Transcript The Real Costs and Benefits of Change: Finding

The Real Costs
and Benefits of Change:
Finding Opportunities for Reform
During Difficult Fiscal Times
Presentation by the
National Juvenile Justice Network
September 22, 2010
About
Enhances the capacity of state-based juvenile justice
coalitions and organizations to press for state and
federal laws, policies and practices that are fair,
equitable and developmentally appropriate for all
children, youth and families involved in, or at risk of
becoming involved in, the justice system.
“The Real Costs and
Benefits of Change”
Developed by NJJN committee
Examples from states across the
country, including NJJN member
states:
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Oregon
Wisconsin
Illinois
Ohio
Rhode Island
New York
California
Presenters
Annie Balck
Deputy Director for Policy and Programs, NJJN
Jim Moeser
Deputy Director, Wisconsin Council on Children and
Families
Beth Colgan
Managing Attorney, Institutions Project, Columbia Legal
Services, Seattle, WA
Themes
• Realign/reduce spending without sacrificing effective and
developmentally appropriate programs
• Use the fiscal crisis as an opportunity to downsize/close
facilities
Key Concepts
• Ideas for how to spend existing money
more wisely
• Ideas for how to persuade people to
spend money more wisely
• What research supports these paths
forward
Substantive Strategies to Spend
Existing Money More Wisely
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Employ a fiscal realignment model
Use downsizing as a means to create a
new revenue stream
Seek administrative or legislative
evaluations of existing institutions and
programs
Redirect funding from adult corrections to
progressive youth programming
1. Employ a Fiscal
Realignment Model
• Provide local jurisdictions with financial incentives to
keep youth out of state facilities
• Encourage localities to treat young offenders through
community- and evidence-based programs rather than
simply to lock them up in state-funded institutions
Wisconsin’s Youth Aids Program
• Began in the early 1980s.
• Legislative reforms redirected funding from
the state Department of Health and
Human Services to the counties to
diminish the reliance on state
commitments.
• Between 1997 and 2006, Wisconsin saw a
46% drop in property offenses, a 52% drop
in drug offenses, and a 31% drop in the
population of committed youth. Since then,
crime continues to drop, and as of now
(2010), there has been a 56% drop in
committed youth.
Youth Aids in Wisconsin
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Wisconsin has 73 juvenile justice
systems – 72 counties and a state
system
Youth Aids to counties is largely
determined based on a formula,
with some “supplemental”
allocations
The county has to “buy” state
juvenile correctional services
based on a “daily rate”
Costs were linked to aid until 1996
Placements in juvenile
correctional institutions have
continued to decline –56% from
1997 to now
About 50% of all jj expenditures
are covered by Youth Aids
Youth Aids in Wisconsin: Lessons Learned
• Good Practice Policy = Good
Fiscal Policy = Good Politics –
creating a “win-win”
• There is a “tipping point”
– Adoption of alternatives varied
across counties
– The “ouch” factor
– The line between incentives and
“penalties”
• Size matters
• $ doesn’t mean everyone plays
well together
RECLAIM Ohio
• Created in 1993.
• Gives counties a fixed allocation from the state
based upon a four-year average of felony
adjudications.
– Higher crime rates = more $
– $ is tied to a reduction in proportion to amount of DYS
bed space each county used in the previous year.
• Since RECLAIM’s enactment, the number
of youth committed to secure state
facilities has fallen 42%, the DYS
institutional average daily population has
decreased from 2,121 in 1993 to 1,077 in
January 2010, and DYS estimates that the
state saves between $11 and $45 in
commitment and processing costs for
every dollar it spends on RECLAIM.
Redeploy Illinois
• Began in 2004; now a permanent statewide
program.
• Counties agree to cut the number of
juveniles they send to state juvenile prisons
by at least 25% below the average of the
previous three years.
• In return, the state reimburses the counties
for funds they spend managing the
adjudicated youth locally.
• Over the first three years, Redeploy sites
diverted 382 youth from commitment,
lowered the number of commitments by an
average of 51%, and saved $18.7 million.
2. Use Downsizing as a Means to
Create a New Revenue Stream
• Rhode Island
– Legislative cap limits the population of the Rhode
Island Training School to a maximum of 160 youth
(148 boys and 12 girls).
– Refers adjudicated youth nearing the end of their
sentences to the reclassification board for a
determination of whether each youth is able to
safely return to his or her community prior to
sentence completion.
• Counts fell from 1,122 in 2007 to
1,084 in 2008 to 937 in 2009.
• Half of the savings was to be
invested in community-based
alternatives to detention and
incarceration and the other half was
to be returned to the Rhode Island
general fund to help close the state’s
budget gap.
Multnomah County (Portland), OR
• Ceased to need some of its detention beds
for its own juvenile detention population;
reduced its daily detention population from
80 youth to 20 over the past decade
through the use of juvenile detention
alternatives.
– Rents a number of beds from its
detention facility to neighboring
counties.
– Must also consider the potential
drawbacks of housing youth further from
their families and communities.
3. Seek Administrative or
Legislative Evaluations of Existing
Institutions and Programs
• Washington State
– Legislature directed the Washington State
Institute for Public Policy (WSIPP) to “project
whether there are ‘evidence-based’ options
that can: reduce the future need for prison
beds, save money for state and local
taxpayers, [and] contribute to lower crime
rates.”
– Concluded that implementation of a
“moderate-to-aggressive portfolio” of
evidence-based options for both adults and
youth in the state could result in avoidance of
a significant level of future prison construction,
$2 billion in taxpayer savings, and reduced
crime rates.
– Used data from all over the country, not just
Washington State.
Cuyahoga County (Cleveland), OH
• Contracted with the University of Cincinnati for two
evaluations of Youth Development Center in 1999 and 2007
to determine if the county was receiving good value from the
institution.
• Evaluations each gave YDC an overall program rating of
“unsatisfactory”; consequently, the facility was closed.
• In 2008, the county then
implemented the Youth and
Family Community
Partnership (YFCP), a
residential
treatment/community-based
alternative to YDC.
4. Redirect funding from adult
corrections to progressive youth
programming
• Justice Reinvestment
– Project of the Council of State
Governments Justice Center
– Works with state policymakers to
analyze the adult prison population
and spending; develop options to
generate savings while increasing
public safety; quantify savings; reinvest
in communities; and measure impact
– Texas reinvested $4.3 million to NurseFamily Partnership programs (out of a
total of $241 million in savings)
Tactical Strategies to
Persuade People to
Spend Money More Wisely
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Reframe the issue from cost to investment
in public safety and crime reduction
Disseminate cost-benefit research that
supports reform
Focus on long-term outcomes
Establish a relationship with the state fiscal
office to ensure the reliability of cost-benefit
data
Establish new partnerships to strengthen
advocacy efforts
Utilize polling data to show that public
opinion supports effective rehabilitation of
youth
Supporting Research
• Incarceration is damaging to youth
• Incarceration is ineffective and can damage communities
and society
• Institutions are expensive
• Evidence- and community-based programs are costeffective
Number of Youth Affected
• According to OJJDP:
– In 2008, 263 juvenile offenders were in custody for every
100,000 juveniles in the U.S. population.
– Eight in 10 juvenile offenders in custody in 2006 were held in
locked, rather than staff-secure, facilities.
– In 2006, majority of incarcerated youth committed only
nonviolent offenses.
– 32% of facilities were at or over their standard bed capacity in
2004.
Incarceration Is
Damaging to Youth
• Institutions have a criminogenic effect on
youth.
• Incarceration can lead to “peer deviancy
training.”
• Incarceration of youth disrupts
development.
• Incarcerated youth are at risk for sexual
victimization by staff and other youth.
• Incarcerated youth are at risk for suicide,
especially nonviolent offenders.
• Incarceration disrupts education.
• Incarceration negatively impacts short- and
long-term employment and economic
outcomes for youth.
Incarceration Is Ineffective
and Can Damage
Communities and Society
• Large juvenile correctional institutions
have a 50-70 percent recidivism rate
within one to two years of release.
– Alternatives can have recidivism rates as low
as 7.3 percent.
• Youth who have been incarcerated are
more likely to recidivate.
• Transfer to the adult system further
increases the chance that a youth will
recidivate.
• Incarceration disrupts education, which in
turn negatively affects public safety.
Institutions Are Expensive
• WSIPP found that confinement is an expensive way to
lower crime rates, providing only two dollars of benefits
per dollar of cost.
• American Correctional Association estimates that it costs
nearly $88,000 per year ($240.99 per day) on average
for each youth in a residential juvenile facility.
• Some states report costs as high as $726 per day
(nearly $265,000 per year) for a juvenile residential bed.
• New York, Nevada, Oregon and Ohio have all used
facility closures as a means to save money.
Evidence- and Community-Based
Programs Are Cost-Effective
• Multidimensional Treatment Foster Care provides a
$88,953 net benefit to crime victims and taxpayers per
participant.
• Functional Family Therapy provides a $49,776 net
benefit to crime victims and taxpayers per participant
and reduces a juvenile’s recidivism rate by 18.1 percent.
• Multi-Systemic Therapy provides a benefit of $13.36
for every dollar spent as well as an $17,694 net benefit
to crime victims and taxpayers per participant.
• In 2001 in New York City it cost 15 times more to send a
youth to one day in detention ($385) versus one day in a
detention alternative ($25).
Conclusion
Use strategies and research to better inform
administrators and legislators in order to save
money and treat youth in conflict with the law more
effectively and humanely.
“Real Costs and Benefits of
Change”
Available on NJJN’s Web site
www.njjn.org
- Under “Announcements” on
home page and under
“Publications and Teleconferences”
tab
Contact Information
Annie Balck
Deputy Director for Policy and Programs
National Juvenile Justice Network
1710 Rhode Island Ave., NW, 10th Floor
Washington, DC 20036
202-467-0864 x124
[email protected]
Jim Moeser
Deputy Director
Wisconsin Council on Children and Families
555 West Washington Ave, Suite 200
Madison, Wisconsin 53703
608-284-0580 x316
[email protected]
Beth Colgan
Managing Attorney, Institutions Project
Columbia Legal Services
101 Yesler Way, Suite 300
Seattle, WA 98104
206-464-1122
[email protected]