Inside the Budget, NYC Independent Budget Office, July 11, 2006 

Each year the city sends roughly 1,200 juvenile lawbreakers to jail-like facilities in upstate New York.  At an average annual cost to the city totaling well over $100 million, some of the youth are placed in institutions run by the state's Office of Children and Family Services (OCFS) and others go to privately operated facilities under contract with OCFS.  But two new programs with an alternative approach are now saving the city considerable expense and may prove to be more effective at rehabilitation than the institutional approach.

Over the past two years the city has started two probation supervision programs that provide in-home community-based alternatives to the placements of juvenile delinquents in state and privately operated facilities.  City payments to OCFS have fallen from $54.2 million in 2003 to $36.1 million in 2005, in part because of the diversion from incarceration to the new programs.  The city's Administration for Children's Services (ACS) spends another $80 million annually on youth placed in private facilities under contract with OCFS, and is developing its own alternative to placement that will provide an intensive, family-based therapeutic approach.  The Mayor's Office of Management and Budget has projected $43.0 million in savings over the next four years as a result of declining numbers of youth placed in OCFS-run facilities, with additional savings likely to be realized from the ACS initiative in the future.

The two community-based alternative to placement programs currently in operation are the Enhanced Supervision Program (ESP) created by the Department of Probation, and Esperanza, a demonstration project of the nonprofit Vera Institute of Justice.  Both of these programs were developed to provide a more intensive level of supervision than is available under the probation department's General Supervision program for juveniles.  Although neither program has been in operation long enough for a definitive evaluation of their effectiveness, their initial results appear promising when contrasted with placement in upstate facilities.  For youth in Administration for Children's Services programs when breaking the law, an alternative placement program will begin later this year.

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