Sponsored by:
Senator SHIRLEY K. TURNER
District 15 (Hunterdon and Mercer)
SYNOPSIS
Creates two-year Restorative and Transformative Justice for Youths and Communities Pilot Program in Juvenile Justice Commission focused on reducing youth involvement with youth justice system; appropriates $8.4 million in FY 2021 and FY 2022.
CURRENT VERSION OF TEXT
As introduced.
An Act creating a two-year restorative and transformative justice pilot program focused on reducing initial and repeat youth involvement with the youth justice system, and making an appropriation.
Be It Enacted by the Senate and General Assembly of the State of New Jersey:
1. The Legislature finds and declares that:
a. Currently, New Jersey s youth justice system has staggering racial justice disparities, high recidivism rates, and grossly underfunded community-based services;
b. New Jersey has the highest Black to white youth incarceration racial disparity rate in the country with a Black youth twenty-one times more likely to be detained or committed than a white youth, even though research shows that Black and white youth commit most offenses at similar rates;
c. New Jersey also has the fourth highest Latina-Latino to white youth incarceration disparity rate in the country;
d. The recidivism rates in New Jersey are devastating as well. Of the 377 youth released from State juvenile facilities in 2014, 76.9 percent had a subsequent arrest or court filing, 58.9 percent had a subsequent adjudication or conviction, and almost one-fourth, 23.9 percent, were recommitted to a facility within three years of release;
e. Yet, despite these failures, New Jersey continues to finance its youth incarceration system at exorbitant cost. In calendar year 2020, New Jersey plans to spend $300,000 to incarcerate each youth in a State secure juvenile facility managed and operated by the Juvenile Justice Commission, and projects the same expenditure in calendar year 2021;
f. While the State currently spends approximately $56 million a year to operate its three secure juvenile facilities, it only allocates around $16 million to provide counties with funding for community-based youth programs;
g. The current public health crisis resulting from the Coronavirus disease 2019 pandemic, also referred to as the COVID-19 pandemic, has further illustrated the failures of our youth justice system by detrimentally harming our impacted youth. As of August 20, 2020, according to the Juvenile Justice Commission, 29 youth and 56 staff in juvenile facilities have tested positive for the virus SARS-CoV-2 which causes COVID-19; 21 of the 29 youth cases occurred at the New Jersey Training School, also known as Jamesburg, the State s largest secure facility for youthful males;
h. The Juvenile Justice Commission has taken several measures to mitigate the spread of the virus, including releasing approximately 38 incarcerated youth from its facilities. Should Senate Bill No. 2519, passed by the Senate on August 27, 2020, or its counterpart bill, Assembly Bill No. 4235, become law, more incarcerated youths would be released in an expedited fashion because their terms of incarceration would be reduced based on awards of credits during the current declared public health emergency concerning the COVID-19 pandemic;
i. As young people are released from facilities in response to the current pandemic, it is clear that the State must actively engage communities and properly fund services to reintegrate these youth back into their communities successfully;
j. The Juvenile Justice Commission and community stakeholders should also work together to create community-based public safety systems that divert young people away from the youth justice system in the first place;
k. Thus, the confluence of the COVID-19 pandemic with the on-going, fervent call for racial equality demands a fresh and immediate need to transform New Jersey s youth justice system. As an alternative to an overreliance on punishment, New Jersey needs a community-based system that embraces restorative and transformative justice practices and emphasizes physical, psychological and emotional safety and healing for youth, their families and communities;
l. Nationally, restorative justice and transformative justice programs and practices have been recognized as best practices in keeping young people out of the youth justice system and successfully reintegrating them into their home communities after being released from out-of-home placements;
m. Restorative justice is a system that brings victims, community members, and youth who have committed harm together to discuss the harm that was done and explore solutions to address the root cause of that harm. This system presents an alternate avenue for addressing harm and encourages active participation in the restorative process to facilitate stronger community relationships and community-driven public safety;
n. Transformative justice addresses conflicts and harms at the individual level, community level, and within broader social structures. Transformative justice works to build alternatives to our current systems and transform the conditions which help create acts of violence or make them possible;
o. Restorative justice and transformative justice offer two different perspectives of justice aimed at interpersonal and consensual resolutions, with transformative justice also incorporating systems-level change;
p. To sufficiently support young people being released from juvenile facilities in response to the current public health crisis, and to provide adequate resources to prevent young people in New Jersey from entering the youth justice system in the first instance, New Jersey should explore, through a pilot program, the development of a comprehensive youth continuum of care based on restorative and transformative justice practices.
2. There is established in the Juvenile Justice Commission, created by section 2 of P.L.1995, c.284 (C.52:17B-170), a two-year pilot program, titled the Restorative and Transformative Justice for Youths and Communities Pilot Program. The purpose of the pilot program is to develop innovative restorative and transformative justice continuums of care in four target cities that include two components: community-based enhanced reentry wraparound services and restorative justice hubs. The pilot program shall be established in the municipalities of Camden, Newark, Paterson, and Trenton.
a. The first component of the pilot program shall include community-based enhanced reentry wraparound services. These services shall be designed as an emergency response for those young people being released from juvenile facilities due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and may also serve as a long-term program for all young people released from a facility. Community-based enhanced reentry wraparound services shall include, but not be limited to, the following services and supports:
(1) Mental health services;
(2) Substance use disorders treatment and recovery;