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Plans for juvenile facilities revisited

Roanoke Times - 11/17/2017

Members of a powerful House of Delegates committee want a second look at Virginia's plan for transforming its juvenile justice system by replacing large youth prisons with smaller, more therapeutic facilities.

The director of the House Appropriations Committee suggested Wednesday that the state instead consider building one new facility at the Powhatan County site of the Beaumont Juvenile Correctional Center that the state closed in June to consolidate its shrinking need for maximum-security incarceration.

Appropriations Director Robert Vaughn expressed concern about a 66 percent increase in the annual cost for serving each minor committed to the juvenile justice system over the past three years, as Gov. Terry McAuliffe has moved aggressively to shift away from operating two large prisons that have been ineffective in rehabilitating youths committed by judges to the state's custody.

"I don't know that we fully vetted what that is going to cost to stand up two facilities," Vaughn said in an interview after the two-day budget retreat ended here Wednesday.

He also favors shifting the center back to Beaumont in western Powhatan so the state can sell the property now occupied by the Bon Air Juvenile Correctional Center in Chesterfield County, where about 215 juveniles committed to state custody have been housed since midsummer.

"The Chesterfield property has a lot of value for economic development," Vaughn told the committee.

Appropriations Chairman Chris Jones, R-Suffolk, said he remains committed to building two smaller centers - including one in Hampton Roads, from which most of the committed youths come - but intends to ask state juvenile justice officials to discuss their plan before the committee when the General Assembly convenes in January.

Bon Air and Beaumont were built to confine as many as 280 youths each, while the system currently houses about one-third of that total.

"Two make sense for the commonwealth and for the individuals that we're looking to rehabilitate," Jones said in an interview after the retreat. "The whole idea is to reduce the recidivism rate."

One reason for the possible change of heart is the difficulty of getting approval of a joint juvenile justice complex in Chesapeake that would include a 64-bed state facility and a 48-bed local juvenile detention center to replace the city's aged center.

The joint project on city-owned land was expected to reduce the state's expense by sharing the costs of building and operating the two facilities.

Chesapeake backed off its first plan to build the joint complex on property it owns on South Military Highway after public opposition arose to the project, but the city council is scheduled to take action next week on a proposed 14-acre facility owned by the public school system on Minuteman Drive.

"The project is the same - it's still a joint facility with the state," Chesapeake spokesman Heath Covey said Wednesday. "It's important to Chesapeake because it allows us to move forward in replacing a very antiquated local facility."

Andrew Block , director of the state Department of Juvenile Justice, said Wednesday that he's confident that the project will proceed and help the state divert money away from operating prisons into community treatment programs that provide a more therapeutic environment for youths in the system.

"Our hope is that the council will still do the right thing," he said. "Even though the project has taken longer to approve than we had thought, it's still a project that is good for the city, good for the state and, most importantly, is a huge improvement over the status quo for the small group of young people who still need confinement and who are from the Hampton Roads region."

Block said the state would pay about $38 million and that Chesapeake would contribute the land, site preparation and $7.5 million to the project, which the state included in a bond bill adopted in 2016 after negotiations between McAuliffe and General Assembly budget leaders.

He said the $248,000 average annual cost of treating each youth confined in the state system - up from $149,000 per youth in 2014 - is misleading because the total cost of operating the facilities is declining but is spread over a smaller number of youths in confinement.

"The costs will go down as we get smaller," he said.

However, the delay in action by Chesapeake already had prompted "preliminary discussions" between the city and state over building a state-only juvenile correctional center on land next to the St. Brides state prison for adults in another part of the city, appropriations analyst David Reynolds told the committee.

"Given increased average operating costs of a smaller juvenile correctional center population and issues with the Chesapeake facility, further discussion about the necessity of two new facilities is warranted," Reynolds concluded in a brief presentation to the committee.

His report prompted Appropriations Vice Chairman Steve Landes, R-Augusta, to suggest that the state could save money by renovating the recently shuttered Beaumont prison in Powhatan County.

"Why pay to build a new facility?" Landes asked.

Reynolds explained that Beaumont's closure was based on the need to create a more therapeutic environment for incarcerated youths than the old penal system had, in which almost 80 percent of youths released from the state centers were re-arrested within three years, with 70 percent convicted of new offices and almost half re-incarcerated.

"It was not driven by the condition of the facility," he said.

Juvenile justice advocates welcome a fresh look at the state plan, but not for the same reason as Landes or Vaughn. They want the state to shift confinement to even smaller facilities - no more than 25 or 30 beds - in community settings across the state.

"We're trying to think long-term and in as strong a therapeutic, best-practice way as possible," said Amy Woolard, attorney and policy coordinator at the Legal Aid Justice Center in Charlottesville.

"I would like them to have some more time to think through some of this," said Woolard, who added that she doesn't want the process to be "driven by cost savings" rather than the best interest of youths committed to state custody.

Block said the new correctional centers are just one piece of the plan to transform the juvenile justice system, using savings from operating smaller prisons to pay for community placement programs in local detention centers and other alternatives.

"We are committed and convinced this is the right way to do juvenile justice in Virginia," he said.

mmartz@timesdispatch.com

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