Bright Spots

From Safely Home

I love that image – bright spots around our country where young people are fully supported, where youth-serving agencies have embraced youth development, where political and community leaders take responsibility rather than allowing the cloak of invisibility to remain over young people.

The new report, Safely Home, by Youth Advocate Programs Policy and Advocacy Center does just that – lifting up the bright spots around the country that are effectively using community-based programs to reduce youth incarceration. The report is powerful as it provides key messages that advocates can us, a compelling cost analysis and examples of places around the country that are reducing incarceration through the provision of community-based alternatives. I’ve plucked a few of the highlights of the report for you:

Money Matters
“For example, using the American Correctional Association average cost of youth incarceration of $240.99/day, the cost of incarcerating 20 youth for 180 days, or six months is $867,564. In contrast, a community-based program that can create a wraparound community for a youth, individualize services based on the unique needs of each youth, engage the family and connect the youth to neighborhood resources, costs on average $75/day.

Using that rate, it would cost a jurisdiction $270,000 over that same 180 day
period to help 20 youth and their families achieve stability in their own

homes and communities. Therefore, if communities use the money they spend on incarceration or residential placement on effective neighborhood-based programs instead, they can save $597,564, more than half a million dollars for just 20 kids over a 6 month period.”

Messages

• The lack of effective alternatives for high-need youth contributes to youth incarceration. Systems cannot achieve deincarceration goals unless they build continua of community-based programs. 
• Virtually anything that can be done in an institution can be done better in the community.
• Systems can redirect institutional dollars toward less expensive community programs.
• Communities can't climb out of poverty, neighborhood violence, and other risk factors through incarceration, especially of their youth.
• Community-based programs that provide the right amount of intensity can provide safe and effective alternatives to youth incarceration and residential placement.

Bright Spots

• In Alabama, where the state committed to redirecting dollars from state institutions to counties to develop alternatives, the number of youth in state custody dropped from 3,340 in 2006 to 1,485 I 2013. Eighty percent of youth 80% remained arrest-free post-discharge.
• Lucas County, OH: The number of youth committed was reduced from 300 in 1988 to 17 in 2014. 
• Community Connections for Youth, South Bronx, NY: This program is focused on high-need youth in the poorest congressional district in the country. 80% of CCFY participants voluntarily continue with program even after the court mandate ends
• Middlesex County Youth Advocates Program (New Brunswick, NJ): After discharge, 87% of youth not arrested. 
• Roca Inc., Massachusetts: This program served over 400 very high-risk people with felony convictions. The retention rates are 78% and of those who completed the program, 90% had no new arrests and 70% have demonstrated educational gains.

I’d love to have an interactive map that showed the bright spots across the entire field – so that we knew which communities were Connecting by 25.