PORTLAND, Ore. – From the mid-’80s to the late ’90s, the number of youths in detention nationwide skyrocketed, with average daily populations ballooning from 13,000 to 28,000 in about a decade.
PORTLAND, Ore. – From the mid-’80s to the late ’90s, the number of youths in detention nationwide skyrocketed, with average daily populations ballooning from 13,000 to 28,000 in about a decade.
A new report from the Annie E. Casey Foundation finds that number is finally decreasing. The foundation, concerned for the large number of youth detained for non-violent crimes and the nearly system-wide practice of not properly screening youths for best-outcomes, developed the Juvenile Detention Alternatives Initiative in 1992.
Although the initiative received mixed success in its first five pilot sites, those in Multnomah County and Cook County in Chicago came back with positive results. Racial disparities were reduced and more youths remained arrest-free and showed up for their court dates.
There are currently 110 jurisdictions that utilize the JDAI model with the majority of them reporting deeper reductions in juvenile arrests for serious violent offenses than jurisdictions that hadn’t employed a detention reform initiative. Studies show that locking up youths indiscriminately can often lead to more, rather than less, crime in the future.
It also appears to have a positive effect on recidivism.
Washington state has become a model in its own right, using the Assessments Research Database, which tracks juvenile offender assessment, tracking and treatment in the state. The project will be fully operational by June 2010, when it will be used to measure the utilization and outcomes of treatment programs, prevalence of behaviors, risks, behavior trends and demographic differences.
In 2007, 70 percent of offenders remained offense-free in the next 12 months. Although Gov. Kulongoski has made it a priority to reduce the number of African-Americans and other minorities in the juvenile justice system, recidivism disparities remain. Looking at just the African-American juvenile offenders, 57 percent did not recidivate. With White juvenile offenders, 78 percent did not recidivate. Of Hispanic juvenile offenders, 65 percent did not recidivate.
According to the Oregon Youth Authority, overall recidivism decreased from 1998 to 2007, from 37 percent to 32 percent of all youth offenders.
The initiative has had uneven affect on disparate rates of detention for minority offenders in Multnomah County.
Detention rates hit an all-time low in 2000, when only 22 percent of youth brought to the juvenile justice center were detained. This was the second year that the percentage of minority youth and White youth detained were equal, a statistic that began to diverge soon after.
______
To read the rest of this article, subscribe to our digital or paper edition. For previous editions, contact us for details.
Copyright 2009 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
About Post Author
