Reinvest in troubled youth

California’s seemingly perennial problem with youth incarceration is rooted in the everyday decisionmaking of its 58 counties. Some counties are much more reliant on incarceration than others, choosing to prioritize the use of taxpayer funds for detention over community-based programs that ensure a safer and healthier California. This implementation is out of step with juvenile justice trends and best practices.

California’s counties must adopt a justice reinvestment strategy that repurposes savings from our continued drop in youth arrest and incarceration rates.

In 1996, California’s youth prison system had a population of 10,000. Today, the number of youth arrested and incarcerated has plummeted to historic lows, with just over 600 youth in the state youth prison system.

At the county level, many juvenile halls, including those in the Bay Area, stand more than half empty. While young people certainly do face challenges, such as lack of education, unemployment, violence and trauma, our continued reliance on incarceration is no way to help them meet those challenges.

Despite fewer youth incarcerated, funding available to counties through two major state juvenile justice funds actually has increased, as it is tied to taxes and allocated based partly on a county’s population.

In fiscal year 2016-17, counties received nearly $280 million in state juvenile justice funding. Both the Juvenile Justice Crime Prevention Act and Youthful Offender Block Grant programs are meant to address the needs of young people who are in the justice system or have the risk of becoming involved in it in the future.

A new study by the Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice analyzes how five Bay Area counties use funds from these two annual juvenile justice grants, which are supported through sales taxes and vehicle

license fees with little risk of discontinuation year to year.

CJCJ’s study found that while counties have broad discretion on how to use this money, county probation departments receive the vast majority of it. Even with ample flexibility for spending and little oversight, most of this critical spending is not supporting young people or the communities most affected by youth incarceration.

Of the $280 million, $25 million went to five Bay Area counties (Alameda, Contra Costa, Marin, San Francisco and San Mateo). Most of the funding benefited county staffing, with only $3.7 million spent to support community-based organizations. Some counties do buck this trend by investing most of their state funding into services that directly support youth in the community — not behind locked doors. For example, San Francisco, which has invested heavily in a continuum of services for youth, spent almost all of its JJCPA funds on community-based organizations. It can and should serve as a model to other counties.

Juvenile justice advocates across California are pushing counties for greater transparency and inclusion in the decisionmaking processes for funding. This is a promising step as communities should be asking more questions about how these funds are used and ensuring they prioritize the real needs of young people. True criminal justice reform is local and each county in California has the power to transform its priorities away from mass incarceration and toward community-based programs that work.