Juvenile Justice
Transforming Juvenile
Justice in Arkansas
| Dermott Juvenile Treatment Center (Formerly the
Southeast Arkansas Regional Juvenile Program) | |
Like many teenagers,
Sheri Lawrence (not her real name) had
a contentious relationship with her mother. She frequently ran away from
her
home in a rural area of Arkansas
to hang out and smoke marijuana. At 15, she had a baby. Her mother
petitioned a
court to declare that the family needed supervision and services.
Sheri was required to get drug counseling and to stay in
school, but she continued to struggle. When she ran away again at age
16, she
violated the court order and was detained after she was apprehended.
While in
detention, Sheri got into a scuffle with a guard that resulted in a 2
nd
degree battery charge and a court finding that she was delinquent.
That was her first commitment to the state’s Division of
Youth Services (DYS) and by age 18, she had been committed to DYS two
more
times for failing to comply with probation. She has been diagnosed with
conduct
disorder, marijuana abuse and mild mental retardation. She has also
received
services and treatment to improve her parenting skills and deal with
school
failure, primary family support problems and substance abuse.
Many of these services have been provided while she has been
confined to a secure juvenile facility. But juvenile justice officials
in Arkansas are learning
that, with adequate wraparound services, Sheri could remain in her
community,
improving the odds for her long-term rehabilitation.
As in many states, the current system of juvenile justice in
Arkansas has
been more punitive than rehabilitative. But officials are working to
change
things. In 2009, about 75 percent of all commitments of young people to
DYS
were for non-violent offenses and 23 percent were for misdemeanors,
compared to
about 90 percent of commitments for non-violent offenses and 40 percent
for
misdemeanors in 2007.
Still, after being charged with relatively minor offenses, far
too many young people have been placed in secure facilities away from
their families
and neighborhoods rather than being helped through community based
programs.
On average, it costs the state $150 a day for each youth
confined in one of the state’s juvenile correctional facilities and up
to $550
a day for each youth placed in a “specialty” facility, offering services
such
as mental health treatment. By contrast, community based services can be
provided for about $86 a day.
“I am a firm believer that institutionalization is not the
answer for most kids,” says Ronald R. Angel, Director of DYS, which is
part of
the state’s Department of Human Services. “I’ve been told by numerous
judges
that kids go from our facilities back into the community and they get
back into
the same routine that got them into trouble to begin with.”
Mr. Angel also knows from personal experience as a former
law enforcement officer doing undercover work to detect fraud in health
facilities that people in institutions often adapt their behavior in
whatever
ways they feel are necessary to survive. By institutionalizing people,
he says,
“you can teach people things you don’t want to teach them.”
With a grant from the Public Welfare Foundation, Mr. Angel
and others are pushing reforms that would place troubled youths in
non-institutional settings in their communities and simultaneously
address
problems of the youths and their families.
As Mr. Angel puts it, “If we can keep more youths in the
community and we include families in the treatment as well, that is one
of the
keys to success.”
It’s a model that the Public Welfare Foundation has promoted
and one that has produced positive results in other states, such as Ohio
and Missouri.
In addition to Arkansas, the Foundation is
supporting similar juvenile justice reform efforts in New
York, Washington, DC, Texas and Wyoming.
The work in Arkansas has
been facilitated by Patricia Arthur, Senior Attorney for Juvenile
Justice at
the National Center
for Youth Law (NCYL), based in Oakland,
California who is an experienced
juvenile justice reform expert and also a Foundation grantee. She has
been
consulting with Arkansas officials and has
used her expertise and that of NCYL to help develop a five-year
strategic plan,
outlined in a report called “Juvenile Justice Reform in Arkansas,
Building a Better Future for
Youth, their Families, and the Community”.
She is convinced that a large proportion of the youth
committed to DYS could be safely managed in the community with
appropriate
supports and services, but she notes that change comes in fits and
starts.
“It’s a slow process to turn a ship,” she says. “And sometimes it’s one
step
forward and two steps back and sometimes it’s two steps forward and one
step
back.”
Confronting reform in Arkansas
involves some unique and some familiar challenges. The report on the
strategic
plan notes that DYS is “the only juvenile justice agency in the nation
that
contracts out to private providers all facility operations, treatment
programs,
and aftercare services.”
The system structure sometimes results in fragmentation and
duplication in efforts to assess which youths pose significant risks and
how to
best help all the youths who come under DYS supervision.
The strategic plan also pointed out that Arkansas follows national
trends of judging
youths to be “delinquent” who are more likely to have learning
disabilities,
mental health issues, and substance abuse problems than youths in the
general
population. DYS also handles youths who are disproportionately poor,
minority, from
broken families and likely victims of abuse or neglect.
A resolution has been passed by the State Legislature acknowledging
the state’s over-reliance on costly secure facilities and the need for a
broader scope of community based alternatives. Significant reform
legislation
is on the drawing boards. In the meantime, officials are making some
administrative changes, including closing some beds at one of the
state’s large
juvenile facilities. And two oversight committees have been enlisted to
help
pave the way for reforms.
Ms. Arthur sees these moves as part of a determined
across-the-board effort to do a better job of helping youths who may be
reaching out for help by engaging in behaviors that get them in trouble.
In her view, it demonstrates acceptance by Arkansas
officials of the fundamental belief that, “You are going to do more to
help
those youths reach their potential by providing them what they need to
address
the underlying issues going on with them and their families than you are
by
locking them up and taking them away from their families and their
communities.”