The Big (Budget) Picture for Juvenile Justice in the District of Columbia

As budget season has gotten underway, I have received numerous questions about whether I believe that the Department of Youth Rehabilitation Services – which is seeking a $105M appropriation (a decrease of 1.5% from FY2013) – needs the money requested in the various line items. My response – perhaps not necessarily the response that people wanted to hear – is that I believed they were asking the wrong question. If our goal is to find cost-savings, then we should not be asking where we can cut DYRS’s budget and short-change the youth under DYRS supervision, but how we can prevent youth from coming into contact with DYRS in the first place. The answer to this question requires taking a bigger picture view of the budget, instead of focusing on the line items proposed by DYRS. Taking a broader view of the budget starts by recognizing three key characteristics of the District’s juvenile justice system.

First, we have to understand that DYRS is merely a part of the juvenile justice system in the District of Columbia. While many think that DYRS is responsible for supervising and rehabilitating all court-involved youth, the reality is that DYRS’s role is actually limited to housing detained youth prior to disposition and housing, supervising, and rehabilitating committed youth. In the juvenile justice world, we call DYRS’s role the “deep-end” of the system.

Second, we have to understand that DYRS plays this “deep-end” role in a juvenile justice system where control, financial responsibility, accountability, and data-collection are split between federal and local control. Indeed, as illustrated in the chart below and explained in more depth in our budget brief, youth involved in the delinquency system in the District often bounce between federal and local agencies within and between the various phases of the process. Commitment to DYRS is often the place court-involved youth land when other interventions have not worked.

Third, we have to understand that the District juvenile justice system as a whole currently serves as the safety net for far too many youth in our city. 95% of the youth who get arrested in the District live below the federal poverty line. Over 70% of those arrested live in under-resourced neighborhoods with failing schools, high unemployment, and low rates of educational attainment. Because of the circumstances into which many are born, our District youth have a razor-thin margin for error. As a result, every time a youth is suspended from school, is denied much-needed special education services, or slips through the cracks of the District’s behavioral health system, the youth becomes far more likely to end up in the juvenile justice system.

So what can we derive from this big picture look at the District’s juvenile justice system in terms of the budget process?

First, we must all recognize that so long as we rely on the juvenile justice system as a social safety net, it is going to cost the District a significant amount of money. This is especially true of the Department of Youth Rehabilitation Services because of the agency’s “deep-end” role in the system. High-need, high-risk youth require rigorous rehabilitative services, whether it be 24-hour around-the-clock surveillance and confinement or intensive, community-based wrap-around services. As Frederick Douglas stated, “It is easier to build strong children than to repair broken men.” It turns out that it is far cheaper to do so as well.

Second, as we started off this blog post by stating, the best way to save money on the deep-end of the system is to make sure a youth does not come into contact with the deep-end in the first place.

At the micro level (i.e. the juvenile justice system level), this requires increased coordination between federal and District agencies to create additional programs that successfully rehabilitate youth at the least restrictive level consistent with public safety. In particular, we would propose that additional investments be made to strengthen or create diversion programs at all stages of the juvenile justice system – diversion from arrest, diversion from prosecution, diversion from probation, and diversion from commitment. We would also propose a renewed commitment to decreasing our reliance on pre-disposition incarceration.

At a macro level (i.e. the full cradle-to-adulthood continuum of youth development), this means that “front-end” agencies not only need to be held more accountable, but also must be given the resources to invest in proven programs and strategies that ensure that our youth do not fall through the cracks. In particular, we would recommend that the District be as aggressive with school push-out as it has been with truancy going forward. Every student should be in school every day. We would also recommend a renewed commitment to providing special education and behavioral health services to youth in a timely and accessible manner. If youth do not have the wrap-around services that eliminate the barriers to success in the classroom, they will not be able to learn and engage.

Hopefully, in future budget cycles we can take a step back and look at the bigger picture of youth development in the District and conduct our budget oversight – as policy makers and advocates – with a eye trained more on how we can save money by investing wisely rather than merely through cutting or shifting spending.

Eddie Ferrer is the Co-Founder and Legal & Policy Director at DC Lawyers for Youth (DCLY), a nonprofit organization that seeks to improve the DC juvenile justice system by advocating for reforms that promote positive youth development, effective legal representation, and supportive relationships between the community and DC’s youth. For more information, please follow DCLY on Facebook and Twitter. Eddie can be contacted at eferrer@dcly.org.

Taking Care of Business (Sorta)

This week's blog post is the last in our series about the effects of last year's budget cuts (FY'11) on youth this summer. This week, our friends at Urban Alliance were kind enough to let their Chief of Staff, Sean Segal have a few spare moments to guest blog for us. Special thanks to Sean for gracing our blog with his writing and sharing his thoughts on this year’s Summer Youth Employment Program (SYEP)!

Year after year, SYEP has been plagued by cost-overruns, poor management, and a lack of youth development principles. While providing jobs for youth is a noble and needed goal for the District government, in the past, SYEP has hurt more than it has helped and done a disservice to District youth – often teaching youth that a “job” means getting paid whether or not you work.

With all this in mind, the changes implemented for the summer of 2011 are both encouraging and long overdue. To make the program more manageable, SYEP is being scaled down by 10,000 youth. Youth are being required to invest their own time and energy in a more detailed application process. All work supervisors have been required to attend training in youth development principles and DOES has talked about being stricter when it comes to placements so that youth have a real opportunity to gain valuable work experience. While there have still been some logistical problems – such as announcing a change in the maximum number of hours youth will be allowed to work just this week (even though it was legislated last year) – SYEP IS moving in the right direction.

With changes, however, always come unintended consequences. This year, 10,000 fewer youth will have the opportunity to participate in SYEP. With the youth unemployment rate currently over 50%, it is not as though young people can easily go seek out alternative employment opportunities. Further, when you consider the new steps youth had to take to register, and the fact that the program was full in less than 5 days, you can easily guess that the youth who did not register were the youth that had no one pushing them, did not have internet access, or had some other extenuating circumstance that prevented them from registering. These disengaged youth are the ones who need programs like SYEP the most. Making SYEP a smaller, more targeted program that offers real job skills is the right move. But this move MUST be paired with strategies, and with appropriate funding, to engage the disconnected youth population.

It would be hypocritical not to acknowledge that DOES implemented many of the recommendations that the provider community has given in the past few years. However, the aforementioned externalities of these decisions highlight the fact that despite DOES' attempts to improve services for youth, the larger District government has made no comprehensive plan for youth employment or youth engagement. When you combine the cuts to SYEP, with cuts to funding for youth programming city-wide, thousands of youth will be on the streets with nothing to do this summer.

The DC Council needs to recognize that youth programs are interconnected and are most effective when they are well coordinated. When funding is cut for programs like SYEP and agencies like CYITC (the Trust) and DCPS, earmarks to non-profits are eliminated, and human services funding takes an additional hit, you are cutting services to the same youth over and over again. When youth have nowhere to go this summer, and additionally have nothing to do, no one should be surprised.

Thanks to Sean AGAIN for sharing his thoughts with us! For more info on the numerous cuts to youth programs this summer please look over our previous blog posts. WAMU 88.5's Kavitha Cardoza also did a short piece on the crisis in which DCAYA's Executive Director was interviewed it is available here.

For more information on The Urban Alliance please visit their website.

Individuals interested in being involved with DCAYA's advocacy and policy work around youth workforce development may contact Anne Abbott: anne(at)dc-aya.org

The Heat Goes Up and the Funding Goes Down

Our first two posts centered on the reasons cutting funds for summer school would have such a negative impact on DC’s student population. However, DC summer school has never been funded at a level that would allow it to accommodate anything more than students who needed credit recovery. In short, summer school is meant to prop up students who are already failing or in need of remediation. There is no space for students seeking enrichment, or anything above basic credit recovery.

The Children and Youth Investment Trust Corporation (often simply referred to as the “Trust”) in contrast, funds year-round after school activities, as well as, summer enrichment activities for thousands of DC’s children and youth every year. In FY’10 the “Trust” had an operating budget of 10.6 million that they used to serve approximately 3,300 that summer. However, after last fall’s emergency budget gap closing the “Trust” was left with a total budget of just 4.6 million for FY’11.

The result? For this summer the “Trust” received 6 million dollars worth of requests for funding, but only has 1 million to grant out.

Programs like Beacon House, Asian American LEAD and Kid Power, all long time Trust grantees, will be forced to cut back. Beacon House will serve 30 fewer children ages 5-13 in their main camp and will be unable to employ older youth as junior counselors. In previous years the junior counselor program gave up to 50 older youth viable employment opportunities. Kid Power will have to reduce its elementary summer camp slots from 100 to 35 and Asian American LEAD will be unable to provide services to one of its age brackets. This summer applicants for Trust funds were only allowed to apply for grants in one age range. This means programs that aim to serve children and youth across the age spectrum and provide continuous services as children and youth grow up cannot do so.

Now that FY'12 Budget Hearings have wrapped up, we can only wait and see if the "Trust" will be funded at a level that allows for higher levels of programming next year. This summer, however, will be a tough one. The examples we gave are just a few of the MANY programs that have had to cut back as a result of heavy reductions to the Trust's operating budget. There are programs out there that,thought they have received funds for summer programming in years past will not receive any this year and may not be able to offer services at all.

The lack of summer school opportunities coupled with large budget cuts to the "Trust" force a situation on DC's children and youth that leaves many of them without positive opportunities for summer learning and enrichment. Children and youth from economically disadvantaged families are disproportionately affected by this occurrence because without programs like those funded by the "Trust", parents and guardians will likely not be able to afford to send their children to full-cost camps or enrichment opportunities. The summer learning loss that occurs because of this will be devastating to the long term academic progress and success of these young people.

While drastically changing the government's agenda about funding youth programs for this summer is probably not a tenable goal, there is still time for parents and youth to tell members of the DC Council that summer programming is critically important. DCAYA will be doing a Walk-Around to various Council Member's offices on Monday May 23, 2011 at 3:30pm in the John A. Wilson Building to speak with Council Members and their staff about these issues. If you are interested in participating please contact DCAYA Policy Analyst Maggie Riden by either phone or email. Her contact information is below.

This is one of the last opportunities advocates and concerned community members will have to speak with decision makers before they vote on the budget late next week. Make sure your voice is heard.

Maggie Riden

email: maggie(at)dc-aya.org phone: 202.587.0616 (ext. 36)

For more information on Trust programs that are operating for Summer 2011 click here.

For more information on other summer programs offered by DPR, MPD or other government agencies click here.

District Youth Lose in FY'12 Budget

If you've been paying any attention to DCAYA (or really District politics in general) for the last week or so, you are probably already well versed on the pros and cons of Mayor Gray's FY'12 Budget that dropped last Friday. Mayor Gray's Budget included a number features that came as somewhat of a surprise to Councilmembers and DC's advocate community alike, but also included a number of cuts to the human services and education clusters that unfortunately did not come as a surprise.

Key youth programs that will have substantially less funding in FY'12 than FY'11 include:

Education Cluster- DCPS

-DCPS Office of OST- 1 million in proposed cuts

-DCPS Summer School-9 million in proposed cuts

-DCPS Wrap-Around Services Provision-9.5 million in proposed cuts

-Office of Youth Engagement-3.7 million in proposed cuts

Youth Workforce Development (DOES)

-Year Round Programs for In- and Out-of School Youth faces a cut of $611,000 (federal funds)

-Summer Youth Employment Program took 4.1 million in proposed cuts

Youth Homelessness

-The Homeless Services Continuum and Permanent Supportive Housing has a total proposed cut of $224,000

-Strong Families funding has a proposed cut of $353,000

Children and Youth Investment Trust Corporation (CYTIC)

Has received a proposed cut of $1,000,000 from the FY’11 level of $4.6 million

General Proposed Human Service Cluster Cuts

-DHS Teen Pregnancy Services remains unfunded

-$500,000 cut from Office of Youth Empowerment

Human services programs only account for 26% of the locally funded budget, yet this cluster sustained a whopping 58% reduction via the proposed budget cuts. Youth programming and more specifically programming for vulnerable youth populations fared especially badly in this year's budget and these cuts come at a time when DC's children and youth need services and programs the most.

While there is still plenty of budget season left to advocate on behalf of sustained funding, now that the Mayor's Budget is out it will be up to the Council to ensure that the programs that mean the most to the city are the ones that remain intact. As we move forward, DCAYA will be keeping you up to date and informed on every opportunity for you and the children, youth and families you serve to have your voices heard.

Youth-Friendly Focus Groups

Over the past few days DCAYA has facilitated a number of focus groups with young people who utilize the various programs that our member organizations provide. As a strong coalition of youth service providers, we are incredibly fortunate to be able to draw on the thoughts and opinions of a varied and diverse set of the young people that our members serve.

Our focus groups have ranged in size, but most of them have been somewhere between 15 and 20 teenagers and young adults. For this round of focus groups, DCAYA is seeking youth input on is the issue of disconnected youth in DC. (Disconnected youth are youth that are currently not involved or “connected” to any sort of educational, job training, or employment outlet).

What DCAYA wants to know is what do YOUTH think about the causes of the high-school dropout crisis? Or the reasons behind why so many young people in DC are currently unemployed? How do young people that are connected to education or job training programs find those programs and what keeps them enrolled?

The youth in these focus groups have impressed us, both in their ability to speak openly about some of the dire situations they have faced (and are largely still facing) and in their willingness to come up with creative, yet viable solutions to the issues they navigate on a daily basis.

What we’ve heard in these focus groups is that young people, by and large, believe in the power of effective and positive youth programming in combating the above issues. Many of these youth admitted that they came to their respective organizations, as a sort of last resort, that they either had “nothing better to do” or were referred to their programs by a government system of care (DYRS, CFSA etc.) A number of our focus group respondents reported that they felt like nobody at their schools cared about them. And furthermore they postulated that young people who didn’t have good support systems at home would be even more negatively affected by not having good relationships with their teachers or school’s staff.

This news is probably not surprising and it is certainly not encouraging. However, the youth who are served by these programs are overwhelmingly committed to them and we’ve heard over and over (and over) again that without these programs, DC’s problems of high youth unemployment and low educational attainment would only spiral further out of control. Youth rely on community based programming once they’ve already fallen through the cracks and are at a high risk of having no job skills and/or a limited education. By offering alternative pathways to something like a high school diploma or GED, organizations like Sasha Bruce, LAYC, and Covenant House raise young people back up. They literally catch them when they fall.

Another response we’ve heard across the board is that these programs recruit young people because of an obvious need in their communities, but that youth stay in these programs because of the incredible and dedicated staff that the non-profit community chooses to employ.

High-quality programming is an indispensable tool in the positive youth development toolbox and DCAYA cannot stress enough the need for these programs to stay intact in light of the current budget crisis. Of course, we didn’t need to run focus groups to realize the strength of these programs, but hearing the words straight out of the horse’s mouth is (as always) the most convincing argument you will ever hear.