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Abstract: 

Since 2000, BronxConnect, a program of Urban Youth Alliance International, has served more than 1,500 youth and young adults in its alternative programs for court-involved high-risk youth. It is the only faith-based, community-based alternative-to-incarceration (ATI) and alternative-to-detention (ATD) program serving youth and young adults in the Bronx. At the heart of the organization’s mission is the recognition of the unique role that faith and members of faith communities—regardless of specific affiliations—serve in transforming lives and in building, nurturing, and sustaining communities. Over the last two decades, UYAI has extended its reach to the provision of social services, including literacy, HIV+ and other health support, alternative programs for courtinvolved youth, employment and workforce training, reentry programming, and afterschool tutoring services. The following article describes a model program that serves adolescents and young adults who have been incarcerated and returned to their communities or who are involved with probation to prevent their further involvement with the justice systems. These criminally involved youth, who represent less than 10% of the general population, may seem to some readers to be far removed from those youth who are in the mainstream of schools, community agencies, or recreation centers. Yet the community-based program that uniquely integrates these delinquent youth into the mainstream of their communities through a variety of programs and services is worth our undivided attention. Calderón-Payne eloquently identifies a series of interventions that work across the spectrum of high-risk youth, whether they are court-involved or not.

Keywords: social services; community engagement outings; alternative-to-incarceration; recidivism; reconviction; Multisystemic Therapy (MST) model; delinquency

Affiliations:  1: Urban Youth Alliance International.