A diversion program has proved to keep young people out of jail. Why hasn’t it grown under Chesa Boudin?
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Jon Rahoi would sit up at night, trying to anticipate his teen daughter’s next crisis.
She’d been caught up in drama at high school in San Francisco and then stopped going. She was sneaking out and behaving erratically. Then came a May 2021 arrest for an assault and the forked road it presented:
Down one path was a courtroom prosecution and a possible four-year prison sentence. Down another was a diversion program offered by the San Francisco District Attorney’s Office. Rahoi’s daughter took the second path, the one less traveled.
“Her life is like a complete 180 since this happened — total 180,” Rahoi said.
The family’s story is a window into how local diversion programs can work at a time when District Attorney Chesa Boudin’s embrace of them has become a political sticking point for critics who say he should be recalled in favor of someone more focused on traditional prosecution. But low enrollment in the evidence-backed program Rahoi’s daughter used also shows the limits of Boudin’s reach.
Effective yet rarely used
Only eight youths enrolled this year in Make it Right, a restorative justice program for people ages 13 to 24 who are accused of felony crimes such as burglary, assault, robbery and car theft. In 2021, only 17 enrolled.
Boudin has attempted to expand the program, which started in 2013 and has been shown in a five-year study to reduce recidivism. In 2020 he upped the top enrollment age from 17 to 24, but participation has remained low. Only seven people 18 or older have been referred to the program, which is administered by Community Works West, the Oakland-based nonprofit, along with Huckleberry Community Assessment and Resource Center.
The D.A.’s office says the numbers haven’t climbed because a dearth of arrests among minors who would qualify.
Admissions to Juvenile Hall reached historic lows in 2020 after declining for years. There were 299 admissions, or about 25 per month, according to an annual report by the San Francisco Juvenile Probation Department. In the first three months of this year, the monthly numbers were even lower.
As for the newly eligible young adults, the office is on a tight timeline to enroll them. Prosecutors have 48 hours to decide whether to charge a person in custody, and Make it Right’s enrollment can only happen before someone is charged.
D.A.’s staff must also seek and obtain the approval of the person affected by the crime before an arrested person can be allowed into the program.
Because of these factors, people ages 18 to 24 are more likely to end up charged and in Young Adult Court, said Mikaela Rabinowitz of the D.A.’s office.
Rabinowitz said the office is exploring ways to expand Make it Right to more people between 18 and 24.
Make it Right is one of more than 20 diversion programs and courts used in San Francisco, but it’s unique in that young people are enrolled “pre-charge.” That means, unlike other programs, the D.A.’s office can divert someone from prosecution without a judge’s approval.
If the program is completed, the young person won’t be charged. If they don’t finish the program, they’re charged and prosecuted.
In Make it Right, young people work with a facilitator to understand the harm they’ve caused and then meet with the person they harmed to express remorse and come up with a plan to make amends, often through community service. If the person affected by the crime declines to participate, a representative or community member will stand in.
Every participant must write a letter of apology to the person harmed by their crime. Facilitators help come up with requirements customized for each person, which may include holding a job, searching for work or going to school.
“There’s a lot of work done between facilitators and (participants) on empathy, on shame and guilt and addressing those issues,” Sandra Rodriguez, a senior program specialist at Oakland-based criminal legal system reform research center Impact Justice.
The program, which takes six to nine months to complete, significantly reduces the chances of recidivism, according to a study released this January from the nonpartisan California Policy Lab. The study found that 32% of program graduates were arrested again in the next four years compared to 75% of those who were prosecuted.
“It’s a truly restorative alternative to the traditional justice system,” said Alissa Krog, one of the authors of the study.
Restorative is how Rahoi describes his daughter’s journey through Make it Right.
A family healing
Mei was referred to the program after she and her friends were involved in a fight in San Francisco’s southside neighborhood Bayview on May 13, 2021. Mei armed herself with scissors and was holding them when police arrived. (Rahoi asked that his daughter be referred to by her middle name to protect her privacy; Mei declined to comment.)
Because Mei was 17, she was charged as a minor. She spent a week in Juvenile Hall and vowed to her father that she’d never go back.
Her father wasn’t sure she could avoid it. Her attorney feared she’d be charged with assault with a deadly weapon, which is punishable by up to four years in prison and a $10,000 fine. Instead the DA’s office offered her a chance to participate in Make it Right.
Make It Right is based off Restorative Community Conferencing — Alameda County’s restorative justice program for youth. Sujatha Baliga of Impact Justice developed Alameda’s program and helped implement it in San Francisco.
Make it Right works best, Rodriguez said, with crimes where there’s a clear victim who was affected by it. That’s because the process is supposed to be oriented around the person harmed and requires the person who caused the harm to assist in their healing.
Of those harmed people who participate, 90% are satisfied in the end, said Kristina Bedrossian, executive director of Community Works West.
Rahoi, a software developer and University of San Francisco professor, had to talk Mei into it. The program sounded daunting. She’d have to submit to requirements, including that she return to high school and get a job, as well as talk through her problems at great length with a facilitator.
After his daughter was in the program awhile, Rahoi started to see a change from the early days of the pandemic, when Mei got caught up in toxic relationships and struggled to communicate with her parents through the tough-girl persona she had adopted.
When it came time for the meeting, the person harmed in the fight didn’t participate. A community member stood in. Mei had to read a letter explaining the causes of her behavior and how she was addressing them.
After, Mei had to read the letter to her father. In it, she admitted that she’d tried to seem tough, but her arrest shattered the illusion.
“It was quite emotional,” Rahoi said.
Mei is on track to graduate high school this summer. Rahoi, whose stress has eased, is still amazed at the change. Rahoi doesn’t like to think of what would have happened if Mei hadn’t been offered Make It Right. She could have been prosecuted and ended up with probation or jail time.
Instead, she turned her arrest into positive momentum.
“Which is incredible,” the father said.
Joshua Sharpe is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: jo***********@*********le.com Twitter: @joshuawsharpe
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