The Cincinnati, Ohio community where Diamond Rice lives and works is a daily reminder of her childhood in Baltimore, Md.
“A lot of the kids here go through some of the same things I experienced when I was their age,” she said.
Rice is an Advocate with Hamilton County, Ohio Youth Advocate Programs, Inc. (YAP™). YAP is a national nonprofit that delivers community-based individual and family wraparound services that give youth justice, child welfare, behavioral health, education, and other government systems an alternative to youth incarceration and other out-of-home placements. In its pre-50th anniversary year with programs in 34 states and Washington, D.C, the nonprofit’s evidence-based YAPWRAP™ service model, capacity building, and policy work make YAP an innovator in transforming systems to become more effective.
Rice first learned about YAP when she was 13, living in Baltimore and assigned to the nonprofit service provider by her probation officer.
“I was arrested a bunch of times for stealing cars, and I even had a gun charge. I ran the streets 24-7,” she said. “My older sisters and I were living with my grandmother, and she was overwhelmed, especially after she was diagnosed with breast cancer.”
In November, Rice represented YAP at the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP) 50th Anniversary National Conference on Youth Justice. As a panelist in the Breaking Barriers: Successful Community Programs for Youth at Risk of Violence session, she talked about her experiences both as a former YAP program participant and a current YAP Advocate. The panel was moderated by National Institute for Criminal Justice Reform (NICJR) Director of Justice Reform Dana Kaplan.
“My Advocate gave me someone I could call. When she came into my life, I saw myself able to exist in other spaces,” she said.
As Rice spoke to the OJJDP audience about the YAP model – how she uses it with youth in her work in Ohio and how she benefitted from it in Baltimore — she was caught off guard by someone who entered the room and took a seat in the front row.
“I’m trippin’; my P.O. who I haven’t seen in 16 years just walked in,” she said.
Rice said her parole officer was special, even took her to have tattoos removed from her face. She spoke of how working with her probation officer, her YAP Advocate filled in much-needed gaps. She said the Advocate worked with her and her grandmother and empowered her to see her strengths, like writing, and connected her to experiences that enabled her to nurture her intelligence, creativity, and kindness.
Rice’s probation officer, whose name for confidentiality reasons TheNeighborhoodAdvocate.org is withholding, said she was pleasantly surprised to see how far her former client had come.
“I just so happened to go into that session,” she said. “I didn’t even know YAP was going to be presenting. When I saw her, I was like, ‘What?’ Just to see her actually speaking and being an Advocate, It almost brought me to tears,” she added, recalling how she fought hard for Rice and was grateful to have YAP’s support.
“They help you do your job. I can’t remember how I found out about it, but Craig [Jernigan, former Baltimore Program Director, now a YAP Regional Director] was at our office all the time, advocating for getting referrals.”
Rice said when she working with her Advocate, she rediscovered her love for learning and writing. She started taking school seriously and accelerated, even moved into advanced placement (AP) English classes. After graduating high school, she began taking classes at a local community college, earned her Commercial Driver’s License certification, and worked for a few years as a professional truck driver.
Today, at age 30, after moving to Cincinnati, Rice is pursuing a bachelor’s degree in social work with goals that include becoming an author.
“She’s great,” said YAP Hamilton County, Ohio Program Director Nathaniel Lett, who believes Rice’s shared experience is one of her superpowers. “She’s handling the toughest kids and is really good at it.”
Guided by its “no reject, no eject” policy, YAP’s decades of service include working with many young people whose histories include serious offenses, multiple arrests, and lengthy out-of-home placements. John Jay College of Criminal Justice research found 86% of YAP’s youth justice participants remain arrest free, and six – 12 months after completing the program, nearly 90 percent of the youth still lived in their communities with less than five percent of participants in secure placement.
Rice said helping kids like herself makes sense, that it comes naturally.
“I love my job,” she said.
Learn more about YAP at yapinc.org.
