Alternatives to Detention

Alternatives to Detention (ATDs) are programs that increase supervision on a youth rather than placing the youth in a secure facility while awaiting their court hearings (prejudicated youth).  Youth in these programs are allowed to remain in the community with the ATD intervention to help prevent them from committing new law violations and make sure that the youth appear in court.  ATDs include electronic monitor, community youth coaching (formerly tracking services), day and evening reporting centers and shelter care.

Electronic monitor (EM) programs use electronic devices, usually worn on the youth’s ankle, that monitors their location and movement centered around their home, allowing them to go to school, jobs, activities, etc as approved by the personal monitoring their movement. 

Community youth coaching is a youth-guided, family-driven service that provides an innovative, individualized alternative to detention, strengthening community safety and appearance in court through intensive relationship building, skill building and positive youth development. Community Youth Coaches will serve as positive role models, provide advocacy and individualized coaching, and support the youth.

Tracking services are when a person is assigned to work with pre-adjudicated or probation youth to ensure that the youth will comply with attendance, curfew, employment, counseling, and drug/alcohol conditions.

Day and Evening Reporting Centers are programs held at a specific location that provide intensive supervision for youth during the school hours for youth not in school and/or the afterschool hours.  Programs may offer only day reporting, evening reporting, or both day and evening reporting for youth.  Reporting centers use structured actives and classes that focus on needs and/or skills such as anger management, job skills, independent living, etc.  Reporting centers do not provide treatment services.  The goal of the reporting center is that youth will return to court with no new law violations.

Shelter Care is a non-secure residential care program for youth in need of short-term placement.  Youth at the shelters require more supervision than can be provided in the community-based level of care (EM, Tracker, and Reporting Centers).  Youth at the shelter participate in daily schedules and structured activities.

Evaluating alternatives to detention programs

As part of our yearly evaluations for Community-based Juvenile Services Aid funded programs in fiscal year 2025, the JJI, in partnership with the NCC, developed evaluation matrices to categorize important outcomes for each program type evaluated. The following categories describe the important program outcome indicators for alternatives to detention programs. These categories can be used to assess the standing of a program in terms of whether it is successfully applying best practices and meeting expectations or common goals for such programs.

Click here for the Alternatives to Detention Evaluation Matrix PDF

Evaluation Framework

Any program assessment must start by reviewing what data is available on processes and outcomes. Incomplete data or small sample sizes (i.e. few client cases) increase the risk of error in analysis. Shreffler and Huecker (2023) describe what Type I and II errors are – with high risks for error we might fail to identify a positive impact that’s occurring or falsely state the program was effective when it wasn’t. Small sample sizes run the risk of an outlier (one or two cases with unique, or very low/high values in an outcome) skewing the results.

A major goal of the Community-based Juvenile Services Aid (CBA) and Juveniles Services Commission Grant (JS) funding is to provide community-based services for juveniles who come in contact with the juvenile justice system and prevent youth from moving deeper into the system. CBA/JS funded programs are evaluated on how effective they are at preventing future system involvement (FSI) after youth are discharged from the program. FSI is evaluated in two ways – 1) comparing FSI between successful cases and unsuccessful cases and 2) overall FSI for all youth served. Evaluating these metrics gives a program the overall picture of FSI for the youth they come into contact with and helps programs more deeply understand how successful completion or discharge from their program impacts FSI of youth.

For higher risk youth (those already involved in the justice system; i.e., ATD, diversion, and truancy diversion programs), FSI cut point percentages are raised higher to account for evidence that prior system involvement increases risk for continued involvement. These higher cut points are based on recidivism rates for Nebraskan youth on probation reported in the annual statistical reports for 2020 to 2023 (range of 15.7% to 19.7% of youth recidivated) (AOCP, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023). It is important to note that recidivism rates identified through meta-analyses of diversion program evaluations across the U.S. and other countries tend to report higher average recidivism rates (e.g., an average of around 30% of diverted youth recidivated across 73 diversion programs according to Wilson & Hoge’s 2012 meta-analysis), but Nebraska-specific statistics tend to fall lower.

The following is a brief review of some of the existing literature related to alternatives to detention programs to further explain the importance of evaluating alternatives to detention program outcomes in rating program effectiveness.

brief literature review

Community-based alternatives to detention afford lower-risk youth the opportunity to be diverted away from secure detention, which has been shown to have ineffective, or even detrimental, effects on youth outcomes and further system involvement (Lambie & Randell, 2013; Stark, 2022; Walker & Herting, 2020).

For many years, scholars in the field have explored the concept of cumulative disadvantage in criminal justice case-processing, which is the idea that people experiencing a form of disadvantage tend to continue experiencing disadvantages over time (Kurlychek & Johnson, 2019). Through this work, it has been revealed that youth who are detained pre-adjudication are 1) more likely to have a petition filed, 2) more likely to be adjudicated, and 3) more likely to receive out of home placements than youth who are not detained pre-adjudication (Rodriguez, 2010; Thomas et al., 2022; Zane, 2025). This pattern underscores the leverage of alternatives to detention in interrupting trajectories into deeper system involvement.

Some alternatives to detention are surveillance-based to ensure public safety and to monitor that youth are following the requirements of their release. And while these alternatives are viewed as ultimately less punitive/harmful to youth compared to secure detention, there are some negative consequences that can come with surveillance-based alternatives. For example, scholars have warned against over-reliance on electronic monitoring for pre-adjudicated youth, as it is sometimes viewed as overly intrusive, stigmatizing, surveillance vs. rehabilitation focused, and not developmentally appropriate for adolescents (Crump, 2019; Stevens, 2021; Weisburd, 2015). Community-based supervision (otherwise known as pre-trial probation) is another form of detention alternative focused on monitoring pre-adjudicated youth within their community. Much like electronic monitoring, simply checking in on youth to make sure they’re staying out of trouble and fulfilling requirements of release does not accomplish much in terms of rehabilitation or positive youth development (R. A. Mendel, 2018). Therefore, it is important to monitor youth being place in alternatives to detention programs to reduce the risk of net-widening – or placing low-risk youth in alternatives to detention programs that would have otherwise been released or given less restrictive sanctions.

According to the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP, 2024), alternatives to detention programs are most effective when they target high risk youth, are multi-faceted, include therapeutic programming, prosocial activities, and use cognitive-behavioral techniques to address dynamic risk factors. Therefore, when surveillance-based programs are used, they should also be paired with some form of rehabilitative programming targeting the youth’s needs. In fact, evidence suggests community supervision programs are most successful when programs are time-limited and purposeful (OJJDP, 2024), focusing on 1) connecting youth with a trusted mentor or coach, 2) developing individualized case plans that consider the needs of the youth and their families, 3) implementing constructive programming or activities, and 4) building positive relationships within their community (Harvell et al., 2021; Mendel, 2023).

For additional resources or to access articles referenced above, contact the JJI at unojji@unomaha.edu.

 
 

additional resources

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The Annie E. Casey Foundation developed the Juvenile Detention Alternatives Initiative (JDAI) to help promote juvenile justice reforms across the country. Their web page contains resources for juvenile justice practitioners and practice guides to implement JDAI’s core values and strategies.

The OJJDP publishes literature reviews on what works for juvenile delinquency prevention and intervention, including alternatives to detention (2024). This review describes the consequences of out of home placement and secure detention, and some key theoretical frameworks and considerations behind alternatives to detention practices.

The Sentencing Project recently published an updated report on effective alternatives to youth incarceration (2023), in which they describe the harms of youth detainment and some current best practices and models to reduce delinquency.

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Additional Research

Research Abstracts

Juvenile Evening Reporting Centers: A Research Note on an Emerging Practice (Garland, et al 2014)

Placing youth in detention centers has the potential to generate negative educational and behavioral consequences. Recognizing this problem, scholars and juvenile justice policy makers and practitioners have searched for viable alternatives during the past two decades. One alternative promoted by the Juvenile Detention Alternatives Initiative is the evening reporting center (ERC). Although promoted as a promising practice, little is known about the ERC’s operational design and effectiveness. This research note explores the ERC through site visits at seven locations across the United States. Data from the site visits are integrated with evidence-based literature to provide suggestions for examining the need for the ERC, creating a model design, and evaluating the program. PDF

Diverting Multi-Problem Youth from Juvenile Justice: Investigating the Importance of Community Influence on Placement and Recidivism (Hamilton, et al 2007)

In the U.S., diversion has increasingly become one of the most utilized alternatives to detention of delinquent youth. Programs providing diversion can vary greatly. Variations in program designmake it difficult to evaluate the effectiveness of program outcomes. Utilizing hierarchical linearmodeling, this study examines variations in outcome for ten program sites of the New York State MH/JJ Diversion Project. Program and youth predictors were evaluated on two outcomes: out-of- community placement and recidivism. At the individual level, significant mental health and substance abuse problems, age, prior placements, and use of wraparound funds were predictive of youth placements, while significant substance abuse problems were predictive of recidivism. Program variations were found to have a significant impact on youth outcomes. Specifically, sites providing direct (or ‘‘in house’’) care had significantly reduced rates of placement. Study results and implications for future research are discussed. Copyright 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. PDF

JDAI Pathway 4- Consider the Alternatives: Planning and Implementing Detention Alternatives

This report presents the experiences of and lessons learned by the JDAI sites regarding the development of effective alternatives to secure detention. Each site expanded or enhanced its program repertoire as part of its detention system reform efforts. Some sites built an entirely new continuum; others filled key programmatic gaps. Taken together, their experiences help to clarify ways to plan, implement, and monitor effective alternatives to detention. PDF

Is Getting Tough With Low-Risk Kids a Good Idea? The Effect of Failure to Appear Detention Stays on Juvenile Recidivism (Ogle & Turanovic, 2016)

Although the juvenile justice system has adopted many alternatives to detention, the practice of detaining youth for failing to appear in court remains common. Despite its widespread use, it is unclear whether this form of detainment is harmful to juvenile offenders—especially to those who pose no credible threat to public safety. Accordingly, using data from the Florida Department of Juvenile Justice (FDJJ) and propensity score matching, we assess whether failure to appear (FTA) detention increases recidivism for low-risk youth. The results indicate that FTA detention increases official recidivism, technical recidivism, and re-detainment, and suggest that alternate policies be considered for low-risk juvenile offenders. PDF