During the most recent meeting of the Juvenile Justice Oversight Council, a group to watch over the implementation of SB200 and to study and debate additional juvenile justice policies, we were shown some jarring numbers from DJJ....
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During the most recent meeting of the Juvenile Justice Oversight Council, a group to watch over the implementation of SB200 and to study and debate additional juvenile justice policies, we were shown some jarring numbers from DJJ....
Over the course of 2012 and 2013, we studied Kentucky's Juvenile Justice system. Our findings were not good, and the recommendations for legislative action were big. What followed was the most comprehensive overhaul to the system in nearly 30 years, Senate Bill 200. This overhaul, passed in 2014 and fully in effect as of July 2015, has become a national model for other states to follow. States from West Virginia to Kansas and South Dakota have looked at what Kentucky has done. The bottom line is that we were holding kids who hadn't committed any crimes with kids who had committed some of the worst crimes there are, and we were detain low-level offenders out of home when a community based approach is both far more effective for kids and their families, and far less expensive to the taxpayer. We weren't always assessing the needs of the child in a meaningful way. Senate Bill 200 required a risk and needs assessment early in the process and brought that community based approach to life.
So far, the numbers from the Department of Juvenile Justice (DJJ), the Administrative Office of the Courts (AOC), and the Department for Community Based Services (DCBS) look promising. While it's too early to claim broad success, we are, for the moment, trending in that direction:
FAIR (Family Accountability Intervention and Response) Teams were created in SB200 as multi-disciplinary teams of local professionals to review cases that otherwise would have ended up in court. The FAIR Team's goal is to plug kids in to community based resources and programs to address their needs. A teacher gave me the example of a young student who was punished for being disobedient and insubordinate. The child was acting out of a mental health diagnosis that the system was unaware had been made. This kid was punished when all he needed was mental health care.
Likewise there are kids who are merely truant (which is a behavior that should definitely be corrected with the child and/or the parents involved) who would share a cell behind razor wire two hours from home with the kids who sold drugs or committed violent crimes. This is incredibly harmful to the kids involved, making their situations worse. Adding insult to injury, holding kids out of home is incredibly expensive. Adults held in state prison cost the taxpayer about $22k a year. Juvenile detention beds cost about $100k a year.
Now that FAIR Teams are meeting across the state we can see that nearly half of the cases that would’ve gone to court are now being resolved through the FAIR Team process - making an enormous positive impact on the lives of these children and their families, while avoiding the enormous drain on the taxpayer with court dockets and detention.
41% of kids that would've gone to court were successfully diverted out of the system, making a huge difference in their lives and sparing the high cost of increased court dockets and detention centers.
Back in May (2014), I made a trip to Frankfort to catch up with a school group that was taking a daylong field trip around the historic sites of the Capitol City. The Heritage Christian Academy Warriors (4th graders) have made a trip up to the Capitol both years I've been in office, and like any other school group visiting during the interim (when I'm not already up there for session) if I can I make the trek to Frankfort too meet them. I hate missing a chance to visit with school kids about the job I'm blessed to have — one of these kids from the district is going to have this job one day in the future!
I caught up with the group and took them to the Senate chamber and had a chance to talk to them for nearly 45 minutes. They asked all kinds of questions and I gave all kinds of answers! Since we had the room to ourselves and plenty of time, I explained a lot about the kind of things we do, good and bad. One of the students asked if I had ever been scared doing my job. Interesting question. Easy answer. Yes.
I've been nervous before, about speaking or carrying a bill on the floor, but those are just nerves about sounding stupid or saying something inaccurate or embarrassing. Fear, on the hand, hasn't been felt nearly as often. In fact, I can only think of one occasion. Carrying Senate Bill 8, the "ultrasound bill," in the House Health & Welfare Committee. The bill, just like others over the years before now, had come out of the Senate and died at the hands of a pro-choice Committee Chairman and pro-choice House leaders — some publicly and unabashedly, and others under cover of anonymity and secret, if not outright deceit. This year, the bill had sat without a hearing in the House Health & Welfare Committee for over two months when a discharge petition was filed in the house. A discharge petition, if passed by a simple majority (51 of 100), would remove the unheard bill from the Committee and bring it before the full House for a vote on the floor. This year, despite 61 co-sponsors of a house bill that contained SB8 language, 49 democrats and a couple of republicans (many of whom brag on themselves for co-sponsoring the same kind of bill) either walked out on the discharge petition vote or simply failed to show up for it at all. The petition failed to pass. Naturally, the next move of House leadership was to hear the bill in Committee - it's an election year so they can't ignore the bill altogether. That's where I come in.
The House Health & Welfare Committee is perceived, fairly or unfairly, as unfriendly territory for conservatives. Liberals control the membership head count, and the tension between committee members of opposite ideologies is palpable and sometimes expressly shown. Even the committee members themselves refer to the committee by its common nickname "Hell & Warfare." This was the lions' den, and I was ordered to march in knowing legislative defeat was certain.
I approached my testimony with great fright, believing I would be attacked or my words twisted by the committee members or the media or both. But I carried on. I presented the bill calmly and directly, explaining the bill didn't actually do anything to expressly restrict abortion at all (no matter how much I wish would).
My testimony fell on more deaf ears than not. Those who wish to protect abortion rights made half-true claims about the bill, and particularly galling was the act by two of the most fiercely prochoice members of the committee to make the initial motion and second for the bill to be voted on — they knew they had numbers.
I explained the situation as it unfolded (edited for time and content, of course) to these school kids. I told them how scared I was of that meeting and the battle that would come my way. It was at that moment when a young man raised his hand to ask this profound question:
So you fight until the war is over?
Yep.
A reporter politely asked me once why we (conservatives) keep fighting for prolife legislation when we know it will continue to be defeated. We keep fighting because those lives should be protected, and we can't give up until they are. I trust God's plan, regardless of the outcome. He can *seal* the mouths of the lions!
After a two year task force process, and an arduous legislative session filled with thousands of hours of writing, studying, debating and re-writing (rinse and repeat), Senate Bill 200 was finally passed by the General Assembly, and signed into law by the Governor. SB200 is easily my biggest accomplishment to date, and my bill (as well as the task force process that led to it) has already become a model used by states across the country, the most recent of which are West Virginia and South Dakota. Best of all, the bill has already brought agencies together to collaborate in an unprecedented way. The trajectory of the lives of Kentucky's children and their families have already begun to change, and it will only get better.
A critical part of SB200 sets up a temporary group called the Oversight Council (the group dissolves after 8 years so as to avoid creating another permanent governmental bureaucracy). The Oversight Council is made up of various agency heads and stakeholder representatives, is co-chaired by the Senate and Judiciary Chairs (as non-voting members), and has two objectives: (1) discuss each agency's SB200 implementation efforts, including a discussion of problem areas to make recommendations for administrative or legislation action to keep the reforms of SB200 on track, and (2) study and debate a handful of policy issues that SB200 did not include, but that we believed warranted further discussion and possible legislative action down the road.
The first meeting of the Oversight Council took place today (September 4, 2014) and uncovered a couple of trouble spots that agencies can begin to work on immediately. The collaboration amongst agencies is just refreshing - this is the way government is supposed to work, cooperation, communication and openness. The meeting was a refreshing break from politics, easily one of the more productive meetings I've had on the job. I hope this keeps up!
Recently, I had a chance to give an interview with Nick Storm at cn|2 Pure Politics about SB200 and the work agencies have already begun. Read about it here, and watch cn|2 clip of the interview below.
You can download either a two-page summary of the bill or the legislation in its entirety by heading over to this page.
KET's Renee Shaw interviewed a number of professionals that play a role in Kentucky's justice system at all levels, including...