Develop Alternatives to Detention

Effective alternatives to detention ensure that youth are placed in detention options based on the risk they pose to the community, with the most serious youth offenders appropriately supervised in secure settings.  Youth who do not require secure care can be supervised in less costly community-based programs and avoid being detained with violent offenders in settings that may lead them to delinquency.  In addition to enabling matching youth to detention options that fit their risk and needs, alternatives to detention help reduce facility overcrowding and the dangerous conditions it produces. Some of the strategies for removing barriers to employment for ex-offenders include:

• Fund evidence-based programs. Research has shown that community-based programs are more effective—and more cost-effective—than traditional detention in reducing recidivism and improving community adjustment.  Mississippi’s Juvenile Justice Reform Act included funding for community-based incarceration alternatives.  New York state and New York City jointly established the NYC alternative-to-detention pilot program to provide assessment, case management, supervision and community-based treatment to mentally ill youth at risk of detention.  New York State has invested in over 100 programs aimed at reducing the reliance on pretrial detention and unnecessary incarceration.[1]  Illinois piloted a comprehensive community-based services program resulting in an $11 million savings and improved public safety. Strategies employed across the pilot sites included Functional Family Therapy and Multisystemic Therapy.[2]

• Require home and community supervision options. To reduce the use of secure detention, limit costs to the juvenile justice system, minimize the chances that youth are involved in ongoing delinquent behavior and help keep youth connected to their communities, state policymakers should require that home and community supervision options be considered.  Home detention and supervision programs have proven to be cost-effective, efficient alternatives to secure detention; it is not unusual for 90 percent to 95 percent of youth assigned to a home detention program to make all their court hearings while remaining arrest-free. Utah’s legislatively mandated Division of Juvenile Justice Services administer a continuum of secure and non-secure programs for all youth offenders, including home confinement and electronic monitoring.[3]

• Promote short-term crisis placements. Short-term crisis placements aim to stabilize a youth’s personal and/or family situation and connect the youth with community-based intervention services, while avoiding detention. Tennessee juvenile code allows counties to use state funds for court improvement or detention alternatives to provide options for short-term crisis placement.

• Provide non-residential supervision and service centers. Reporting centers and service centers allow for intensive daily supervision of pre-adjudicated youth with the benefits of home and community supervision and without the restrictive nature and high cost of residential settings.  Colorado’s statutes provide for the use of reporting centers as part of the case planning for pre-adjudicated youth.