By MIKE SALINERO | The Tampa Tribune
Published: January 20, 2010
TAMPA - Hillsborough County pays the state of Florida $8.3 million a year to house juvenile offenders, but the investment hasn't resulted in fewer arrests, local officials say.
"We have one of the highest juvenile arrest rates in the state," County Commissioner Kevin Beckner said. "Miami-Dade has twice the population, but fewer arrests than we do."
Beckner and other local officials think the county could get better results by spending less money on detention and more on services for juvenile offenders when they are first arrested. He plans to ask county commissioners Thursday to create a task force to evaluate the county's juvenile justice system and recommend changes.
"The big issue is we haven't been spending the resources on what's causing individuals to continue delinquent acts," Beckner said. "We need to start early on. Whether it's truancy or petty theft, they're engaging in delinquent behavior that leads to more serious crimes and sends them to prison."
Beckner got the idea for a task force after a community meeting last February. East Tampa residents at the meeting told Beckner they were concerned about the disproportionate number of black children referred to juvenile justice, either by arrest or by misbehaving at school. Beckner looked into the situation and found that black children make up 23 percent of the county's juvenile population but account for over half the referrals to juvenile justice.
"As we started to address more research in finding ways to address disproportionate minority arrests, we found more and more issues that plague the juvenile justice system in Hillsborough County," Beckner said.
He put together an informal working group to discuss the issues of disproportionate minority juvenile arrests and problems in juvenile justice overall. County Judge Herbert J. Baumann Jr., a juvenile court judge and member of the group, says he agrees that the system needs revamping.
"For all segments of society, we want the goal to be to get kids to graduate from school or some type of vocational training and become functioning and contributing adults," Baumann said. "If we don't accomplish that as a society, we're failing somewhere and we need to figure out why."
Baumann and others are looking to Miami-Dade County's nationally recognized Juvenile Services Department as a model. Miami-Dade reduced juvenile arrests by 41 percent between 1998 and 2007. The number of repeat offenders decreased by 78 percent during the same time.
"They do more on prevention and rehabilitation than throughout the rest of state," Baumann said.
Miami-Dade assesses all juveniles who enter the system, looking for the roots of their misbehavior, said the department's director, Wansley Walters. In many cases, mental health and family counseling are provided in the youth's home.
Walters said the key to success is targeting the specific reason that a kid is getting into trouble. For instance, kids who get caught for shoplifting may be doing if for different reasons: One might have a drug problem; another might need food at home. A third may be a victim of abuse.
"You need to determine exactly what's going on," Walters said. "If you start to address that specific reason, they will, for the most part, not come back into the system."
Miami-Dade also has a program for at-risk kids who haven't been referred to juvenile justice, but whose families or schools report are causing problems. The idea is to help families address the juvenile's problems before he gets deeper into the system where pathologies can harden.
"In many cases, misbehavior turns into misdemeanor," said Joe Clark, president of the Tampa-based non-profit Eckerd Family Foundation, which works on juvenile delinquency. "A lot of the factors that bring these kids into the juvenile justice system are not real criminal justice issues."
Miami-Dade's highly rated assessment and therapy strategies are the product of research and constant re-evaluation, said Richard Dembo, a criminology professor at the University of South Florida who did research for Walters' department. Hillsborough can benefit from the work that's already been done, Dembo said.
"I think commissioner Beckner is very committed to those evidence-based instruments that are part of the assessment process," Dembo said.
The challenge is that starting new programs and hiring trained personnel requires money. Hillsborough County, like most other local governments, has been hit hard by the recession and property tax reductions passed by voters and lawmakers.
And the county can't do it alone. Sheriff's Col. Jim Previtera, a member of Beckner's working group, said there has to be involvement from law enforcement and non-government groups such as Boys and Girls Clubs and Big Brothers Big Sisters. Many of those groups saw their county government contributions slashed last year because of the budget deficit.
"There has to be ongoing alternatives and programs available to address the needs of these kids and keep them out of the system," Previtera said. "None of these things comes cheap."
Beckner said he knows county agencies can't afford huge new expenditures now. His immediate goal is to convene representatives from across the spectrum of juvenile services to determine what's wrong and how it can be fixed.
"Eventually it will take money to reorganize the system," Beckner said, "but at first we want to look at how everything fits together, and then put in a cost-effective plan."
Reporter Mike Salinero can be reached at (813) 259-8303