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Camco praised for youth reformsCourier-Post
November 29, 2006
By Jason Laughlin
CAMDEN
New Jersey, and Camden County in particular, received praise in a national study that looked at the damage incarceration can do to young offenders.
The Justice Policy Institute of Washington, D.C., released a study Tuesday stating that incarcerating young people increases their chances of facing other problems, including unemployment, depression and further criminal behavior leading to subsequent incarceration.
While the report states dangerous youths should be in a secure detention center, too many nonviolent offenders are getting locked up around the country. The study found that 70 percent of the youths in detention are held for nonviolent charges. Those jailed are getting worse, not better, as a result of their time behind bars.
"I think there's been more an abatement of the lock 'em up and throw away the key philosophy," said Paul DeMuro, a consultant with the Annie E. Casey Foundation who has worked with New Jersey to bring alternatives to detention to the state.
The report comes as a vindication for New Jersey, which received in 2004 a $600,000, three-year grant from the Casey Foundation to implement the foundation's Juvenile Detention Alternatives Initiative. Camden, Essex, Monmouth, Atlantic and Hudson counties were selected to test the system. Camden in particular was chosen because of heavy overcrowding at the time.
In 2004, the county's youth detention facility designed to hold 37 was home to 90 to 100 juveniles, officials said. As of Monday, 46 were there. In the past, year there have been as few as 26 juveniles held there, Camden County Administrator Ross Angilella said.
"It's proof that when the community decides to come together and sit at the table and discuss the issues, we're a success," Angilella said.
The JDAI program looks for alternatives to incarceration for youths. This can mean speeding up the court system so youths spend less time waiting for hearings to assigning nonviolent offenders electronic monitoring or placement in group or foster homes, officials said.
In the Lakeland complex, Camden County is constructing a youth detention facility about twice the size of the current one. It's expected to open at the start of 2007. But officials don't want more rooms to mean more residents.
"JDAI to me means we have only people who need to be in the youth center who should be in the youth center," Angilella said. "It is a constant. We need to be constantly vigilant."
The size of the new youth center will allow Camden County to place youths within the center more intelligently, Angilella said. For example, the extra space will allow officials to separate offenders from the same town who might know each other away, Angilella said.
Camden County has had ongoing problems with overcrowding at its adult jail, and Angilella said he has tried to use the success at the juvenile level as a model for reducing the population at the county jail.
New Jersey is expanding the JDAI system with the hope it will eventually be used in all of the state's 17 youth detention centers, said Howard Beyer, executive director of the state's Juvenile Justice Commission.
"We would like to have statisticians and data collectors in all the counties. We want education in all the counties the way we would like to. But we're working on that and we have very good support," Beyer said
The JDAI program expanded to Mercer and Union counties this year. Burlington County, along with Ocean and Bergen, will begin using the JDAI system in 2007, officials said. The Burlington County facility of 24 beds is currently home to 12 juveniles, said Frederick Green, superintendent of the county juvenile detention center.
"Even without JDAI I'm very confident that our court would do an outstanding job of keeping kids out of our facility if they do not belong there," he said.
Reach Jason Laughlin at (856) 486-2476 or jlaughlin@courierpostonline.com
Published: November 29. 2006 3:10AM
Posted by Amy Jacob
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