How Oakland Life Coaches Support Teens and Young Adults in the Criminal Justice System

Earlier this year, the Oakland Mentoring Center received a referral for a 14-year-old client who was involved in several robberies and carjackings.

According to the Alameda County Probation Department, the girl is at “high risk” of engaging in further criminal activity. She hadn’t seen her family in months and hadn’t gone to school. She had run away from home and slept on a friend’s couch.

A life coach from the Mentoring Center reached out and offered support and guidance. The 14-year-old opened up and said she had a volatile relationship with her mother that led to her running away from home, dropping out of school and hanging out with peers who encouraged her to get involved Participate in robberies and car thefts.

For months, the life coach and the teenager met in person at least once a week and texted each other almost daily. “We were able to meet with her, take her to lunch, buy her clothes and just connect with her to find out what caused all of these things,” said Celsa Snead, who has led the mentoring center as executive director since 2009.

After months of building a connection, the life coach arranged a meeting with the girl and her mother. “That ultimately led to the mother and daughter sorting out their issues … and the girl going home and being re-enrolled in school,” Snead said. Now the risk that she will continue to be involved in dangerous activities and violence is significantly reduced, she explained.

Founded in 1991, the Mentoring Center Life Coaches provide mentoring and case management to youth and young adults involved in the criminal justice system. The organization employs youth life coaches who serve clients ages 14 to 18 and young adult life coaches who serve people ages 18 to 35.

One of the tasks of a life coach is to provide clients with coping strategies for stressful situations. For example, the 14-year-old’s life coach taught her a “crazy scale” to rate her anger from yellow (mild) to red (severe). Every time she felt “red,” such as during an argument with her mother, the girl would “walk around the neighborhood for an hour” or call her life coach, Snead said. When she felt “yellow” or “orange” (moderate), she wrote in her diary.

“Their way of dealing with things was to run away,” Snead said. “So we developed a system for her, and it’s a tool she still uses. And I think that stopped her from running away again.”

A transformative mentoring approach

The Mentoring Center also offers “transformative mentoring” for “system-impacted” youth and young adults, meaning they have been negatively impacted by the criminal justice system or the foster care system, either personally or through family ties.

The center’s transformative mentoring program has greatly influenced other service providers across the country, Snead said, trademarking the group’s unique approach. Transformative mentoring is an intensive, curriculum-based program and aims to change a person’s mentality that has led to destructive behavior and help them set their life goals. The program also provides referrals and access to resources such as drug addiction counseling, therapy and job training.

With mixed male, female and school-based mentoring groups, transformative mentoring is “culturally appropriate, trauma-responsive and evidence-based,” Snead said. “It will be developed with young people around their own needs and the things that are important to them.”

All mentees are taught a core curriculum covering self-identity, critical thinking, goal setting, relationship building and employability skills. Mentoring groups with youth and young adults exiting detention centers can also discuss topics such as re-entering society and recovering from trauma.

Snead said some questions mentors and mentees can answer include: “What does it mean to go back to the neighborhood you were living in when you got into trouble in the first place?” And how do you navigate that? What things do you need to think about when you decide to reconnect with other people? Are these good people you can reconnect with? And how do you do that?”

Depending on their clients’ needs, life coaches may meet with their clients’ family members, friends, teachers, probation officers, and social workers. While the Mentoring Center officially works with teens and young adults for a year, life coaches continue to offer support to clients after they complete the transformative mentoring program.

Located in Preservation Park in downtown Oakland, the center currently employs eight life coaches and hopes to hire two more by the end of the year. They serve between 80 and 100 teens and young adults in Oakland.

Snead said these life coaches serve as “credible ambassadors,” mentors who have similar experiences and cultural backgrounds to the people they serve. They are often formerly incarcerated and former members of groups or gangs, making them credible messengers who are uniquely positioned to connect with and build relationships with youth committed to justice.

Tackling the system, serving young people directly – or both?

Snead first came to the Mentoring Center in 2005 as director of the Juvenile Offenders Diversion Program. After losing two family members to gun violence “at the hands of a young person,” she was drawn to justice-seeking youth and young adults, she said. “I believe something happened to him along the way that left him no choice but to do what he did.”

Prior to joining the Mentoring Center, Snead was a public defender for Contra Costa County for three years, working primarily with juveniles and young adults in crime and addiction cases. Snead was born in Detroit and grew up in Oakland. He attended Joaquin Miller Elementary School and Montera Middle School. She holds degrees from UC Berkeley and UCLA School of Law.

Founded by Martin A. Jacks, the Mentoring Center was launched in the 1990s with the goal of “addressing the problem of more young African-American men going to prison instead of college,” Snead said. Before launching the nonprofit, Jacks and his colleagues considered which approach would have more impact: tackling the system or offering direct services to young people.

They decided to do both. Originally, the Mentoring Center focused on training mentors and providing technical assistance to government institutions, school districts and other community-based organizations to better serve youth and young adults in the criminal justice system. Over the years, the organization’s scope of services expanded to include youth negatively impacted by the foster care system, girls and young women survivors of commercial sexual exploitation, and other historically underserved groups.

According to the organization, the Mentoring Center has trained over 20,000 mentors and provided technical assistance to more than 800 agencies locally, regionally and nationally since its inception, including in Bakersfield, Chicago and St. Louis. It is one of several community-based organizations working with the City of Oakland’s Violence Prevention Division to provide alternative pathways for young people at risk of engaging in or falling victim to gun violence.

According to Snead, the most common characteristic of the Mentoring Center’s clients is that a system – be it the legal, nursing or school systems – has failed them.

“Young people often find themselves in systems through no fault of their own,” she said, adding that a person’s quality of life, sense of belonging and social environment play a role in their development. She said most of the mentoring center’s teen and young adult mentees grew up in West or East Oakland, where generations of Black and brown residents have faced discrimination, displacement and disinvestment.

“When you talk about gangs, groups and cliques, those are families,” Snead said. “If your basic needs aren’t being met, you don’t have a place to sleep, you don’t have food to eat, and your social and emotional needs aren’t being met, then you’re going to find those things somewhere else.”

One of the most common misconceptions Snead hears about teens and young adults committed to justice is that they are “criminal by nature.” An example of this is the myth of the “superpredator,” a term popular in the 1990s that demonized Black and Latino children and teens, resulting in harsher punishments.

“Kids make bad decisions every day, and this is especially true in adolescence,” Snead said. “I don’t think you can assign a personality trait or characteristic to someone who doesn’t have access to other things, because if you had a healthy environment, you would be healthier.”

Snead recalled a 14-year-old boy who was one of the mentoring center’s first clients. After a life coach suggested the teen attend an after-school program, the boy’s grandmother immediately dismissed the idea. His grandmother told the life coach that the family had been in the drug business for generations.

“‘I did it. My son did it. My grandson did it. “It’s the family business,” Snead said of the grandmother’s response.

Most crimes, Snead added, are not opportunistic in nature but rather originate in relationships. “Whether it’s your relationship with your neighbors, your community, your family or the people you spend time with, many crimes have to do with emotional reactions,” she said. Therefore, improving one’s relationships is an essential part of transformative mentoring.

Many teenagers Snead has worked with over the years have had to “unlearn” certain ways of thinking and behaving, and this is where transformative mentoring comes into play. “We’re not changing anyone,” she said. “We help people change.”

With policing often at the forefront of Oakland’s public safety discourse, Snead said more awareness and resources need to be dedicated to life coaching programs, which she said are more effective at reducing crime than law enforcement.

“Policing is a response to something that has already happened,” she said. “It’s based on punishment, not prevention or intervention.”

In the long term, Snead wants all young people in Oakland to have three things: well-being, justice and freedom. She envisions a future in which everyone—especially Black and brown youth—has full access to mental health services, safe meeting spaces, healthy relationships, and economic justice.

“I want them to have the freedom to walk their streets safely, to make mistakes that teenagers make and to discover who they are as a person,” Snead said. “I want them to be who they were created to be, without fear of violence, punishment or stigma.”