- I got my first arrest when I was 11 years old.
You know, you don't go from
banging on the streets of Atlanta, Georgia
with a life expectancy of 15 years
to Commissioner of Juvenile Justice accidentally.
You go there because somebody had the courage
to believe more and give you
the opportunity to become more.
And that's what we have to do.
That's our real work.
- Senate Bill 200 is adopted.
- Since the late 1990's the rate at which
juveniles are arrested for violent crime
has been cut in half.
And so has the rate at which they're held
in juvenile correctional facilities.
State policy leaders are now poised
to accelerate and lock in these trends
toward more public safety at less tax payer expense.
- The time is right for juvenile justice reform.
- We're living in a time now where
the opportunity has never been greater.
- We need to recognize that we can do
a better job with our kids.
- States from Georgia to Kentucky to Hawaii
are taking a fresh look at juvenile justice
because it was clear the status quo was not working.
- Kentucky was spending it's money
it all the wrong ways.
- We weren't getting a good return on investment.
We weren't getting results.
We weren't getting the best outcomes
for our most troubled children.
When I started to look at the type of kids
that we had at the correctional facility
I realized that the overwhelming majority
of them were not a risk to public safety.
- Like many judges, we were committing kids by default.
- We were putting almost as many kids in
some type of detention facility
for missing school as we were for committing a crime.
- We are forced, because we don't have those
local community interventions, to commit them to the state.
- We were spending a lot of money on detention,
particularly for low level offenders,
when we see that that's not a productive
or effective way to invest in the lives of those kids.
- Research shows that juvenile correctional facilities
generally fail to produce better outcomes
than alternative sanctions, cost much more,
and can actually increase re-offending for certain youth.
- Putting kids in placement in secure facilities,
lock up, does not actually deter crime.
- Longer stays don't seem to show any positive effects
in terms of reducing rate of re-arrest.
At some point, we should have a way of thinking about
why we're keeping an adolescent in an institution
for a longer time period.
And if they are reasons to do that
then let's be explicit about that,
and figure out what we're getting out of it.
- To get better results, states are reducing
the number of youths sent to correctional facilities
and reinvesting a portion of the savings
into programs and policies that reduce recidivism.
- One of the ways that states can really respond effectively
is to be able to sort through kids in terms of
low risk, medium risk, high risk kids,
and to focus those resources effectively
on the adolescents who are going to present
the highest risk of public safety problems.
- If we require judges to apply risk assessment
instruments before they can commit kids
to ensure that the lower risk kids
are not committed to the state.
- We're gonna see a dramatic shift
in the way we serve young people.
- These reforms, first of all, are going to keep kids
who otherwise would have been sent to a youth prison
to remain in the community and receive the type
of interventions that need to happen in their home.
- There will be a significantly reduced number
of actual court cases filed.
They will be addressed appropriately
with social services on the front end.
- To better protect public safety,
you need to spend those dollars at the front end
of the system versus the back end of the system.
- Everything in juvenile justice is about intervention.
Prevent a child learning further criminal behaviors
and you prevent a future adult criminal.
- These reforms are not only making communities safer,
but they're saving states money because placing youth
in residential facilities is the most
expensive correctional option.
- When you can divert, you can avoid sending
a low level child to detention for $100,000 a year,
those savings mount up quickly.
- In the state of Hawaii it's costing approximately
$199,000 a year to incarcerate a youth.
- The bottom line is that we have passed a bill
that gets better outcomes for children
and does so at a lower cost for the tax payer.
- As a result of these reforms,
we have realized cost savings.
In Georgia for example, we have already shut down
two facilities because we are no longer
committing low risk offenders.
- States are getting to good public policy
by looking at the data.
Across all branches of government,
and the partisan divide, state leaders are coming together
to assess their systems and find solutions.
- The collaboration on this bill is key.
We turned no one away.
- The task force was vital to the process
because it gave us that credibility
and that unified voice to speak with
when rolling out a package of legislative reforms.
- These reforms are grounded in research
and the public supports them.
- The public has always been more positive
in its orientation toward youthful offenders.
- Eighty-five percent of voters say they are not concerned
whether juvenile offenders are sent to
correctional facilities or how long they stay there.
What matters is reducing the likelihood
of future crime.
- I really think in some way we're kinda coming
back around to what the public expected all the time
from the juvenile justice system.
- State leaders have successfully adopted
reforms that will change the direction
of juvenile justice policy and the lives of young people.
- For every child that we divert from the
criminal justice system and decrease the chances
they'll ever enter it, that's a policy win
in so many ways.
- We go into public service to do those things.
That's why we're there.
- If we continue on this trajectory,
the only children that come to the deep end
of our system will be the ones that
absolutely need it and every other child
in the commonwealth, and hopefully in the nation,
will move forward to their greatest successes.