Milwaukee County is seeing a rise in its youth detention population. Will $7 million in pandemic funds reverse that trend?
About $7 million in federal pandemic aid could be directed to easing the strains on Milwaukee County's youth justice system and building out services for girls.
County Department of Health and Human Services officials on Thursday said the societal disruptions brought on by the coronavirus pandemic have contributed to an influx of youth into the justice system, reversing gains that had been made in prior years.
At the same time, the cost to the county to send its young people into the state's prison system at Lincoln Hills School for Boys, Copper Lake School for Girls and the Mendota Juvenile Treatment Center in Madison has nearly doubled from $615 to $1,154 per person per day. On July 1 it will rise again to $1,178 per person per day.
"I think what we have seen is the significant increase not only in the severity of crimes but the numbers of young people who are being brought in for these types of incidents. And at the same time, what we're facing in terms of our fiscal situation is untenable," said DHHS Deputy Director David Muhammad.
The county, he said, has sought ways to ensure accountability without building a new youth justice facility. Neither a Milwaukee-based, state-run facility for youth who commit the most serious crimes nor a county-run facility have been built in the years since state legislators first sought them in response to revelations of abuse and mistreatment at Lincoln Hills and Copper Lake. The prisons share a joint campus north of Wausau.
The state has paid more than $25 million in settlements and legal fees, but prosecutors wrapped up a four-year probe of the facility in 2019 without any criminal charges.
In response to these challenges, DHHS leaders on Thursday asked the Milwaukee County American Rescue Plan Act Task Force to recommend spending $4 million of the federal aid on additional staff and programming for county youth involved in the local justice system and $3 million for programming specifically for girls, whose numbers and length of time in the system have risen.
The task force agreed with the need expressed by the department, recommending that the County Board and Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley give their approval. The county will receive a total of $183.7 million in ARPA funds and elected officials have so far allocated about 41% of the money.
'Significant increase' in youth referrals
Thursday's request marked a continuation of county leaders' efforts to respond to strains on the youth justice system, particularly in its detention center and a program considered an alternative to sending young people to Lincoln Hills at disposition — similar to an adult "sentencing."
The in-custody phase of that program, known as the Milwaukee County Accountability Program, or MCAP, is capped at 24 participants and has had a wait list of between five and 28 youth since September, according to a report from DHHS.
For some, the wait in detention before they could begin the program lasted six to 10 weeks.
And the overall population in detention at the Vel R. Phillips Youth and Family Justice Center — the county's 127-bed juvenile jail — has been on the rise.
It reached a high of 147 in recent weeks, surpassing a high in February of 141 youths, said Kelly Pethke, interim administrator of DHHS's Children, Youth and Family Services division.
The report noted the rise in violence in Milwaukee since the onset of the pandemic.
That includes a 37% increase in youth referred on the charge of armed robbery and a 129% increase in youth referred on the charge of possession of a dangerous weapon between 2019 and 2021, according to the report.
Currently, 13 young people are on the waitlist to get into MCAP, Pethke said.
"Right now, they're sitting in detention," she told the task force. "They're getting services but not the programming, the full programming that they have been ordered to because we need staff, we need contracted partners, we need programming services in order to work with those 13 young people."
Ultimately, the focus is on moving them out of the detention center and back into the community, she said.
Compounding the challenge, she said, youth who are ordered to MCAP and put on the waitlist are being transferred to the jurisdiction of the state Department of Corrections, which can bump them immediately to the cost of $1,154 per person per day.
Two years ago, she said the county had 22 youths in state corrections. Now there are 39.
The ARPA funds would help serve the youths who are in MCAP and the 13 who are on the waitlist to keep them in Milwaukee instead of being sent to the state youth prison hours away, she said.
In addition to the human cost of sending them away, she said, there is also a fiscal cost of more than $421,000 per child held for a year in corrections.
"Think about if we kept these kids here what we could do with young people across the community at $421,000 a year," Pethke said.
The $4 million would be spent through 2024 to expand services for youth in the secure phase of the program, particularly for those on the waiting list, in addition to additional GPS monitoring and credible messengers for those in the community phases of MCAP, according to the report.
It would also go to expanding emergency housing placements, supporting youth vocational training and employment, and more.
Successful use of the funds would result in a decrease in the number of youth on the MCAP waitlist and the average time in detention waiting to access MCAP services, an increase in the number of funded community-based programs to support youth returning to the community from MCAP, and more.
Milwaukee County officials want funds for girls-focused programming
The county is also requesting nearly $3 million to increase programming for the county’s at-risk and adjudicated girls.
According to a report, CYFS says its proposal will “invest in proven and promising strategies to expand the menu of gender- and culturally responsive services available to girls in the community and secure placements and reduce barriers to access to promote racial and health equity.”
Pethke noted there are 18 girls at the detention facility that only has space for 16. In 2019, there were eight girls daily on average.
Pethke said staff shortages and pandemic-related disruptions have also led the average stay of girls in detention to nearly triple since 2019, from 12 days to 32.
“We do not want girls going into corrections because there's no placement for them, or (have girls) sit in our detention center, because there's no placement or services for them,” Pethke explained. “So this is to address that need.”
Pethke's division has no contracts with providers that work specifically with girls in the community.
Pethke said the proposal’s goals will build off recommendations from a workgroup that included court officers and community nonprofits and had been regularly convening before the pandemic.
The funding request will focus on accomplishing four objectives:
Expanding gender-responsive contracted service providers.
Increasing access to health services (with a focus on Black girls).
Working with the community to develop methods of support.
Intervention for girls and addressing systemic health disparities to reduce future instances of crime.
The proposal will also encourage more girls to participate in the Year of the Youth Initiative, which features youth days at different sporting events, job shadowing, mentoring and other opportunities. Some of the features are intended to support all girls, and especially Black and transgender girls, in “counteracting social isolation and other harmful effects” of the pandemic, according to DHHS Enterprise Project Administrator Sumaiyah Clark.
To measure success, officials said they plan to track how much the department's provider network has expanded to include gender-responsive programming, the number of options available to girls in detention and the community, and the number of community alternatives to detention or group home placement.
Officials warned that if the proposal is not funded, the length of stay for girls is likely to increase and, in the cases where local beds are full, girls are at a higher risk of being placed out of state.
This is not the first time state and county officials have sought funding to support more girls’ focused programming.
Three nonprofits that specifically focused on justice that involved girls — Youth Justice Milwaukee, Represent Milwaukee, and My Sista’s KeepHer — lost out on $425,000 in funding from the state after that money was rerouted through Milwaukee County, and the nonprofits were unable to meet the new set of requirements to receive the funds.
Contact Alison Dirr at 414-224-2383 or adirr@jrn.com. Follow her on Twitter @AlisonDirr.
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This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: COVID aid could help Milwaukee County drop youth detention population
