Good and Bad in DJJ Transition Report, Part 1
The 200+ page report from the Scott Transition team looking at the Department of Juvenile Justice lists 20 recommendations, many of which are worthy, but can also often seem disconnected from reality, or just nit-picky. Someone seems to have wanted to make 20 recommendations when 5 good ones would have sufficed. Maybe they thought it would indicate good ROI (=return on investment – the Scott team’s favorite Wall Street acronym; get used to it).
Among the recommendations, the two aiming to produce major savings are the civil citation program recommendation and the privatizing of remaining DJJ residential facilities.
Yes, civil citation programs can reduce systemic costs, but they’ll be most effective when there are community-based service providers in place to deal with those cases that require more than an apology letter and 50 community service hours. Civil citations are issued in lieu of making an arrest, like getting a ticket instead of handcuffs. Many juvenile offenses can be treated this way, particularly school-based offenses which constitute a large number of incidents due to strict school policies. Keeping kids out of the juvenile justice system is both good for kids and cost effective.
However, community-based providers don’t grow on trees and their programs don’t appear overnight with trained, experienced staff, proven program strategies, records of success, community-wide connections and relationships, etc. Such providers take years to develop. And they take consistent and considerable funding. Some communities can adapt overnight because those providers are already there, but in smaller communities, they simply aren’t there. Marion has lost some providers and lost programs from survivors. Imagine Levy County or even Citrus County which have little, if anything to offer right now.
The savings numbers used by the team in its report seem grossly inflated and poorly substantiated, but the source explains why they were used.
A Miami-Dade Co. Juvenile Services Dept. report appended to the team’s report had more realistic numbers that showed a rough savings of 2/3 between civil citation at $1,351 per youth and detention at $3,561, with diversion at $1,819 per youth.
The transition team’s report claims civil citation costs only $386 per youth while detention costs $5,000, numbers found on p. 203 (diligence!) in the footnotes of an appended report by the Associated Industries Foundation, co-authored (unsurprisingly) by transition team leader Wansley Walters, Director of Juvenile Service at the Miami-Dade Juvenile Assessment Center, and team member Tom Olk, CEO of DISC Village in Tallahassee together with Barney Bishop of AI. (There were only 4 reporting members of the transition team.) The AIF numbers are clearly weak, ad hoc extrapolations whereas the Miami-Dade numbers are reality-based.
The privatization scheme for detention facilities sounds good as all privatization schemes sound before they hit reality. In fact, private contractors are a very mixed bag and include both for-profits and non-profits. At the Marion DJJ facility in Lowell, there had been a series of private contractors. A revolving door because either the contractor isn’t making any money or isn’t delivering services, or both, screws up the whole system. The temptation to reduce costs by squeezing contractors usually corrupts the whole enterprise and that’s what pinched legislatures do.
They drool at the notion of getting rid of any unions, but those unions may be the best thing in ensuring that certain services get provided at an effective level. More unions involving specialists and professionals may be a better guarantor of good services as unionized nurses have shown as they try to ensure effective levels of care.
Finally, any cost savings have value if they translate into improved services. The team suggests that there are budgetary savings and shifting of revenues possible. When it comes to crunch time, what do you think will happen? Cash out the savings and screw the programs, or shift funds and invest in progressive systemic reform? Yeah.
More on the DJJ report in my next post.
