WASHINGTON, DC- U.S. Senators Bob Casey (D-PA) and Olympia Snowe (R-ME) today introduced bipartisan legislation to help reduce crime among our youth and prevent young people from going to prison. The Youth PROMISE Act (Youth Prison Reduction through Opportunities, Mentoring, Interventions, Support and Education) will enable local jurisdictions to apply proven strategies that will prevent and redirect youth away from delinquency, create safer communities and save money.
“The Youth PROMISE Act helps communities by providing guidelines and resources for proven delinquency prevention programs,” said Senator Casey. “In so doing, we change the trajectories of young lives, create safer communities and generate enormous savings for our economy in the areas of safety, child welfare and education.”
“The Youth PROMISE Act will bring communities together to prevent youth delinquency and violence,” Senator Snowe said. “By keeping kids off the street and out of detention centers, this legislation will keep our communities safe, relieve laden local budgets, and create a brighter future for our nation’s children.”
On any given day in the United States, approximately 60,000 young people are locked in youth detention or correctional centers. According to the Annie E. Casey Foundation, the cost of incarcerating each individual youth is between $32,000 and $65,000 per year. In some locations, the average cost to operate a detention bed exceeds $70,000 annually, and experts estimate that the cost of building, financing and operating a single bed over 20 years is approximately $1.5 million.
The Youth PROMISE Act provides:
A Comprehensive and Coordinated Approach to Prevention and Intervention of Delinquency and Youth Violence:
Communities will create PROMISE Coordinating Councils, comprised of representatives from law enforcement, court services, schools, social services, health and mental health providers, and community-based service organizations, including parents and faith-based organizations, charged with leading a comprehensive and coordinated strategy to address youth violence;
The PROMISE Coordinating Council will develop, with an academic partner, a comprehensive plan for assessing and evaluating community needs and strengths so that strategies can be uniquely and specifically targeted at young people who are involved, or at risk of becoming involved, in gangs or the juvenile or criminal justice system to redirect them toward productive and law-abiding alternatives. Targeted and evidence-based programs may include:
early childhood prevention programs such as nurse-family partnership programs, Early Head Start and Head Start;
foster care and adoption assistance programs;
youth and adolescent job training, job placement and retention programs;
mentoring and afterschool programs;
conflict resolution skills training;
health and mental health services;
substance abuse counseling and treatment services;
comprehensive programs for troubled youth, such as family therapeutic interventions;
targeted gang prevention, intervention and exit services such as tattoo removal, anti-gang crime outreach programs such as “street worker” programs and other criminal street gang truce or peacemaking activities;
mandatory community service and restitution programs; and
pre-release, post-release and reentry services to assist detained and incarcerated youth in integrating back into schools and communities;
Enhanced Law Enforcement that is Youth-oriented and Community-based:
The Youth PROMISE Act provides funding for hiring and training, through the Office of Community Policing Services (COPS), Youth Oriented Policing officers, to address juvenile delinquency and criminal street gang activity;
A Center for Youth Oriented Policing Services (YOPS) will be established to identify, develop and disseminate information related to strategic policing practices and technologies to law enforcement agencies related to youth;
The Youth PROMISE Act will enhance coordination of federal, state and local law enforcement efforts in comprehensive gang prevention and intervention efforts;
A National Research Center for Proven Juvenile Justice Practices will be created to collect and disseminate evidence-based and promising practices related to juvenile delinquency and criminal street gang activity prevention and intervention.
The Youth PROMISE Act has been endorsed by hundreds of national and state organizations and over 200 police chiefs, sheriffs and prosecutors in Pennsylvania as well as key stakeholders in other states.
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