Last week, Virginia’s House Appropriations and Senate Finance committees gathered in Richmond to begin considering the governor’s proposed budget, including a $90.5-million plan to transform the Commonwealth’s juvenile justice system.
As legislators weigh the plan, they should be aware of the tremendous opportunity they have to improve public safety, maintain a balanced budget, and make juvenile justice more restorative for victims, juvenile offenders, and their families.
Our state’s juvenile justice system is in crisis. Overall, three-quarters of incarcerated minors are re-arrested within three years of their release, and the recidivism rate actually goes up more than 30 percent for each additional year spent in a state facility. That’s a dismal return on the $140,000 Virginians invest per juvenile each year. Reform is desperately needed, but we should choose the right reforms by focusing on solutions that are proven to work with young people.
Reforming the juvenile justice system is a significant way to protect communities from crime. Youth certainly need to be held accountable for wrongdoing, but when additional incarceration actually makes them more likely to commit a new crime, concern for public safety demands we question how long our youth are punished and for what purpose.
Punishment should be proportionate to the offense, and secure-care facilities for youth should embrace a constructive community culture that reflects the values we expect Virginia’s youth to model upon completion of their sentences. The true measure of success is how many youth grow up to become adults restored and prepared to contribute to the families and communities they once harmed.
Currently, juveniles sentenced in Virginia are placed in large, outdated facilities that are not designed to provide the correctional culture that they need. The governor proposes two smaller, more modern secure youth facilities, but having overseen Virginia’s foster care system and studied Virginia’s incarcerated youth populations to provide family reintegration recommendations to the governor, I believe even more drastic steps are needed. Research suggests that the capacity of residential secure-care facilities should be close to 24 beds. In facilities that house only a few dozen youths, with better staff-to-resident ratios, staff and residents are safer, and residents have genuine opportunities for personal growth, character development and positive adult relationships.
Missouri has pioneered this “smaller-is-better” approach. When faced with a youth-incarceration crisis of its own, that state opted to close its youth prisons in favor of group homes with tiered security levels based on risk assessments. The buildings used were already owned by the state or purchased cheaply.
The results were remarkable. More than two-thirds of released juveniles had avoided further trouble with the law three years after their release. Less crime means fewer crime victims.
At the same time, these juveniles also had higher rates of engagement in school, work, and service. Missouri has proven that small facilities work, providing a much better return on taxpayers’ investment than large youth prisons do.
Just as important as size is the need for youth facilities to be regionally placed, when possible. One of the primary flaws of the current system in Virginia is the distance between incarcerated youth and their families and communities. Some juveniles may be as far as five hours from their family by car, making frequent visitation impractical and expensive — sometimes prohibitively so.
At a time when troubled young people need their families the most, they may see them rarely or not at all. Under these conditions, already tenuous family relationships fray, contributing to high rates of recidivism for the disconnected youth who are released.
In order for our “corrections” system to live up to its intent, we must not only hold youth accountable for their bad choices and poor behavior, but we must also build their capacity to behave differently. A system of corrections that incorporates therapeutic and behavioral counseling, education, job training, and family support is a winning formula for restorative justice, as well as the long-term reduction of crime and the strengthening of families and communities.
Virginia’s incarcerated youth are at a crossroads. With evidence-based, restorative interventions, they can prepare for an adulthood of purpose and productivity. Or they can become institutionalized, divested from their communities and families and prone to careers of criminal behavior. The General Assembly, too, is at a crossroads. It can continue to incarcerate youth in facilities that largely fail to rehabilitate them, or it can seize this chance to rebuild the Commonwealth’s youth prison system in meaningful ways.