Longmont City Council Tuesday reviewed the initial work done by a group formed to study and address racial and ethnic disparities in the county’s juvenile justice system.
Boulder County’s Racial and Ethnic Disparities, or RED, group is a collaborative effort by a variety of local agencies aimed at fostering equitable treatment of minority youth in county and municipal courts, Shannon Bryan, strategic programs coordinator from Boulder County, told the city council.
“Our goal is to dig into the direct and indirect causes” of the inequitable handling of minority youth, Bryan said.
Christina Pacheco, city of Longmont’s Children, Youth and Families Division Manager , is a collaborating partner in RED. She told the council Tuesday night Longmont is already a leader in juvenile diversion through its R.E.W.I.N.D (Rebuilding Expectations and Walking in New Directions) program. R.E.W.I.N.D diverts youth from municipal court to other experiences besides traditional juvenile punishment, according to the city’s website.
RED is now in the process of gathering information on juvenile detention in the county in hopes of producing recommendations to help reshape local juvenile justice systems by summer 2022, Bryan said.
Local curfew laws or a community’s access to juvenile diversion programs can be a reason some youth are sent to juvenile jail rather than a program that emphasizes rehabilitation, Bryan said.
A cross section of organizations involved with RED includes community justice services, mental health and youth serving organizations, the Boulder District Attorney Office, local school districts and county organizations, according to a staff report to the city council. The RED report centers primarily on Latino and Black youth.
Councilmember Susie Hidalgo-Fahring — also a St. Vrain Valley School District teacher — emphasized that RED should dig deep into a student’s brushes with authorities to head off later problems.
RED hopefully “has looked back prior to arrests to see the trends … that have happened in school,” Hidalgo-Fahring. The number of suspensions a student has had, “greatly impacts the student’s ability to graduate.”
Bryan told council members several aspects of juvenile justice are being explored.
