RISE for Youth is a nonpartisan organization committed to ensuring every space that impacts a young person's life encourages growth and success. RISE promotes the reduction of the criminal justice system's impact on the lives of youth through the creation of healthy communities and community-based alternatives to youth incarceration. Our work centers youth and their communities who together, challenge and dismantle racial and social injustice in Virginia.

RISE and all collaborating organizations stand in opposition to the proposed changes to the Virginia Department of Juvenile Justice (("DJJ") Length of Stay ("LOS") Guidelines.

The mission of the DJJ is to protect the public by preparing court-involved youth to be successful citizens. In essence, DJJ is tasked with helping to keep communities safe by (1) providing effective programming that helps rehabilitate youth behavior and (2) keeping youth from reentering the legal system. During the last seven years DJJ has undergone extensive transformation, much of which has yielded positive results for youth in its care. One of the most sweeping changes during this period of transformation was an overhaul of the LOS policy. The LOS policy offers standards and guidance regarding the length of time a youth should be held in DJJ's custody when that time is not explicitly determined by the court. In drafting the 2015 LOS policy, DJJ initially heeded the vast body of research that demonstrated that keeping youth in custody longer yielded both a diminishing return and increased harm and, therefore, shortened the amount of time youth in Virginia were held in custodial settings.

Disturbingly, DJJ has recently proposed adopting a new LOS policy that would take us backwards by significantly increasing the amount of time youth committed to its care would remain in custody.  DJJ has claimed a decrease in treatment completion and an increase in recidivism rates as the rationale for these proposed changes. However, these proposed policy changes are not supported by DJJ's data, which demonstrates that recidivism fell from 2014 to 2020 for youth at all risk levels, whether placed on probation or on parole (after a stay in DJJ custody). But youth at all risk levels fared better on probation.

The proposed guidelines further ignore research that shows keeping youth in custody longer in fact increases the chances that the youth will reoffend. A November 2022 publication summarizes the serious problems with an overreliance on confinement for young people. Among the findings cited is the prevalence of trauma among youth in the juvenile justice system, and the fact that confinement in a facility exacerbates youth trauma. A 2017 study that analyzed data collected from 14,344 participants in the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health, found that "incarceration duration during adolescence and early adulthood is independently associated with worse physical and mental health later in adulthood." Study authors noted that "This relationship holds even when accounting for baseline health and key social determinants of health." The study found that an incarceration duration of more than one year as a young person "is associated with worse adult mental health and adult functional limitations," including depressive symptoms and suicidal thoughts.

In its presentation to the board of Juvenile Justice on November 9, 2022, DJJ stated that the percentage of young people completing treatment for aggression management and for substance use desistance has declined since the 2015 LOS policy was adopted. Because DJJ did not show any supporting data or explain what time periods were being compared, it is hard to evaluate this claim. However, the programs currently used by DJJ are designed, according to the FY2021 Data Resource Guide ("DRG"), to be completed in less than six months (in most cases, well under six months). Under the 2015 policy, almost none of the young people released in FY2021 stayed in custody for less than six months.

The FY21 DRG on page 45 says that treatment completion for intensive aggression management "requires approximately 4 months. The DRG does not give a specified duration for substance use treatment, but it sets out a range of "five weeks to six months" based on individual needs. The DRG on page 53 also says that no young people with an indeterminate commitment released in FY2021 had a late release date of less that six months. While more than one-third of stays were much longer (the actual average LOS for all indeterminately committed youth was 10.3 months) because the 2015 LOS policy allowed for overrides of the guidelines based on individualized case reviews. 

According to its own data outlining the estimated time to complete treatment, the 2015 LOS policy allows ample time to complete treatment. Moreover, the statistics DJJ cites show that under the 2015 policy about 70% of young people did complete these treatment programs. Identifying and addressing the specific barriers that affect the other 30% is more effective and efficient than drastically increasing LOS to apply to all youth. We have just come out of a global pandemic that impacted every aspect of our society, to include the functioning of the DJJ. Instead of advocating for harmful increases in LOS policy, DJJ should evaluate the timeliness of its internal procedures and the effectiveness of its treatment programs - including its capacity to provide effective, continuous treatment for young people in the community rather than in DJJ facilities. DJJ does not need to arbitrarily increase LOS for all young people, in order to do better for the faction of youth who are not currently being served effectively.

The range of interventions for court-involved youth include diversion, probation, and commitment to some form of direct care. According to the date on page 87 of the FY21 DRG, the most common intervention for all youth found delinquent in Virginia is placement on probation; and the most common intervention for youth who receive indeterminate commitments - custodial sentence that consists of a range of time and not a fixed time -  to DJJ is placement on parole (of the 305 youth released from DJJ direct care 256 were placed on parole).

Through its risk assessment instrument, the Youth Assessment and Screening Instrument ("YASI"), DJJ classifies young people into one of three levels (Low, Moderate, and High) in terms of the risk that they will recidivate (i.e., be rearrested, reconvicted, or reincarcerated within some period of time), based on the young person's background, psychological and behavioral characteristics, and other individual factors. Youth classified as High risk are more likely to recidivate than those classified as Low or Moderate risk.

DJJ tracks recidivism in various ways, but the timeliest is the one-year rearrest rate - the percentage of youth who received a given intervention who are rearrested for any reason within one year after that intervention.

In its annual DRG, DJJ publishes one-year rearrest rates for youth placed on probation and youth placed on parole, broken out by their assessed risk levels on the YASI. Page 87 of the DRG data shows that one-year rearrest rates were lower for youth placed on probation and parole, whether High risk or Low to Moderate risk on the YASI, in FY2020 (under the 2015 policy) than in FY2014 or FY2015 (under the prior policy). Thus, according to its own data, there in no question that recidivism has been improving under DJJ's 2015 LOS policy.

Most notably, the data also shows that - for youth at all risk levels - recidivism has consistently been lower for those placed on probation than for those who were committed to DJJ and later released to parole.

According to data on page 83 of the DRG for indeterminate sentences to DJJ, the average LOS for youth released from DJJ custody fell from 18.7 months in 2014 to 14.2 months in 2020 and the average LOS for youth on probation fell from 12.9 months in 2014 to 11.8 months in 2020. Thus, these improvements were achieved with shorter lengths of stay - for probation as well as DJJ custody - which is a significant policy achievement that creates better public safety and better outcomes for young people at lower cost to the public.

Because longer stays mean higher costs to the public, the 2015 policy could be judged a success if recidivism had simply stayed the same. The fact that recidivism declined shows a remarkable improvement in DJJ's performance. What DJJ's recidivism data articulates is that working with young people in the community, even young people who have been assessed as being at a higher risk of recidivism, is more effective than confinement.  A strategy designed to improve outcomes for public safety and for youth should start by looking for ways to provide more and better interventions in the communities where young people live - not by seeking ways to keep them confined for longer.

There is no question that youth must be held accountable for their actions and harmful behavior must be corrected. In fact, accountability is a standard that communities, local and state leaders, and the criminal justice system must all be held to as well. But as even this policy notes, accountability is about young people understanding the impact of their actions and taking responsibility for them so they do not repeat them. Accountability does not require longer lengths of stay in custody.

DJJ's presentation to the Board of Juvenile Justice relied heavily on attributed quotes from juvenile justice system stakeholders asserting that thee is not, and never has been, support within the juvenile justice system for the 2015 LOS policy. This misrepresents the history of the 2015 policy, as it was developed with extensive participation and input from across Virginia's juvenile justice system. When it was published for public comment, almost every comment received was supportive. Even the Virginia Association of Commonwealth Attorneys, while raising concerns about it, did not have consensus within its membership and did not take a position for or against the policy. The 2015 LOS policy was approved unanimously by  a Board of Juvenile Justice that included members appointed by governors of both parties. The Board of that time did not approve the policy on the first presentation, but rather asked DJJ to provide more information and allow time for public comment.

We must not allow the progress of the last five years to be dismantled based on the unfounded claim that youth are either not held long enough to receive the full benefit of programs while in DJJ custody or the fallacy that youth are coming back into the justice system because they were not held in DJJ custody long enough. These claims are not only unfounded but run counter to research and DJJ's own data. Addressing the needs of youth in DJJ's custody is of paramount importance to ensure we are preparing youth to return to their communities. The 2015 LOS policy is providing the needed guidance. Holding youth longer is not the answer. DJJ must take an introspective look to ensure it is accountable to meeting its own standards of quality to help youth succeed. We look forward to the day when the number of young people involved with the justice system decreases because Virginia in intentionally creating healthy communities for all youth and their families. We have great hope that the few youths who do find themselves involved with the juvenile justice system will be appropriately held accountable and given the opportunity to be restored to healthy, thriving communities.

The following is a list of organizations who support the contents and recommendations of this comment:

Valerie Slater, Esq., Executive Director, RISE for Youth

Rob Poggenklass, Interim Executive Director, Justice Forward Virginia

Alyson Clement, CO-Executive Director, National Juvenile Justice Network

Fallon J. Speaker, Esq., Legal Director, Youth Justice Program, Legal Aid Justice Center

Amy Woolard, Chief Program Officer, ACLU of Virginia

Laura Goren, Director of Research and Education Policy, The Commonwealth Institute for Fiscal Analysis

Rev. Lauren Ramseur & Rev. Ashley Diaz Mejias, Co-Pastors, Voices of Jubilee, Presbytery of the James