Organizing a Juvenile Facility
Visit
A visit to a juvenile detention or corrections
facility will provide your community an opportunity to understand how
Latino youth are treated by the juvenile justice system, hear from
Latino youth who have come in contact with the juvenile justice system
and personally see and experience the juvenile justice system at work.
Here are some suggestions in organizing a juvenile facility visit:
- Schedule the visit so that
it does not interfere with school hours (9 am - 3 pm) for the
youth at the facility, and also to ensure maximum participation of
community leaders by allowing them a full-day at work so they do
not have to take a half a day off to participate. After school
hours and before evening functions, around 4pm - 6pm, is an ideal
time frame for the visit.
- Make arrangements with the
juvenile facility several months in advance. Send a letter to the
facility director (sample enclosed.) Follow up with a phone call.
Offer to meet with the director in advance of the community
dialogue.
- Send out invitations (sample
enclosed) to community leaders with plenty of advance notice to
ensure maximum participation.
- Confirm their participation
with a letter and include an agenda with starting and ending
times, some brief background materials on juvenile justice issues
such as an overview of current challenges facing the juvenile
justice system in your state and brief essays from youth in
detention on their experiences, a copy of the current state law on
juvenile justice, and directions to the facility.
- 30 participants is an ideal
number for a medium to large size facility. 15-20 is an ideal size
for a smaller facility.
- Ask juvenile justice
experts, such as a juvenile defender, community-based juvenile
justice program director, or juvenile justice state advisory group
chair to give an overview on juvenile justice issues, to lead the
small group discussions with staff and youth or to help facilitate
the participant discussion.
- Schedule in ample time for
small group discussions with the children and youth during the
visit and include an interactive activity, such as eating snacks
or dinner in the dining hall. The activity will make it easier to
engage youth in a dialogue, and will be a more comfortable setting
for adults who are not working directly with youth on a regular
basis.
- Be sure to include one or
more individuals who are familiar with the facility, staff, and
youth, to assist you, especially in leading small group
discussions with staff and youth. This will make for a smoother
dialogue.
- Assign individuals for the
small group discussions in advance, assign a small group ‘leader’
to guide the group, and include at least one adult in each group
who works directly with youth to help ensure each group can easily
talk with youth.
- Provide an overview of what
participants will experience at the outset of the visit
- Include a short briefing on
effective approaches to community partnerships serving children
and youth in detention and corrections, such as mentoring programs
- Provide participants with
suggestions on how to engage youth in discussion. You may want to
send out these suggestions with the confirmation letter in advance
as well.
- Ask small group leaders to
talk to staff during the visit on the reason for the visit
stressing the importance of the dialogue and building a stronger
community partnership
- Set aside time for
participant discussion and for followup feedback after the small
group discussions with participants and staff.
- Important note: You will
need to make arrangements well in advance with the director of the
juvenile detention center to make the visit especially to ensure
interactive opportunities to talk with youth in detention. A
sample contact letter is enclosed. To also assist you in making
arrangements with the juvenile detention or corrections facility
director, please feel free to contact the Building Blocks for
Youth initiative at 202/637-0377.
- How to find out the location
of the nearest facility: For your convenience, this packet
contains several resource lists where you can obtain information
on state juvenile justice contacts.
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