A new deputy director started work this week at the Arkansas Youth Services Division as part of a larger effort to overhaul the state's oft-troubled juvenile-justice system, an agency spokesman said Thursday.
Kimbla Newsom began Monday in the newly created $91,200-a-year position. She has decades of experience working with at-risk youth and juvenile-justice programs in Maryland and Texas, the spokesman said.
Newsom will work alongside Michael Crump, who has led the division on an interim basis since December. The veteran state government official has been named permanent director, with a salary of $108,110 to oversee organizational changes to the agency.
Officials promised that the division's leadership changes would benefit Arkansas' incarcerated and at-risk children. The changes also are resulting in a restructuring of the agency.
The leadership changes come as the Youth Services Division follows through on a "Transformation Plan" announced by then-director Betty Guhman in November. Guhman, who was paid $114,410, resigned in December to take a position with the Department of Human Services' Office of Legislative and Intergovernmental Affairs to help oversee legislative and other efforts to carry out the overhaul.
Executives from the state's leading advocacy organizations noted this wasn't the first time the agency has gone through organizational changes.
"In its time, the division has gone through many structural changes, as well as directors, so we are optimistic for both progress and continuity," said Tom Masseau, executive director of Disability Rights Arkansas.
He also said that he hoped the changes "will focus on providing strong supports and services" to locked up youths. The nonprofit he heads has federal authority to monitor conditions in youth jails.
The division has had 13 directors in the past two decades.
Marcus Devine headed the division before Guhman, until his resignation in April 2016, about a year after taking the job. State and county records showed that officials filed two liens against Devine while he was director.
Before Devine, Tracy Steele left after serving as director for about a year. Steele said he left to pursue other career opportunities.
Rich Huddleston of Arkansas Advocates for Children and Families said he "anticipated [the agency] would likely do some restructuring when they had a change in leadership and in response to the new legislation" and that the changes "sound reasonable given what needs to happen as part of reform."
Huddleston and Masseau both belong to the joint Youth Justice Reform Board and Arkansas Supreme Court Commission on Children, Youth and Families, which helped introduce legislation aimed at preventing needless youth incarceration. Gov. Asa Hutchinson signed Act 189 of 2019 on Feb. 21.
Human Services Director Cindy Gillespie interviewed Crump and three other candidates for the youth agency job, along with two of the department's deputy directors, its human resources director and chief business officer, said Amy Webb, department spokesman. The Youth Services Division is part of the Human Services Department.
Though Crump didn't have the vast juvenile justice knowledge state officials originally said they were looking for in a new director last year, officials found that in Newsom, Webb said.
Crump worked for former Gov. Mike Huckabee as a criminal-justice policy adviser and was a former Pulaski County prosecutor.
"Both [Crump and Newsom] bring different skillsets to the job that complement one another," Webb said. "They have rolled up their sleeves and started working hard on this restructuring."
A Monday news release outlined the "restructuring" as the creation of four new "units," each one led by a different assistant director: case management, treatment, diversion, and service delivery, compliance and quality assurance.
The changes are considered an update to the division's "Transformation Plan," which details how officials will rework the juvenile-justice system to reduce youth incarceration. The state locked up 402 kids in 2018 and 433 the year before.
Officials say the changes will ensure that incarcerated youths are released on time and receive needed services in lockup. They also promise to work with local circuit juvenile courts to keep lower-risk kids out of detention and to provide better oversight of contractors managing the state's youth prisons and providing re-entry services to those leaving the lockups.
The revamp will occur in stages, over the next four months, according to the statement.
"This restructuring allows us to have more of a management-level focus on what matters -- creating a safe system that emphasizes individualized treatment and services, holding contractors accountable, and ensuring judges have strong service options for diversion and aftercare treatment," Crump said in the news release.
Metro on 03/08/2019