Twenty-five years ago, the picture was bleak for juvenile justice in Multnomah County. The County was facing a federal lawsuit for unconstitutional conditions at the juvenile detention center in Northeast Portland and the consequent overcrowding to comply with federally-mandated caps on detention-use.
“There was a lack of meaningful alternatives in lieu of detention,” Multnomah County Juvenile Services Division Director Deena Corso told the Board of Commissioners during a presentation Thursday. “And we didn’t have any real data to tell us who was in our facility; why were they there; or how long were they there. And we weren’t really working collaboratively with our system partners.”
Today, the county has dramatically reduced the number of youth placed in detention and sent to correctional facilities. And along with that quarter-century of reductions, there’s also been a downturn in youth crime. Corso and many others credit a 1992 commitment to the Juvenile Detention Alternatives Initiative (JDAI), then a pilot project through the Annie E. Casey Foundation aimed at reducing reliance on and improving conditions in detention, while also increasing services for youth and their families in the community.
“So even though we are detaining far fewer youth than we did when we began, crime has in fact decreased significantly,” Corso said. “So what we see in Multnomah County and nationally is that if we’re smarter about who we detain and for how long that youth actually have better outcomes and public safety is improved.”
Proponents describe JDAI as a framework with eight core strategies to help jurisdictions safely reduce reliance on detention and determine who should be placed in secured confinement in the first place. According to research dating to the 1950s, Corso explained, many youth who engage in criminal behavior age out of that behavior on their own. Detention, however, is a risk factor that can plunge a person deeper into the system and keep them on a path of continued crime.
“If you’re removed from your home, that makes it more likely you’ll use drugs and alcohol, less likely you’ll complete school, have a strong employment history or have enduring family relationships,” Corso continued, “so what we decide to do at the point of arrest, in terms of whether to detain a youth, has potentially life-altering consequences.”
In the past two decades, the county has established, among many efforts:
- An objective risk assessment for determining who should be placed in detention
- An eleven o’clock meeting held before preliminary hearings with stakeholders and partners to discuss release/hold recommendations and release plans for youth
- A Juvenile Justice Council to ensure collaboration on policy
- Expedited case processing to reduce lengths of stay
- The Community Healing Initiative (CHI) program to divert youth who’ve committed low-level offenses to culturally-specific community providers
- And a reception center, which has served as a model for jurisdictions throughout the country
“We had 1,200 to 1,500 youth who were being brought to detention every year by police, for non-detainable offenses. The detention center is not the right place,” said Corso. “The reception center is able to assess them and get them connected to community resources for them and their families.”
Corso acknowledged that while progress has been made reducing the use of detention overall, work remains to address a disproportionate number of youth of color being brought to detention. Disparities also exist at various decision points throughout the juvenile justice system.
Commissioners Loretta Smith and Sharon Meieran raised concerns about a five-year trend of increased utilization of detention which disproportionately impact youth of color, particularly Black youth.
Lengths of stay in detention are also up, and more youth are in custody awaiting adjudication of alleged probation violations
“It begs the question of why, and what we’re doing to address it,” said Commissioner Meieran.
Multnomah County is not alone in struggling to reduce racial disparities, explained Nate Balis, director of the Juvenile Justice Strategy Group for the Annie E. Casey Foundation.
“As highlighted in a recent sentencing project analysis, nationally black youth are five times more likely than their white peers to be confined,” Balis said. Since 2000, “racial disparities have grown in 37 states, Oregon included, even as the number of confined kids has dropped dramatically.”
But Balis emphasized the long-term commitment to objective risk assessment tools and core JDAI strategies.
“We know from a quarter-century of this work that jurisdictions frequently face challenges; see spikes in the current detention population, they lose track of key indicators or just generally suffer from what some call reform fatigue. But based on 25 years of partnership we are quite confident that Multnomah County will rededicate its efforts to safely reducing the use of secured detention,” Balis said.
“The latest data shows that you have to keep an intentional focus,” said Chair Deborah Kafoury. The reasons that we have backtracked, there are many and they’re complex, that doesn’t excuse the fact that it’s happened and that we need to redouble our efforts but it’s going to be that partnership. It’s going to be all of our partners together and recommitting to why we joined this effort in the first place.”
Balis noted the shift the County experienced in the 1990s, when virtually every state in the country passed laws making it easier to give youth adult time for adult crimes.
“The national fervor about youth crimes, super predators and zero tolerance made it all the more critical and impressive to see the kinds of efforts and innovation here in Portland, and especially the results,” Balis said.
Since then, the County has served as a model for other counties and cities, hosting thousands of service providers, practitioners and advocates.
“That doesn’t mean that it was an easy sell to new jurisdictions who were going to take this on. Even after sites sign up, there are many naysayers who are quick to critique what may feel like abstract reform concepts and ideas,” Balis said. “I say all of that because this is where the power of Multnomah County’s early success and work hosting other jurisdictions come into play
“It’s one thing for the Annie E. Casey Foundation to produce a publication speaking to the wisdom of collaboration and detention alternatives,” Balis continued “It’s quite another thing for them to come to Portland and learn from practitioners about the 11 o’clock meeting or the reception center. These are practices and alternatives that countless other jurisdictions have copied.”
More than 300 jurisdictions participate in JDAI across 39 states today. The Casey Foundation has provided uninterrupted funding to the County to support project management, pilot programs, data-driven decision-making, and coordination and collaboration with other JDAI leaders.
In addition to the social impacts, Corso noted the millions of dollars saved throughout the juvenile justice reform.
“If we were still detaining youth at the rate we were prior to JDAI, we would have had 472 more admissions to detention last year at a cost of $2.14 million to the county,” said Corso.
“It’s significant.”