JUVENILE JUSTICE REFORM IN CONNECTICUT: How Collaboration and Commitment Have Improved Public Safety and Outcomes for Youth 1 CONTENTS INTRODUCTION • pg. 1 TIMELINE OF CHANGE • pg. 4 1992 • pg. 4 2002 • pg. 11 2012 • pg. 15 TRANSFORMATION OVER TWO DECADES • pgs. 30–31 KEYS to SuccESS • pg. 33 LESSONS • pg. 45 CREDITS • pg. 5O EndnotES • pg. 51 2 SEIZING THE OPPortunitY INTRODUCTION Over the past two decades, a tremendous volume of new knowledge has emerged about causes of adolescent delinquency and the effective responses. Through research and policy experimentation, scholars and practitioners have proven that several new approaches significantly improve outcomes for youth who become involved in delinquency, thereby enhancing public safety and saving taxpayers’ money. These advances provide public officials with unprecedented opportunities to redesign their juvenile justice systems for the benefit of youth, families and communities. Unfortunately, most states and localities have been slow to recognize and act on this new information, slow to seize these opportunities for constructive change. Progress has been uneven. Perhaps more than any other state, Connecticut has absorbed the growing body of knowledge about youth development, adolescent brain research and delinquency, adopted its lessons, and used the information to fundamentally re-invent its approach to juvenile justice. As a result, Connecticut’s system today is far and away more successful, more humane, and more cost-effective than it was 10 or 20 years ago. This report will describe, dissect, and draw lessons from Connecticut’s striking success in juvenile justice reform for other states and communities seeking similar progress. The first section details the timeline and dimensions of change in Connecticut’s juvenile justice system over the past two decades. In 1992, Connecticut routinely locked up hundreds of youths – many of them never convicted or even accused of serious crimes – in decrepit and unsafe facilities while offering little or no treatment or rehabilitation. The state was one of only three in the nation whose justice system treated all 16- and 17-year-olds as adults – trying them in criminal courts, with open records, and sentencing many to adult prisons without education or rehabilitative services designed for adolescents. By 2002 there was a growing awareness that these problems could no longer be ignored. Over the decade that followed, a movement for sweeping reforms began to build momentum and take root. And by 2012, Connecticut had a strong commitment to invest in alternatives to detention and incarceration, improve conditions of confinement, examine the research, and focus on treatment strategies with evidence of effectiveness. Most impressively, these changes have been accomplished in Connecticut without any added financial cost, and without any increase in juvenile crime or violence. To the contrary, the costs of new programs and services for Connecticut’s court-involved youth have been fully offset in the short-term by reduced expenditures for detention and confinement, and promise additional savings down the road as more youth desist from delinquency and crime. Arrests of youth have fallen substantially throughout the reform period, both for serious violent crimes and for virtually all other offense categories as well. The report then looks under the hood of Connecticut’s reform efforts and explores the critical factors underlying these accomplishments. The discussion begins by detailing the main elements and key champions of progress and by identifying the turning points that built momentum toward reform. The report’s final section explores what other states or local jurisdictions can learn from Connecticut’s experience. The most important lesson, it finds, is that a new and vastly improved juvenile justice system is within reach for any jurisdiction that summons the energy and commitment, the creativity and cooperative spirit to do what’s best for their children, their families, and their communities. 1 JUVENILE JUSTICE REFORM IN CONNEcticut: 1 . REducED OVERRELIAncE ON 3 . IMPROVED CONDITIONS IN CONFINEMENT JUVENILE FACILITIES Over the past decade, Connecticut has dramatically Connecticut has undertaken sweeping reforms in reduced the number of youth removed from home by recent years to ensure humane care for confined youth. delinquency courts and placed into pre-trial detention After being sued in the early 1990s for overcrowding centers, correctional training schools, and/or other and problematic treatment of youth in its pre-trial residential facilities. Specifically, the state has reduced detention facilities, Connecticut vastly improved residential commitments from 680 in 2000 to 216 in detention programming, education and mental health 2011 (nearly 70%), even though most 16 year-olds, who services, and physical conditions in detention. After were previously treated as adults, are now handled in a series of investigations revealed severe deficiencies the juvenile system. The average daily population in in the new $57 million Connecticut Juvenile Training Connecticut’s pretrial detention centers fell from 132 in School from 2001-2004, Connecticut permanently 2006 to 94 in 2011, the year after 16-year-olds entered closed a high-security unit where violent incidents the juvenile system, allowing the state to close one of had been commonplace, temporarily suspended new its three state-operated detention centers. Meanwhile, admissions, provided intensive retraining of staff on the under 18 population in Connecticut’s adult prisons behavior management, reformed disciplinary practices, fell from 403 in January 2007 to 151 in July 2012. and vastly improved programming and treatment throughout the facility. 2 . BUILT A CONTINUUM OF TARGETED, HIGH-QUALITY 4 . DIVErtED StATUS OFFENDING NON-RESIDENTIAL PROGRAMS YoutH AWAY FROM THE Court AND SERVICES FOR YoutH SYSTEM AND OUT OF LocKED Over the past 15 years, Connecticut has developed DETENTION CENTERS an array of new community-based supervision and Until just a few years ago, Connecticut routinely sent treatment programs for delinquent and behaviorally youth to court and even detained them for minor troubled youth. Specifically, the state has expanded misdeeds (truancy, running away, alcohol possession) its investment in evidence-based, family-focused that would not be illegal if committed by an adult – adolescent treatment programs with proven success despite evidence that such harsh treatment for these in reducing problem behaviors from $300,000 in 2000 “status offenses” is costly, ineffective, and harmful to $39 million in 2009. In Fiscal Year 2012, 955 youths to youth. Since 2005, Connecticut has eliminated on probation supervision participated in intensive admission of youth to detention centers for status evidence-based family therapy programs and 652 offenses and opened Family Support Centers (FSC) in evidence-based cognitive behavioral therapy. statewide that offer community-based treatment and Evidence-based treatment was also provided to other services for status-offending youth and their thousands of other Connecticut youths, including families rather than probation supervision. The state delinquent young people committed to state custody, reduced judicial processing (formal petition) of status status offenders diverted from juvenile court, and offender referrals from 50 percent of those filed in behaviorally troubled youth served in the child welfare 2006-07 to just 4.5 percent in 2010 and 2011. Since and children’s mental health systems. 2006, the number of youth with a status offense who were rearrested or convicted of crimes fell by more than 70 percent. 2 SEVEN MAJOR AccoMPLISHMENTS 5 . KEPT YoutH OUT OF THE ADULT 7. REducED ARRESTS AT ScHOOL JUSTICE SYSTEM FOR ROUTINE AND NON-SERIOUS For decades, Connecticut was one of only three states MISBEHAVIOR that prosecuted and punished all 16- and 17-year-olds Though Connecticut has not yet demonstrated as adults. In 2007, the state enacted historic legislation significant statewide progress, it is making important to raise the age of juvenile jurisdiction from 16 to 18, strides. Nine Connecticut school districts have signed effective January 1, 2010 for 16 year olds and July 1, agreements with police limiting the circumstances under 2012 for 17 year olds. Even before 17 year-olds became which students can be arrested at school. In one pilot eligible for juvenile court on July 1, 2012, the new law district (Manchester), by the spring of 2012, arrests and kept 8,325 16 year-olds from being prosecuted and expulsions both fell by more than 60 percent compared punished in the adult criminal justice system. Extending to the prior school year. The School-Based Diversion juvenile jurisdiction to 16 year-olds has increased Initiative (SBDI) also is working in nine sites to promote juvenile caseloads far less than expected (22 percent mental health treatment rather than disciplinary actual vs. 40 percent projected); as a result, the state or justice responses to misbehavior by emotionally spent nearly $12 million less in fiscal years 2010 and 2011 disturbed students. An independent evaluation found than it had budgeted. Meanwhile, 16 year-olds served that SBDI decreased the number of students arrested by the juvenile system have had higher success rates in and/or suspended, and reduced subsequent misbehavior. alternative programs and lower rearrest rates than youth In 2011, juvenile courts began rejecting referrals involving 15 and younger,