Face the ACE: Law Enforcement Working with Educators to Overcome Adverse Childhood Experiences

Format

Individual Presentation

First Presenter's Institution

Riverside County District Attorney's Office

First Presenter’s Email Address

huntertaylor@rivcoda.org

First Presenter's Brief Biography

Hunter Taylor J.D., Deputy District Attorney, Riverside County District Attorney’s Office, Riverside, CA Mr. Taylor has been a prosecutor for over thirteen years and has tried cases involving all types of crimes ranging from drug offenses to homicide. He is currently the Team Leader of the Riverside County District Attorney’s Office Crime Prevention Unit and the founder of Real Men Read, a young men’s literacy program primarily operated in Riverside County’s Juvenile Detention Facilities. Mr. Taylor served as an adjunct professor at Chapman University’s Fowler School of Law in Orange County, CA for nearly a decade where he has taught Legal Negotiations, California Evidence, and Client Interviewing and Counseling.

Location

Session Six Breakouts

Strand #1

Hands: Safety & Violence Prevention

Strand #2

Home: Family & Community Engagement

Relevance

This presentation will detail how prosecutors, community partners, and schools can work together to ensure the well-being of all youth by specifically addressing core tenants of the HANDS and HOME strands.

HANDS: Our presentation addresses several unique law enforcement and education collaborations designed to prevent crimes against children and that assist youth that have already been exposed to victimization and other traumatic experiences.

HOME: Our presentation explains how, instead of focusing on the prosecution of children, our Crime Prevention Unit utilizes education, social/emotional supports, and local resources to bring healing to families in need while strengthening familial and community bonds.

Brief Program Description

Designed for law enforcement, educators, and all citizens working with youth, this presentation details how prosecutors and educators from one of the country’s largest counties have collaborated to prevent and respond to youth victimization and other adverse childhood experiences.

Summary

The Riverside County DA’s Office proposes to have the Team Leader of their award-winning Crime Prevention Unit and another experienced prosecutor present on some of the Unit’s most innovative initiatives:

a. Aware to Care Exchange (ACE);

b. De-Escalation and Assistance Response Team (DART); and

c. Restoring Opportunities After Rehabilitation (RESTOAR).

This presentation explains how each program was created, is currently operated, and how similar programs can be replicated anywhere in the country with the help of school and community engagement.

ACE

ACE is a web-based notification system supporting children exposed to violence and other adverse childhood experiences by improving communication and collaboration between first responders and school sites/districts. When a first responder encounters a child who experienced a traumatic event, they make a notification via the ACE which is then forwarded to the school district and school site where the child attends school. The teacher and/or school site employees are able to observe the child’s behavior and utilize trauma-sensitive services and/or interventions if deemed appropriate by the individual school site and/or school district.

DART

DART is a multi-agency collaborative providing preventive anti-violence education to schools and that deploys experienced prosecutors, victim services advocates, and other essential community partners to school sites in response to school-related traumatic events and/or violent incidents. Examples of traumatic incidents DART can respond to include race-based fights, student overdoses, and in-person or online hate speech directed towards students and/or staff.

RESTOAR

RESTOAR is an anti-recidivism collaboration consisting of the DA’s Office, community organizations, public agencies, and reentry experts who work together to assist justice-involved individuals by (1) helping those with felony records attain personal and economic stability through resource connection and gainful employment, and (2) restoring opportunities to those demonstrating their successful rehabilitation and reintegration into their communities. By helping justice-involved adults, we help their children by lessening the detrimental impact of adverse childhood experiences associated with criminal justice system involvement. Job opportunities and increasing the likelihood of cleaning up someone’s criminal record provides the necessary stability for justice-involved parents to care for and support their children in ways that may otherwise be impossible.

Evidence

There is no question that our CPU’s innovative models are effective as Riverside County recently experienced a 46% decrease in juvenile court criminal filings over a four year period, helping youth-at-risk remain in the educational system and out of the Juvenile Justice System.

One of our CPU’s programs has been recognized by a White House initiative, Harvard University, and the California State Association of Counties as an effective and innovative community improvement best practice. Due to its effectiveness, that program is currently being modeled in El Salvador to address gang violence in that country.

Our CPU averages over 250 presentations (gang, drug, human trafficking, internet safety, anti-bullying and hate crime awareness) to over 20,000 people each year.

Our ACE initiative spans 19 school districts and hundreds of schools that serve over 250,000 students. The ACE also boasts nearly two dozen fire, law enforcement, and community-based agency partners that are committed to sending notifications upon contacting children that have been exposed to adverse childhood experiences. Projections indicate over 1,000 notifications will be made annually via our ACE initiative and we believe our system may be the largest of its kind in the nation.

Learning Objective 1

1) learn key insights programs designed to prevent youth from entering the criminal justice system while curbing the impact of exposure to adverse childhood experiences. Participants will also learn about a program designed to assist rehabilitated adults reenter society and the workforce after incarceration, subsequently benefitting those children negatively affected by their parents’/guardians’ criminal justice system involvement.

Learning Objective 2

2) learn how these programs can be created and operated in their own jurisdictions

Learning Objective 3

learn valuable statistical information and data highlighting behavior outcomes for youth exposed to adverse childhood experiences

Keyword Descriptors

law enforcement, prosecutor, adverse childhood experience, childhood trauma

Presentation Year

2022

Start Date

3-8-2022 1:00 PM

End Date

3-8-2022 2:15 PM

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Mar 8th, 1:00 PM Mar 8th, 2:15 PM

Face the ACE: Law Enforcement Working with Educators to Overcome Adverse Childhood Experiences

Session Six Breakouts

Designed for law enforcement, educators, and all citizens working with youth, this presentation details how prosecutors and educators from one of the country’s largest counties have collaborated to prevent and respond to youth victimization and other adverse childhood experiences.