Protect and Redirect: Effective Messaging to Promote Juvenile Diversion Reform

By Richard A. Mendel

This brief provides recommendations for advocates on how best to understand and address the messaging challenge in order to build support for further progress expanding the use of diversion in youth justice. The recent momentum to expand the use of diversion in youth justice is long overdue. However, to reach its potential, advocates must deliver clear, consistent messages to inform the public and persuade public officials. This will require advocates to: ● Develop a clear and simple definition of diversion that makes effective community-based alternatives to the formal justice system understandable and appealing to policymakers and the public. (See Text Box on p.2 for a definition and sample elevator pitch to promote diversion.) ● Craft messages to promote youth diversion that are grounded in evidence of diversion’s benefits and are compelling to persuadable voters as well as elected officials and other policymakers. ● Tailor messages to the political sensibilities and civic culture of the local community, and target messages to specific audiences. ● Develop effective strategies to combat sensationalized, alarmist, poorly contextualized news coverage and political rhetoric that stoke public fears of youth crime and subvert constructive reform efforts. ● Augment arguments and evidence with real-world stories illustrating the benefits of diversion and the harms of formal court processing. Involve youth, families, and community members with direct experience in the youth justice system to tell their stories and highlight the importance of diversion in human terms.

Issue Brief #4

Washington, DC: The Sentencing Project, 2024. 7p.