Tennessee is in the infancy of its comprehensive juvenile justice system reform. However, some lessons have been learned. If racial and ethnic justice is a priority, every proposed provision of the reform must be viewed through a racial and ethnic justice lens.
To pass the best legislation possible and potentially avoid challenges to the legislation, key stakeholders within the juvenile justice system must be meaningfully engaged early and often. Adequate thought should be given to not only the stakeholder categories, but also the right people within the category.
Additionally, states looking to undergo comprehensive juvenile justice system reform should establish an implementation team as soon as possible. Their work should begin when the legislation becomes law. The implementation team should not only be diverse in professions and expertise, but also racially and ethnically diverse. States should also consider placing a youth with juvenile justice system experience on the implementation team.
Here’s how we did it:
Tennessee is taking a two-pronged approach to reducing disproportionate minority contact (DMC), working at the statewide and local levels. At the statewide level, Tennessee conducted a detailed analysis of its juvenile justice system that involved a multitiered analysis of 2016-18. Among other things, the analysis revealed racial disparities across all stages of the juvenile justice system.
In part as a result of this analysis, the Tennessee Juvenile Justice Reform Act of 2018 (JJ Reform Act) was enacted by the General Assembly and signed by Gov. Bill Haslam in May 2018. The act contains several provisions likely to reduce DMC by providing additional objectivity at various decision-making points.
[To read more of this article, please click here.]
Comments (0)