• Establish statutory diversion program eligibility criteria that eliminates the existing racial disparity in access to and participation in diversion programs by minority children.
• Require that before a child pleads guilty or no contest, the child is represented by an attorney and has had a meaningful opportunity to discuss with an attorney the life-long direct and collateral consequences of taking a plea.

• Eliminate unilateral prosecutorial transfers of children in adult court.
• Require criminal court judges to consider alternative juvenile sanctions for juveniles in the adult system.
• Allow criminal court judges the discretion to sentence any transferred juvenile to specialized juvenile treatment programs or to a blended sentence (juvenile treatment programs and adult court supervision) if appropriate.
• Allow judges to determine if a juvenile should be tried/sentenced in adult court.
• Allow judges and prosecutors to waive minimum mandatory and life sentences for juveniles transferred to adult court or allow parole supervision.

• Create and use more community alternatives to detention centers.
• End the inappropriate use of detention centers as a baby sitting service, as punishment before a contempt hearing or trial, and as a homeless shelter.
• Prohibit the indefinite detention of children who have been found incompetent to proceed to trial.

Promote Community Safety Through Juvenile Justice System Improvements and Process Reforms
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• Protect children’s futures by making sure that before a child pleads guilty or no contest, the child has a meaningful opportunity to discuss with an attorney the lifelong direct and collateral consequences of taking a plea.
• Strictly limit teenager sex offender registration. At a minimum, expand the “Romeo and Juliet” exception to match the federal law. Provide jury trial if teenager qualifies for sex offender registration.
• Require taping of all children’s statements to law enforcement or school personnel regarding criminal investigations.
• Give police full discretion to take other appropriate action when a young person has a physical altercation with a relative in the family home. The Domestic Violence arrest and mandatory detention provisions were intended to eliminate the serious problem of intimate partner and spousal violence and should not apply to children. Currently, if an officer wants to do something other than an arrest, the officer has to extensively document why the young person was not arrested.
• Prosecute traffic cases of juveniles in juvenile court, not in county court with adult offenders.

• Require a hearing to take extreme measure of chaining and shackling a child in court. This change would eliminate the current practice of blanket, wholesale shackling of securely detained children in dependency and delinquency proceedings.
• To conserve limited resources and protect public safety, DJJ should use a detention risk assessment instrument (DRAI) that is independently validated and is focused on ensuring court appearance and reducing the likelihood a child will commit a serious crime pending trial. Housing children at a detention center increases the likelihood of future criminal behavior. The current DRAI is a political instrument that has not been independently validated.
• Prohibit the arrest of a juvenile for failing to appear in court if the child was in school at the time of the court hearing, or the child was unable to attend court by himself.
• Require Kingian Non-violence training for Department of Juvenile Justice employees and contracted service providers.
• Create an independent ombudsman office to review allegations of abuse at DJJ and private provider facilities and programs.