Those formerly arrested need a community to see them, not label them

Too often, the public conversation about young people entering the justice system happens in a vacuum. We overlook the lack of mental health care, access to basic needs, educational support, meaningful employment and opportunity that shaped the lives of young people long before an arrest. Involvement in the justice system sometimes is not simply about the choices a young person has made. Far too often, it is about the choices they were given in the first place. When a young person grows up without consistent access to basic needs and meaningful opportunities, we cannot judge their decisions as though they had access to the same choices many of us did. Too often, we label young people for how they responded to circumstances they did not create. These are community failures, but we keep asking children to overcome them on their own. We shouldn't act surprised when they cannot. Only an invested community can replace a cycle of incarceration with a cycle of opportunity. This is not an excuse for breaking the law. Rather it is a diagnosis of the larger problems that are driving too many young people that way. At Café Momentum, a nonprofit restaurant and training program for kids who are tied up in the justice system, we're focused on providing the resources young people need to address the challenges in their lives every day. After young people leave the justice system, we often send them back to the same circumstances that led them there in the first place. Only now they also carry a label that makes nearly every door harder to open. Young people will rise to the level of expectation we set for them when we give them the tools and support to do so. When we tell young people they are capable, valuable and worthy of opportunity and then surround them with the resources to rise to these expectations, they begin to see something different in themselves and imagine something different for their futures. I witness this every day at Café Momentum. Our young people are trusted to help operate every part of a casual fine-dining restaurant. They wash dishes, prepare food, serve guests, solve problems, develop time-management skills and work alongside chefs, case managers, mentors and community partners. Our guests often arrive with an idea of who will serve them. Then they watch these young people work. They experience their talent, professionalism, humor and hospitality. They stop seeing a label and begin seeing a whole person. That shift often leads to a question: 'How did this young person end up in the justice system?' Curiosity is an important beginning. It means a stereotype has been disrupted. But curiosity alone does not change a young person's life. We have to turn it into action. That requires employers willing to hire, mentors willing to show up, educators willing to adapt and neighbors willing to invest. Sometimes that investment begins with something as ordinary as the kind of entry-level job most of us had growing up. Before Café Momentum opened, we hosted pop-up dinners throughout Dallas. I would ask the business owners and community leaders in the room to raise their hands if they had ever worked in a restaurant. More than half the room usually did. Then I would ask whether that job taught them lessons and skills that still contributed to their success. The same hands went back up. That is not an accident. Restaurant work teaches you how to manage stress, communicate, collaborate, solve problems, take responsibility and recover when something goes wrong. Many of the young people we serve have never had consistent access to spaces where they could practice and develop those skills. That is not a failure of their potential. It is a failure of our communities to provide opportunity. When we create an environment rooted in high expectations and unconditional support, young people begin to build more than job skills. They build confidence, relationships, agency and a vision for what their lives can become. That is why we cannot define success only by whether a young person returns to the justice system or not. The absence of another arrest is not the same as the presence of opportunity. Success is a young person graduating from high school, opening a bank account, earning a first paycheck, learning to advocate for themselves, becoming a leader and beginning to dream about a future they may never have believed was possible. Working in a restaurant, or a job in general, is not the entire solution. But I have seen it become a place to practice for life. Courts focus on holding kids accountable and nonprofits focus on stability and opening doors, but lasting change can happen when an entire community decides that its young people are worth investing in. No system can do the work of a community that refuses to give up on its children. Chad Houser is founder CEO of Café Momentum. He was recently named as a TIME visionary.