The youth justice system is responsible for ensuring community safety by promoting the positive development of youth in its care while recognizing that children have different developmental needs than adults.
Youth justice systems have a range of options for monitoring and rehabilitating youth other than incarceration, including probation, restorative justice programs, and evidence-based treatment programs. Alternatives to incarceration have been shown to be more effective in preventing recidivism and more cost-effective. The most successful programs involve families in treatment and promote healthy development at the individual, family, school, and peer levels.
New Resource: Recommendations for Supporting a Positive School Climate and Safe Schools
We have released a new resource to help school districts build safer, more equitable learning environments. This is in response to data showing Black and Hispanic students, as well as students with IEPs, are referred to law enforcement and arrested at disproportionate rates in RI schools. The goal of the resource is to create safer schools through restorative, developmentally appropriate discipline practices that divert students from the youth justice system, while still prioritizing school safety. This resource is modeled after a Connecticut initiative, and we thank them for their preceding work. We developed Recommendations for Supporting a Positive School Climate and Safe Schools with the Rhode Island Juvenile Detention Alternatives Initiative Steering Committee and youth from the Anti-Racist Education Policy collaborative, and we also received input from other partners at the intersection of schools and youth justice.
Recommendations for Supporting a Positive School Climate and Safe Schools includes:
- A Model Memorandum of Understanding clarifying roles between school districts and law enforcement, ensuring School Resource Officers are involved only in genuine criminal matters.
- A Graduated Response Model, a four-tier framework guiding discipline (from classroom teachers to administrators to student support professionals), with law enforcement as a last resort.
Factbook Indicators
The 2026 Rhode Island KIDS COUNT Factbook provides a statistical portrait of the status of Rhode Island’s children and youth.
By examining the best available data statewide and in Rhode Island’s 39 cities and towns, Rhode Island KIDS COUNT provides an information base that can result in more effective policy and community action on behalf of children and families.
YOUTH JUSTICE INDICATORS
Juvenile Detention Alternatives Initiative (JDAI)
- The Annie E. Casey Foundation’s Juvenile Detention Alternatives Initiative (JDAI) works in jurisdictions across the U.S. to promote policies and practices that reduce inappropriate and unnecessary secure detention, reduce racial and ethnic disparities, and maintain public safety. JDAI focuses on creating opportunities for positive youth development through proven, family-focused interventions.
- For most youth in the justice system, JDAI recommends using high-quality community-based programs that provide supervision, accountability, and therapeutic services. Since 2009, Rhode Island youth justice stakeholders from state agencies, community organizations, as well as lived experts have contributed to a statewide JDAI effort as a unified steering committee. Together, the committee has examined and proposed reforms to decrease racial and ethnic disproportionality of youth at the Training School and has promoted the use of community-based alternatives to detention.
- Rhode Island KIDS COUNT is the coordinator of JDAI.
Advocacy
Monitor Legislation in the Rhode Island General Assembly.
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