FUNDING OF JUVENILE JUSTICE ACT Senator HRUSKA. Mr. Chairman, Senator Stafford asked that there be placed in the hearing record a statement regarding the funding of the Juvenile Justice Act, prepared by the Vermont Governor's Commission on the Administration of Justice. I request that the statement be placed in the record. Senator PASTORE. It is so ordered. [The statement follows:] STATEMENT REGARDING FY 77 FUNDING of THE JUVENILE JUSTICE AND DELINQUENCY PREVENTION ACT PL 93-415 This statement is predicated upon the following facts and assumptions regarding FY 1977 funding of PL 93-415: The President has recommended funding at a The House is expected to approve an approp- Senator Bayh's proposal to increase funding The Senate Appropriations Committee is con- The Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act was passed in September 1974. The Act resulted from almost unprecedented Congressional recognition of failure, both society's and government's. Not the family, nor the school, nor forty federal juvenile programs were socializing and humanizing the nation's children to an extent acceptable to either the children or adults. Furthermore, in the three quarters of a century since the passage of the first Juvenile Court Act, this society has demonstrated both the inability and unwillingness to develop the resources of both knowledge and funds, to support those children who are not socialized by existing processes. Public Law 93-415 represented the culmination of Congressional effort to make the future different from the past. In attempting that, Congress directed the states to find alternatives to and in the system of juvenile justice, a system which has not served this nation well. The statute specified: Section 223 (a) (12) within two years after submission of In short, Congress told Vermont that all those children adjudicated "without and beyond the control of their parent", committed to the custody of the Commissioner of Social and Rehabilitation Services and placed at the Weeks School1 were to be anywhere but there by the end of 1977. Those children average about 60% of the approximately 110 children living at Weeks. As you know, Vermont has demonstrated dedication to deinstitutionalization for all categories of persons committed to its care. Adult offenders, the mentally ill, the retarded and Juveniles of all classifications have been removed over the past few years from institutional settings. Only 60 of the approximately 1300 children committed to the care and custody of the Commissioner of Social and Rehabilitation Services are at Weeks. About 50 of some 400 children with whom Corrections is involved find themselves at that institution. Deinstitutionalization then seems to be the wave of the present and the future. But at the crest of that wave, the Weeks School still exists as a placement possibility for both adjudicated delinquents and status offenders. It does so for a number of reasons, one of which has been the lack of real knowledge regarding Vermont's adjudicated children. By June, data compiled by the Department of Corrections through an LEAA funded research grant will allow us to know a good deal about our juvenile clientele. We have suspected that there may be little difference between our juvenile delinquents and status offenders. Plea bargaining combined with many judges' unwillingness to adjudicate girls "delinquent", we think, render the labels meaningless. However, we must know, not think, before some ultimate action is taken in regard to Weeks. is The Weeks School, operated by the Department of Corrections, Vermont's only State institution for juveniles. Both delinquents adjudicated to Corrections and status offenders adjudicated to Social and Rehabilitation Services may be placed there. Weeks continues to exist for another reason strangely resulting from the product of deinstitutionalization. Three years of placing children in alternative situations have Are alternative settings better than Are available alternative care situations Can the state assure accountability for We are then committed to deinstitutionalization. We feel instinctively a rightness in that philosophy. Institutions, generally speaking, are bad places to put kids. Our commitment however is not a blind one for we are accountable, not only to the state, but to every one of those children who will be affected by the decisions we make. We will not make those decisions on the basis of vague, good philosophies, but will predicate them upon knowledge of the clientele, its needs, and the quality of all resources we might apply to meeting those needs. In short, we commit ourselves to this: if we take all kids out of the institutions, we will guarantee that they will be better off, not worse. It is this commitment that caused us to participate in PL 93-415. We believed it would provide us with the resources to buy the time and opportunity to make a rational decision concerning both Weeks and alternative care. We proposed allocating most of the formula monies available under the statute to increasing Purchase of Services so that the decision regarding Weeks could be based upon empirical data pertaining to both Weeks and alternative care. Purchase of Services allows the oppor tunity to place children in alternative care situations, an opportunity which will be nonexistent without PL 93-415 funds. To date, Vermont has not received any of the block monies appropriated under PL 93-415. A $15,000 planning grant was awarded but the $200,000 for each of Fiscal Years 1975 and 1976 has not been awarded although we expect to receive that $400,000 by June. During the past year the planner employed under the $15,000 planning grant, has been required to dedicate at least half of her time to dealing with the administrative nonsense resulting from LEAA's confused attempts to implement PL 93-415. LEAA misinterpreted Congressional intent and exceeded its statutory authority in requiring cash rather than in-kind match. The war which resulted from our conviction that although we are a small state, we are as able as LEAA Central to read statutes, has been costly in terms of time and manpower. Although the At this point we are engaged in something of a stand-off with LEAA Central. That agency has provided for a waiver procedure by which in-kind match might be allowable. agency was acting beyond the authority of the statute in requiring the waiver, we chose to apply. We did so and at the same time filed a disclaimer stating that the application should not be construed as recognition of LEAA's authority to require a waiver. We could not recognize LEAA's authority to require it. We expect to be granted the waiver. We expect to receive a total of $400,000 during the month of June. If we do not, there will be no monies available in this state for alternatives to institutional placement for juveniles. The truth is, however, we have done nothing but expect since September of 1974 when PL 93-415 was adopted. To date, our expectations have come to naught. During all this "expecting" certain incidents occurred which we did not expect. We did not expect $15,000,000 of the FY 1976 |