EDUCATE - Juvenile Crime Prevention Council Funding

Ask your state legislators to restore to recurring funding $23 million to the Juvenile Crime Prevention Councils (JCPCs) and invest an additional $8 million in these programs.

Talking points:

• Funding distributed in Buncombe County through the Juvenile Crime Prevention Councils (JCPC) changes youth’s lives and reduces delinquent behavior and recidivism.
• Prevention programs reduce the need for sentencing youth to costly detention centers.
• 525 at-risk and adjudicated youth were served by JCPC-funded programs in Buncombe County during the 2006-07 school year. Some of the nonprofits that receive JCPC funding also receive United Way funding; all programs leverage additional funding and resources to provide services.
• State funding for JCPC programming has not kept up with inflation or increased need in Buncombe County. Buncombe County receives about $500,000 a year and that money leverages additional funds from local government and private organizations. However, demand for these JCPC funds exceeds the existing resources. Additional funds would allow expanding valuable services in our community.
• JCPC programs’ success is well-documented statewide and funding is needed immediately to ensure that community programs can operate uninterrupted into the new state fiscal year (begins July 1, 2008).
• Investing additional dollars in the JCPCs will help serve a growing juvenile population in North Carolina. Dollars spent on JCPCs prevent future state spending on expensive detention facilities, jails, and prisons. It is less expensive to pay for prevention.

The following are excerpts from the “Department of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Juvenile Crime Prevention Council Continuation Review,” February 1, 2008.

What is a Juvenile Crime Prevention Council?

Juvenile Crime Prevention Councils (JCPCs) are the foundation for North Carolina’s comprehensive strategy to prevent and reduce juvenile delinquency and crime. JCPCs are responsible for planning and developing strategies to address and prevent juvenile delinquency at the county level in partnership with the State so that there is coordination with statewide resources, priorities, and objectives.

JCPC membership composition consists of nineteen specific members (local leaders, agency directors - or their designees, and professionals who work with youth and families in various capacities) and up to seven members of the public who are appointed to serve by the County Board of Commissioners.[1]

Where does a JCPC’s money come from?

Since juvenile justice reform, an allocation of JCPC funding has been granted by the General Assembly to the Department of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention. This allocation in turn is distributed to each county to fund local grants which address the needs of juvenile delinquents and their families and youth most likely to become delinquent. Grants provide services which are not otherwise available or accessible in each individual county.

From 1998 to 2007, the statewide youth population ages 10-17 increased 19 percent, while JCPC funding statewide has been essentially flat. During this nine-year period, JCPC funding has averaged around $22.4 million. Although the state funding allocation has fluctuated from $21.7 million in FY 1999-2000 to a high of $23 million in FY 2004-2005, JCPC funding has essentially remained stagnant. During this same time span, however, youth development center population commitments have decreased by approximately 70% since the formation of the Department.[2]

How are decisions about local funding made by a JCPC?

Knowledge about what is needed comes from the JCPC’s planning process in each county. Each county JCPC conducts an assessment of local resources and a local Risk and Needs Assessment. The Department provides each JCPC with juvenile justice data specific to each individual county. The Department, through the assigned area consultant, facilitates a review and discussion of the juvenile justice data. JCPC members add local insight with other sources of local information such as academic achievement, substance abuse, mental health, teen pregnancy, and local crime reports. Through this process, the JCPC determines the conditions and circumstances - risk factors - within the county which increase the likelihood for juveniles to become delinquent or engage in repeated delinquent acts. The JCPC then determines the services and interventions which are needed to negate or off-set the effects of those risk factors.

Needed services which are not otherwise available or accessible in the community are then prioritized. Proposals to provide these services are then solicited through a Request for Proposals and a competitive grant process.[3]

JCPC-funded programs save the state money.

To illustrate, JCPC programs annually admit over 24,000 at-risk and adjudicated youth, providing them with programs and interventions that allow them to be successfully maintained in the community at an average cost of $933 per youth as opposed to being committed to a youth development center at an annual cost of $95,720 per youth. The savings in this comparison is obvious. For every 1 percent of youth served successfully in JCPC funded community-based programs and kept out of youth development centers, the cost saved in youth development center expenditures alone is approximately equal to the total current JCPC allocation of $22.6 million.[4]

What would happen if JCPCs disappear?

Without JCPC grant program services, according to 86 percent of Law Enforcement and 91 percent of School Administrator respondents in the JCPC Membership Survey, at-risk and adjudicated youth are significantly more likely to commit more juvenile offenses, become school dropouts, become increasingly truant, and be more likely to get suspended from school. In addition, 81 percent of Mental Health and 85 percent of Social Services Director respondents believe that discontinuing JCPC funding will result in increased gang activity, increased use of inpatient services, increased delay in acquiring psychological assessments, increases in consumer costs for DSS services and an increase in DSS residential placements, and have a negative effect on the juvenile sex offender population.[5]