By: Rev. Dr. C. Vernon Mason
In a period of extreme economic challenges, New York State taxpayers are paying $200,000 annually to house a juvenile in a residential center! To add insult to economic injury, this exorbitant cost has proven to have limited benefit to the juveniles or the community. In the April 8, 2008, issue of New York Non-Profit Press, in an article titled, “Point of View: Transforming Our Juvenile Justice System,” Gladys Carrion, Esq., New York State Office of Children and Family Services Commissioner, writes:
“The time has come to fix the New York State’s juvenile justice system. Advocates have pleaded for changes to the system for a long time ... What I have found were troubled children — overwhelming poor, mostly African-American and Latinos — housed hundred of miles from their families and neighborhoods, and far from hope ... [Y]oung people have the ability to change their behavior. That means providing them intervention and support. This includes an education, job training, and mental health and substance abuse services to support their rehabilitation and return them to the community. It is after all, our responsibility to prepare them, for a successful transition into adulthood.
[I]t is spending hundreds of millions of dollars on a system that does not work. A system that was founded on the idea that if the state took these children away from their families and the neighborhoods where they got into trouble, then something magical would happen to turn their lives around.
As many as 80 percent of the children who enter the system come back to us or go to prison within three years. That’s grossly unacceptable in any system, especially compared to alternative community-based programs that have 30 percent recidivism rate ... [T]he issue of race in the current system cannot be ignored. Only 44 percent of the children in New York State are African-American or Latino, yet they represent 86 percent of the youth in state custody.
Instead of continuing to pour money into this system [we propose] investing tax dollars in programs that better prevent youth crime, including identifying and helping these children before they come into the system — at a fraction of the current cost.
This includes supporting a community-based system where these children can maintain and strengthen connections with their families and the significant adults in their lives ....The transformation of New York’s juvenile justice system had been a long time coming. At stake is nothing less than the health and future of our most troubled children and their families.”
The current system of juvenile justice does not insure public safety since 80 percent of the youth who enter the system recidivate. Moreover, with the severe strain on the New York State budget, what economic sense does it make to spend $200,000 annually to house a single youth in a residential center? From a cost/benefit perspective, there needs to be a shift in public policy regarding at-risk youth from incarceration to prevention.
In 1999, with support from the New York State Office of Children and Family Services, Ford Foundation, and New York Theological Seminary, the Fund for Community Leadership Development, Inc, a 501 c (3) non-profit organization, launched Project Uth Turn (pronounced Youth Turn). Uth Turn is an Alternative to Detention (ATD) Program that collaborates with churches, criminal justice partners and service agencies. Our mission is to provide early intervention to a young urban population, male and female, from ages 13 to 21. We work with street youth, gang members, and young people with pending or prior conflicts with the law by providing: case management, counseling and mentoring, leadership training, educational and job preparation, as well as employment and social service referrals. Reverend Karim Camara, Executive Pastor at the First Baptist Church of Crown Heights in Brooklyn and member of the New York Legislature representing the 43rd Assembly District, recollects his experience with Uth Turn as a former New York Theological Seminary Intern:
“As a New York Theological Seminary intern, I was assigned to the First Baptist Church of Crown Heights. I have since become the first and only Executive Pastor in the church’s history, and currently also serve as a Member of the New York State Legislature representing the 43rd Assembly District. I mention my two current positions because my philosophy of ministry and foundation of governing were both shaped in the Uth Turn program that we started in the Albany Projects in Crown Heights, Brooklyn. It was there that I learned the power of direct intervention and the necessity to give as many youth as possible the one thing that they need the most, yet find so hard to find: high expectations. During times of fiscal crisis, youth programs often become convenient victims of federal, state, and municipal budget cuts. The rationale often being clearly articulated is that we can not afford the costs. Yet what many people who live in and work with urban communities are realizing is, not giving adequate resources to disconnected youth is helping to sustain the cradle to prison to coffin pipeline, and that is really the cost that we can no longer bear.”
Since 1999, Uth Turn has served several thousand young people and has a 93 percent success rate with court-mandated youth, and the cost per Uth Turn participant is $2.53 per day. The annual cost for a Uth Turn participant is approximately $954, a drastic cost-reduction compared to the $200,000 needed annually to house a juvenile in a state detention facility.
Rev. Dr. C. Vernon Mason is an Ordained Baptist Minister, a graduate of New York Theological Seminary, and is the Chief Executive Officer for the Fund for Community Leadership Development, Inc.
