Stoneleigh Fellows Rhonda McKitten and Kevin Bethel are featured in The Philadelphia Citizen for their work on Philadelphia’s Juvenile Justice Hub, which is a finalist for a Bloomberg Philanthropies grant.
Philly’s Juvenile Justice Hub last week was named one of 35 finalists in the Bloomberg Philanthropies Mayors Challenge. This idea is an extension of a successful—and nationally innovative—school diversion program launched here in 2014 by former Deputy Commissioner Kevin Bethel, which upended the way students are treated for committing nonviolent infractions in school.
The proposed Juvenile Justice Hub would take that same concept and apply it to incidents that occur outside of school; the school diversion program would also be housed here. Lt. Steve Clark and his colleague, Sgt. John Ross, started talking internally about a Juvenile Justice Hub as part of work looking into what happens department-wide when kids are arrested; they formed the idea with Rhonda McKitten, a Stoneleigh Fellow who works with the police department on juvenile issues.
