Guest writer

Blueprint for youth

Lockup not best place for some

While most states have dramatically cut youth incarceration, Arkansas appears to be moving in the opposite direction. Recently, the Arkansas Division of Youth Services (DYS) reported that the number of young people committed to the agency's juvenile facilities has increased for the second year in a row.

Even more concerning is that 90 percent of youth confined in the state's juvenile facilities are nonviolent offenders.

Arkansas must do better at reducing incarceration of our low-risk, nonviolent youth. Locking up young people who do not pose a serious risk to public safety exacts an enormous cost to taxpayers and to incarcerated youth and their families. When a judge commits a young person to DYS custody, he or she is first confined at the Arkansas Juvenile Assessment and Treatment Center (AJATC). This for-profit, privately operated facility in Alexander is one of the nation's largest and oldest youth prisons. According to DYS, it costs $239 to lock up a youth for one night at AJATC--an annual cost of over $87,000 per child.

The good news is that there are more affordable and effective alternatives to incarcerating youth. Community programs work better than incarceration because they offer individualized services, work with a child's family and community members, and provide young people with long-term connections and positive relationships that will help them grow into successful adults. Some examples include:

Community wraparound programs: These programs recruit and train adults from the neighborhoods where court-involved youth live, and employ these adults to serve as full-time advocates and mentors for youth. The program develops highly individualized plans that engage the entire family and connect youth and their families to community services and support. These programs cost about $25,000 per youth annually--significantly less expensive than youth incarceration. Youth Advocates Programs, which operates neighborhood-based wraparound programs for high-risk youth in more than a dozen states, reports that 80 percent of their program participants do not commit new offenses after completing the program.

Community conferencing programs: These restorative programs hold youth accountable for their actions by engaging them in a conference with the individuals affected by their actions. Much like the way neighborhoods and schools used to deal with the mischievous transgressions of teens, these conferences help youth repair the harm done to victims and to their community. Youth who commit property offenses such as theft and vandalism are good candidates for this type of program. In Maryland, re-offending rates for youth who went through community conferencing are 60 percent lower than for those who went through traditional juvenile-court sanctions. It is a relatively inexpensive program, and typically a trained facilitator can conduct six to eight conferences a month for roughly $2,500 per month.

Teen courts: Teen courts provide an alternative to formal court processing and help divert low-risk youth from deeper system involvement. In teen courts, young people serve as judges, jurors, prosecutors, and defense attorneys to address the misbehavior of their peers. These programs engage young people in the juvenile-justice process while holding youth accountable and allowing them to make amends for their actions. A 2015 study of teen courts in Maryland found that when youth completed teen-court sanctions such as community service, they were much less likely to commit new offenses.

School-based intervention programs: Several school systems have partnered with community organizations in schools to address school-based offenses including truancy and discipline infractions. These programs help schools address the needs of students who exhibit disruptive or problematic behavior without resorting to suspension, expulsion, or referral to juvenile court. For example, after schools in Clayton County, Ga., introduced protocols to reduce court referrals, and implemented community-based programs to assess and treat disruptive students as an alternative to arrest, graduation rates rose by 20 percent and felony rates fell by 51 percent.

Arkansas has laid the groundwork for a more effective juvenile-justice system.

A validated risk assessment of youthful offenders is now being used in several judicial districts. This tool identifies the youth's risk of re-offense, the specific services needed, and the strengths of the child and their family. Judges are better informed and can make reliable decisions.

But without more proven effective programs available in the community, unnecessary and costly over-reliance on incarceration will continue.

If Arkansas expands community-based alternatives, we will not only improve outcomes for young people involved in our juvenile-justice system but will also ultimately save tax dollars and make our communities safer.

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Paul Kelly is senior policy analyst at Arkansas Advocates for Children and Families.

Editorial on 04/28/2016

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