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| Ore. Juvenile Prison Closures' Impact Not Severe |
| By Associated Press |
| Published: 07/28/2003 |
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When the state closed four of its juvenile state prisons, the prediction was that freeing 234 of Oregon's most prolific young criminals would spur a crime spree. That hasn't happened. In 3 1/2 months since their release, only 13 have returned to prison, accused of new crimes that ranged from a robbery to eight property crimes, along with four minor assaults. Those return rates are higher than for juvenile parolees in general, but not unduly alarming, juvenile officials said. 'It's a hard thing for people to understand. It's not as though we're having looters driving down (the street) holding people up,' said Lane County Juvenile Court Judge Kip Leonard. When the prisons closed, high-risk offenders came home. In many cases, although they remained out of jail, they were assigned to spots in local reform programs. That meant they bumped other potentially high-risk offenders out of treatment. State lawmakers, facing a drop of almost $3 billion in state revenue, trimmed more than $18 million from programs dealing with juvenile crime in the final months of the budget cycle that ended July 1. 'The long-term cost to these short-term savings are real. It's very difficult to convey that in a three-month snapshot (of juvenile crime rates),' said Steven Harder, juvenile parole supervisor for Lane County. 'Putting kids on the street when they're not ready is very costly in the long run. They come back into the system. They get into the adult system,' Harder said. |
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