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Nearly 60% of pending placement youth were being held and subsequently placed out of home for Violations of Probation (VOP), AWOL, or failure in a previous placement. The most common offense was for a technical violation of probation (28% of all charges)*. Less than one-fourth of VOPs involved new delinquency.
Violent or dangerous offenders (those found delinquent for sexual assault, arson or robbery) were 16% of those pending placement while drug offenses (9%), auto offenses (9%) and property offenses (9%) rounded out the pending placement population.
Furthermore, the pending placement population was not made up primarily of chronic offenders either. Nearly half (45%) of pending placement youth in our sample had no or one prior adjudication.
Nearly 60% of Maryland's Pending Placement Youth were Committed for Violations of Probation or Placement While only 16% Were Committed for Violent or Dangerous Offenses such as Sexual Assault, Robbery, or Arson
2. The group of youth pending placement for violations of probation (with no new delinquency) consume detention resources at a pace more than twice that of sex offenders and arsonists combined.
Interviews with DJJ staff showed a system-wide belief that sex offenders and arsonists were responsible for the system's large pending placement numbers and long stays in detention prior to placement. The data show that these fears were unfounded. While youth committed for these two offenses do spend long periods of time detained pending placement (an average of 110 and 77 days respectively), they consume a small amount of detention resources relative to the cohort of youth pending placement for violations of probation with no new delinquency (an average of 47 days waiting placement). This is because the cohort of youth pending placement for VOP without new delinquency is five times as large as sex offenders and arsonists. Detention bed days consumed by VOP youth during our study was 1222 (26 VOPs x 47 days pending placement) versus 542 for arson (3 youth x 77 days) and sex offenses (2 youth x 110 days) combined. Additionally, bed days consumed by VOPs was nearly four times the amount for all violent person offenses combined (robbery and sex offenses).
3. Girls are even more likely than boys to be committed and detained pending placement for VOPs and status offenses.
An even higher percentage of girls (61%) than boys (45%) were committed for VOPs without new charges. Furthermore, each of the delinquent offenses for which the remaining 39% of the girls in our study were committed resulted from family disputes and running away. One girl took her family's car when she ran away from home - she was committed for "unauthorized use." A second girl ran away from her foster family in their car and was charged with "auto theft." A third girl was charged with "misdemeanor theft" for taking the stereo out of her own bedroom when she ran away from home. Nearly every girl in our study had run away from home at some point and nearly all incidents leading to their current detention were for running away or offenses associated with running away. No girls in our analysis were detained due to either a new violent offense or a new sex offense.
4. African American youth outnumber white youth 3 to 1 in pending placement.
Nearly 80% of the pending placement population was youth of color. African American youth alone comprised 71% of those pending placement--more than three times the number of white youth. Youth of color were more likely to be sentenced to juvenile correctional facilities while white youth were more likely to go to scarcer "therapeutic" programs.
5. Community-based treatment and supervision for youth is possible and embraced by the courts.
During the six months of the public/private demonstration project, a team of DJJ staff and NCIA consultants changed the placement patterns for pending placement youth away from training schools and residential treatment institutions to in-home and community-based treatment and supervision. Data on a matched set of 79 youth who had existing court-approved DJJ case plans who were later given to NCIA's project for re-assessment and new case planning is telling. Residential treatment referrals were cut by 75% and training school referrals by nearly 80%. Conversely, eight times more youth and families were ordered to receive services in their homes, seven times more youth were ordered to live and receive services in the community and six times more youth were ordered to receive in-patient drug treatment followed by individualized aftercare services. By constructing thorough social histories, ensuring quality mental health and substance abuse evaluations and tailoring service plans to the needs and strengths of youth and their families, courts endorsed the project's more than 50 treatment plans in every case except one. While flexibility in funding, improved contracting regulations and more community-based service providers for youth and families would make DJJ's job easier, the lack of these is not the cause of the state's on-going detention difficulties.
6. By finding alternatives to detention and commitment for the large number of violation of probation youth, Maryland can cut its pending placement population in half and free up resources for case planning and treatment options for youth with serious delinquency, substance abuse and mental health problems.
The demonstration project clearly showed that a substantial portion Maryland's youthful probation violators (as well as youth with more extensive needs) can be placed in non-residential settings in lieu of either residential programming or long stays in detention pending placement. Of course, diverting VOP youth from detention and, ultimately, lengthy waits pending placement is best done as a "front end" strategy, i.e. prior to the youth's detention. Creating a probation violation sanctions "matrix" or graduated scale in lieu of detention; adopting written VOP guidelines; enacting mandatory risk screening of VOP cases; establishing supervisory review of VOP detention recommendations; and establishing a system of non-judicial handling of technical violations could all reduce the number of youth returned to detention for probation violations, thereby allowing DJJ staff to focus scarce placement resources on youth in need of such attention so as to place those youth more expeditiously. Strategies for diverting VOP cases from detention are discussed more fully in "Pathways # 9: Special Detention Cases," available from the Annie E. Casey Foundation.
This fact sheet was prepared by criminal justice consultant Barry Holman. Building Blocks for Youth is a multi-organizational initiative whose goal is to promote a fair and effective youth justice system. More information on Building Blocks can be found at www.buildingblocksforyouth.org or by calling (202) 637-0377, ext. 112.