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Ramsey County officials urge legislators to fund housing program for juveniles who commit crimes

Saint Paul Pioneer Press - 2/9/2023

Ramsey County officials are seeking $15 million in state funds to create a network of small-scale treatment homes for juveniles who have been convicted of crimes.

A bipartisan bill before the Minnesota House of Representatives would fund between five and seven such homes, where kids and teens would receive “culturally specific, community-based intensive therapeutic treatment,” in hopes of reducing recidivism without incarcerating them in juvenile detention centers.

Each home would accommodate four or five youths and provide them with counseling and social services before helping to ease their transition back into life at home, offering support and resources to parents and families, the bill says.

The legislation is sponsored Kaohly Vang Her, DFL-St. Paul, and Rep. Marion O’Neill, R-Maple Lake, who testified at the state Capitol on Thursday morning before the House Public Safety Finance and Policy Committee, along with Ramsey County Attorney John Choi and Ramsey County Commissioner Rena Moran.

“Recent increases in violent behavior by young people, particularly carjacking, has brought more attention to a long-standing problem,” Her told the committee. “A lack of culturally appropriate, community-based out-of-home placement options and other interventions for youth who engage in serious delinquent behavior has been a broadly recognized problem for years.”

Choi told legislators that this lack of options often leaves judges feeling trapped between the extremes of releasing juvenile offenders back to their parents or sentencing them to a term in a juvenile correctional facility, like the one in Red Wing.

“What they feel is that they don’t have the options in between,” Choi told the committee. “You’ve got Red Wing on one side and you’ve got electronic home monitoring on the other.”

A program like the one outlined in the bill would offer an alternative.

“There is research that this type of intensive therapeutic intervention in small residential places can actually work,” Choi said. “So we’d like to give it a try.”

Unlike juvenile detention centers like Red Wing, these homes would be licensed by the state’s Department of Human Services — rather than the Department of Corrections — and would be located closer to home.

“These homes will further Ramsey County’s goal of keeping youth closer to their family, community and natural supports,” Moran told the committee.

Also testifying in favor of the bill at Thursday’s hearing was Patrick Connolly, who told the committee that his wife was carjacked by three teenagers outside their St. Paul home in December 2021.

“Hearing my wife scream and seeing her run for her life with our daughter in her arms was the worst thing I’ve ever heard or seen,” Connolly said.

He said the problem of juvenile crime has laid bare the inadequacies of Minnesota’s criminal justice system, which is failing not only the victims of crimes, but the youths who commit them.

“Our state’s juvenile system is supposed to help kids who commit crimes like this find a way to get their lives back on track before more serious crimes happen,” Connolly said. “Yet today, there are too many situations where our system is failing these kids because there’s no real path to rehabilitation to become a productive member of our society.”

Malaika Eban, interim executive director of the Legal Rights Center in Minneapolis, testified that while her organization supports several provisions in the bill, it opposes creating more “secure facilities” that would confine juvenile offenders behind locked doors.

“We don’t deny the reality that there are times when home is not the right place for a child to live, but these placements in those scenarios do not have to be secured,” Eban said. “With the right flexibility of program design, staffing and youth advocacy, even the most disconnected child can find safety and success in non-secure placements.”

O’Neill said while it is unlikely that all the homes would be secure facilities, at least one or two would need to be, in order to accommodate the most at-risk youths.

“Outside forces are all trying to pull that juvenile back to that life, and with one text message they could be running out the door,” She said. “That’s not safe for them.”

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