Government leaders in counties throughout the state have partnered with young people and community organizations to identify and champion solutions that are informed by both research and the lived experiences of young people. Their work is paying off and showing in real time that ending girls’ incarceration is possible.

• In 2018, Santa Clara County committed to ending girls’ incarceration and focusing on community-based solutions. Because of these efforts, the county maintained an ADP between zero and two girls in custody for a full year.^[]Santa Clara County Probation Department, “Monthly Average Daily Population Reports,” database (Santa Clara, CA: Santa Clara County Probation Department, updated August 2023), https://probation.sccgov.org/data-and-reports/reports/monthly-reports.

• San Francisco has partnered with YWFC and other community-based organizations to keep girls out of custody and has maintained stretches with zero girls in juvenile hall.

• In 2021, Los Angeles County passed a motion committing to decarcerate the girls’ units in the county’s halls and camps, and its population of incarcerated girls and gender-expansive youth is at historic lows.^[]Revised Motion by Supervisors Hilda L. Solis and Janice Hahn, Decarceration of Girls and Young Women: Addressing the Incarcerated Youth Population in the Los Angeles County Camps and Halls, Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors, November 30, 2021.

• In 2023, four counties—Imperial, Los Angeles, Sacramento, and San Diego—joined Vera’s Ending Girls’ Incarceration in California (EGI-CA) Action Network, committing to making court-based policy and practice changes that will immediately and significantly reduce the numbers of girls and gender-expansive youth in custody and invest in community-based alternatives.^[]Vera Institute of Justice, “Ending Girls’ Incarceration in California.”

Every county in California can end girls’ incarceration and create community-based solutions that promote safety by building on successful work already happening in the state—such as in Santa Clara, Alameda, and San Francisco Counties—and nationally, in places like New York City, Hawai'i, Maine, and others. Jurisdictions that have hit zero offer important proof points that it is a realistic goal and one that contributes to community safety. They also provide models that counties can adapt to continue reform efforts across the youth and adult criminal legal systems.

Although local stakeholders in each county will need to collaboratively identify the combination of targeted investment, programming, and practice change that is right for their jurisdiction, there are six key action steps that would significantly reduce, if not eliminate, the incarceration of girls and gender-expansive youth in every county in California.

Across these action steps, it is essential that directly impacted girls and gender-expansive youth, and the adults who support them, are at the table leading these efforts for change.

1. Prevent confinements based on concerns for girls’ safety and eliminate any confinement for low-level charges.

Many girls and gender-expansive youth continue to be confined due to concerns for their safety or to connect them with services, and most girls in California are arrested and confined on offenses that do not require formal processing or detention under state law. This is out of step with best practice in juvenile justice and youth development.^[]National Research Council, Reforming Juvenile Justice: A Developmental Approach, edited by Richard J. Bonnie, Robert L. Johnson, Betty M. Chemers, et al. (Washington, DC: National Academies Press, 2013); Mikah C. Owen, Stephenie B. Wallace, Elizabeth M. Alderman, et al., “Advocacy and Collaborative Health Care for Justice-Involved Youth,” Pediatrics 146, no. 1 (2020); and Youth.gov, “Key Principles of Positive Youth Development.”

Many counties have already invested resources to divert cases with low-level charges, and they should continue to build on that progress. Court stakeholders should also develop clear protocols to eliminate confinement driven by concerns for individual safety, including to connect girls and gender-expansive youth to services, and should eliminate detention and formal delinquency petitions in response to misdemeanors and status offenses. To support these practice changes, court stakeholders will need to collaborate more quickly with each other, other child-serving agencies, and community-based providers to allow for in-the-moment problem-solving outside of the courtroom. This should include building a network of community-based providers that can offer immediate supports while stakeholders work with young people and their families to identify longer-term services. Connections to supports should not be linked to court involvement, and lack of participation in recommended services should not result in deeper system involvement.

2. Prevent confinement due to technical violations of probation and significantly limit the use of formal community supervision.

Girls and gender-expansive youth often cycle in and out of detention as a result of status offense behaviors that violate conditions of probation—acts like skipping school, running away from home, or using illegal substances. Research suggests that formal probation supervision is ineffective at reducing delinquent behaviors, particularly for youth with a low risk of re-arrest.^[]Richard A. Mendel, Transforming Juvenile Probation: A Vision for Getting It Right (Baltimore: Annie E. Casey Foundation, 2018). It is also net-widening—young people on probation supervision can be criminalized and incarcerated for behaviors that their non-system-involved peers are not, leading to cycles of continued system entanglement. To disrupt this cycle, counties should align with nationally recommended best practices:

• Eliminate the use of formal probation or community supervision in response to low-level offenses. Young people arrested for low-level offenses, including all misdemeanors and status offenses, should not be formally charged and should instead be connected to voluntary community-based programs at the earliest possible system point and kept off of probation supervision entirely.^[]Richard A. Mendel, Transforming Juvenile Probation: A Vision for Getting It Right (Baltimore: Annie E. Casey Foundation, 2018), 26.

• Limit and individually tailor conditions of release. For the subset of cases in which supervision is ordered, the list of conditions the young person is required to comply with should be limited, conditions should be individually crafted, and supervision should be time-bound.^[]Richard A. Mendel, Transforming Juvenile Probation: A Vision for Getting It Right (Baltimore: Annie E. Casey Foundation, 2018).

• Technical violations of probation should not result in detention. Stakeholders should work together to create protocols that eliminate detention as a consequence for technical violations, regardless of underlying charge. This will require problem-solving outside of the courtroom to identify needed changes in case planning, including additional community-based supports that can reduce future violations and mitigate any public safety risks.^[]National Council of Juvenile and Family Court Judges, “XI: Probation and Parole Violations,” in Enhanced Juvenile Justice Guidelines (Reno, NV: NCJFCJ, 2018).

3. Invest in gender-responsive programming to create off-ramps from the youth legal system.

Community-based programming provides an effective alternative to incarceration that can reduce recidivism and increase protective factors.^[]Development Services Group, Inc., Diversion from Formal Juvenile Court Processing (Washington, DC: OJJDP, 2017); National Research Council, Reforming Juvenile Justice: A Developmental Approach, edited by Richard J. Bonnie, Robert L. Johnson, Betty M. Chemers, et al. (Washington, DC: National Academies Press, 2013); and Blueprints for Healthy Youth Development, “Multisystemic Therapy.” Counties should invest in a robust continuum of care and ensure that this continuum—including wraparound services, mental health interventions, and substance use programming—is available and accessible to girls and gender-expansive youth. Programming must not inadvertently exclude young people most in need of these resources due to strict eligibility requirements, such as requiring parental participation or offering little flexibility in meeting times or locations.^[]Megan Granski, Shabnam Javdani, Valerie R. Anderson, et al., “A Meta-Analysis of Program Characteristics for Youth with Disruptive Behavior Problems: The Moderating Role of Program Format and Youth Gender,” American Journal of Community Psychology 65, no. 1–2 (2020), 201–222.

Stakeholders at every youth legal system point—including law enforcement, probation officers, judges, district attorneys, and public defenders—should build in access to gender-responsive diversion programming that does not require formal probation supervision.^[]Richard A. Mendel,Transforming Juvenile Probation: A Vision for Getting It Right (Baltimore: Annie E. Casey Foundation, 2018). Instead of mandating specific services (for example, family therapy or anger management), systems should default to referring young people to trusted community-based programs that work alongside young people to develop appropriate service plans that fully account for their individual needs and contexts. Many effective programs use credible messenger models and have expertise in working alongside young people to support them in meeting self-identified needs and goals.

4. Prevent crossover from child-serving systems.

All child-serving systems—including child welfare, behavioral health, public health, education, and housing systems—should invest in and use non-law-enforcement crisis responses. System actors should train staff on strategies to avoid contact with law enforcement in response to children in crisis, including (absent serious public safety concerns) most altercations and conflict, and look to restorative justice and holistic crisis response models instead.

5. Invest in holistic, gender-responsive community-based supports.

Housing and economic instability are significant drivers of incarceration for girls and gender-expansive youth. Girls and gender-expansive youth should never be detained because they lack housing. Counties should expand the continuum of local housing options for young people and their families that can be used as prevention and diversion. This includes exploring family-based care models that specially recruit, train, resource, and connect local families to welcome girls and gender-expansive youth into their homes while longer-term options are explored.

Local policymakers must understand that housing is a complicated issue: there are some young people who do not feel safe at home with their families but have no other options, while others want to stay with their families. Policymakers need to review the numerous, nuanced restrictions for family foster placement and invest in safe spaces for youth who do not have anywhere to go. Any housing models should be coupled with economic supports aimed at ensuring that chosen families are resourced and can support the young people who choose to stay with them.

At the same time, counties should prioritize holistic investments in communities to ensure that young people can access safe and secure housing, quality education and school-based services, community-based mental health services, economic supports for their families, and fun and engaging community-based programming.

6. Develop multidisciplinary, collaborative workgroups that facilitate the sharing of power and resources.

Counties should develop collaborative, multidisciplinary workgroups that bring together diverse leadership from child-serving agencies, community-based organizations, advocates, and directly impacted young people to examine data, explore system gaps, and discuss solutions. Inviting community members to the table is important, but it is not enough; government actors will also need to intentionally create collaborative spaces that can welcome community members and foster their contributions. This means sharing power and resources with those most directly harmed by carceral systems.