomoil.org.

Pray
If you would like information about our coordinated prayer team, or wish to sign up as a prayer partner, please contact Mary Coleman, Kingdom Oil’s Director of Prayer Support at (612) 299-2287 megcoleman@kingdomoil.org.

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