Funding of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention

In 1994, the Little Hoover Commission reported that CYA budget for its 11 institutions and parole services was about $400 million. $46 million in crime prevention grants are funneled to local governments and organizations by the state Office of Criminal Justice Planning. County funding (boosted by federal and state subsidies for court costs, juvenile placements, etc.) covers law enforcement, court, prosecution, public defense, probation and a variety of social service costs. In many cases, specific county departments deal with both juveniles and adults, making a cost breakdown solely for juvenile responsibilities difficult. The Little Hoover Commission asked the 15 largest counties in California for data on their juvenile probation costs and ten responded. Their combined costs added up to $344 million in 1993-94. This includes Los Angeles County, which includes $200 million and is home to 25 percent of the juvenile arrests statewide and accounts for close to 40 percent of new commitments annually to the CYA. Even the most conservation estimates of the total state and county costs of juvenile justice would be above $1 billion in 1994. <90>

In the late 1940's the State first used subsidies to local government as a way to reduce the number of wards sent to state facilities. Other efforts followed in 1961, 1965, and 1978 which funded construction of county camps, subsidized intensive probation and underwrote the cost of other programs, including delinquency prevention services. This worked well for the State as long as strings were attached that required counties to reduce the commitments to CYA facilities. But the passage of Proposition 13 in 1978 put a lid on counties' ability to raise funds for locally provided services, including delinquency prevention programs, and set the stage for a fiscal tug of was between the State and the counties. At first, the State - flush with a surplus of funds - bailed out the counties, even removing the strings that had required reduced CYA commitments in return for the juvenile services funds.

In the 1990s, however, the State, suffering from a series of tight budgets, clamped down on money the counties had begun to think of as their own. In 1990, the County Justice System Subvention Program was cut in half, with funding dropping from $67.3 million to $34.3 million. The following year, the one-time cut became permanent and the funds were "realigned" to county coffers along with other monies in a move that gave counties discretion to spend the funds based on their own priorities - not necessarily juvenile delinquency prevention. Many probation departments received major budget reductions and often the first programs to be cut were the front-end diversion and prevention efforts. Some police agencies could no longer fund their special juvenile bureaus and diversion programs. The situation was worsened by the demise of the federal Law Enforcement Assistance Administration, which had funded many California juvenile justice programs. At the local level, county agencies and community-based organizations competed for increasingly scarce public funds. <91>

Counties now pay the State $150 a month to send a juvenile to CYA. This is much less than it would cost to keep the juvenile in a secure facility either in the county or elsewhere, or to develop alternatives to incarceration. Some argue that this serves as a fiscal incentive to send juveniles to CYA. County officials deny that fiscal considerations drive commitments to CYA. They point out that State law requires a judge to certify that all other options have been exhausted and that only the CYA can meet the needs of the juvenile. In addition, the State has a mechanism for charging counties for CYA commitments if they are due to a reduction in county service options, such as the closing of county camp programs.

In 1994, the LAO proposed a realignment that would include placing responsibility for all juvenile justice services at the county government level. Counties would select and pay for any treatment/punishment for juveniles, including reimbursing the State for the full cost of incarceration if the county chose that option for a juvenile. Counties would be given a larger share of the state sales tax to underwrite the added costs. One of the arguments in favor of this arrangement, would be that it would eliminate the fiscal incentive to send juveniles to CYA.

Advocates of such a change view it as a prime opportunity to eliminate incarceration of juveniles in large institutions in favor of treating them in community-based programs. They also believe that counties will quickly turn to preventive programs as a way of holding down costs in the long run by reducing future crime. But critics, including many of the county officials who would be the recipients of the new responsibility, believe the plan is flawed because the funding source is unlikely to keep up with the need to deal with juvenile crime. While some believe that prevention programs would blossom under realignment, others believe that if counties are left to make their own choices about spending, prevention will have a tough time competing with other more popular services, as they have in the past. There are the historical precedents of the late 1960's and early 1970's when the State reduced reliance on state facilities and sent patients home to their communities and sent subsidies to counties to develop services. The State saved money but sufficient local treatment options were never developed and the mentally ill show up among the homeless today. Similarly, in 1977 when status offenders were taken out of the juvenile incarceration system, local services did not develop to take up the slack and today status offenders receive little of the attention they need. <92>

There is no inherent conflict between incarceration and prevention. The two are points along a continuum of programs to address societal ills. However, in California we have lost our balance and are overweight in incarceration while anemic in prevention. <93>

Legislators introduced bills to implement the LAO's realignment but none was successful.

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