San Francisco, CA

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In both San Francisco and San Jose, the Burns Institute's work on reducing the disproportionality of youth of color in the juvenile justice system is part of a larger detention reform effort: the Annie E. Casey Foundation's Juvenile Detention Alternatives Initiative (JDAI). In San Francisco, the Burns Institute's James Bell leads the Disproportionate Minority Confinement (DMC) workgroup of the San Francisco JDAI, as well as serving as the Casey Foundation "Team Leader" for the entire JDAI process. The San Francisco DMC Advisory Board is co-chaired by Damone Hale, President of the San Francisco Juvenile Probation Commission, and Liz Jackson-Simpson, Director of Community Programs for the San Francisco Juvenile Probation Department. In San Francisco, the main disproportionality problem is the overrepresentation of African-American youth. San Francisco's data analysis led it to focus its community mapping efforts on the Bayview-Hunter's Point neighborhood. San Francisco has completed a number of focus groups with youth and parents from this neighborhood, and is about to embark on the physical mapping of the community. San Francisco has also revised its detention risk assessment instrument, and the results of the new instrument are being closely monitored to ascertain the effect of the new instrument on youth of color.

For more information on the San Francisco site, please contact San Francisco Site Coordinator Garry Bieringer.