Probation officers from Washington traveled to Philadelphia to learn from a Philly youth organization that works with young people impacted by violence.
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The officers met with YEAH Philly, a group that works with Philadelphia youths charged with crimes, in an effort to incorporate some of their community-based practices into their own work.
The tour, which took place Wednesday and Thursday, brought about 100 officers to Philadelphia’s Family Court and introduced them to public defenders. The trip was part of a larger project from the D.C. court system to learn from other youth programs to adapt their services.
Probation officers can mimic some things YEAH Philly is doing, said Robert Bacon, D.C.’s assistant deputy director of court social services. What really struck him about the program is how it seemed to be able to connect with kids while making them feel safe.
“We are trying to find a way to reach kids differently,” he said.
But as a nongovernmental organization, YEAH Phillyis not subject to the same restrictions that probation officers, as law-enforcement officers, are, Bacon noted.
“They do a lot of the function that probation does without the weight of the court system,” Malcolm Woodland, the director of court social services said about YEAH Philly. Nonetheless, he noted that “the cloth that binds us is that we want to help young people.”
In a town-hall-like dialogue, probation officers and leadership from YEAH Philly discussed how the organization was able to successfully build relationships with young people. James Aye, the founder of the organization, shared how they were able to help young people avoid violating their probation by providing them with food, arranging for and paying for repairs to their homes, and giving them skills on how to interact with their parole officers.
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A goal of the dialogue with YEAH Philly, Bacon suggested, would be to mimic its role as a community-based organization but in a more official capacity of a law-enforcement agency. YEAH Philly acts as a kind of probation-system model for them.
In Pennsylvania, a probation office can represent an outsized part of a youth’s time in the justice system. Youths spent an average of 121 days under supervision between the initial charge and final disposition, according to the Pennsylvania Juvenile Court 2024 report. And just over 16% of youths found delinquent in Pennsylvania are put on probation, the report said.
Some attempts have been made to reform the probation system locally. The Philadelphia’s District Attorney’s Office noted in a 2019 report that 72% of children sent to juvenile placement were there because they were not complying with their probation and not because they had committed another crime. As a result, the office committed to asking children to meet only three conditions as part of their probation. Conditions can range from drug testing, educational requirements, curfew, and regular meetings with probation officers.
This was the experience of Haafith Collins, who spoke to the D.C. probation officers of his experience. Collins, now 19, had previously been on probation for four years.
“I was only recharged when I was forced to live in a house that was uninhabitable, and I felt like I had no choice but to run away even though I was on house arrest,” he said.
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