
Justice
OMNI supports government agencies, organizations, and leaders nationwide and across touchpoints of the justice system (from diversion to re-entry) to transform system approaches to serving communities and individuals.
Our diverse partners and projects—spanning Juvenile Justice, Innovative Policing Strategies, and the intersection of Behavioral Health & Justice—share common goals of reducing justice system involvement and recidivism, eliminating racial and ethnic disparities in system experiences and outcomes, and changing the way our systems respond to root causes of delinquency, including unmet behavioral health needs of individuals with or at risk of system involvement.

Juvenile Justice
We bring expertise across a range of juvenile justice prevention and intervention approaches and settings, spanning juvenile diversion programs that provide early intervention services for low-risk, high need youth; school- and judicial-based restorative justice practices and programs that increase accountability and repair harm to victims and communities; state and local efforts to address drivers of Racial and Ethnic Disparities (RED) in system involvement for youth of color; and reform approaches to behavioral management and mental health needs of youth in juvenile detention facilities.
Project Examples
Division of Criminal Justice’s Juvenile Diversion Program Evaluation
The Juvenile Diversion Grant program, administered through the Division of Criminal Justice (DCJ), diverts youth who have committed offenses from further involvement in the juvenile justice system. Diversion can occur at multiple stages of the juvenile justice system and be offered to youth with varying levels of offense. DCJ has primarily funded services for youth who are pre-file or pre-adjudicated and who have committed a first-time district-level offense.
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Weld County Juvenile Justice System Analysis
The Weld County, Colorado juvenile justice system, wanted to better understand their collective efforts to serve justice-involved youth and the community. Three juvenile justice entities in Weld County, the Colorado Youth Detention Continuum (CYDC), Juvenile Probation, and Diversion in Weld County, engaged OMNI to conduct an exploratory analysis to document and better understand the ways in which youth are served both individually by each entity as well as across these entities in Weld County.
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City of Longmont’s REWiND and Community Restorative Justice Program Evaluation
The City of Longmont contracted OMNI Institute to conduct a formative and general evaluation of two programs: 1) the REWiND program (Rebuilding Expectations and Walking into New Directions), which is a collaborative initiative directly operated by the City of Longmont that involves Children, Youth, and Families (CYF), Longmont Municipal Court and Probation, the City Attorney’s Office/City Prosecutor and Public Safety, and 2) Community Restorative Justice (CRJ), a program offered by Longmont Community Justice Partnership (LCJP), an independent nonprofit agency with whom the City contracts to provide restorative justice services within the Longmont community.
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Colorado Restorative Justice in Juvenile Diversion
The Colorado Restorative Justice Coordinating Council (RJ Council) oversaw the development and implementation of a statewide juvenile restorative justice program funded by House Bill 13-1254. The program began as a pilot focused on programs serving youth in pre-file juvenile diversion and transitioned to a grant program to fund additional restorative programs to serve youth in diversion.
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The Common Sense Discipline (CSD) Initiative
In early 2013, The Denver Foundation initiated a grant-making program titled Ending the School to Prison Pipeline: Preventative and Responsive Practices to Ensure Positive Educational Outcomes for all Students. The goal of the initiative was to reduce suspensions and expulsions, and racial and ethnic disparities in these outcomes. The program initiative was renamed the Common Sense Discipline initiative (CSD) in the third year (2015-16) of the initiative. The Denver Foundation contracted with OMNI Institute to engage in an evaluation of the CSD grant-making effort.
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Douglas County Youth Center Room Confinement Study
The use of isolation in juvenile correctional facilities is a controversial issue that has gained legislative momentum in Nebraska. This ongoing project funded through the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP) was designed to understand room confinement practices within the Douglas County Youth Center (DCYC) and explores possible alternatives with the ultimate goals of improving youth and facility outcomes. OMNI’s role includes facilitating grant meetings with DCYC staff, leadership, and Advisory Group; conducting essential data collection activities; working with DCYC staff to understand and utilize data to inform decision-making; and supporting DCYC staff and leadership with change management and evaluation of all grant activities.
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Innovative Policing Strategies
OMNI has years of experience supporting and partnering with law enforcement agencies in their efforts to meaningfully engage with community organizations, leaders, and citizens to inform departmental policies, implement community-based crime reduction efforts, eliminate Racial and Ethnic Disparities (RED) in youth arrests, and expand law-enforcement assisted diversion and co-responder programs (see Behavioral Health and Justice below, also).
Project Examples
Denver Police Department Body-Worn Camera Policy and Implementation Assessment
In 2016, the Denver Police Department (DPD) was awarded a multi-year grant from the Bureau of Justice Assistance under the U.S. Department of Justice to expand its body-worn camera (BWC) program, conduct a policy review, and gather data to understand early impacts of the program. OMNI was selected by DPD to lead these early assessment efforts. Findings from this work were intended to inform refinements to BWC policies and procedures, as well as related officer training and public education efforts. A primary focus of the project was to understand the experiences and needs of victims of crime, and promote policy that balances victim concerns with police department transparency and accountability, public safety, and justice.
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Denver Police Department: Community-Based Crime Reduction
In response to the Bureau of Justice Assistance (BJA) Community-Based Crime Reduction (CBCR) grant, the Denver Police Department (DPD) hired OMNI as their research partner to help reach the following goals:
Reduce the rate of crimes committed with a firearm within the Westwood neighborhood
Reduce the rate of motor vehicle theft (MVT) and theft from motor vehicles within the Westwood neighborhood
Strengthen Westwood families by providing quality educational, social, and economic opportunities through cross-sector partners
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Racial and Ethnic Disparities
OMNI has led many projects related to Racial and Ethnic Disparities in the juvenile justice system, and the capacity and understanding to anticipate and navigate sensitive issues relating to Racial and Ethnic Disparities.
The Division of Criminal Justice has contracted with OMNI to conduct evaluation and provide technical support to address statewide and local-level Racial and Ethnic Disparities. This work has included a critical review of statewide capacity to collect, code, and report race and ethnicity data for youth at the point of arrest; and case studies completed with five different judicial districts.
OMNI has conducted the statewide evaluation of juvenile diversion for the Division of Criminal Justice, which includes an ongoing focus on Racial and Ethnic Disparities of youth of color in juvenile diversion programs across the state. As part of this component of the evaluation, OMNI has conducted analyses to examine rates of diversion participation relative to rates of arrest in each of the 15 judicial districts that house state-funded diversion programs; and has conducted interviews with select DA’s offices to better understand barriers to participation for youth of color, and factors driving decision making for diversion referrals.
OMNI has evaluated The Denver Foundation’s Ending the School to Prison Pipeline initiative, which funds several organizations working in partnership with schools to implement restorative justice and restorative practices, culturally responsive and trauma-informed practices, and socio-emotional learning, with the goal of reducing suspensions and expulsions, and the racial and ethnic disparities in these outcomes for youth of color.

Behavioral Health & Justice
OMNI leverages our expertise in behavioral health and criminal justice to partner with agencies and communities working to address the behavioral health needs of system-involved persons. OMNI has supported the design, implementation, and evaluation of community-wide cross-system diversion efforts, including law-enforcement assisted diversion and co-responder programs, and behavioral health screening, assessment, and treatment for youth in diversion, as well as more targeted programs focused on improving outcomes for systems-involved adults and youth with behavioral health needs, including alternative sentencing and problem-solving courts, jail-based treatment and re-entry programs for adults with substance use disorder (including opioid use disorder), and coordinated mental health assessments and linkages to care in community for youth housed in juvenile detention facilities.
Project Examples
Recommendations for a Coordinated Behavioral Health System in Boulder County, Colorado
In 2019, Boulder County Public Health (BCPH) commissioned a county-wide assessment to document needs and identify opportunities for developing a comprehensive and integrated behavioral health system, one that ensures timely access to appropriate care for all individuals. BCPH contracted with OMNI to conduct the multi-faceted assessment, with a central aim of generating clear, supported, and actionable recommendations for developing and implementing a coordinated behavioral health system.
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Juvenile Diversion - Marijuana Tax Cash Fund Evaluation
The Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (JJDP) Council and the Division of Criminal Justice (DCJ) hired OMNI to provide an evaluation that will contribute to the reduction of substance use among youth in diversion programs. Eight juvenile diversion programs applied for and received money from the marijuana tax cash fund in order to increase access to substance use screening, assessment and treatment services for youth receiving juvenile diversion programming. The efforts conducted fit into three different categories (1) training staff to better serve youth using substances, (2) paying for staff to better serve youth with substance use, and (3) paying for or expanding direct services for the youth using substances.
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Boulder County’s Comprehensive Opioid Abuse Site-Based Program Evaluation
In 2018, Boulder County was awarded a Comprehensive Opioid Abuse Site-based Program (COAP) grant from the Bureau of Justice Assistance under the U.S. Department of Justice to develop and implement a comprehensive and coordinated strategy to address opiate abuse among its criminally involved residents. Through the provision of services to this population while in custody and at the point of release back to the community, COAP aims to reduce opioid abuse and the number of overdose fatalities and decrease further criminal-justice system involvement among its target population. COAP is successfully implementing a jail-based program to address the OUD treatment needs of justice-involved individuals.
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Douglas County DCYC Behavioral Health Initiative
In 2019, a group of vested partners in Douglas County, Nebraska embarked on a cross-system collaborative effort to improve the behavioral health services provided to youth entering and exiting the local detention facility (DCYC). OMNI has been collaborating with key partners for over 2 years to provide ongoing evaluation and facilitation support that has involved co-developing and documenting the Theory of Change, Theory of Action, and associated workflows depicting the key elements of the Initiative and intended short, intermediate, and long-term outcomes.
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OMNI’s Work with Co-Responder Programs
A key area of focus for OMNI within the intersection of Behavioral Health and Justice space is the evaluation of co-responder programs. These programs involve local law enforcement agencies partnering with behavioral health clinicians to "co-respond" to calls for service involving persons with suspected behavioral health needs. OMNI supports several communities and their co-responder teams by working with vested partners to establish program goals and develop essential evaluation infrastructure such as logic models, workflows, and evaluation/measurement plans. In addition, our research teams collaborate with key program partners to collect and analyze primary and secondary data to measure and assess progress toward intended program goals- the culmination of which has involved the development of visually appealing, informative, and dynamic reports that are utilized for evaluation and program improvement purposes.
Boulder County Co-Responder Evaluation
The Co-Responder Unit was developed after the Boulder County Sheriff Office was awarded a 5-year Co-Responder Services Program grant from the Colorado Office of Behavioral Health (OBH). The Unit pairs law enforcement with a co-responder trained in behavioral health provision to respond to calls for service determined to have a behavioral health component. As the evaluation partner, OMNI collects, tracks, and reports on the data from these interactions. The reports include performance measurement and other process and outcome data for the purpose of monitoring program progress and outcomes.
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Meet Our Experts
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ANA NUNES, PhD
DIRECTOR
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CHANDRA WINDER, MPA
SENIOR RESEARCH MANAGER
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STACEY MCCLELLAN, MSW
RESEARCHER