Commissioners receive kudos for efforts on JCPC funding

The efforts of county commissioners helped stave off cuts to the Juvenile Crime Prevention Councils, said Teresa Price, deputy secretary for Community Programs at the N.C. Department of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (DJJDP). Price spoke to members of the NCACC Justice and Public Safety Steering Committee on Nov. 17.

Price noted the importance of JCPC funding and emphasized that it was one of the few initiatives not cut in the current state budget. She credited the pressure applied on legislators by county commissioners for helping the programs avoid any significant and potentially harmful budget cuts during last year's state budget negotiations.

"JCPC programs have proven over time that prevention works," she said. "Money spent on prevention is a very good investment because the sooner services intercede in a juvenile's case, the less likely the case will escalate to the adult level."

Price updated committee members on the state's growing gang problem, noting that 9.3 percent of youths encountered in North Carolina's juvenile justice system are involved in gangs. She also said that gangs are no longer an urban issue and are expanding to rural counties, and she pointed out that the state and federal governments, through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, had appropriated millions of dollars to programs designed to address the gang issue.

Price also addressed the Youth Accountability Task Force, which was created by H1414 to look at the possibility of increasing the age at which an offender is regarded as an adult from 16 to 18. North Carolina and New York are the only states that classify 16-year-olds as adult offenders, and New York has a lot of exceptions that allow youths at 16 or 17 to be treated as juveniles.

Price said the major push for the change is based on recent research on brain development that shows the human brain, particularly among males, is not fully developed until age 24. However, it is recognized that raising the age to 18 will impact counties in many ways, including requiring increases in substance abuse, parenting and vocational programs.

Karen Calhoun, senior research and policy associate at the Sentencing and Policy Advisory Commission, spoke to the Commission's role within the state's criminal justice system.

She reviewed the history of the Commission, which was first created in the early 1990s to address the issues of prison overcrowding. Following extensive research among all stakeholders and a spirited debate, the Commission developed recommendations to standardize sentencing so that offenders convicted of the same crime with the same basic criminal record would receive roughly the same sentence.

All offenders now must serve the entire portion of their minimum sentence. The amount of time they are required to serve of their maximum sentence after completing their minimum sentence depends on the offender's behavior while in prison. Calhoun stressed the research the Commission's staff conducts is grounded in numbers, and it frequently quantifies data for the N.C. Department of Justice, the State Bureau of Investigation and DJJDP. Annually, the staff completes prison population and juvenile crime projections. Every two years, they complete studies on adult recidivism, juvenile recidivism and the effectiveness of the JCPCs.

The principles that form the foundation of North Carolina's sentencing laws are that:

• sentence lengths should bear a close relationship to the time actually served.
• offenders convicted of similar offenses with similar criminal records should receive similar sentences.
• sentences should be proportionate to the severity of the crime as measured by the harm to the victim(s) and the offender's prior record.
• the most expensive resource (prisons and jails) should be reserved for violent and repeat offenders, and community based programs should be used for nonviolent offenders with little or no prior record.
• sentencing policies should be supported by adequate prison and community resources.

Calhoun also covered the initiatives of Criminal Justice Partnership Programs (CJPP), which are the equivalent of JCPCs in the juvenile system. CJPPs provide programs for intermediate punishments, such as day reporting and electronic monitoring/house arrest. She said it is important that these programs are fully funded because they help reduce the need for more prisons.

In other committee action:

• Steering Committee Chair Hubert Sealy of Robeson County appointed Beaufort County's Jerry Langley as committee vice chair.
• Committee members set their next two meeting dates for Feb. 9 and May 11. Both dates fall on a Tuesday, and each meeting will be held from 10 a.m. – 2 p.m. at the Albert Coates Local Government Center in Raleigh.