Philly’s juvenile justice spends funds inefficiently, with ‘sub-optimal results,’ report says

A report unveiled by the Philadelphia District Attorney’s Office on Monday describes a juvenile justice system where funds are being inefficiently spent and producing what experts call “suboptimal results.”

The report, which aimed to give the public a glimpse of how the juvenile justice system functions and how efficiently tax dollars are spent was made possible in part by a $50,000 Neubauer Family Foundation grant and produced by Econsult Solutions Inc.

“It has been spoken of that the juvenile justice system is broken,” said Lee Huang, Econsult Solutions president. “Unfortunately, that is the verdict that we came up with in our analysis.”

Here are five takeaways.

The number of young people the Juvenile Probation Office serves declined by almost half between 2017 and 2021. The report attributed the drop to the closure of private and nonprofit residential facilities accused of abuse, District Attorney Larry Krasner taking office in 2018, and a decline in arrests over less-serious charges during the pandemic.

In the same time span, the amount spent by the juvenile divisions in the Department of Human Services and District Attorney’s Office, and the Juvenile Probation Department have declined but at a slower pace.

The numbers aren’t exact because Econsult couldn’t obtain precise figures for the cost of state placement, so they calculated a projected number. But total projected spending from these agencies dropped from $134 million to $99 million over the five years studied, meaning the city went from spending about $37,000 to $50,000 per youth served by the court system. In comparison, the school district spent more than $30,000 per student in the fiscal year 2021.

It’s possible, according to the report, that fixed costs are keeping the amount spent per youth high. Other inefficiencies could also bear some of the blame, with some young people receiving expensive services, regardless of whether they need them. It’s also possible that the system is dealing with high-risk youths who require the most expensive services.

Even as the city spent less on private and nonprofit placement, spending on residential confinement — such as juvenile detention, state-run facilities, and secure residential services — increased, the report found.

With the closures of private and nonprofit facilities, young people who are not necessarily high-risk offenders might be placed in state-run facilities that cost more than $190,000 per youth.

What’s more, young people have been spending longer periods in detention as they wait for openings in these facilities.

The Philadelphia Juvenile Justice Services Center, the city’s only secure juvenile detention facility, has a target population of 136 people. According to the report, it was serving close to 200 young people in September 2022.

Krasner called the rising lengths of stay a crisis, adding that some youths have been sent as far as Texas because there are fewer “midlevel” facilities locally.

“We are separating those juveniles from their families by great distances when all of the science indicates that is a bad idea,” he said.

In 2019, four out of five young people arrested in the city were Black, according to the report. That’s despite Black youths making up less than half of the juvenile population.

The report also found that the “vast majority” of youths arrested come from high-poverty neighborhoods.

The report found that 57% of young people charged in 2016 were rearrested within five years.

First Assistant District Attorney Robert Listenbee said that until this report, the city didn’t know how many people were coming back into the criminal justice system.

According to the report, diversion programs, which allow low-level offenders to avoid court-based supervision programs and instead receive support, could help. The report doesn’t argue that the diversion works better than traditional court proceedings, but it does say the youths involved in this approach “did not appear to substantively increase risks to public safety.” What’s more, by cutting out the most expensive aspects, such as staffing for court hearings and monitoring court-ordered supervision programs, the cost to taxpayers declines.

For example, in fiscal year 2022, the DAO diverted about 22% of arrests, which then accounted for only 0.6% of total juvenile justice system spending.

The report found a total of about $133 million budgeted for juvenile justice spending between fiscal year 2014 and 2021, mostly for residential placements.

Krasner said there’s an opportunity for investing in young people and programs that serve them using this money.

He also made the case, as did the report, to better track how money is spent and the outcomes of that spending.

In addition to rearrest rates, Listenbee suggested the city track metrics that signal success such as a young person getting a job, going to a trade school, or buying a house.