|
|
| Budget Cuts Eroding Progress in Juvenile Justice |
| By nytimes.com |
| Published: 07/13/2009 |
|
Budget Cuts Eroding Progress in Juvenile Justice By Peter S. Goodman Published: July 10, 2009 COLUMBIA, S.C. — Her first night inside the razor wire at the state juvenile prison came as a 14-year-old in the mid-1970s, when she was locked up for running away from home. Her next experience came the following decade, when she began work as a correctional officer. As Velvet McGowan tells it, care was a word not then in the lexicon of the South Carolina Department of Juvenile Justice. Teenagers were warehoused like problematic inventory, with as many as 80 crammed into spaces built for 40. Social services were meager. Violent outbreaks occurred daily. Two decades later, Ms. McGowan oversees the girls’ prison, where she focuses on turning around troubled lives. New programs have expanded counseling and education, cutting the repeat offender rate. New facilities have extricated the state from a federal lawsuit brought in response to once appalling conditions. But what South Carolina built over many years in eradicating its shameful past is being undermined by the deep economic recession. In the last year, the state has cut the financing for its juvenile justice system by one-fifth, forcing 285 layoffs and the closure of several facilities, including five group homes that focused on counseling. The department has scrapped a program that helped paroled youngsters find jobs, unleashing them into a state with 11.6 percent unemployment. It has canceled state financing for 40 after-school centers for teenagers, where they get help with their homework, receive mentoring and take part in activities during hours when children are most likely to stray into trouble. It has trimmed the ranks of social workers to 20, from 36. “I’m scared,” said Ms. McGowan, dabbing tears with a tissue. “I don’t want to relive the ’80s through a budget cut.” Across the country, depleted coffers have prompted state and local officials to pare programs intended as alternatives to the mere incarceration of juvenile lawbreakers. In Tennessee, state legislators voted last month to close a wilderness activity camp. In Louisiana, a boot camp aimed at deterring young people from crime has been shut down. In California, alternative facilities focused on counseling are threatened from San Jose to Sacramento. For South Carolina, cuts are particularly unsettling given its history. For a dozen years ending in 2003, a federal judge supervised the department under the settlement of a class-action lawsuit arising from overcrowded prison conditions. Since then, the system has stopped treating youthful offenders as hardened convicts, instead confronting them as social problems through new programs that attack the underlying causes of juvenile crime — like dysfunctional homes, drug abuse and difficulties in school. The department’s director, William R. Byars Jr., a former family court justice, has overseen many of the changes. In his days on the bench, he fretted over the condition of the juvenile justice system, regretfully sending children to the prison then known as “Little Vietnam.” “It was a dangerous place,” Judge Byars said. “Kids were in here with mental deficiencies. You had kids in here for status offenses, for cutting school or running away. They were all mixed together, because our system was not designed to ask, ‘What is the best situation for this child?’ ” Under Judge Byars’s direction, the department has focused on drastically decreasing the numbers of young people held inside the razor wire at the prison, shipping hundreds out to wilderness camps and group homes. The number held at the prison has dropped to fewer than 400, from more than 1,000 in the mid-1990s, while the number held in alternative settings has increased by a similar magnitude. Read More. |
MARKETPLACE search vendors | advanced search
IN CASE YOU MISSED IT
|
Comments:
No comments have been posted for this article.
Login to let us know what you think