Congrats, Tarrant juvenile board, you slayed DEI bogeyman. Now, how about helping kids? | Opinion

In their zeal to tackle the menace of diversity, equity and inclusion programs, Tarrant County officials have left young criminal offenders in the lurch.

The county board that oversees juvenile justice declined last month to renew the contract for a group called Youth Advocate Programs, which has provided rehabilitation, education and counseling services for thousands of young local offenders over the last three decades.

The program operates in 35 states and helps about 200 Tarrant County youths a year. But on its website, it mentions “policy and advocacy,” “diversity initiatives,” and “systemic racism.”

Can’t have that, at least according to District Judge Chris Wolfe and County Judge Tim O’Hare. They led the board to vote down an extension of Youth Advocate Programs’ contract, leaving Tarrant County without a provider for these crucial services.

Wolfe deemed the expressions on the website “hot topics and controversy politically.” But if board members have evidence that the group’s services were compromised, they haven’t provided it. And while some expressed a desire for a local vendor to pick up the slack, there doesn’t appear to be an obvious choice.

Did anyone on the board do any research to find out if Youth Advocate Programs’ work was effective? Can they cite any specific problematic teachings or a superior approach offered by a different vendor?

So far, no. It’s a political purge in a realm where politics can often do more harm than good.

Here’s how it works: Judges, child-welfare agents or probation officers refer children to the program. For months, the offenders spend several hours a week working on life skills, ranging from how to interview for a job to more serious issues of dealing with trauma.

Many perpetrators have themselves been victims of abuse and neglect, and the goal is to help them overcome it, to improve the odds that they’ll be productive members of society instead of ending up in a prison cell.

The program reduces the number of children held in county facilities, where some may simply learn more about a life of crime than any rehabilitation.

The excesses of DEI are real. Adjustments are being made at universities and in the business world. Diversity programs need to lift people up rather than reinforce victimhood.

But without something to replace the hastily canceled contract, Tarrant County risks devolving to a simplistic “tough on crime” stance that simply does not work with most young offenders. We should not coddle violent, dangerous people. But there’s simply too much human potential at stake to risk hardening most young offenders.

Instead, we should teach them to overcome their circumstances and pain, improve their own lives and pass on what they’ve learned to others. Those steps aren’t progressive; they stem from conservative values of personal responsibility and service to one’s community.

By indulging themselves with a high-profile political point, board members have undermined the very purpose of their work. What happens now to those 200 children a year? If the services aren’t adequately and quickly replaced, how many are at risk of committing further crime and eventually becoming a burden to the county or the state?

If the Juvenile Board has answers to these questions, it hasn’t bothered to tell the rest of us. The failure to plan for an alternative, the hasty, politically based decision-making and the lack of transparency are a recipe for bad policymaking. And this time, it risks harming children.