State Department of Juvenile Justice director Bill Byars has a dire warning about the effects of major budget cuts to his agency. "Crime will go back up and these kids will cause more harm in the communities that they're going back to," he says. "They'll break into your car, your house or sell drugs on your street corner if we can't turn 'em around."
How bad are the cuts? DJJ's budget has been cut by 23 percent in the last seven months, in both state and federal funds. "We have cut 260 people so far. The state had five group homes. We've closed all five," he says. DJJ has also had to close one of four wilderness camps, which he says have a lower recidivism rate than the main DJJ facility in Columbia.
Shaquinda, a 17-year-old youth offender at DJJ, says, "These budget cuts, they're not only hurting us but they're hurting the staff that care about us. Many of us don't have a support system at home and the support system that we do have, you know, one day we're seeing them and the next day they're gone. You know, the counselors we have and the people we open up to."
Byars says the state is also on the verge of being taken over by the federal courts. A federal lawsuit over unconstitutional conditions at DJJ led to federal control of the agency from 1990 until 2003. A recent consultant's report said these budget cuts are likely to mean the state would no longer be in compliance, and Byars says there are several groups ready to sue the state. If that happens, the federal courts would be able to force the state to spend however much it deemed necessary.
But Byars says not spending that money would cost taxpayers even more in the long run. "If we don't turn these kids around, they'll be incarcerated probably for the rest of their life and they will cost you and me, in addition to the damage they will do to our communities, they will cost us to house them for the rest of their life," he says.
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