Legislative changes are responsible for the mass reductions in youth incarceration nationwide, but a reduction of funding for community organizational programs could threaten the continued success, says the National Council on Crime & Delinquency (NCCD).
The authors of the report, Antoinette Davis, Angela Irvine, and Jason Ziedenberg, wrote about five components that have made legislative changes successful: revised supervision responsibility, reallocating finances, redefining crime status from felony to misdemeanors/non-violent felonies, using evidence-based practices, and inspiring stakeholders to support nonrestrictive facilities.
The legislative changes did not use a cookie cutter model. Legislation varied from state to state depending on their needs. In the past the juvenile justice systems across the country operated from a tri-lateral structure utilizing three entities: state, county, and local government agencies. However, as governments begin to implement less punitive means of punishment, new ideas are surfacing about how rehabilitation methods should be addressed.
Funding is always an issue and the reallocating of resources is one way governments are addressing this.
Mike Griffiths, executive director of Texas’ Department of Juvenile Justice, said, “We validated the proposal we put forward to the policymakers in 2009 that said, ‘Give local communities the resources and we will refer the youth away from the deep end of the system.’”
The NCCD reported on the fiscal incentives offered to some state systems. Nine states were mentioned in the report, Alabama, Arkansas, California, Georgia, New York, Texas, Illinois, Ohio, and Nebraska, as having established a fiscal incentive to serve more youth outside of the state juvenile justice system.
While there are always challenges incorporating the juvenile programs into the community, advocates for the project remain optimistic about its success. The biggest issue with implementation of community programs is finding the funding needed to support the youth in the community. Connecting with concerned citizens and business people to operate and foster the programs is equally important.
Federal funding for juvenile justice, as well as the Delinquency Prevention Act, has been reduced 83% from 1999 to 2010, according to a National Academy of Sciences report. An alliance of stakeholders for federal reforms is calling for government agencies to reallocate funds for juvenile justice.
The NCCD report went on to say that community-based organizations’ ability to expand rests in the hands of legislators and budget reform. Currently, no legislative plans for reform are being discussed openly. However, the hope is that legislators and advocates of budget reform will convene and discuss the reinvestment of federal funding.
The NCCD report stressed that funding reinvestment is imperative in order for juvenile justice programs to succeed.
Scott Taylor, director of the Department of Community Justice in Multnomah County, Oregon, said “As (states) go through this reinvestment, what they fail to do is maintain the infrastructure to allow the local (jurisdiction) to deal with these folks locally.” Presently, programs are being closed as incarcerated juvenile numbers decline. The irony is that due to the decline in juvenile incarceration, more money will be necessary to provide community-based organizations with the means to sustain these positive numbers.
Finally, Katy Weinsten Miller, Chief of Alternative Programs and Initiatives for the San Francisco district attorney’s office, said, “Even if you succeed in getting the money into the community, into community-based organizations, there’s still that question of how you design funding processes to make sure that it includes homegrown organizations, with people who lived that experience providing the service. We have this struggle in San Francisco where it often winds up being the best grant writers—not necessarily the most qualified organizations—that receive the biggest grants.”
