Criminal and Juvenile Justice |
The Criminal and Juvenile Justice program seeks to establish more effective and fairer criminal and juvenile justice policies and institutions throughout the nation. In addition, the Foundation’s grantmaking aims to lower overall rates of incarceration and help eliminate unequal treatment of African Americans and Latinos.Transforming Juvenile Justice in Arkansas
|
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 2nd 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.”
 © The Public Welfare Foundation, 2007 |