Newly Released Report "Safely Home" Finds That Community-based Programs are More Effective, Less Expensive Than Youth Incarceration

Youth Advocate Program (YAP) released new report today that shows community based programs are more effective and less expensive that locking up youth. As states continue to grapple with the fiscal impact of incarceration there seems to be smarter, more effective and less costly way of doing business. The Safely Home report highlights how youth have been safely and successfully supported in their homes and with their families in many jurisdictions around the country.

The report draws upon a series of recent briefs by the John Jay College of Criminal Justice Research and Evaluation Center on the public safety and permanency outcomes of thousands of youth served by YAP, and a survey of 300 young people served by community-based programs instead of incarceration. The report finds that more than 8 out of 10 youth remained arrest free and 9 out of 10 were at home after completing their community-based program, at cost that is a fraction of what it would have cost to incarcerate these youth.

The findings highlight how high-need youth have been safely and successfully supported in their homes with the help of intensive community-based programs like YAP. Intensive community-based programs can serve three to four high-need youth safely in the community for the same cost as incarcerating one child, the report found.

At the Campaign for Youth Justice we support these types of reforms and encourage states to reinvest dollars to serve youth in the community rather than in an institution that more often than not produces the opposite of what we would all like to see. This report is a roadmap to reinvesting dollars into proven practices that work to keep kids in the community and produce better more effective outcomes.

To view the entire report, visit www.safelyhomecampaign.org.