For the first time, detention facilities at Arkansas' troubled Division of Youth Services will receive national accreditation, a status expected to be granted in 18 months, division officials promised Wednesday.
"That's a guarantee," said B.B. Malin, the division's accreditation manager.
Malin's comment came during a joint state House and Senate committee meeting after legislators heard an hour-long presentation from division Director Russell Rigsby detailing a five-year plan to fix the state's system of handling young offenders.
One key, Rigsby said, is developing a better way to identify children who need psychiatric or substance-abuse treatment. Often children who can be helped are being locked up with violent offenders, he said, which doesn't help recidivism rates.
"We're in a catcher's mitt mentality," Rigsby told legislators. "We just stand by and wait for the kids to come. If we stay with this catcher's mitt mentality, you're going to have to continually build" more youth detention facilities.
To earn national accreditation by the American Correctional Association, Malin said, facilities must address 450 standards and meet 35 standards, such as resolving health hazards and improving fire codes.
Given his 11 years in correctional system accreditation and Rigsby's plan, 18 months is a reasonable goal to set, Malin said after the meeting.
State Sen. Mike Everett, D-Marked Tree, vice chairman of the Committee on Children and Youth, said monthly committee meetings on the division's problems can be expected for the rest of the year before a detailed funding plan is recommended to the General Assembly in 2001.
"We've got a year to study it to see what we can afford," Everett said.
Legislators generally gave Rigsby's plan a warm reception, but some questioned his funding projections.
Rep. Jim Luker, D-Wynne, said it "looked too good to be true."
Rigsby said the state in 1999 spent $24 million on the division, or $132 a day for 496 beds. Within five years, he wants 811 beds. That will cost an extra $9.9 million a year in operating expenses.
But Rigsby said the state won't pay all of that. By focusing on treatment over punishment, the state would receive more federal dollars because the federal government won't reimburse the state for medical expenses if children are incarcerated, he said.
"I can't give you a paint-by-numbers plan," Rigsby told legislators.
He said he's unsure of the exact amount of federal funds available. Other variables include changes to the plan made through input by legislators, juvenile court judges and others.
Juvenile court judges will meet with Rigsby on April 28.
During the public comment period, Pulaski County Juvenile Court Judge Wiley Branton said he feared legislators would force judges to order children into treatment.
To illustrate the need for options, Branton recalled a 12-year-old girl caught shoplifting. He said he sent her to a division facility because she ignored those trying to offer treatment and didn't go to school.
"Do I send her home and she gets her tennis shoes and runs, or do I send her to DYS?" Branton said. "At least [offenders] will learn that society has rules."
Branton complained about the lack of coordination between Youth Services and the Division of Children and Family Services. He said that in 60 percent of his cases, parents are to blame, but the Division of Children and Family Services is reluctant to intervene.
Rigsby's five-year plan, which began this year, includes:
- Reshaping five regional youth camps around the state into comprehensive treatment complexes at Alexander, Harrisburg, Lewisville, Mansfield and Dermott.
- Improving living quarters.
- Reorganizing staff, hiring better workers and paying them more.
- Creating a major complex at Dermott to separate older and more-violent offenders from the general population and to house 18- to 21-year-olds.
- Hiring 14 more staff monitors to travel to every division facility and evaluate the care of children each month.
- Adding hundreds of children to treatment programs.