DIVERTED

A Los Angeles Community Storytelling Film

What if Los Angeles regularly chose healing over punishment for Black and Brown youth?

Diverted challenges the belief that youth need harsh punishment to become “contributing members of society,” and calls for a society where alternatives to incarceration are the standard, not the exception.

Southern California has a youth justice problem. The disproportionate impact of Los Angeles County juvenile correctional facilities on Black and Brown children is rooted in the belief that harsh treatment creates accountability, even despite unsafe conditions and inadequate services that do not redirect or restore. Once young people come into contact with the juvenile justice system, it too often becomes nearly impossible to escape, even into adulthood.

Diverted follows Daniel, Mora, and Edin - three young adults directly and indirectly impacted by California’s carceral system and whose paths diverged based on the opportunities they were given and the ones they were denied. 

Through personal narrative, data, and interviews with those advancing youth justice in California, the film reframes incarceration as a policy choice and elevates alternatives like diversion programs that remove barriers to healing and transformation. 

Diverted is designed to be a catalyst for immediate and long-term change in how we respond to system-impacted youth in California and to lessen the state’s reliance on youth incarceration.

Bring Diverted to your campus, organization, coalition meeting, or community space! By hosting a screening, you could help shift harmful narratives about Black and Brown youth, build civic engagement, and connect audiences to real opportunities for local and state action.

Host A screening

Interested in a panel or Q&A with the system-impacted storytellers and local advocates featured in the film? Request to host a screening and follow the link on the host a screening confirmation page to access a screening toolkit which contains all film participants’ contact information.

ABOUT THE ISSUE

Los Angeles County continues to funnel Black and Brown youth into facilities that are not equipped to heal trauma or support growth. The conditions and culture inside juvenile facilities, and the lack of effective, supportive services, reinforce harm, not safety.

Diverted pushes a different frame: youth incarceration is a policy choice. California can move away from punishment by investing in alternatives to incarceration for young people, especially diversion and community-based supports that prevent trauma from metastasizing into lifelong system involvement.

What narratives the film is challenging:

  • Do “youth need harsh punishment” or do they instead “deserve opportunity, care, and support”?

  • Why are policies that see youth incarceration as the solution the default? Instead, what happens when policymakers, judges, and other system actors begin seeing diversion as a real and important to be funded pathway and alternative?

  • What happens when a youth’s experience goes from isolated stories to civic power: what does it look like to link lived experience to advocacy, policy change, and demanding community-centric budget decisions?

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