A new report found most official estimates undercount the number of kids locked up in juvenile prisons, but one Indiana-based organization is providing young people with conflict resolution skills, so they can avoid coming into contact with the system in the first place.

The Center for Community Justice in Elkhart conducts conflict resolution and restorative justice programs for kids and young adults.

Graham Salinger, a restorative mediation and facilitation practitioner at the Center, said learning how to resolve conflict in a healthy way can help kids build social and emotional capacity.

"What we really try to do is fill the gap in terms of the importance of understanding how conflict happens, how conflict escalates, how once you're in conflict it's super hard to get out of it," Salinger outlined. "And then, building up very specific conflict resolution skills that help them de-escalate the situation that the might get into."

The report from The Sentencing Project showed American youth were locked up in juvenile facilities nearly a quarter million times in 2019. The report noted a standard point-in-time model of counting kids in facilities often overlooks those in detention who have yet to receive a trial, and can exclude at least 80% of incarcerated youth.

Josh Rovner, senior advocacy associate for The Sentencing Project and the report's author, said nationally, Black and Latino kids were 50% more likely to face incarceration than their white counterparts. According to the Indiana Youth Institute, as of last March, about half the young people in detention in the state were people of color.

"Overall, one out of every four kids who are sent to court are detained at the outset," Rovner reported. "Now, for white youths, that is one out of every five. For Black and Latino youths, it's closer to 30%, and that is not connected to the seriousness of the offense."

Rovner added locking minors up, even for brief periods, can result in severe long-term impacts.

"For one, there's self-harm," Rovner pointed out. "Children are at a much higher risk of suicide having been detained. Not surprisingly, kids who are detained are much less likely to graduate from high school."

The Community Justice Center model may become more common in the future, as this month, Gov. Eric Holcomb signed into law a bill to keep young children out of lockup. The measure will provide mental health counseling to most juvenile offenders younger than 12, instead of placing them in detention facilities. It also calls for establishing a statewide grant program to support juvenile diversion and pretrial initiatives.

Maryland's Juvenile Restoration Act has been in effect for more than a year now and its impact has people talking about additional reforms. The act created a path for people who were convicted of crimes as minors and have served 20 years or more to file a motion to have their sentence reduced.

More than 200 individuals incarcerated in Maryland are eligible for consideration under the JRA.

Brian Saccenti, director of the Decarceration Initiative at the state's Office of the Public Defender, said as of mid-November, 42 cases have been decided and the courts granted some relief in 30 of them, with 25 of those resulting in the person being released. Saccenti hopes the success of these first cases will lead to more reforms.

"People who have been released, it hasn't been that long, but they've done very well," he said. "We've had no recidivism, no problems with the law, no problems with violations of probation. They've done great so far, and we expect that to continue. So their success will be, I hope, a basis to consider similar reforms for other groups of people."

He believes additional reforms are possible with elderly prisoners who have served long sentences, as well as people convicted of crimes between the ages of 18 and early twenties who have served a significant amount of time.

The act mandates that the court can only reduce a sentence if the person would not pose a danger to public safety. Saccenti said the act is based in part on the idea that most people don't fully mature until their mid twenties.

"Eighteen is not a magic number, Saccenti said. It's not like you turn 18 and all of a sudden you're wise and mature and making good decisions. And the science bears that out, the parts of the brain that regulate decision making, and emotions, and risk taking, really don't mature until about the mid-20s."

The Office of the Public Defender approaches these cases by assembling a legal team to work with social workers and re-entry specialists to create a release plan to help the individual transition from incarceration to freedom.

State and local leaders are joining community groups for a call to action this weekend to draw attention to efforts to support at-risk youth in Illinois.

Grassroots organizing does not always have the support of elected officials, but in Lake County the State's Attorney is joining in an effort to prevent gun violence and address mental-health issues among young people.

Eric Rinehart, state's attorney for Lake County, said when it comes to addressing the cycle of gun violence and helping at-risk youth, the prosecutor's office is a unique position.

"I think the prosecutor's office, when it comes to expungement, when it comes to diversion programs, when it comes to drug court programs and mental-health court programs, the prosecutor's office has sometimes almost complete discretion in terms of who gets into some courthouse programs," Rinehart pointed out. "We need to be thinking about how courthouse outcomes and, frankly, decades of disparity in our courthouse plays a role in this gun-violence cycle as well."

The Lake County State's Attorney's office is co-sponsoring the event along with community groups including Mothers Against Wrongful Convictions and the Lake County chapter of the National Alliance on Mental Illness. The event on Saturday will be at 4 p.m. at Zion-Benton Township High School in Zion.

Organizers in Lake County are bringing together community resources to help at-risk young people to bring multiple organizations into the mix at once. Rinehart argued the interventions need to happen sooner rather than later.

"When we identify somebody who is in need, but who hasn't hurt anyone yet, who hasn't shot anyone, maybe they've been shot, maybe they've been near the gunfire, we need to saturate those individuals with services in a nontraditional approach that I don't think has ever been done out of a prosecutor's office before," Rinehart asserted.

Nicole Scuffham, president of the National Alliance on Mental Illness-Lake County, said one of their programs geared toward at-risk youths is called "Ending the Silence," which brings young people into contact with lived experience.

"Includes going into schools with people who've been there, with lived experience of a mental-health condition that started during their teenage years and just kind of talking about how we've been there, and we've made it out on top, and this is where we are today," Scuffham outlined.

Scuffham added today's young people are better prepared to talk about mental-health issues than past generations.

One goal of youth and family support services is to keep kids out of juvenile detention, but for those who are accused of serious crimes, Pennsylvania doesn't have enough space in its detention centers, and it is being described as a crisis.

A report by the Juvenile Court Judges' Commission outlined the effects of facility closures on accessibility to services. Since 2006, some 15 juvenile detention centers have closed in the state.

Abigail Wilson, director of child welfare, juvenile justice, and education services for the Pennsylvania Council of Children, Youth, and Family Services, explained a few factors contributing to the lack of available beds.

"Sometimes the youth need doesn't match the facility that they're being sent to," Wilson pointed out. "Sometimes there are staffing challenges because, in detention centers, there has to be a certain staff-to-youth ratio. And if they can't meet that, they can't continue to accept youth. There are sometimes medical concerns that can't be addressed at the facility."

She noted most recently, COVID has added to the complications. There are now 14 facilities providing secure detention services across the state, and 61 of 67 counties must vie for beds at just seven of them. The report showed staff shortages mean not all the beds can be used.

In the meantime, experts emphasized detention is never the ideal solution for a troubled youth. Wilson argued more mental health treatment, support for rebuilding family relationships and greater community involvement can all help contribute to preventing young people from entering the juvenile justice system or being placed in detention, but it takes funding and coordination.

"Building community-based centers, and places where families can come and receive help without stigmatized feeling, or feeling judged in a certain way," Wilson suggested. "Screening and assessment for mental health or needs, education or tutoring services are helpful; crisis intervention, family counseling."

Another consequence of the detention-bed shortage is young people often must be housed out of their home county, which puts a strain on families as well as juvenile probation departments.