In the Olmstead case, the U.S. Supreme Court held that individuals who had disabilities, including children with mental illness, were required to receive supports and services in the most integrated settings appropriate to their needs. This means that states are required to establish programs for individuals with mental illnesses or disabilities that are integrated and are proven to work.
The problem lies in the fact that West Virginia fails to implement these programs and instead relies on a system of residential treatment facilities which remove children from their families and communities.
According to the Department of Justice findings, children with disabilities represented only 17 percent of the overall West Virginia School population during the 2009-10 school year, but they represented 34 percent of all school related arrests. Many of those arrests were then processed through the juvenile justice system with most of those juveniles being placed out of their homes to receive the “personal and social growth” that they need. One might wonder why this matters, and the answer to that is two-fold.
First and most importantly, studies from across the nation show that placing youth out of their homes is not effective in helping them learn appropriate behaviors to deter them from re-offending.
In August, the U.S. Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention released a bulletin “Studying Deterrence Among High-Risk Offenders.” This bulletin analyzed The Pathways to Desistance study which tracked over 1,300 serious juvenile offenders for seven years after their convictions in both Philadelphia County, Pennsylvania and Maricopa County, Arizona.
Some of the important conclusions from that study include:
• Incarceration, as well as longer stays in juvenile facilities, did not reduce reoffending. In fact, for those with lower level offenses, placement in those facilities had a tendency to raise their rate of re-offending.
• Juveniles who received community-based supervision and services within their communities were more likely to attend school, go to work and avoid further offending compared with those juveniles that were placed in facilities. This leads us to the conclusion that treating juvenile offenders in their homes and communities helps prevent them from re-offending more effectively than removing them from those situations.