The Annie E. Casey foundation recently released No Place for Kids: The Case for Reducing Juvenile Incarceration. The report concludes there is now overwhelming evidence demonstrating that the wholesale incarceration of juvenile offenders is a failed strategy for combating youth crime for the following reasons:
* Does not reduce future offending by confined youth: Within three years of release, roughly three-quarters of youth are rearrested; up to 72 percent, depending on individual state measures, are convicted of a new offense.
* Does not enhance public safety: States which lowered juvenile confinement rates the most from 1997 to 2007 saw a greater decline in juvenile violent crime arrests than states which increased incarceration rates or reduced them more slowly.
* Wastes taxpayer dollars: Nationwide, states continue to spend the bulk of their juvenile justice budgets - $5 billion in 2008 - to confine and house young offenders in incarceration facilities despite evidence showing that alternative in-home or community-based programs can deliver equal or better results for a fraction of the cost.
* Exposes youth to violence and abuse: In nearly half of the states, persistent maltreatment has been documented since 2000 in at least one state-funded institution. One in eight confined youth reported being sexually abused by staff or other youth and 42 percent feared physical attack according to reports released in 2010.
"The traditional approach of locking up youth offenders wholesale -- even those with limited or no histories of serious or violent offending -- has continued for decades without any evidence that it helps kids or protects the public," says Bart Lubow, director of the Juvenile Justice Strategy Group at the Annie E. Casey Foundation. "This report highlights the crucial challenges facing the youth corrections field. Our hope is that the research will serve as a catalyst for developing more effective and efficient juvenile justice strategies. "
Wyoming has retained the dubious distinction as the U.S. state with the highest rate of juvenile committed confinement in the nation. The rate is defined as the number of youth in residential placements based on order of a juvenile court after being adjudicated for delinquent offending, per 100,000 juvenile population. Wyoming's rate was 395 in 2007 compared to a U.S. rate of 194. Showing some improvement, Wyoming's rate decreased by 14.5% since 1997 when the rate was 462.
To help understand the costliness of the State of Wyoming's refusal to change its ways and implement best practices, it is useful to compare the Cowboy state to Vermont, a rural state with roughly the same child population as Wyoming.
Vermont is a national leader when it comes to promoting child well-being. Vermont ranked 4th in the nation in 2011 for overall child well-being compared to Wyoming which ranked 28th in this year’s Kids Count report based on ten key indicators. In fact, the Green Mountain State has been in the top ten at least since 2000 while Wyoming has bobbled between 23rd and 33rd during the same period.
Vermont’s child population was 131,099 in 2007 while Wyoming's child population was 126,410. In 2007, Vermont had just fifteen youth in committed confinement that year while Wyoming had 222. According to estimates by the Council of Juvenile Correctional Administrators, Vermont's juvenile corrections budget was $3,431,106 while Wyoming's estimated budget was $65,800,310.
Wyoming Kids Count Director Marc Homer says, "The definition of insanity regarding Wyoming's juvenile justice system is doing the same thing over and over again--locking kids up, paying an estimated $66 million to do it, and refusing to measure for results."
According to the "No Place for Kids" report, Wyoming is one of just eleven states that does not spend money on evaluating whether its approach works. Wyoming has no evaluation system that would allow policymakers to compare recidivism rates between confined youth and those treated in alternative justice programs facilitated at a fraction of the cost. The average annualized cost of placing a youth in detention is $88,000 whereas a typical Big Brothers/Big Sisters youth mentoring program (featured on WPR's Open Spaces) costs an average $987 annually.
Nearly all other alternatives to committed confinement examined in the AECF report, such as in-home or community-based programs that focus on prevention and treatment, are delivering better results for a fraction of the cost.
The key recommendations advocated from the Casey Foundation are:
* Limit incarceration to youth who have committed serious offenses. States like Texas and California for example, have changed their laws so that only youth found guilty of felony crimes can be committed to state custody. Currently in Wyoming, just 27 percent of youth in committed confinement were found guilty of a violent index crime. The rest could be treated more effectively and at a much lower cost in community based programs.
* Invest in alternatives. States should redirect funds previously spent on incarceration to support high-quality treatment and supervision programs proven to work. States should also expand access to career preparation and vocational training programs, and promising models for specialized mental health and substance-abuse treatment.
* Change the financial incentives for incarcerating youth. Right now, many local juvenile justice officials face a perverse choice: They can either offer youth cost-effective community-based programs at the expense of local governments, or they can commit them to more costly and less effective custody programs which are often funded entirely by the state. States like California and Ohio have adopted new financial incentives that make the decision to treat and supervise youth offenders in their home communities the smarter choice all around.