Stevens asks about long-term funding shift to alternatives
Stevens asks whether the administration has a long-term goal to expand community alternatives and reduce secure detention funding. Administration witnesses say they are assessing whether courts and youth use the programs, because programs only reduce population if court stakeholders rely on them.
Does the administration have a long-term goal to expand funding for those programs and reduce funding spent on secure detention?
If not, why?
We absolutely are, as we are implementing these, we are needing to assess how they are being used.
Are they being used, are these the programs that the youth in our community actually need, and are these the programs that our court stakeholders are going to use?
And so we know that we can make as many programs as we want, but if the court stakeholders don't rely on them, then they won't be used and they won't be effective in our goal of reducing population.
So as we are implementing them, we are meeting with the stakeholders all of the time to see if these programs are meeting their needs, and then we move to the next thing and figure out.
Is there more investment needed here?
Is there more investment needed somewhere else?