By Alayna DeMartini
The Columbus Dispatch
COLUMBUS, Ohio — For the fourth year in a row, Franklin County will take a deep cut in state funds because an increasing number of the county’s youths are spending time in juvenile prison. The more days Franklin County teens are in a youth prison, the less the county receives to treat juveniles outside prison.
As they prepare for more than one-third reduction in funding, the county’s magistrates and judges are trying to figure out how to cut the number of youths they send to juvenile prison and the length of time they stay.
In the fiscal year that begins July 1, Franklin County is expected to receive $377,000 for juvenile-treatment programs. The previous year, the county got $592,000. A total of 197 offenders from Franklin County have been sent to juvenile prison in the current fiscal year. That was seven more than the previous fiscal year and 37 more than in 2004.
The county hopes to soon have a new screening tool to better advise magistrates and judges on which juveniles should be sent to prison and which could stay in the community for treatment.
The goal is to reach youths with mental-health problems before they become involved in serious crimes, to work more with parents of offenders and to treat more youths in the community rather than in prison, said Karen Casey, administrator of Franklin County Juvenile Court.
Ohio taxpayers spend nearly $80,000 a year for each youth sent to juvenile prison. Half of them, on average, are locked up again within three years.
“We can’t do much worse than that,” Casey said.
Sometimes, magistrates have no choice but to send a juvenile felon to prison. When a youth robs someone, seriously injures the person and uses a gun, that youth is required to serve at least two years in prison. But in most cases, the magistrates have the discretion to lock up the youth or send them to an alternative program.
With many youths, magistrates already have tried alternatives such as drug or alcohol counseling or residential treatment, and yet the youths continue to commit felonies, Magistrate Bill Kirby said.
“At some point, you’ve got to say, ‘We’ve tried everything, and public safety demands we take a timeout (in prison),’ ” Kirby said.
“We’re not prison-happy down here, like we send kids at the drop of a hat,” he said.
Franklin County isn’t the only county in the state struggling with the challenge of sending fewer youths to prison and for shorter periods. Cuyahoga County is expected to take a two-thirds cut in state funds in the next fiscal year because of how many of its youths went to prison for long periods.
Hamilton County is expected to receive an increase in funding after significantly reducing its juvenile prison population.
Some youths have been staying in prison well past their minimum prison sentence because of the long waiting lists to get into treatment programs in prison. Overcrowding and understaffing have prompted the juvenile prison system to let youths out earlier to get that treatment on the outside.
There are waiting lists for programs outside of prison, as well. There’s a six- to eight-week wait for clients starting a Franklin County program aimed at working with the parents of troubled youths to enable them to put reasonable limits on their son or daughter.
Franklin County Juvenile Court officials are trying to evaluate which of its adolescent programs work best to keep youths out of trouble.
Only 43 percent of youths sent to the substance-abuse outpatient counseling program at Maryhaven on Alum Creek Drive last year completed it, county records show.
A little more than half of the young people who attended a job-preparation program run by Buckeye Ranch finished it.
Some programs have more success.
The practice of placing electronic anklets on youths to ensure they don’t leave the county worked with two-thirds of the youths assigned to it last year. Franklin County plans to look into getting electronic monitoring with a global-positioning system to track youths. Still, the youths could cut off the monitor.
If Franklin County magistrates are going to use prison less often to punish youths, the county still must keep a tight rein on them, county Juvenile Court Judge Jim Mason said.
“We have to keep these kids on a short leash. It has to be a highly structured program,” Mason said.
“My fear or concern is that this isn’t going to work, that we can’t convince (youth offenders) that this is their best option.”
Copyright 2008 The Columbus Dispatch