Late October 2024. A 13-year-old girl sits in the office at Brown Middle School. It’s not the first time she’s mouthed off one too many times, but this time the adults seem different. This time the consequences seem real.
Then everything changes. Instead of answering to disorderly conduct charges in Portage County Juvenile Court, the girl and her mother are introduced to Jessica Tamba, lead diversion specialist with the county’s juvenile diversion program.
“The idea is to work with the youth in the community without having them come into the formal court process and focusing on rehabilitation through education, counseling and the use of community services,” said Scott Wayt, the court’s director of family services. “We try to address the underlying issues: mental health or substance use, or sometimes it’s just learning how to make good choices, really, for a lot of these kids.”
Tamba got to work. The girl found herself attending anger management classes at Children’s Advantage, and the mom started an eight-week empowering parents class at the county courthouse. Listening to the other parents in the group, she said she didn’t feel so alone.
“It’s a wonderful class. It helped me a lot. It shed light on a lot of things, and a lot of those behaviors are because I’m an enabler. I am guilty. I’ve parented for a long time, and it taught me that I was being more her friend than her parent. It’s made me look at things a different way,” the mom said.
(To protect the child’s privacy, The Portager is not identifying her or her mother.)
During the anger management classes, the daughter listened to other youths telling her she didn’t want to go down a certain road because certain consequences were just that: certain. Sure, her mom had said the same thing, but kids are kids. They’ll sometimes listen to their peers more than their parents.
“It’s taught her ways to cope before lashing out. Stop and think before you run your mouth, and think about how your words affect other people in the long run. You might be mad and lashing out at that moment, but some of that stuff scars,” the mom said.
Though all people can be described as works in progress, the mom said her daughter hasn’t been in trouble at school since she started the classes.
“I’m not going to say she walks around with a halo now, but it’s definitely teaching her, and she shows more respect for adults. I really do think all this is helping. Even though it came about for a bad reason, it turned out to be not so bad. We both learned a lot about each other and ourselves,” she said.
The mom lauded the juvenile program as what it is intended to be: a second chance for low-level offenders to stay out of the court system and an invaluable resource for their parents.
Or a third chance. In this case, the girl had already been through Ravenna’s juvenile diversion program, headed by School Resource Officer Steven Lincoln. She’d been successful, but had clearly had a set-back, Tamba said.
Ravenna and Kent have juvenile diversion programs separate from the county’s, but they are alike in key aspects: all three aim to keep low-level offenders out of the court system. Mantua police also plan to formally launch a juvenile diversion program early this year, with Officer Miranda Brothers designated as project coordinator.
Officers called to Ravenna or Kent schools or school officials in those districts typically refer youths to Kent Juvenile Counselor Abigail Watkins or to Lincoln, who then conduct lengthy interviews to determine if the young adult is likely to be a good fit for juvenile diversion.
A successful outcome is when the youth and their family complete the contract. The charge disappears, and the youth’s name only appears in a police file. Should Watkins or Lincoln decide not to divert a case, or if their previous efforts were unsuccessful but they still feel there’s a chance, they may refer certain cases to the county.
“Just because a youth would do a police diversion doesn’t mean that they can’t do a court diversion,” Tamba said.
The county
Families that opt for the county’s juvenile diversion program never see a judge, and the young adults don’t start a rap sheet. They don’t even go to the courthouse, instead meeting with one of four juvenile diversion specialists at the administration building’s annex on Meridian Street. Two of the specialists focus on first-time, low-level offenders and two handle truancy cases.
Like Ravenna’s and Kent’s juvenile diversion programs, participation in the county’s program is voluntary and is limited to low-level offenders: those who commit a range of offenses that would be considered misdemeanors or minor misdemeanors if they were adults. Being kids, they are generally being charged with being unruly by reason of truancy, habitually being disobedient to parents, prohibitions, curfew violations, or disorderly conduct charges that don’t involve significant violence.
Young adults who have committed offenses that involve violence or sexual assault are ineligible for juvenile diversion, Wayt said.
Those youths, youths who choose not to participate in the juvenile diversion program, those who do not live up to the stipulations in their program contract, and re-offenders are the ones who end up in court.
The county’s juvenile diversion program seems to be working. Wayt said 87% of the youths who went through diversion from 2019 through 2023 did not re-offend within the next year. And since the beginning of the 2023-24 school year, when the court designated two diversion specialists to work specifically with traditional and at-risk truancy cases, that case load has increased by more than 300%.
Prior to the at-risk program, juvenile diversion specialists saw about 200 youths a year. Now, Wayt said, more than 650 traditional and at-risk cases have been referred. Gone are the days that schools must wait most of an academic year to receive services for certain students.
“Now a school can notify us at any time, even in the summer, prior to school, and let us know a list of youth that they think are at risk of becoming truant. Some examples would be a history of truancy or a change in family status,” Wayt said.
Though data for the current school year is not yet available, Wayt said the diversion specialists are seeing more at-risk recommendations from schools and less official truancy filings. Noting that re-offenses are down and more kids are back in school, he said he hopes more communities will adopt the juvenile diversion service model.
Tamba said she is notified when police file charges with the courts, when schools file truancy charges, or when schools inform her that a child is at risk of becoming truant. Should juvenile diversion fail for a student identified as habitually truant, charges are filed with the court, she said.
Because students who are at risk of becoming truant do not (yet) face charges, Tamba simply closes those files even if the students are unsuccessful.
Typically, though, by the time an at-risk case proceeds to actual state truancy charges, the family’s options dwindle to two: participate in juvenile diversion or appear in court, she said.
Kent
Watkins, a juvenile counselor with Kent police, does not wear a uniform as she sees almost 100 Kent juvenile diversion participants and their families. All of the kids are low-level, first-time offenders or are identified as truant or at risk of being truant. Parents, school officials, guidance counselors or sometimes the school resource officers bring her names.
Watkins determines if the young adults are eligible for her services and works closely with the youths and their families for one to three months. She regularly deals with Kent youths who don’t listen to their parents or who are identified as truant from school or at risk of becoming truant.
Connecting the kids and their parents with resources they need, Watkins puts certain guardrails in place: rules that must be followed, drug testing, community service. Counseling is available, sometimes for the child and sometimes for the parent or guardian. She links the families with social services they may need, including day care, Medicaid, WIC, housing, utilities assistance and food.
“It’s wrap-around services for the entire family, and if I can’t help them, I will find the person that can, and help them bridge that gap,” Watkins said, adding that all the services, including drug testing, are provided free of charge.
The need is real. Since July 2024, Watkins has worked with 76 families, their children’s ages ranging from elementary to high school. Her youngest client was in third grade. In 2023, she saw 74 families and in 2022, 83.
Allowing KPD to expand its juvenile diversion program is a $150,000 state grant Portage County Juvenile Court and Kent police received last year. $75,000 a year for two years helps Watkins do her job.
“Let’s not give them a criminal offense if we don’t have to,” Watkins said. “Putting their name with that at such a young age is not something we take lightly.”
Ravenna
Lincoln told The Portager he uses juvenile diversion as one of his many tools. He said he typically steers about 20 students a year to the program, though, as reoffenders, none have been eligible so far this school year.
“I’m not a school cop to put kids in jail,” Lincoln said. “I’m not here to arrest kids. I’m here to build relationships with them, to where they feel comfortable to approach law enforcement officers when they’re out of school and know that they’re there on their side, to support them even when they feel like they’ve done something wrong.”
With other aspects of his job pressing, Lincoln said he is only able to reach out to the kids in the juvenile diversion program and their families on a monthly basis.
“I feel like I’m building stronger relationships with these individuals,” he said. “The kids that weren’t saying hi to me, they’re saying hi to me now. Parents, too. They know that they can come to me and talk to me if they have an issue with their kid. It doesn’t have to be because they’re in trouble. They know they can talk to me, that I’ve dealt with their kid.”
Wendy DiAlesandro is a former Record Publishing Co. reporter and contributing writer for The Portager.