The PEW's article on Georgia's 2013 Juvenile Justice Reform: New Policies to Reduce Secure Confinement, Costs, and Recidivism discusses Georgia Specifically and the financial problems in the state, and how the Georgia's House bill 242 was meant to bring about reform the the Juvenile Justice system. The bill is supposed to save $85 million through 2018 and to instead allocate that money to community based programs. (1) It is important to be smarter with taxpayer dollars to acknowledge the high trend of recidivism that is as high as 65% (4) I think it is a great idea to try to address the lack of community based options to reduce the problems such as the high level of misdemeanor, low level offenses that make up most of the cases of juveniles that are held in facilities (4) However, after reading this article I hope the officials who will allocate these funds plan to ask members of the community (possibly through town halls) how the money towards programming will be allocated. Unfortunately, many of these types of initiatives still do not reduce the amount of recidivism and incarceration due to the fact that these funds are being distributed by governmental officials who are disconnected from the community itself. While I was a volunteer for Leaders for a Beautiful Struggle in Baltimore, they emphasized to not stop at just giving finances to communities in need, but promoting social/cultural capital, by allowing the members in the community themselves to dictate and have say where the funds should be allocated and how. It promotes the issues to be solved in ways that are unique and effective for the community, and also promotes pride in the communities culture and the feeling that it can fix it's own problems if given the resources. The article also points out that there is a 'lack of community based options' and 'lack of uniform data collection' (5). I think it is important to prioritize these issues to be able to promote cultural capital to effectively allocate these funds. One way this could work is by having more presence in community conversations and having community ambassadors be able to speak to officials so that they can get the information they need and also allocate their funds correctly. By fostering these dialogues and empowering the community itself, this will show what community based options already exist and need to be supported as well as keeping track of what polices benefited and harmed the community in the past so that efforts aren’t repetitive, futile, or harmful in the future. Source: See below
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May 2016
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