“When you collaborate and have great outcomes, people like to see that. When crime goes down, when families remain together, when people are employed, it’s this amazing situation that people want to be a part of.”

These insightful words came from PA Attorney General Dave Sunday, the keynote speaker at our State of Diversion webinar this week. Attorney General Sunday is not only the chief legal officer of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania; he is also a Republican who supports programs that give second chances to young people who break the law.

He spoke passionately about his support for diversion programs that grew out of his time working in the York County District Attorney’s office, and later as the York County D.A. When the state’s top law enforcement official is touting a top Children First legislative priority, we couldn’t say it better ourselves.

“Where [York County officials] ultimately landed is completely different from where we started. We looked at the individual holistically, we looked at the case, we obviously looked at the impact on the victim but every one of us – the D.A.’s office, police members, community advocates – asked ourselves ‘What is the best way to make our community safer?’ It all comes down to decreasing recidivism and doing everything we can to make sure that bad things don’t happen in the first place.”

Making communities safer is the focus of the statewide Youth Safety Coalition, of which Children First is a founding member. The politically and geographically diverse coalition is working to pass The Care Package, a set of bills intended to reduce the number of PA kids involved with the juvenile legal system, including promoting diversion.

Said Attorney General Sunday, “If you don’t apply diversion to the way you think about criminal justice, then you’re looking at every case the exact same and you’re essentially creating a scenario where you can’t stop incidents from happening in the future. Everybody ends up in jail and the data is overwhelming that that doesn’t always increase public safety.

“All of this led to my philosophy of accountability and redemption. You have to hold people accountable, but accountability doesn’t always mean 800 years in prison. Accountability can mean an apology letter under the right circumstances. It can mean probation. It could mean a very short stint in incarceration. It could mean a long and lengthy time working through treatment courts.

“From my experience, I have seen some of the most hardened violent offenders desperately want a second chance, and we’ve seen people take that chance. We’ve seen them take advantage of [community-based programs] and really changing their lives.

“Not only are you making the community safer, you’re keeping families together. You’re decreasing the prison population which saves millions of dollars in taxpayer funds. You’re also just very simply setting people up to be successful in life.

“The hardest, most challenging things we deal with are public policy issues that will take maybe decades to fix and, because they don’t fit neatly within the political cycle of two or four years, sometimes people walk away because it’s not instant gratification.

“I can tell you right now that it’s beyond worth it when you see lives changed, it’s amazing what that does to the community, what that does to people who may not understand how important it is to embrace redemption.”

Working together, Children First, Attorney General Sunday, and the Youth Safety Coalition are a national example of bipartisan efforts to make communities safe, keep families whole, and give children a second chance for a good life.

“I knew I had to put off therapy and my
physical health because I had to take care of
my children. If we had access to paid
medical leave, or if I had a job that had
access, we could have co-parented … and
then we could have come back to work and
be better for it.”

– Clare Burgess, PA mom, in support of The
Family Care Act, legislation to create a
statewide paid family and medical leave
program