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Youths committed to the Alabama Department of Youth Services wait in line for physical training at a juvenile boot camp in Prattville, Ala., in this 2005 file photo. A recent study indicates that Alabama has been among the nation's leaders in shifting juveniles from state-run detention facilities to home- and community-based alternatives. (AP file photo)
Alabama has one of the nation's cheapest juvenile confinement systems and has been at the forefront of a national trend toward shifting youth offenders to home- and community-based alternatives, according to a report released this week.
The Justice Policy Institute, a nonprofit organization committed to criminal justice reform, examined the juvenile justice systems in 45 states plus the District of Columbia and documented costs and trends in a report called "Sticker Shock."
The study indicated that Alabama spends $159 a day, or $58,035 a year, to lock up a juvenile offender at its highest-cost confinement option. Only Florida and Louisiana spend less money. It is more than 21/2 times less than the $148,767 annual national average. The per capita cost is six figures in many states. New York has the most expensive program at a cost of the $352,663 per child per year.
The study documents a nationwide trend in reducing reliance on incarceration and singles out Alabama among a group of states that has made great strides in recent years. It urges officials in those states to build on those efforts.
"The funding streams established in Alabama, California, Ohio, New York State and Texas that built a continuum outside of state-run facilities are a
starting point, but they (are) only a beginning," the report states.
The study calculates that beyond the direct costs of confining youths, the overall impact of the failed juvenile justice policies - from lost future wages of incarcerated youth to reduced tax collections to greater Medicaid and Medicare spending - the collateral costs run anywhere from $7.9 billion to $21.47 billion a year.
"It's crazy not to invest early in the things we know work," said, Marc Schindler, the executive director of the Justice Policy Institute.
In Alabama, the changing philosophy on youth incarceration comes from a package of juvenile justice reforms passed by the state Legislature in 2008. The law prohibited judges from sending youths who had not committed crimes - such as runaways - to juvenile detention facilities. The Department of Youth Services also has spent millions of dollars since then on grants to set up alternative programs in counties throughout the state.
David Rogers, the deputy director of administration for the department, said the reorganization came at a time when the agency was facing budget cuts.
"We took that opportunity to set up some grants in the local communities," he said. "We feel like the best treatment comes from within the community."
More 'tools in the arsenal'
The department spends $10 million a year on grants for 89 programs operating in 47 of the state's 67 counties. They have had an impact. Data through fiscal year 2013, the last year for which statistics are available, show that the number of youths confined at a state-run detention facility has dropped every single year since fiscal year 2006.
The total population declined from an all-time high of 3,340 that year to 1,485 in fiscal year 2013 - a 55.5 percent drop. That outpaces the national average, where youth incarceration fell by 45 percent between 2001 and 2011.
The success stands in stark contrast to the adult prison system, which has struggled to reduce overcrowding that has brushed up against 200 percent of the system's designed capacity in recent years.
Rogers said the Department of Youth Services came up with the $10 million by reducing staff. He said it has saved money in the ensuing years because community-based programs are far less expensive than housing youths around the clock in juvenile prisons.
"The main savings comes from within the facilities because we have fewer kids and we don't need as much staff," he said.
Baldwin County Circuit Judge Carmen Bosch, who presides over family court, said she has many more options than she did when she took office in 2003. Back then, she said, her only choices for juvenile offenders were probation and full-scale lock-ups like the Mount Meigs Complex.
At one point, Bosch said, she had the second-highest commitment rate of any judge in the state. "I was one of the first judges they wanted to train," she said.
A $309,000 annual grant from that $10 million pot pays for a contract with Youth Advocate Program, which assigns mentors to work with troubled teens and their families. It is limited to youths who otherwise would be incarcerated at a state-run facility. They can avoid incarceration and remain at home if they successfully complete the program as a condition of probation.
In 2007, the Baldwin County Commission launched the Girls Wilderness Center in northern Baldwin County. The facility, known as Camp Horizon, shifted to boys only in 2012 and added back girls with a 16-bed facility that opened in October. It now serves between 110 and 120 teens.
A program called Chemical Abuse Prevention offers drug counseling to youth offenders before they go to court.
"We have a lot more tools in the arsenal than when I first took the bench 12 years ago," Bosch said.
Rodney Criswell, the chief juvenile probation officer in Baldwin County, said 43 teenagers in fiscal year 2013 spent anywhere from a day to 10 months in the YAP program, with an average length of 521/2 months. Ten of them failed and had to be confined in a state facility, he said.
Criswell said the advocates who work for the program intervene in family disputes and help defuse problems. Bosch said they sometimes give rides to the youths or their family members so they can attend counseling or treatment sessions. In some cases, she said, they have even bought clothes and done laundry so that the teens have clean clothes to wear.
The upshot, according to officials, is that the YAP initiative has saved a great deal of money.
"Since we've had YAP, it's saved the state millions," he said.
Alabama a national model
Advocates on the state and national levels have praised the progress Alabama has made in reforming its juvenile justice system.
"Alabama was in some ways a leader in looking to hold youths accountable in their communities," said Sarah Bryer, director of the National Juvenile Justice Network.
The residents and faculty at the Girls Wilderness Center in north Baldwin County play an ice breaker game shorter after the facility opened in 2007. Now known as Camp Horizon, the program serves boys and girls and is one of several alternatives to confinement available to Baldwin County family court judges. (AL.com file photo)
Ebony Howard, the interim managing attorney for children at risk/Montgomery at the Southern Poverty Law Center, agreed.
"Alabama's made great strides coming up with community-based alternatives for kids, and that's obviously something we applaud," she said.
Still, Howard said, the state ought to go further in breaking the "pipeline from the schoolhouse to the jailhouse." She noted that not every county has alternatives to incarceration. And she criticized a decision by the state to rebuild a girls juvenile facility in Chalkville that was destroyed by a tornado in January 2012.
On the same day that storm struck, the Southern Poverty Law Center, the Center for Public Responsibility and the Alabama Disability Advocacy Program put out a report calling for the facility to be closed. It had had a history of sexual abuse, which prompted the state to agree to pay $12.5 million in 2007 to settle a lawsuit.
"Alabama needs to remember the strides it has made and realize that children do not need to be in cages," Howard said.
Rogers said the department would like to expand its community grants, but he said money is limited.
Howard said it is vital to prioritize that spending.
"I would say we should continue to invest in these alternatives," she said. "We spend a lot of money on a lot of different things but don't always spend it on the most important things, and that's our children."