“Taxpayers pay $108,820 a year per juvenile in placement.”
Sorry, Virginia taxpayers, but the hard, cold fact is that you’re wasting your money. While government officials attempt to find answers to ever-increasing costs for juvenile placements (that years of research shows doesn’t decrease future criminal behavior), a Hampton Roads editorial recently echoed the pleas of organizations like Evidence-Based Associates (EBA): Stop locking low- and moderate-risk offenders up and throwing money away.
$108,820 is a lot of money to keep an at-risk youth behind bars. Especially when evidence shows that on average over 60 percent will return back to that cell within three years. This costly and ineffective boomerang policy is taking place all across the country —but people are finally starting to take notice. The purse strings are tightening and the eyes are opening, desperate for better solutions.
The Annie E. Casey Foundation, based in Baltimore, Maryland, recently reported on positive alternatives to incarceration for our nation’s troubled youth. They gathered the grim statistics on state-based programs that are wasting money but, thankfully, balanced that data with information on programs that have succeeded. Casey officials push these data out to the public in hopes that other states, such as Virginia, will notice and start looking away from facility expansion budgets and more towards community-based alternatives. The Casey Foundation’s latest report, No Place for Kids: The Case for Reducing Juvenile Incarceration, demonstrates that “youth prisions do not reduce future offending, they waste taxpayer dollars and they frequently expose youth to dangerous and abusive conditions.” It highlights successes of certain programs, one being the Redirection Project in Florida. This project alone, over the last five years, has saved Florida tax-payers $41 million by ‘redirecting’ youth away from costly and ineffective placements and instead addressed the mental health and criminogenic needs of more than 6,400 troubled youth and families – good news for their futures and for the safety of the Florida communities.
To learn more about the Redirection Project or Evidence-Based Associates’ other projects, visit their website or call (843) 343-8747.