Beginning in 2008, juvenile stakeholders engaged in a year-long effort to understand how best to reshape the youth service delivery system in Arkansas. They visited programs in five other states to see firsthand the effectiveness of community-based alternatives to confinement. The conclusion was that Arkansas’s traditional reliance on secure correctional confinement for minor and non-violent juvenile offenders was expensive, ineffective, and not supported by the research on the proven-effective alternative methods already recognized and implemented in other states.

The Arkansas Division of Youth Services (DYS) created a Comprehensive Plan 2009-2014 to strategically implement reforms efforts that: assessed the risk levels of youth committed to DYS, measured the recidivism rates of those youth after three years, created pilot sites to implement proven-effective local alternatives to incarceration, and offered commitment reduction incentives to reward communities that successfully reduced the use of secure confinement. Other promising efforts now underway in Arkansas:

• Improved educational services and additional resources for youth held in secure confinement has been a major success;
• Increased professional development training has exposed more youth service staff to proven-effective methods of treatment;
• Developing more tools for youth who are re-entering the community is the focus of a recent grant to increase youths’ chances of success;
• Three local detention sites have agreed to explore alternatives to detention with advice from the Annie E. Casey Foundation; and
• Court-involved youth will soon be evaluated to determine if they suffer from co-occurring disorders of substance abuse and mental illness – a common problem not yet documented or treated effectively across the state.

Commitments of Arkansas youth to secure facilities decreased 24 percent between 2009 and 2011,
but rose slightly in 2012. The majority of those commitment reductions (94 percent) came from just five of the 28 judicial districts, indicating that more work still needs to be done to spread these reforms across the state. Juvenile justice system reforms are spreading across the country. Arkansas is at the forefront of these reforms and is positioned to remain so. By learning from what has been successful in other states and in Arkansas, and applying those lessons statewide, reform will advance to the next stage.

System stakeholders must make the necessary changes in policies and practices in order to usher in the next phase of reform. The state’s laws, regulations, and practices must align with its commitment to a system of juvenile justice that will effectively serve youth for the long term. A thoughtful, engaged, and community-driven approach can reduce the incarceration of low- and moderate-risk youth. Reinvesting state savings in proven-effective, community-based alternatives is the most promising way to ensure that our continued successes builds on what we’ve accomplished thus far.

Read the full report here.