Financial cutbacks: causes, effects, and organizational responses

Funding Juvenile Justice Programs

Juvenile Justice Budget Cuts

The State of Funding for Juvenile Justice Programs

States facing budget crises have been forced to cut back on a variety of social programs, including those designed to help juvenile offenders get the help they need to become positive contributors to society. A quick search on the internet for news stories about cuts at the state level reveals widespread concern about what impact this trend will have on future society. At the federal level, the Obama administration has proposed a cut in federally-funded youth mentoring program and increases for prevention programs (Youth Today, 2012). This essay will examine whether leaving juvenile offender to fend for themselves is good public policy.

Juvenile Offender Program Effectiveness

A 2009 statistical analysis of all studies examining the effectiveness of juvenile justice programs found that overall; recidivism is reduced by a statistically significant 6% (Lipsey, Howell, Kelly, Chapman, and Carver, 2010). The programs that produced the greatest improvement tended to be focused on high risk offenders and involved therapeutic interventions rather than discipline and deterrence. Therapeutic interventions, such as counseling, skill building, and other related services, reduced recidivism by 10 to 13%.

Based on the analysis by Lipsey and colleagues (2010), the juvenile justice programs targeting the worst offenders provide the greatest return on investment. Such programs should be continued or even expanded when possible. Finding the funds to keep these programs going is difficult in the current fiscal climate, but Lipsey and colleagues suggest that programs for offenders with a low-risk of reoffending could be reduced or cut, thereby providing additional dollars for high risk offenders.

Kansas Juvenile Justice Programs

Kansas Governor Brownback ordered all state agencies to trim 10% from their budgets, including the Kansas Juvenile Justice Authority (JJA) (Marso, 2012). This budgeting target would eliminate another $5.1 million from programs intended to prevent and treat juvenile behavioral problems that would otherwise lead to incarceration. The JJA budget has been trimmed repeatedly over the years and the most recent cut will probably eliminate prevention programs completely in some Kansas municipalities.

Kansas offers offenders a number of intervention programs. Within the state juvenile correctional facilities, residents may have access to a variety of services including psychiatric assessment and treatment, drug and alcohol rehabilitation, anger management, cognitive-behavioral training, violent offender and sex offender groups, living skills training, parenting classes, and academic classes (JJA, 2013). There are two state juvenile correctional facilities that are gender-specific, but the Larned Juvenile Correctional Facility is not.