Restorative Justice and the Prosocial Communities Solution

Balanced and restorative justice argues for greater accountability, competency, and public safety through community care of juvenile offenders. Toward these ends, the Prosocial Communities Solution builds an infrastructure around key elements of information sharing, coordinated supervision, and immersion in prosocial activities. Assisted by a clinical, cross-organizational management information system, each community horizontally aligns parents with professional caregivers responsible for at-risk youth. The caregiver alliance deploys a cross-organizational ad hoc caregiver team for each juvenile offender on community diversion, probation, or parole. Ad hoc teams negotiate individualized risk reduction contracts with youth and parents providing round-the-clock caregiver-supervised prosocial activities, including restorative justice practices. Through prosocial activities, at-risk youth get natural lessons in self-regulation. The caregiver alliance can learn from locally collected data about the procedures that successfully embody restorative justice goals and elevate the standard of care for at-risk youth.