California  Voter	Juvenile Justice in California
	Dealing with Juvenile Delinquency

In this section... DEALING WITH JUVENILE DELINQUENCY Juvenile Justice System Minorities in the Juvenile Justice System Girls in the Juvenile Justice System Balanced and Restorative Justice Preventing Juvenile Delinquency and Violence TABLE OF CONTENTS

Preventing Juvenile Delinquency and Violence

David Steinhart, Director of Commonweal Juvenile Justice Program, argues that, "The next five years present a window of opportunity to restructure the balance of spending in California between corrections and prevention. Population estimates by the State Department of Finance tell us that California's teenage at-risk population will experience a dramatic upsurge beginning about the year 2003....

"The present `lull' in at-risk population growth," Steinhart continues, "is a demographic pause offering time and opportunity to test new strategies to divert teens from the justice system and to relieve future correctional facility loads. The opportunity is enhanced by opinion polls showing that registered voters already support an increase in the state's commitment of resources to specific types of youth violence prevention programs.

"In the Fiscal Year 98-99 California state budget, $50 million in new funding was appropriated for after-school programs in local districts. For FY 99-00 this appropriation was increased to a total of $85 million. After-school programs operate in the critical after school hours, after 3:00 p.m., and can include multiple components such as tutoring, drug and alcohol counseling, gang awareness and conflict resolution training."

Funding of Prevention Programs

"For FY 97-98, state general fund expenditures for crime and violence prevention programs constituted less than one percent of the state appropriation for youth and adult corrections, and about one two-thousandth of the total state general fund budget for that year. Even when federal funds are added to the prevention pot, the total California expenditure for crime and violence prevention is microscopic next to the huge corrections budget.... According to the California Legislative Analyst Office, ` ... there has been much research showing that integrated, multi-disciplinary services appear to help divert juveniles from a life of crime.' The Rand Corporation, in its 1995 study entitled, `The Cost Effectiveness of Early Intervention as a Strategy for Reducing Violent Crime,' identified potential savings (in relation to the cost of incarceration) produced by investing in specific types of youth and family intervention programs."

California Expenditure for Youth Crime and Violence Prevention Programs

Source: Commonweal**

* Totals in millions of dollars

** Based on information from the Department of Finance Evaluation of Prevention Programs

Steinhart notes that advances in prevention technology have raised the level of confidence in specific types of crime and violence prevention programs.

"Evaluations of specific prevention programs, while not 100 percent satisfying, have vastly improved. Promising approaches that are candidates for replication in California include conflict resolution curricula in the schools, `second shift' and after-school programs, mentoring programs, parent training programs, youth employment programs, early intervention programs for status offenders and first-time juvenile offenders, programs preventing youth access to firearms and community policing. Some cities (like Boston) have enacted comprehensive youth violence prevention plans, with coordinated services delivered by law enforcement agencies, health and mental health professionals, schools and community service groups. While [California's] governor and legislature deserve credit for starting selected anti-violence programs in recent years, the violence prevention effort has been launched on too small a scale to have a significant impact on California's nine million children and four million teenagers."

Lack of Coordination

Steinhart states that, "[s]tate-funded crime and violence prevention programs are scattered throughout many state agencies. There is a need to improve state-level coordination, planning and development of these programs.

"[At present they] are administered by multiple state departments and agencies. Some are co-managed by more than one agency. Some programs have been funded in only one budget cycle, while others draw support (or stretch expenditures) over many budget years.

"This fragmentation occurs because the state lacks any central agency dedicated to the coordination and oversight of crime prevention programs, and also because the programs are launched on a haphazard schedule based on their popularity, sponsorship and fund-drawing power in the year they were created. Both California's Little Hoover Commission, in its 1994 report, The Juvenile Crime Challenge, and the California Task Force on Juvenile Crime and the Juvenile Justice Response in 1996 recommended consolidating juvenile anti-crime and violence prevention efforts within a single state agency."

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