The Real Cost of Prisons Weblog

"Our state's duty to our wayward children is when they come into care, they leave better off," said Sue Bell Cobb, an Alabama Court of Criminal Appeals judge and a former juvenile judge. She spoke at a State House news conference releasing the youth recidivism study, which she said "now proves that Alabama fails in this critical duty 70 percent of the time."

Teens return to the system most often for minor failings such as violating probation or curfew, called "aftercare violations," the study showed. Other offenses that land teens back in court include domestic violence, drug and alcohol use and resisting arrest. A small fraction commit robberies or sexual offenses once released, the study found.

Demographer Donald Bogie of Auburn University Montgomery conducted the study for the Children First Foundation and Voices for Alabama's Children, Montgomery-based child-advocacy groups.

He tracked about 5,000 Alabama youths committed to DYS-run or -funded lockups, boot camps and treatment centers who were released during 2001 and 2002. Researchers tracked the youths until October 2004.

Some returned to DYS programs. Others entered state prison. Only 30 percent stayed out of trouble.

Children First officials said they have asked to work alongside DYS to review the department's programs. Such a request was written into this year's appropriations bill, then deleted at the request of Rep. Locy Baker, D-Abbeville, a DYS board member, said Graham Champion, chairman of Children First Foundation.

"What is it that they are so afraid of that they don't want oversight from the group that protects their funding?" Champion asked.

Difficult backgrounds:

J. Walter Wood Jr., executive director of DYS, issued a statement saying the agency welcomes efforts of the two groups and will work with them, state agencies and the Legislature to serve the juveniles.

He said many of the youth sent to DYS come "from backgrounds that often include poverty, broken homes, and alcohol and drug abuse, and all too often go home from DYS programs to this same environment with little or no aftercare supervision."

DYS provides education, drug treatment, anger management and other counseling activities, Wood said.

Children First has helped distribute millions of dollars that Alabama receives from the national tobacco settlement. When tobacco funds started coming in, the advocacy group pushed for the creation of novel programs with the new dollars. Instead, DYS has used its millions to pay for the same juvenile lockups it's always used, which the new study shows don't work, Champion said.

DYS's share of tobacco money has ballooned from $1.25 million in 2000 to $11.8 million this year.

Some of the highest recidivism rates occurred at DYS-run juvenile prisons. After being sent to Birmingham's Vacca campus, 77 percent of youths returned to the system. At Mount Meigs outside Montgomery, the rate was 73 percent.

The study also looked at return rates for delinquents sent to private contractors paid by the state. The Bridge Male Adventure Treatment program, a boot camp type of facility, posted the highest recidivism among private programs at 73 percent.

The study also found that children sent to DYS at ages 11 and 12 were the most likely to return. Older children were less likely, possibly because of maturity, researchers said.

Officials speculated that youngsters sent off for minor problems were becoming more hardened at juvenile prisons.

"Do you really want to lock up an 11- or 12-year-old because they weren't going to school?" Champion asked. "They become far more street smart, just because of the nature of self-preservation. They become tougher and harder, and in some respects they become far bolder because they've had to defend themselves in a situation that's not Sunday School."

Family counseling:

Champion and Cobb emphasized that the release of the study was not aimed at embarrassing DYS, but the first step in using a research-based approach to reforming a broken system.

They called for an increase in treatment programs that keep families together and offer mental health treatment and counseling, as opposed to "warehousing" teens away from their families.

Family court judges in the Wiregrass region are using a pilot program called Multi Systemic Therapy, or MST, that has been successful in other states and has shown to have a 30 percent recidivism rate, Champion said.

MST involves the whole family in counseling, rather than locking up children.

DYS officials have been reluctant to give up their funding for local, less restrictive programs. Until these sorts of programs are available statewide, Champion said, parents will continue to turn to the courts for help with mentally ill children, and the children will get locked up instead of diagnosed.
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E-mail: ccrowder@bhamnews.com