Math For Legislators (cost of youth crime) Part 1

HEART OF THE MATTER

Legislators make our laws and distribute our money. They have to know everything about everything to do this wisely and well. There will always be things they know more about than others.  Especially those things lobbied hardest by powerful, monied constituents. This article focuses on simple things those of us (not monied, not powerful) advocating for at risk children can share with our legislators that demonstrate the costs of not knowing and importance of knowing more about the issues of child abuse, trauma and child protection.

SHARE THIS ARTICLE WITH YOUR STATE REPRESENTATIVE.

Most lawmakers know what a big percentage of their budgets is spent on social programs like child welfare and child protection.

Not as many understand how tax dollars they appropriate are working to solve the problems they are meant to solve.

To be fair, there is little reporting or transparency from the agencies involved and the media is struggling to afford the investigative journalism dollars amidst the many loud cries of War, Climate, Covid, and Politics. It’s hard to make good legislative decisions based on incomplete institutional data (not all data is equal, not all data is reported).

This deductive math exercise is not perfect. It is KARA’s attempt to help those of us not monied or powerful demonstrate to our legislators the depth and scope of the issues facing at-risk children and how tax dollars could be redirected to better solve problems (improving our Return on Investment) while saving taxpayers money (additional proof will follow in Part 2 of this series).

Adjusting for your State data, this equation works where you live and nationally. For this article, data numbers are rounded up if they are at .5 or greater and rounded down if at .5 or smaller.

• The average number of children per family in the U.S. is 1.9 – the average number of children per family in each Hennepin County MN Child Protection Case = 4. Most abused youth go on to have families like the family they came from. The number 4 is an important part of the equation as the average number of children in American households is less than 2. This variance indicates that generational child abuse has grown and continues to grow exponentially. Like the frog in warm water brought to a boil, our budget allocations for child abuse and all things related to it are also growing exponentially.
• Between 5 and 7 thousand MN children/year were removed from their homes between 2017 and 2020. Nationally, there are 3.5 million reports of abuse in America annually (pre COVID) representing over 7 million abused children. Minnesota averages 70,000 reports of child abuse annually.
• 12.7% of MN foster children re-enter foster care after being reunited with their families within one year of being reunited with their family.
• 9000 youth are in MN Foster Care on any given day at a cost of between $40 and $400 day depending on level of care. 1/3 of fostered youth are placed on psychotropic medications. Many of these youth have serious mental health and behavioral issues and a high cost to social services. Legislators should push to find out what these costs are (reported in an understandable way) and what are the outcomes from the services provided (mental health diagnosis, graduation rates, employment rates, incarceration/recidivism rates)?
• 80% of fostered youth aging out of the system lead dysfunctional lives – 2000 Minnesota youth each year age out of Foster Care year costing our communities between $300,000 and $900,000 over their lifetime. This figure does not include the high cost of juvenile crimes or cost to our schools, public health or public safety. 23,000 American youth age out of foster care each year.
• 90% of youth in the Juvenile Justice System have passed through Child Protective Services. 66% of youth in JJ have diagnosable mental illness over half of them have multiple and severe diagnosis.
• 80% of adults in the Criminal Justice system have passed through Juvenile Justice. 9 year prison recidivism rates nationally are approaching 90%. The cost per youth at Rikers Island in NY is $553,000 per youth this year. The cost per youth in 40 states (including MN) Juvenile Justice is almost $300/day – over $100,000/year.
• The majority of serious and violent crime is committed by juveniles (between 500 billion & 1 trillion dollars annually). An ACEs study in ST Paul MN determined that the majority of Ramsey County crimes were committed by youth from 4% of the families in St Paul.

If these assumptions are close, the cost of a single family passing through child protective services over a 70 year period (3 generations) to be approximately 3.5 times 2 billion dollars in the State of Minnesota and 3.5 times 805 billion dollars nationally.

This cost approximation is based on:

• The assumption that 2 of the 4 youth per family (3 generations) passing through CPS have not managed their mental health and behavior issues and remain tied to the court, justice and social services system.
• The fact that generations of children passing through Child Protective Services, then as Juveniles passing through the Juvenile Justice system and into the Criminal Justice system + the welfare costs of teen and preteen mothers relying on public support as they bring children into the world to be cumulative.

There are other factors, but these two are chosen as we there is data to support them and this snapshot gives us a  viable number we can defend or dispute.

Cost Scenarios;

1. Using only the 2000 youth aging out of foster care in MN and the 23,000 youth aging out nationally, and a midrange number of $20,000/yr per in additional burden/system person costs* (not including the lost cost as taxpaying contributors to the community, over 50 years of dysfunctional lifestyle costs to schools and the community). Today in Minneapolis schools, 76% of Black third graders cannot read at grade level and only 10% are proficient in math. Minnesota spending; $2 Billion dollars – Federal spending same assumptions; $230 billion dollars.
2. Using a 10% slice of the 70,000 children reported to MN Child Protection and 7 million children reported nationally, each year;  7000 youth in MN and 700,000 nationally or 3.5 times greater children and dollars in #1 = (MN $7 Billion – Nationally $805 Billion).

*New York’s Rikers Island Detention Center costs per inmate now exceed $500,000 per year. Average prison costs are over $40,000 annually and average Jail costs are higher.

KARA reports on the issues of child abuse and child protection

This article submitted by CASA volunteer Mike Tikkanen

KARA Public Service Announcement (30 seconds)

KARA Signature Video (4 minute)

INVISIBLE CHILDREN campus programs here

All Adults Are the Protectors of All Children

 

PART II (under construction)

• In 2020 in Hennepin County, 40% of youth who were delinquent or found guilty by a judge, were charged with new crimes within 12 months. The recidivism rate is similarly high for Hennepin County youth who are being supervised in the community by probation officers. In Minneapolis, a startling two-thirds of minors arrested for carjackings between June 2020 and last November had at least one other arrest within the previous year, police records show.

• Over the past four years, between 20 to 25% of youth who were arrested for crimes in Hennepin and Ramsey counties were diverted away from formal court proceedings and into community-based programming such as mentoring, mental health counseling and jobs training.

Group home day rates 2020;

Restorative justice practices, once rare, are now widespread. Counties are hiring outside providers to conduct group dialogues, or talking circles, in which youth are encouraged to confront the impact of their crimes on victims and the community.

 

 

• More than 23,000 children will age out of the US foster care system every year.
• After reaching the age of 18, 20% of the children who were in foster care will become instantly homeless.
• Only 1 out of every 2 foster kids who age out of the system will have some form of gainful employment by the age of 24.
• There is less than a 3% chance for children who have aged out of foster care to earn a college degree at any point in their life.
• 7 out of 10 girls who age out of the foster care system will become pregnant before the age of 21.
• The percentage of children who age out of the foster care system and still suffer from the direct effects of PTSD: 25%.
• Tens of thousands of children in the foster care system were taken away from their parents after extreme abuse.
• 8% of the total child population of the United States is represented by reports of abuse that are given to authorities in the United States annually.
• In 2015, more than 20,000 young people — whom states failed to reunite with their families or place in permanent homes.