YOUNGSTOWN — Mahoning County Juvenile Court Judge Theresa Dellick said the Juvenile Summit on Wednesday was a chance to talk to law enforcement officers and others about how juvenile diversion programs have decreased crime and recidivism and reduced the number of children in detention.

The summit in a meeting room of the main branch of the Public Library of Youngstown and Mahoning County also was a chance to hear from lawmakers on legislation affecting juveniles.

Dellick said when she was first elected Mahoning County Juvenile Court judge in 2001, the court had more than 2,000 felony cases. “As of last year (and the year before), we are down to 200,” she said.

“We think it is because of our focus on diversion and intervention. What we have done is flip the table. Instead of focusing on what comes in through the back door, we focus on what is coming through the front door, through intake,” she said. “We go right in and we start working with those” children, she said.

“We’re doing more now, not through the court, but through the community,” she said. “We’re doing it through the neighborhoods and in schools.

She said during Wednesday’s summit two experts from Case Western Reserve University “were able to show that diversion and intervention is much more beneficial and cost effective than locking kids up.”

She said such programs mean fewer kids come into detention, and fewer are coming to juvenile court.

Dellick provided statistics to The Vindicator stating that the number of children in custody in Mahoning County dropped from 141 in 2017 to 86 in 2024. The number going through delinquency proceedings in Mahoning County Juvenile Court dropped from 447 children in 2017 to 290 in 2024.

The number in court for traffic charges dropped from 909 in 2017 to 447 in 2024, and the number of children involved in truancy dropped from 363 to 252.

The total number of new cases of all kinds (not just criminal) dropped from 4,490 in 2017 to 2,740 in 2024, according to the statistics.

Dr. Jeff Kretschmar, professor at Case Western Reserve University, who has worked with Mahoning County Juvenile Court since about 2010 to evaluate the court’s programs, said kids who come through the juvenile justice system “are just a little different from other kids.”

He said, “They have a lot more trauma and mental health issues, substance use issues and family dysfunction. Those kids that end up in the system in detention a lot of times is not as productive at curbing recidivism (re-offending) as we might want to hope”

He said, “If you take a kid who has certain characteristics and another kid with those same characteristics, and if one goes into diversion and another goes into detention, generally, the kid in detention is going to have worse outcomes.”

He said the child in detention is less likely to graduate from high school, less likely to get a job. “It sort of just snowballs,” Kretschmar said. He said diversion programs “are not perfect for everybody.” But it is the better option for some kids.

He said he works with the juvenile court on a program that focuses on diverting youth with behavioral health issues out of the system “instead of either local incarceration or state incarceration” to address “the things that are bringing you in front of the judge or the court a lot to see if we can get those things under control, and we won’t see you so much.”

Dellick said using more diversion programs has existed at the court for many years. “We just keep adding things to it. and honing it because Jeff has evaluated our programs and said, ‘This is what we need to tighten up. This is what we need to add.'”

The program Kretschmar works in with the Mahoning County Juvenile Court is a statewide program that a lot of counties participate in. “My role is evaluation,” Kretschmar said.