The Youth Justice Reform Board pushed a plan Monday to lower the juvenile incarceration rate by interviewing troubled youths before they are sentenced by judges and by steering more dollars to community-based programs instead of residential facilities.
The proposal discussed during the board's Monday meeting offers judges and juvenile justice officials a more complete picture of a child -- such as mental health, family history, drug use and other factors through a risk assessment and behavioral screening -- prior to punishment. Currently, there is not a uniform method in how youths are assessed when they enter the juvenile justice system.
Supporters of the proposal say results from the screening may also deter judges from doling out cookie-cutter sentences to youths who commit the same types of offenses. Over time, data from the screenings are intended to reveal which services are needed the most.
"It's a game-changer for juvenile courts," Justice Rhonda Wood of the Arkansas Supreme Court said at the meeting. "But it's not going to work if we don't have judicial buy-in."
Wood said the board was "working to come up with real dollar costs" of extending the assessment program from Pulaski, Faulkner, Crittenden and Craighead counties, where it is being piloted.
The program is just one component of a two-year plan released by the youth justice board in July. The group is expected to meet again in early December to refine how the statewide screenings can be funded and replicated in all juvenile divisions by 2019.
Last year, legislators created the 21-member panel, tasking it to essentially reshape the juvenile justice system in Arkansas after separate investigations found instances of abuse and misconduct at the state's youth centers.
Youth advocates had been petitioning for policy changes, pointing to juvenile confinement trends that they believed indicated Arkansas was not improving enough, especially when compared to neighboring states. And in March, Marcus Devine, the former director of the Youth Services Division, told lawmakers that despite a drop in the number of juvenile arrests, the number of children committed to the state increased two years in a row, sometimes because judges were jailing children who committed status offenses.
During the meeting, Faulkner County Circuit Judge Troy Braswell vouched for the program's "real potential."
The assessment and community-based alternatives are why Faulkner County had fewer than half as many juvenile placements this year than it did in 2015, he said. In Faulkner County, court employees look at what needs were identified in each assessment and link individual needs with specific groups that run programs geared to handle that issue.
"We are seeing a real immediate capability in addressing the most important issues," Braswell said.
Betty Guhman, newly named director of the Youth Services Division, said that "specific cost breakdowns" could help the board gain support from Gov. Asa Hutchinson and legislators.
Guhman also asked board members to return to the next meeting with ideas for legislative proposals that would be presented in the next session and to devise a system that tracks savings.
"It is important to focus on what our charge is," she said.
Metro on 09/20/2016