What Would a More Effective, Accountable, Equitable Approach to Juvenile Probation Condition Setting Entail?
This section of the toolkit can help you identify and come to consensus on condition setting and enforcement improvements. Review a continuum of potential reform options and determine which strategies are best for your agency, court, and system.
Condition Approaches
Jurisdictions can consider a continuum of strategies for deciding what their probation conditions entail, from traditional to more research-based approaches. Review the list of (not mutually exclusive) options below and consider what approach might best help you meet your goals.
Standardized conditions applied to all youth in the same manner
- Long list of standardized conditions
- Reduced number of standardized conditions
- Limited number of developmentally appropriate standardized conditions
Individualized conditions tailored to each youth
- Based on risks, needs, strengths, and circumstances
- Based on developmentally appropriate expectations
Positive growth- and goal-oriented conditions
- Based on achieving progress instead of absolutes
- Includes positive goals rather than only rules
Contract or agreement that outlines mutual responsibilities
- Replaces conditions with a case plan
- Details responsibilities of all parties including youth, family, probation officers, service providers, victims or the community, and the court
No conditions (other than legal prohibitions)
- Relies on motivational and relationship building abilities of probation officers and service providers
Continuum in Practice: Condition Approaches
To illustrate the continuum, example conditions related to mandatory school attendance are outlined below, a common condition for youth on probation.
Standardized conditions applied to all youth in the same manner
- You shall attend school daily and follow all school rules.
Individualized conditions tailored to each youth
- You shall develop a plan with your probation officer, and other identified supports, to engage in prosocial activities at school to help you expand your peer and support network.
Positive growth- and goal-oriented conditions
- I will measurably increase my school attendance each month and engage in a structured prosocial activity once a month.
Contract or agreement that outlines mutual responsibilities
- I will increase my school attendance each month and engage in a structured prosocial activity once a month. My probation officer will provide transportation resources three days a week, and my mentor will identify three accessible, prosocial activities for me to choose from every month.
No conditions
- Probation, youth, family, court, and service providers and/or community organizations work together to support youth’s improved school attendance.
A Conditions Checklist: Effectiveness
Regardless of the probation conditions you use, consider how these conditions are best structured to effectively promote positive youth behavior change. Conditions should do the following:
- Focus on the presenting problem and risk to community safety.
- Use language and concepts that are understandable and motivating to youth.
- Be developmentally appropriate, feasible, and realistically achievable.
- Be dynamic and based on and responsive to youth’s risks, needs, and changing circumstances.
- Exclude extraneous, unmeasurable, or unenforceable rules to ensure that youth and officers are not set up for failure.
- Promote, rather than undermine, relationship building with a probation officer.
- Promote officers’ engaging in research-based rather than purely surveillance-based activities such as skill building and connections to services.
A Conditions Checklist: Accountability
Regardless of the probation conditions you use, consider how these conditions are best structured to hold youth accountable in specific, meaningful ways:
- Hold youth accountable for and support them in addressing the underlying causes of their behavior and related improvements, not arbitrary norms or standards of good behavior.
- Detail expectations only if matched with specific opportunities and supports for related skill building and practice.
- Develop restorative conditions that are directly connected to and provide the opportunity for youth to repair the specific harm caused to victims and communities, such as victim mediation.
- Account for, if not expressly include, specific expectations of system, court, and service provider stakeholders.
A Conditions Checklist: Equity
Regardless of the probation conditions you use, consider how to ensure these conditions don’t exacerbate system inequities, and ideally, position all youth for success:
- Tailor conditions to a youth and family’s strengths, circumstances, and opportunities and obstacles to achieving them.
- Make sure conditions eliminate practical barriers, such as requiring an appointment during school and work hours.
- Conditions should reflect and include community and cultural norms.
- Conditions should account for the availability and quality of differing communities’ service and support systems.
Condition Setting Approaches
It’s also critical for jurisdictions to consider who is involved in setting conditions and how. Consider the options below and what approach to condition setting will best help you achieve your reform goals.
- Conditions are automatically determined.
- Judge sets the conditions.
- Probation officers set the conditions.
- Probation officers set the conditions with input from stakeholders.
- Probation officers and judges mutually determine probation conditions and related supports.
- Conditions are determined initially and updated on an ongoing basis through a collaborative team, including youth, families, officers, the court, and other stakeholders.
You just explored Solutions to Explore—Condition Setting. Be sure to engage with the other modules. Next is Enforcement.
Right now, you are exploring Solutions to Explore—Condition Setting. Be sure to review the information and engage with the other modules. Next is Solutions to Explore—Enforcement.