Study: Huge Drop In Juvenile Lock-up Rates

February 28, 2013

Declining juvenile crime rates and more emphasis on keeping teens out of the criminal justice system have resulted in a major drop in lock-up rates both in Florida and nationwide.

The Annie E. Casey Foundation on Wednesday released a new KIDS COUNT data report, “Reducing Youth Incarceration in the United States,” which shows a 32 percent drop in the number of Florida youths sent to residential juvenile-justice programs between 1997 and 2010. Locally, the rate was 31 percent in Escambia County.

Nationally, the drop was 37 percent for the same period – to the lowest rate in 35 years.

The peak nationally came in 1995, with 107,637 juveniles incarcerated on a single day, and dropped to 70,792 on a single day in 2010, according to the U.S. Census Bureau and the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention. During that time, the overall incarceration rate dropped by 41 percent.

The report shows Florida is on the right track, said Department of Juvenile Justice Secretary Wansley Walters.

“In addition to the significant decrease in youth incarceration rates documented in this snapshot, Florida has seen a drastic reduction in overall juvenile arrests, school-based delinquency and the number of youth being transferred to the adult prison system,” Walters said in a statement.

According to DJJ, the state has seen a 34 percent drop in juvenile arrests over the last five years. School-based delinquency dropped by 50 percent over the last eight years. The number of Florida youths transferred to adult court has dropped by 44 percent since 2007-08.

As examples of the drops in incarceration rates, Broward County saw a 12 percent decrease, while Lee County saw its rate go down 34 percent and Alachua County had a 53 percent drop.

Walters credits DJJ’s “Roadmap to System Excellence,” a reform proposal the agency has been developing. The plan would shift funding from residential facilities to community-based intervention, then take those savings and spend more on job training, education, family support, transitional housing and transportation. Walters has led a series of town hall meetings on the plan, seeking feedback statewide.

David Utter, the Southern Poverty Law Center’s legislative director for Florida, praised the approach.

“It’s a plan that for the first time is based on what we know works for juvenile delinquency and kids who are troubled,” he said. “It’s a very exciting development.”

The state roadmap also dovetails with the Casey Foundation’s warning that despite the rapid decline, the U.S. still leads the industrialized world in locking up young people, most for nonviolent offenses such as truancy and technical probation violations.

“Locking up young people has lifelong consequences, as incarcerated youth experience lower educational achievement, more unemployment, higher alcohol and substance abuse rates and greater chances of run-ins with the law as adults,” said Bart Lubow, director of the foundation’s Juvenile Justice Strategy Group, in a statement. “Our decreasing reliance on incarceration presents an exceptional opportunity to respond to juvenile delinquency in a more cost-effective and humane way – and to give these youth a real chance to turn themselves around.”

Utter agrees that community- and family-based interventions are much more effective than incarceration. The Southern Poverty Law Center is pursuing that strategy in Florida via lawsuits and legislation.

The KIDS COUNT data also found racial bias in the juvenile justice system. African Americans are nearly five times as likely to be locked up as their white counterparts, and Latinos and American Indians are two to three times as likely.

DJJ is trying to address racial bias as well, calling it “a critical component of the Roadmap.” The plan calls for increased use of civil citations, a training curriculum for officials who work with minority youths and more partnerships to help them find jobs, and collaborating with schools to develop teacher/youth summits on diversity issues.

By The News Service of Florida

Comments

3 Responses to “Study: Huge Drop In Juvenile Lock-up Rates”

  1. Don't believe this... on February 28th, 2013 3:29 pm

    Don’t believe that the system is so great… They only keep very very violent juveniles… They send the rest home on house arrest that isn’t even managed properly, back on probation that isn’t regulated or they slap their wrists until they commit something so horrible the system has to step in… This article and information is a joke. If you overlook things and look at world through rose colored glasses then our Juvenile System is great!!!

  2. In the Know on February 28th, 2013 8:32 am

    DJJ is a broken system. In truth, it should be disbanded and their authority deligated to local agencies. The numbers in this story sound promising, but you can make numbers look anyway you would like.

    The truth from someone who works with, and in the justice system:

    Delinquent juveniles are on the rise. The reason there has been a decline in juvenile incarceration boils down to two main reasons. Since 2004, DJJ as downsized and increased their screening requirements for incarceration to combat budget and staffing issues. The second reason is a direct result of the first. DJJ has made LEO handling of juveniles such a burden on the officer, that the officers tend to avoid juvenile offenders due to their arrest requiring several levels of red tape and 3 times the paperwork to process.

    I agree that more needs to be spent on rehabilitating youth. However, the DJJ system is a joke. The juveniles know there is no real, or consistent, consequences for their actions under the current system. The current system has incarcerated juveniles that had gotten of track and needed services, and given a slap on the wrist to lost causes.

    If DJJ wants to measure their success, they should publish the current juvenile recidivism rates. I don’t know the exact number, but it is close to 75% under the current DJJ model.

  3. David Huie Green on February 28th, 2013 8:08 am

    They found the way to reduce incarceration: Commit less crime

    whodathunk?

    Congratulations, parents and those who decided they could be better.

    David marveling at mysteries

Written by William Reynolds · Filed Under News