Baltimore burning. Disparity in the justice system. Is there a role for MST?

A young black man in confrontation with police. Another young black man dead. Last summer, it was 17-year-old Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo. This month, 25-year-old Freddie Gray did not get proper medical attention as he was being transported to a Baltimore police station and later died. Looting and vandalizing broke out in Ferguson. Protests were met with police in riot gear and tear gas. In Baltimore, full-scale rioting erupted following Gray’s funeral.

While violence should not be condoned, it’s easy to see that the frustration of the black community in Baltimore had gone beyond the boiling point. Why?

Whatever it Takes Awards Announced at International Conference

Multisystemic Therapy (MST), which works with high-risk juvenile offenders to keep them at home, in school, and out of trouble, announced the 2014 Annual Whatever It Takes (WIT) winners at the MST International Conference held in Charleston, SC earlier this week.  

A comprehensive report on juvenile crime, victimization, and the juvenile justice system

To say the National Center for Juvenile Justice’s (NCJJ) 2014 Juvenile Offenders and Victims report is comprehensive is not doing it justice.

The center used a vast array of sources from Census Bureau to the FBI to state agencies with the objective of giving the public, media, elected officials, and juvenile-justice professionals accurate statistics on the types of crime juveniles are committing, who’s committing the crimes, and trends in criminal behaviors.

The Cost of Jailing Juveniles—Enough to Give You Sticker Shock 

The Justice Policy Institute recently issued a report spelling out the staggering costs of incarcerating juveniles. The institute, a nonprofit think tank dedicated to finding ways to improve the justice system and reduce the number of people imprisoned, gathered information from 46 states on what they spend on their juvenile correctional facilities. These states accounted for 93 percent of the U.S. population in 2013.

Pew Poll Finds Voters  Support Juvenile Sentencing Reform For Those Who Commit Lesser Crimes

In the 1990s, the country and its lawmakers took a “get tough on juvenile offenders” stance. Keeping the community safe by getting delinquents off the street and locking them up was the attitude. 

Judging by a 2014 Pew Charitable Trusts poll, the times, have changed.

Update: South Dakota Moves Quickly on Juvenile Justice Reform 

Often the wheels of government turn very slowly. From the inception of an idea to passage can take years of wrangling, modifications, and more wrangling before it reaches consideration in the legislature.

Such was not the case in South Dakota. Having had success with an overhaul of its adult justice system, Gov. Dennis Daugaard and Chief Justice David Gilbertson were intent on improving the juvenile system. After all, it was costing $140,000 a year for each youth commitment. Annual tuition at the University of South Dakota is only $13,904. And the returns on the commitment investment were not good. Forty percent of the adolescents were back with the Department of Corrections (DOC) three years after they were released.

In this era of extreme political contentiousness in the United States, it seems as if the conservatives are the conservatives, the liberals, the liberals and never the twain shall meet.

Except . . . there is one issue on which the two adversaries—or at least some of them—can agree. Criminal-justice reform.

There is no debate that juvenile crime is of great concern in the United States. According to the FBI, youths younger than 18 commit almost 20 percent of all serious crimes, 13 percent of violent offenses, and 20 percent of crimes involving property. It’s also been found that a single lifetime of crime amounts to a $1.3 to $1.5 million burden on society. Knowing that makes it even more imperative to keep adolescents from becoming habitual criminals.

Where there is debate is how to deal with this problem and where to allocate funds earmarked for it. There are many who lean toward paying as little as possible upfront. Policymakers and those who sign the checks are under pressure to come up with programs that reduce crime without draining the budget. Often, they choose individual therapy instead of a program like Multisystemic Therapy (MST). What they overlook is the long-term savings when a treatment such as MST is implemented. It has been shown that youths commit fewer crimes following MST. That means lower future expenses for taxpayers and crime victims relative to the expenses associated with individual therapy.

Kids get into trouble. Some kids get into a lot of major trouble. They know right from wrong, but commit crimes anyway. So what to do with them? We want to be fair to these children by giving them the best shot at succeeding. Their success is ours, too. Stopping their crime will make all of us safer.

But as it is, our juvenile-justice system operates like a bike that can’t get out of first gear. That gear being incarceration. But is that right answer?

You may be wondering just how bad the situation is. So a few kids get sent away, big deal. But take a step back. Without question, incarcerating youth costs too much and makes them more likely to commit future crimes. Wouldn’t it make more sense to switch gears. 

Provide drug treatment, mental-health services, job training. And very importantly, give parents and caregivers the tools to change their children’s behavior. 

Take a look at this infographic that shows the costs of youth incarceration. Sometimes seeing makes it easier to believe. Going state by state, it’s pretty staggering how many juveniles end up in facilities and the price tag associated with putting them there.

The statistics told the story. When South Dakota government leaders read them, they knew there was a big problem. Here the state was ranked 46th in population, yet holding the dubious honor of having the second-highest commitment rate in the United States—385 per 100,000 youth. 

Was this high rate because more juveniles were being arrested for violent crimes than in other states? No, the state’s arrest rate was one‐third the national average in 2011. Locking up all these kids was a very expensive proposition. The state put the figure at 41,000 to $144,000 annually for each commitment. On top of that, after being released, 45 percent of the youth were back in confinement within three years.