Why implementing evidence-based practices is a good choice

Let’s start by being honest—it’s hard to implement Evidence-based Practices (EBPs). However, keep in mind, it’s even harder to start an unscripted practice even with the most well-intentioned service providers, rely on the limited scope of implementation expertise in many jurisdictions or shoot in the dark hoping for outcomes that may not even target the needs in your local community.

Just for argument’s sake, consider several alternatives. Without implementing an evidence-based practice, most jurisdictions or agencies will be doing business as usual. In other words, doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. This is a common definition of insanity. Agencies and jurisdictions might have great ideas about helping youth that never get to implementation because there is no real plan. (Most evidence-based practices come with a plan.) They may have a few stellar “go-to” clinicians, but what happens when they go? Individual clinician’s practices often can’t be replicated. (EBPs give you options for sustaining good practices with many different practitioners over time.)

Jurisdictions probably won’t know the longer-term outcomes of the youth in their care at the individual case level and certainly not at the aggregate system-impact level. (Most evidence-based practices come with data-collection tools and useful ways to monitor outcomes for practitioners and systems.)

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.

Texas Juvenile Crime Justice Reform Reduces Crime & Saves Money

In 2007, after abuses were reported in Texas juvenile facilities, the legislature put together a reform package. Part of its aim was to keep youthful offenders close to home in the hopes of reducing the size of the correctional system, the second largest in the United States. Money that would have been spent putting kids behind bars, building new jails and prisons, and all the ancillary costs of incarceration were to be funneled into community supervision.

Over the course of the years since the reforms began, juvenile incarcerations plunged from 4,305 to 1,481, a 66-percent drop. At the same time, arrests fell by 33 percent from 136,206 in 2007 to 91,873 in 2012. So, it would not appear that locking up fewer adolescents was a threat to public safety.

By closing eight juvenile correctional facilities, the state shaved its appropriations from $486 million to $290 million from 2006-2007 to 2014-2015. The savings went to local probation departments that find community supervision, services, and treatment for the offenders.

Imagine yourself 17. You’ve been convicted of armed robbery. In jail, you were caught with a shiv. In the eyes of the institution, no excuse for that. However, any viewer of the TV series “Law and Order” would know having protection might be the only way to stave off predators.

Now take this further. Imagine you are confined to an 8-by-10 foot cell, 23 hours a day without human contact. That’s what happened to Michael Kemp. “You just like, ‘Man, I feel like an animal in here. I don’t even feel real...where I’m not even a human being."

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.

Study Finds Hispanic Juvenile Offenders in LA County Show Marked Improvements with MST

With Hispanics and Latinos making up more than 48 percent of Los Angeles’ population, it is no surprise that those concerned with the local juvenile-justice system would turn to the Rand Corporation to evaluate how effective Multisystemic Therapy is with minority youth offenders. 

Rand’s study followed 757 juveniles who received Multisystemic Therapy and 380 offenders who did not participate in the program from 2003 to 2010 to compare the outcomes of both groups. Of the MST group, 77 percent were Hispanic as compared to 69 percent in the non-MST group.

The results show MST-treated youth having a lower recidivism rate and doing better in their dealings with the county's probation system. (See below.) MST youth had significantly lower incarceration rates than the other group (11.2 percent, compared with 20.3 percent) and significantly higher rates of completion of community service (8.5 percent versus 2.6 percent).

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.

New Initiatives Improve Ohio’s Juvenile Justice Outcomes

The ‘status quo’ can be a barrier to progress.  Moving out of the comfort zone can promote innovation and generate outcomes. This is especially true when it comes to juvenile justice.

Ohio recognized this when it came to reforming its juvenile justice system. In 1993, it created RECLAIM Ohio (Reasoned and Equitable Community and Local Alternatives to the Incarceration of Minors) in an attempt to get courts to use community-based programs “to meet the needs of each juvenile offender or youth at risk of offending.” By providing funding incentives, in the first pilot year alone, it had a 42.7% drop in commitments.

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.

Nell Bernstein is a passionate advocate for juvenile-justice reform, author of the widely praised “Burning Down the House: The End of Juvenile Prison” and journalist who was honored with a White House “Champion of Change.” Recently, she talked with MST about a number of topics, including the reaction to the book, the role of race in the juvenile justice system, and how MST and other evidence-based programs can be part of a comprehensive solution that addresses and changes the behaviors of juvenile offenders.

Bernstein writes in an easy-to-read style that blends facts with first-person accounts that reveal the often brutal and deadly world behind bars. The stories can be difficult to digest at times and beggar belief in others. It is, in short, a compelling argument in favor of completely rebuilding the juvenile-prison system. When I asked Bernstein if this argument was the purpose behind writing the book, she said she did not embark on the project with the preconceived notion that incarceration was inherently wrong and that “if I had seen something other than a completely counterproductive and destructive institution, then that is what I would have written.” But she added that she “had written about criminal justice for years and years, seen kids destroyed by it.”