Ohio has a groundbreaking history with rehabilitative youth justice models, in fact, Cuyahoga County was just the second county in the country to establish a juvenile court. We were once leaders, building up youth who have made mistakes and need to be held accountable towards healing and betterment. Keeping communities safe while acknowledging the capacity for young people to change is central to the mission of a functioning youth justice system. However, Ohio has strayed from these goals. Ohio levies harsh punitive measures on adolescents that do not ultimately make communities safer or return youth home better off; on the contrary, they often leave facilities more traumatized than when they first arrived.
Ohio’s 136th General Assembly is underway, and our lawmakers are in the thick of budget season. For youth justice advocates like the ACLU of Ohio, this is a critical time to ensure our goals for reforming the system are top of mind for policymakers at the Statehouse. Prior to the start of our current legislative session, Governor Mike DeWine expressed a commitment to reforming the youth justice system for the better – a system that rehabilitates, cares for, and stabilizes delinquent youth while also holding these youth accountable. He did so after several news reports uncovered the disastrous conditions for both youth and staff, at facilities under the purview of Ohio’s Department of Youth Services. We have covered these developments in our Breaking Down the Governor’s Juvenile Justice Working Group blog. The ACLU of Ohio is committed to holding our lawmakers to their word and making these necessary changes a reality, but it will be an uphill battle.
In early April, the Ohio House passed their version of the General Operating Budget (HB 96, which now sits before the Senate Finance Committee. Currently, Ohio Senators are deliberating the contents of the budget and will make changes before conferencing alongside the House to send a final version to Governor DeWine for his signature. The budget itself prescribes funding allotments to all governmental departments in the state and contains multiple policy and legislative changes including a portion on the Department of Youth Services and the youth justice system.
Of utmost concern to the ACLU of Ohio, are the budgetary proposals related to RECLAIM, the Department of Youth Services program tasked with diversion programming for youth. Diversion is essential in keeping youth out of deep end systems, and rehabilitating in low impact, close to home environments. In the originally proposed version of the budget, RECLAIM would have seen $218,505,972 in fiscal year (FY) 26 and $220,528,981 in FY 27, showing a commitment to the Governor’s working group objectives. However, in the House’s current version, those numbers were decreased to $207,000,000 and $218,000,000 respectively. While not monumental decreases, they do not align with the stated goals of the governor and will not allow for expansions in vital diversion programming which we know works for youth in Ohio In the Senate, we are urging lawmakers to return to the original allotments, as well as advocating for a $6,000,000 addition for the expansion of community investments. This will allow local communities to expand Community-Based Assessment Centers, establish new Juvenile Detention Alternatives Initiative (JDAI) sites, strengthen and expand Behavioral Health/Juvenile Justice (BHJJ) programs, enhance wraparound and respite services for at-risk youth, grow Targeted & Competitive RECLAIM programs, and provide counties with resources.
Looking beyond the budget, we need substantive policy changes to ensure the highest level of care and rehabilitation for youth in DYS. Specifically, the ACLU of Ohio is working to end mandatory bindover and advance the “smaller is better” model.
Mandatory Bindover
The ACLU of Ohio will fervently continue to push for an end to mandatory bindover, the process by which a youth is automatically transferred to the adult system based on their charge. Young people in adult facilities are at higher risk for harm than their adult counterparts. It is a monumental decision for the trajectory of a young person’s life. We believe each young person is unique and they deserve deep consideration before they are sentenced. Youth should receive the services they need to properly rehabilitate in youth systems without being sent to an adult system where they are mistreated and taken advantage of because of their young age. We will continue to push for increased judicial discretion in the sentencing of delinquent youth and ending mandatory bindover.
Smaller is Better
A hallmark of the Governor’s Juvenile Justice Working Group recommendations was the commitment to move towards smaller is better model. This looks like smaller, more regional facilities that are committed to working alongside families and communities for proper rehabilitation for committed youth. Considering recent reports of unsafe conditions at DYS’s Indian River facility, resulting in injuries to staff, and past reports detailing how catastrophic outcomes can be for youth in this facility, it is imperative we close these failing prisons with a commitment to respecting the dignity of all persons within these buildings especially the youth meant to have an environment conducive for growth. Rehabilitation is immensely difficult in chaotic and poorly managed environments far away from home. This remains a high priority for us and our partners as we look to hold this GA and the Governor to this promise.
In addition to these priorities, the ACLU of Ohio along with the Ohioans for Youth Justice Coalition have a list of priorities and fact sheets for further reading.
