Reductions in Youth Aids Come at the Wrong Time

The Youth Aids funding concept was established in 1980 as a way to both control state spending for juvenile correctional services and incentivize counties to develop alternatives to sending delinquent youth to the state juvenile system. Youth Aids funds are apportioned to counties based on a formula that is generally meant to reflect their need for support in dealing with delinquent youth, and if/when a youth is placed in the state juvenile correctional system by a circuit court that county pays a daily rate for the services provided (institutional care or aftercare supervision and services).

Over the years, counties have utilized these funds to pay not only for state juvenile correctional costs but also to help support local delinquency prevention, intervention, and placement programs. Although originally intended to cover most costs associated with delinquency services, Youth Aids funds now support only about one-half of all costs incurred by counties in this area.

The 2011-13 biennial budget reduces by $9.8 million the amount of funds in Youth Aids that can be distributed to counties for juvenile delinquency related services. This reduction comes on top of years in which the increase in Youth Aids funds has not kept pace with increase in the daily rates charged for services – and it may threaten the progress that has been made at the county level to develop cost-effective, community-based programs to work with youthful offenders. As juvenile arrests have declined over the last 10 years, there has been an even larger decline in the number of youth placed in juvenile correctional institutions – with no evidence of an increase in crime – supporting the argument that counties have been successful in redirecting youthful offenders.

Many counties are well on their way in implementing better assessments of youth referred, faster and more appropriate ways of responding to low level offenders, implementing proven cognitive-behavioral strategies to teach youth new pro-social skills, and developing community based supervision programs that help ensure community safety.

These are exactly the kinds of things that Youth Aids funding is needed for. As counties struggle to balance their budgets due to reductions in their own general purpose revenues, these Youth Aids reductions may force counties to eliminate prevention, early intervention, and alternative programs that are demonstrating success in our communities and could have the negative effect of putting us back on a path that relies on costly institutional care for delinquent youth.

We will be watching to see how counties meet this challenge for the rest of this year and as they put together their 2012 budgets. While there remains room for moving toward more effective, evidence-based, practice this reduction imperils the progress that has already been made.

Jim Moeser

Tomorrow—Way #24: Tax Increases on Low-Income Families

About the series: “31 Ways in 31 Days” is a series of posts to the WCCF blog exploring the recently-passed biennial budget’s impact on children and families in Wisconsin. Each day in July, we are posting a description of one way the budget will affect kids and families, with an eye toward what should be done going forward to help improve outcomes and move us closer to the goal of making Wisconsin a place where every child has the opportunity to grow up, learn, and thrive in a safe, healthy, economically secure home and community.