After a string of teenagers killing other teenagers in Ogden last year, lawyers, legislators and social service agencies want to expand a youth violence prevention program that’s been piloted in Salt Lake County.
Jim Retallick, director of the Weber County Public Defender Group, said this level of youth violence is the worst he’s ever seen.
“I've been doing public defense work for 35 years,” Retallick said. “And I'm tired of representing the grandchildren of the parents and grandparents that I've represented all those years. And I was not seeing a change.”
So Retallick began working on a plan to reduce violence more than a year ago. In the meantime, a 16-year-old allegedly shot and killed another 16-year-old near Ben Lomond High School and another teen was charged with shooting and killing a 15-year-old girl in her Ogden home, among other cases.
Now, he wants the Legislature to fund a Salt Lake County youth violence prevention pilot program and bring it to Weber and Utah counties.
Republican Rep. Tyler Clancy sponsored a request for $1.2 million to pay a coordinator for Salt Lake, Weber and Utah counties for three years.
Ogden could benefit from the program.
A 2025 analysis by the Utah Commission on Criminal and Juvenile Justice identified 100 neighborhoods across the state as priorities for juvenile justice interventions. It’s based on where juvenile offenders live, not where they commit crimes, so providers can target prevention services there.
Four of the top six hotspots are in Ogden. Retallick wasn’t surprised. He said kids who commit violence are targeted by gangs.
“That's why this is so important. We need to build that buffer between these kids, these families, and the ones who would prey upon them to do their dirty work.”
He started looking at what’s working in other parts of Utah.
The youth violence prevention program pilot in Magna started in 2022 with a federal grant. Advocates say it’s working.
In a Jan. 22 presentation to lawmakers, Pamela Vickrey, director of Utah Juvenile Defender Attorneys, said youth crime rates have decreased faster in Magna than in Salt Lake County as a whole.
“Having a coordinator central to that and a person dedicated to doing that work has made a huge impact in Salt Lake County,” she told lawmakers.
The program helped expand some services and increase collaboration between others, said Amber Lietz, youth justice coalition coordinator with the Salt Lake County Office of Homelessness & Criminal Justice Reform. The goal is to match the right resources to each individual and prevent kids from becoming involved with the courts — and to provide services to young people after they go through court.
“That's kind of the secret sauce of the whole thing, is really getting people to the table and talking about, how do we work together and share our resources and make sure that the wraparound supports are provided to youth and families so that they're getting all of the different elements they need, and just not one piece?” she said.
Lietz offered an example of that wraparound approach. It aims to meet a range of needs, rather than focusing on a singular problem.
In one case, she said, a Spanish-speaking young person was participating in a program that lacked a Spanish translator. The pilot program connected them with a fluent Spanish speaker, and they were mentored in their native language.
Providers can also better identify problems when they work together. A school administrator might interpret something as delinquent behavior that a mental health professional could read as a trauma response, Lietz said.
The program might function differently in each location. In Magna, organizers saw a need for mentorship and diversion, so they expanded Granite School District’s Check & Connect and Choose Gang Free programs and started the Magna Kearns Youth Court, in which youth volunteers recommend outcomes like classes or training for peers who run into trouble at school or with the law.
In Ogden, the school district and youth court would likely be partners, Lietz said.
Vickrey also hopes to continue the Magna program after the pilot funding runs out. If not, she said, they risk losing what they’ve built.
“We've created all of these amazing things in Salt Lake County through this grant money and a pilot project, and we need to be able to hold onto those interventions and spread them to other cities and counties so that they can continue to benefit kids across the Wasatch Front.”
The Legislature will pass its fiscal year 2027 budget by the end of the legislative session on March 6.
Macy Lipkin is a Report for America corps member who reports for KUER in northern Utah.
Produced with assistance from the Public Media Journalists Association Editor Corps, funded by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, a private corporation funded by the American people.
