Diplomas Not Detention: The Better Options for Kids Act

By Hope DeLap and Jasper Burroughs

JPI Interns

Judge Teske on Capitol Hill in June.

Across the nation, young students who commit minor misdeeds (truancy, running away, alcohol possession and others) are suspended, expelled, and put in prison at an alarming rate.
On June 25th we attended a briefing that marked Sen. Chris Murphy’s (D-CT) introduction of the Better Options for Kids Act of 2014. The bill seeks to rupture the school to prison pipeline by supporting states with policies that “improve educational continuity and limit juvenile court involvement and incarceration for youth.” 

The Better Options for Kids Act will encourage “five state policies that help drive down juvenile incarceration and crime, saving millions of dollars,” which include:

• Limiting court referrals;

• Limiting police officers in schools;

• Providing training or funds without expulsion;

• Promoting community-based alternatives;

• Providing re-entry help for young people returning to the community from custody.

The legislation echoes the recommendations included in JPI’s 2011 report, “Education Under Arrest,” which calls on jurisdictions to use strategies like those listed in the Better Options for Kids Act, including investing in education, prevention and intervention strategies that work to keep schools safe. The legislation also reflects the findings of the JPI report, Juvenile Justice Reform in Connecticut, which showed that there are better ways to improve community safely than needlessly refer youth from schools to the justice system.

Judge Steve Teske, Chief Judge of the Juvenile Court of Clayton County, Georgia, spoke about his experiences advancing nationally recognized practices in balanced and restorative justice in a jurisdiction that serves almost 80,000 kids. He said that addressing the issue of the mass incarceration of students is “not just a legal obligation, [it] is a moral obligation. These are our children.”

Jim St. Germain also spoke. The 24 year old Brooklyn-native began dealing drugs at age 11 and was arrested at 14 on a felony drug charge. He agreed with Judge Teske: “[this is] not just a juvenile problem, this is America’s problem.”

If he had been two years older, St. Germain would probably have served time into his twenties in an adult prison. Instead, he spent three years in a group home with five other boys, emerged with newfound purpose, and got a Bachelors Degree. He is now preparing to enter NYU’s Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of Public Service. He also tirelessly advocates for juvenile justice reform and is a current member of the Vera Institute of Justice Juvenile Justice Board and NYC Police Commissioner Bill Bratton’s Reengineering team. He counts himself lucky, acknowledging that “it’s a blessing that I got caught at an early stage. I wouldn’t have stopped unless my whole neighborhood changed overnight.”

Land of the Free

By Hope DeLap

Independence Day is the celebration of the birth of a nation liberated from the oppressive rule of Britain, free of the shackles of its past and empowered to thrive moving forward. But are we still this nation? Can we truly celebrate freedom when our justice system has never been so unjust?

Photo taken from http://www.thedailysheeple.com/

It is hard to celebrate America’s liberty knowing how truly un-free so many Americans are. A recent study showed that 65 million Americans have a criminal record. If you don’t have a calculator handy, 65 million is equivalent to one in four adults in the United States. Furthermore, another study found that about one third of adults in America have been arrested for adult or juvenile offenses, not including minor traffic offenses. Despite so many Americans having previous convictions on their record, a criminal history is seen as extremely problematic, not as normal. There is a severe social stigma attached to a condition 65 million adults share. Additionally, the past can never be left behind. These people are not free to move forward with their lives. Background checks and collateral consequences become the new chains that constrain their liberty.

The collateral consequences of conviction prevent so many people from moving on and creating new lives for themselves. These collateral consequences include additional civil and state penalties which continue to punish people long after they have paid their debt to society. JPI reports in Billion Dollar Divide that in 2010, 451,471 people in Virginia alone were disenfranchised. These penalties, mandated by statute, extend beyond voting rights and affect all areas of individuals’ lives:

• Employment and business licensing
• Housing
• Education
• Public benefits (unemployment insurance, Medicaid and Temporary Assistance to Needy Families)
• Credits and loans
• Immigration status
• Parental rights
• Interstate travel

Eleven Years Too Late: It’s Time to Implement PREA

By Natrina Gandana

For the last two years, I have been studying and working on criminal justice reform. I’ve worked inside and outside prisons, advocating for reform in California. Now, I intern with the Justice Policy Institute in Washington, D.C. which has enabled me to immerse myself into the political and legislative parts of the justice system. 

(l-r) Amy Fettig, Liz Ryan, Elissa Rumsey, Joshua Delaney, Rudy Qazilbash  

So after attending the seven-hour long teach-in session on the Prison Rape Elimination Act (PREA), Brenda V. Smith, a professor of law and director of the Project on Addressing Prison Rape asked the attendees two big questions – what have we learned and what are we going to do?

I had learned so much, facts and statistics ran through my head, while the names of individuals and stories weighed heavily. So when Professor Smith asked those questions, I knew what I was going to say. I walked up to the microphone, thanked all the speakers, and told everyone that they inspired me to fight for criminal justice reform. Before I could continue, Talila Lewis, founder of Helping Educate to Advance the Rights of the Deaf (HEARD), yelled from the crowd, “You already ARE fighting!” Taken aback, I heard “woohs!” and claps from the audience, and I smiled.  

However, I wasn’t smiling during the event. This inspiring, but hard-to-swallow teach-in centered on the Prison Rape Elimination Act (PREA). PREA passed unanimously in both houses of Congress and was signed into law by President Bush in 2003. It is a comprehensive initiative that establishes a zero tolerance policy for sexual assault in custody and requires the U.S. Department of Justice to enforce standards that detect, prevent, reduce and punish sexual assault in custody. The Justice Policy Institute, in collaboration with the conservative Hudson Institute, helped to make the legislation a reality. Despite JPI’s creation of a broad coalition in support of the law and its necessity, PREA’s potential was never fully realized.

How Young People are Fairing on Adult Community Supervision, and the Need to Raise the Age in Michigan

By Jason Ziedenberg

As a former staffer of two corrections agencies responsible for community supervision of youth and young adults, the data in a new report published this week by the Michigan Council on Crime and Delinquency (MCCD) on the transfer laws – and how youth are fairing under adult supervision – underlines for me the critical need for this state to increase the age of juvenile court jurisdiction to age 18.


The report, Youth Behind Bars: Examining the impact of prosecuting and incarcerating kids in Michigan’s criminal justice system, profiles the fact that Michigan is one of 10 states that automatically sees 17 year olds tried in their adult system. A huge number of youth are affected by this, and not only those engaged in serious delinquency. Between 2003 and 2013, according to the report, 19,124 youth aged 17 were tried as adults, and entered either an adult jail, prison or ended up on probation. While there are a couple of pathways for youth to be transferred to adult court, because 17 year olds are automatically tried as adults, most youth affected by the law were convicted of a non-violent offense.

Different people will read Youth Behind Bars and see different reasons why there is a need for a change in the Michigan law. When I think about my time working with probation departments in Oregon, juvenile departments that supervise young adults in Washington, D.C., and work with community supervision leaders that want to advance best practices through the National Institute of Corrections, I see a classic example of how the state isn’t keeping up with best practices that we would like to see criminal justice policy.

Beyond the Fence: Maya Angelou’s Visit to Oak Hill

This was originally posted on June 5, 2014 by the Center for Educational Excellence in Alternative Settings.


By David Domenici


I served as the school’s principal for four years, working with an incredibly dedicated team of teachers, many of whom are still there today. In the spring of 2009, with our organization’s annual fundraiser approaching, I decided to call Dr. Angelou and ask if she would be willing to come to Oak Hill, located about 20 miles outside of DC, to spend some time with our students.

Last weekend my best friend, James Forman, published a beautiful tribute to Dr. Maya Angelou. James recounts how the school we started for court-involved and at-risk teens from DC came to bear her name, how Dr. Angelou joined us for our annual fundraisers 17 years in a row, and how she embraced our students (in every sense of the word) at those events.

I know one of the reasons James wrote that piece was to make sure that Dr. Angelou’s commitment to our students would be recognized as part of her legacy. In that spirit, I feel compelled to add a few paragraphs to supplement James’ account.  

‘True North’ Youth Justice Reform: Lessons from Ontario

This post originally appeared on JJIE's ideas and opinions page May 21, 2014.

By Jason Ziedenberg

The two big trends to watch in American youth justice policy have focused on reducing youth incarceration, and moving young people from adult prisons and jails into a reformed youth justice system.
These are positive trends that the field needs to build on, but it’s too soon to pop the champagne. Too many states still have direct file laws on the books where youth automatically end up in the adult system by their charge, Raise-the-Age efforts in a couple of states are slow to take hold, and as budget-strained states close youth facilities, the field faces new challenges in building, funding and sustaining the continuum needed to meet young people’s needs.

These challenges should not be seen as roadblocks in places like New York, California, North Carolina, Texas, Florida and a dozen other states where large parts of the reform agenda have yet to be fulfilled. If these states are looking for yet one more example that our broader youth justice vision can be achieved, you need only to go “north.”

In 2003, the Canadian federal government replaced the antiquated Youth Offenders Act — Canada’s equivalent of the Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act — with a new law. Under the Youth Criminal Justice Act (YCJA), the 10 provinces and two territories sought to implement a youth justice vision that recognizes young people’s unique adolescent development needs, divert youth from the justice system and meet their needs through other youth serving systems, expand the options that could serve as alternatives to youth prisons and improve rehabilitation and re-entry services for those few youth in locked custody. The provinces received modest funding from the federal government to implement the new law, but the 10 provinces were largely left to align their work with the YCJA on their own dime.

Listen Up D.C.: Stop Putting Your Young People In Adult Jails

This post originally appeared on JJIE's ideas and opinions page May 22, 2014.

By Marc Schindler

Having helped lead the Washington, D.C. Department of Youth Rehabilitation Services (DYRS) – the city’s juvenile corrections agency — I know, first hand from my experience running that system and from my colleagues around the country that, Washington, D.C. can and should serve youth who are currently being transferred to the adult system in the juvenile justice system, rather than see them jailed and locked up in the adult system.

This issue has come into sharp relief for me this week, with the release of a new report: Capital City Correction: Reforming DC's Use of Adult Incarceration Against Youth. Released by DC Lawyers for Youth and the Campaign for Youth Justice, the report looks at how young people are prosecuted in the adult criminal justice system in Washington, D.C. through Direct File – a statute that enables federal prosecutors to send District youth accused of certain crimes to adult court without judicial review.

The report showed that 541 young people under the age of 18 were detained or incarcerated in adult facilities in D.C. between 2007 and 2012 and that youth spent 10,000 days – the equivalent of 27 years – in adult jail. The young people who end up on this path experience inadequate facilities, higher risk of being victimized while locked up, increased chances of solitary confinement, and often carry the long-term consequences of adult felony convictions when they leave the system. We also know from decades of research, including by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that transfer to adult court actually increases recidivism, with youth prosecuted as adults more likely to commit crimes upon release than similar youth handled in the juvenile system.

Lessons from Norway: A Different Approach to Criminal Justice

By Sarah Mostyn

It is well known that the United States incarcerates more of its population than any other country. Despite the harsh punishments and mandatory sentences for many crimes, recidivism rates remain high. If a criminal justice system that relies primarily on punitive measures to reduce crime rates,  but instead results in such high rates of recidivism, there is clearly something wrong with that system. In order to find a solution to this problem, policymakers and others may need to look beyond the borders of the United States.

JPI’s report Finding Direction: Expanding Criminal Justice Options by Considering Policies of Other Nations, shows the many advantages that exist in looking to other nations for possible solutions to the problems of our own criminal justice system. Doing so, allows fresh insight into current policies and offers alternative policy solutions to key issues. JPI’s report also found that the sentencing policies in the United States are harsher than those countries in comparison. With current sentencing laws being a leading driver to the US’s mass incarceration problem, these laws merit greater scrutiny.

With the passing of the Sentencing Reform Act of 1984, the United States experienced an incredible increase in its prison population. Retribution became the driving factor behind sentencing with an increased emphasis on people serving the entirety of their punishment with few programs to promote rehabilitation. It is this vindictive mentality that sets the United States apart from many other nations.

The Insidiousness of Private Interest

By Paul Ashton

It’s 2014 and it is time to: “Stop them. Shrink them. Close them.”

I heard the above quote by Donald Cohen, Executive Director of In the Public Interest, at the annual Public Safety and Justice Campaign’s (PSJC) prison privatization meeting held last December in Washington, D.C. The Public Safety and Justice Campaign is a growing coalition of labor, faith, criminal justice, human rights, and immigration organizations working to address privatization of the criminal justice system. This annual meeting is a time for members to gather to discuss the current state of privatization in the justice system and upcoming industry trends.

When I am out in public and talk about the criminal justice system and the need for reform, I often bring up private prisons and to my surprise I am usually greeted with shock from people who have no idea such an industry even exists. Well, private prisons are real and privatization of the justice system expands far beyond just the management of prisons; it can include the privatization of prison services such as healthcare, mental health services, food services and even phone contracts.

PSJC focuses on the privatization of the justice system and works to combat the insidious impact private interest can have on justice. In 2011, I co-authored the JPI report Gaming the System which examines the political strategies that private prison companies use to influence incarceration policy.

Gimme a Tax Break!

By Zerline Hughes

It’s most everyone’s UNfavorite day: Tax Filing Day – April 15.

For those of you who have already filed, even received your refund, kudos. For those who are reading this while taking a break from your pile of receipts or waiting in an around-the-corner line at the post office: good luck to you. For those of you who were hoping to get a bit of a tax break for college expenses and ran into this red tape: it’s time to advocate!

We learned through Gus Smith, a Virginia criminal justice advocate, tax preparer and parent of Kemba Smith whose 1994 drug sentence was commuted by President Bill Clinton in 2000, that he has had to tell a lot of Virginian’s that taxpayers cannot receive certain education-related tax deductions if they have been convicted of a felony drug offense.

Had you heard about that one?

The New Retirement Plan: A Look at Geriatric Release in Virginia

By Sarah Mostyn

Criminal Justice Degree Hub

When asked about the current system of geriatric release in Virginia, Carla Peterson, Director of Virginia CURE, states that the situation is grim. As noted in JPI’s latest report, Billion Dollar Divide, the elderly population presents unique challenges to the criminal justice system. Healthcare costs for this population are consistently higher than their younger cohorts, straining already limited resources.

Many of the troubles with geriatric release begin with the parole board. Compared to other states, Virginia has an incredibly low parole rate. When denied parole, many individuals do not know the exact reasoning behind the decision. Typically, generic statements such as “serious nature of the crime” are given instead of individualized responses. For the months of January to November 2013, the overall parole rate was 2.1 percent, an extremely low rate.

National Crime Victims' Rights Week: Restoring the Balance of Justice

By Paul Ashton

This week is National Crime Victims’ Rights Week and the theme is “30 Years: Restoring the Balance of Justice” (#NCVRW2014). In 2010, JPI organized a roundtable discussion that brought together criminal justice reform advocates and victim advocates to have a dialogue on how these two groups, that often times have been diametrically opposed, can work together on positive reforms that make communities safer for all people.

While the over-arching theme of the roundtable was to explore opportunities for dialogue and finding points of common ground, other areas of discussion included addressing who is a victim, the history and current status of the victims’ movement, and issues around services for victims. The day’s discussion resulted in the brief: Moving Toward a Public Safety Paradigm: A Roundtable Discussion on Victims and Criminal Justice Reform.

Since then, other organizations have carried the baton, working on finding common ground and building a cohesive reform movement to increase public safety and decrease the negative impact of the justice system. For instance, in 2011 the Partnership for Safety and Justice, a leader in this effort, released the concept paper Moving Beyond Sides: The Power and Potential of a New Public Safety Paradigm. And this week, the National Juvenile Justice Network (NJJN) released its policy document A House Divided No More: Common Cause for Juvenile Justice Advocates, Victim Advocates, and Communities. NJJN takes an important look at the intersection of youth crime and victimization and how the current juvenile justice system fails everyone.

The Impact of Virginia's Billion Dollar Corrections System on Our Brown Population

Guest Blog Post

Having spent much of my career working on juvenile justice issues and advocating for corrections reform I have been paying close attention to the proposed criminal justice reforms coming out of our nation’s capital.

For the past several years I have been especially concerned with the impact that our criminal justice policies have on our children and our communities of color, especially on America’s Latino community. I have recently found myself feeling cautiously optimistic that our nation is finally moving towards a more comprehensive approach to addressing the state of our criminal justice system. For me, it seems that we may actually be working towards establishing “smart on crime” policies rather than “tough on crime” policies. My cautious optimism has, however, been significantly diminished by the release of the Justice Policy Institute’s Billion Dollar Divide: Virginia’s Sentencing, Corrections and Criminal Justice Challenge.  

Virginia, Give Me More to Love You For

By Amanda Petteruti

It’s April in Virginia – the flowers are blooming, the trees are flowering, and the General Assembly is still arguing about the state’s budget. Funding for Medicaid may be the primary issue of contention this year, but there should be another issue. This year, for the second time since 2009, a billion dollars of that budget is dedicated to locking people up.

In the time that my family has lived in Virginia, the commonwealth has not outwardly struggled with finances the way some other states have. To cut budgets, many states have looked hard at their spending on incarceration. Virginia has not had to choose to do that. With growing concerns about supporting mental health services, rebuilding crumbling infrastructure, improving transportation, ensuring high quality education, and protecting the environment, it is time to rethink how it spends its money. As a homeowner and a taxpayer in Virginia, it is important how the commonwealth spends my money.

But an argument about money only gets us part-way. The reality is that the commonwealth continues to put more people in prison, keep them there longer, and then refuse to release people who are eligible even though there is no evidence that incarceration makes us safer in the long run. While most of the rest of the country is reducing the number of people behind bars, Virginia is seeing its first increase in five years. As of 2012, it had the 15th highest state imprisonment rate and had the 38th highest prison population.

Improving Accountability, Reducing Incarceration: Shifting to Success-Oriented Federal Funding of Local Law Enforcement

By Jason Ziedenberg
 

In the fall of 2008, the national economy fell off a cliff.  For state, county, and city officials, alarm bells were sounding off as revenue streams that supported everything from schools, to parks to prisons and police were suddenly under strain. 

Staff at local probation and parole departments had the opportunity to see first-hand what an “fiscal emergency” looks like. System leaders were charged with the task of making huge cuts to treatment, housing and services for people under criminal justice supervision, and begged and borrowed every dollar they could find to stave off even more cuts to community-based organizations, and layoffs of staff.

During a time when many Community Based Organizations (CBOs) and community supervision agencies were trying to navigate the Great Recession, the Edwards Byrne Memorial Justice Grant (JAG) funds that government agencies received were a lifeline. Under the 2008 and 2009 federal stimulus, billions of dollars were funneled through JAG to shore up local criminal justice services.

Is Legalizing Marijuana Beneficial?

By Matthew Brosmer

Late last year, Gallup released a poll showing 58 percent of Americans favoring marijuana legalization, while 39 percent were not in favor of it. This is a large increase from 48 percent favoring and 50 not favoring in 2012. As of now, two states have legalized - Colorado and Washington State; 16 states have decriminalized small amounts of marijuana possession; and 20 states plus D.C. have medical marijuana laws. And this month, Washington, D.C. City Council moved to decriminalize marijuana. Congress will have final say, though, since D.C. laws are subject to approval by Congress.

Marijuana legalization could, in fact, help society; there will be benefits in the economy and in the criminal justice system.The economy would improve, bringing back industrial hemp jobs, scientific research on medical marijuana and hemp-related products, and other marijuana related jobs such as working in a dispensary. According to reform advocate and former head of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML) Jon Gettman, “marijuana prohibition costs nearly $42 billion in lost taxes per year.” When broken down, “marijuana arrests cost taxpayers $10.7 billion annually” and “the diversion of $113 billion from the taxable economy into the illicit economy deprives taxpayers of $31.1 billion annually.”

In 2007, the U.S. Department of Justice, National Drug Intelligence Center released “The Economic Impact of Illicit Drug Use on American Society,” which found illicit drug use cost more than $193 billion in three sections: crime, health, and productivity.

Juvenile Justice Reforms Continuing – Let’s Keep the Momentum Going!

By Marc Schindler

This week, I was honored to participate in meetings where the National Governors Association Center for Best Practices launched a year-long “Learning Lab” for governors’ senior advisors and other high-level state officials on improving outcomes for youth involved in the juvenile justice system, with a focus on the Connecticut reform experience. How timely as JPI just recently recognized the one year anniversary of two groundbreaking reports by JPI that highlighted the encouraging trend toward reduced confinement of youth nationwide. In the year since the release of our reports, Common Ground: Lessons Learned from Five States that Reduced Juvenile Confinement by More than Half, and Juvenile Justice Reform in Connecticut, we are encouraged to see a continuation of the reform trends we documented. 

After decades of increases in the number of youth being locked up across our country, most of whom are disadvantaged youth of color, we are finally seeing continued progress and recognition that there is a better and more effective way of responding to poor choices by young people. As President Obama said during the launch of his My Brother’s Keeper initiative, a promising effort to help young men of color reach their full potential, “By making sure our criminal justice system doesn’t just function as a pipeline for underfunded schools to overcrowded jails, we can help young men of color stay out of prison and jail.”  Now is the time to make sure this progress continues!

  

Just released data published by the U.S. Justice Department’s Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP) show that fewer and fewer young people are incarcerated, and this trend has not made our communities any less safe. The data showed:

• A continuing decline in the number of confined youth in the five states profiled in Common Gound. OJJDP’s data released through the Census of Residential Placement found that in each state profiled in Common Ground –- Arizona, Connecticut, Louisiana, Minnesota, Tennessee –  there was a continuing decline in the number of youth incarcerated. Between 2001 and 2011, these states reported declines in youth incarceration that ranged between 65 to 43 percent.

• A continuing decline in the number of youth confined nationally.  The Census of Residential Placement also showed that the number of youth incarcerated nationally continued to decline, with a 41 percent decline over the decade (2001-2011).

•  Juvenile arrests continued to decline as well, even while fewer youth are being locked up.  OJJDP’s recently released data on arrest trends (Juvenile Arrests 2011) showed that four out of five states saw a decline in youth arrested for violent crime. As has been demonstrated for years, particularly in JDAI sites, we can safely reduce the use of incarceration without a negative impact on public safety.

A special shout out to juvenile justice reforms in Connecticut, which are now influencing policy change around the country

During the year since we published Juvenile Justice Reform in Connecticut: How Collaboration and Commitment Have Improved Public Safety and Outcomes, the story of how Connecticut safely and effectively reduced reliance on incarceration and the transfer of youth into the adult system is drawing increased attention from policy makers and elected officials from around the country.

The report has also been used by policymakers to show how a juvenile justice system can be reformed to be more humane, benefit youth and families, improve public safety, help young people succeed, and reduce the transfer of youth to the adult system. In July, the report was featured in a congressional briefing hosted by U.S. Senator Chris Murphy (D-CT). The briefing was moderated by Mike Thompson of the Council of State Governments, and participants included Robert Listenbee, Administrator of OJJDP; Mike Lawlor, Under Secretary for Criminal Justice Policy and Planning, Connecticut; State Senator John Whitmire (D-TX); and Judge Linda Teodosio, Summit County Juvenile Court, Ohio.

The report has also been used and disseminated by the National Governors Association, the National Conference of State Legislatures, the Council of State Governments and advocacy organizations around the country to help policymakers choose better juvenile justice policies. 

As we all know, we still have far too many young people locked up in unsafe facilities, and too few receiving the types of effective services, supports and opportunities they need to succeed.  Having led the juvenile justice agency in Washington, D.C., I know first-hand the challenges of trying to transform a system from one that relies primarily on locking youth up into one that uses secure confinement as a last resort.  It’s not easy work, and our bureaucracies too often cling to the status quo default position of removing a youth from their home instead of doing the hard but more effective work of providing supports that will help a young person succeed. 

President’s Budget: Tiny Steps to Deinarcerate and Billions for Prisons and Police

By Marc Schindler

President Obama and his administration released their Fiscal Year 2015 (FY15) budget plan on March 4. For folks favoring a broader response to meeting public safety and youth development goals, the budget is a mixed bag with the bulk of the Justice Department’s $27 billion being spent on ways to incarcerate and arrest more people. These enormous investments in continuing to lock up more and more people contrasts with the President’s statements at the launch last week of his My Brother’s Keeper initiative: a promising effort intended to create opportunities for boys and young men of color, including approaches to keep them out of the justice system.

The budget takes modest steps to restore some youth development funds deleted from the president’s 2014 budget proposal by the last Congress.  According to the Act for JJ, a campaign that JPI is part of advocating for the reauthorization of a strengthened Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act (JJDPA), the budget restores the Juvenile Accountability Block Grants program funding, and continues some of the new monies recommended to help address and eliminate community violence.

While only a small part of the $299.4 million federal juvenile justice budget, it is encouraging to see a $10 million fund for “Juvenile Justice Realignment Incentive Grants” – funds designated to help states implement evidence-based strategies that reduce youth incarceration and foster better outcomes for youth. As we showed in our reports,  Cost Effective Youth Correction:  Rationalizing the fiscal architecture of juvenile justice systems, and Common Ground: Lessons learned from five states that reduced juvenile confinement by more than half, funding streams that help encourage states to right-size their juvenile justice systems have played a big role in reducing the use of incarceration in states.

This is an important step, but a small step. The president’s youth development budget falls short of the funds advocated for by Act for JJ, including the $20 million originally requested by the president to support state deincarceration efforts, and $30 million more needed for juvenile justice efforts overall. These funds are also dwarfed by other budget proposals in the justice realm.  

As Ted Gest notes in The Crime Report, of the $27 billion proposed for Justice, the largest line items are $9 billion for the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s various efforts, and $8.4 billion for the Bureau of Prisons (BOP). Most of the BOP funds are spent on a growing federal prison population, largely driven by the incarceration of individuals for drug offenses.

The president’s proposed budget also boosts funding for the Community Oriented Policing (COPS) program, up from $180 million in FY 2014 to $222 million in FY 2015—something that expands local capacity to arrest more individuals, and subsidizes local government to employ police when cities or counties could be right-sizing.  

In contrast to the billions being spent to imprison and arrest more people, the federal investment in re-entry and other ways to meet public safety needs are failing to keep pace.  The president’s budget includes a modest increase in the Second Chance Act (from $68 million to $115 million), a funding stream that supports reentry efforts in the states.

All eyes are on the $414 federal residential drug abuse program, and whether its implementation will create opportunities for states to treat drug-involved individuals outside of a correctional setting. 

In short, a little additional money to help states ween themselves off youth incarceration is a big deal for a country that spends $80 billion on prisons and jails -- and can make a difference. But there is plenty more work to be done to press elected officials to make smarter budget choices to reduce incarceration, and invest in effective ways to prevent crime.

Also see

• JPI’s Behind the Times: President Obama's FY2013 budget

• Federal Folly: FY2012 U.S. Department of Justice budget gorges on prisons, gouges juvenile justice  

• Fact Sheet on The Obama Administration’s 2011 Budget: More policing, prisons, and punitive policies

• The President's FY2015 Budget Overview

Marc is executive director for the Justice Policy Institute.

Insulation Breakdown: Realities of our Justice System are Shocking

By Spike Bradford

Having worked as an auto mechanic, I often think of criminal and juvenile justice issues the way a mechanic would: as an interacting web of systems. After all, a car is simply a series of systems (ignition, electrical, drive, etc.). The mechanical term that has been in my mind lately is “insulation breakdown.” This usually involves stripped wires or damaged circuits or anything that allows current to go where it’s not supposed to. In short (pun intended), this is a bad thing.

Working in criminal and juvenile justice reform-minded research, I experience “insulation breakdown” of a different sort on a daily basis; a good kind of “insulation breakdown.” You see, unlike many that work in my field, I am not from a disproportionately impacted community of color or close to people who have been negatively affected by what I know to be our broken, arbitrary and institutionally racist systems of justice. I am a middle-class, highly educated, Volvo-driving, NPR-listening white guy. In other words, I’m insulated. Insulated in a way that most Americans are when it comes to understanding criminal and juvenile justice in our country.

Virginia's Justice System: Expensive, Ineffective and Unfair

This Just Policy Blog is a repost from the Campaign for Youth Justice Blog originally posted Wednesday, November 20, 2013.

By Christine Brugh

Last week, the Justice Policy Institute released a new brief titled, “Virginia’s Justice System: Expensive, Ineffective, and Unfair.” The brief examines trends in incarceration in Virginia, delving into topics such as racial disparity and drug laws. According to the brief, Virginia has the 8^th highest incarceration in the United States, making it even more pertinent that these disparities be addressed.

During Governor Allen’s tenure, prisons in Virginia have become even tougher, and have earned a reputation for being one of the most severe systems in the United States. Over-incarceration has contributed to this reputation and has serious consequences for communities and taxpayers in Virginia. The increased use of incarceration has been justified by the goal of reducing crime through the incapacitation of law-breakers. However, this comes at the expense of disproportionate incarceration of African Americans and African-American youth.

The brief reports that the cost to incarcerate a young person in a juvenile facility is approximately $100,000 per year. Virginia’s policies on juvenile justice falls behind those of other states; youth as young as 14 year- old can be transferred to criminal court for certain offenses, and in some cases, the transfer is automatic. According to the brief, Virginia is unnecessarily transferring many of these youth to adult court: a majority of these adolescents do not receive sentences requiring placement in adult prison.