Establishes the youth justice innovation fund

• Democratic36

◆ The sponsor's argument

Why Cordell Cleare says this is needed

After the implementation of New York state's Raise the Age law in 2018, it was pledged that the program providing supervision and treatment services for at-risk youth would be adequately funded. Despite this promise, as of March 2024, less than a third of the $1.5 billion appro- priated for this purpose has been disbursed, leading to a backlog of unresolved family court cases. This legislation will expedite the disbursement of $50 million in funds from the annual appropriation of $250 million to community-based organizations that work with youth who are at risk of, alleged to be, or adjudicated as juvenile delinquents, juvenile offenders, or adolescent offenders through age twenty-five. This funding will be specifically focused on funding services and programs with the purpose of youth development and preventing youth arrest and incarceration, including, but not limited to, those providing violence-prevention services; alternatives to detention, placement and incarceration programs for youth and reentry, education, and employment training and placement programs for youth. SOCIAL JUSTICE IMPACT: Providing timely access to resources is especially critical for communi- ties of color due to the significant racial disparity in arrest, prose- cution, and incarceration. A 2019 study conducted by the Sentencing Project found that in New York, juvenile placement rates for Black youths are more than 5 times higher than those for their white peers. Moreover, the difference in placement rates between the two racial groups was found to have only decreased by 2% between 2015 to 2019 leav- ing a slightly smaller yet still considerable disparity between Black youth and White youth. Accelerated funding for juvenile programs is required to address these inequalities through prevention initiatives. The proposed legislation aims to expedite the allocation of funds to community organizations to facilitate the full implementation of Raise the Age programming. According to a 2017 national report by Georgetown Law's Center on Poverty and Inequity, examining the disparate treatment of Black juvenile girls by various system actors, Black girls are 2.7 times more likely than White girls to be referred to juvenile justice, are 1.2 times more likely to be detained, as well as three times more likely to be removed from their homes and placed in state custody compared to white girls. There is an imperative to provide greater aid for juvenile programming, and through this bill, the distribution of funds will be expedited to community organizations.

This is the sponsor's own case for the bill, quoted from their memorandum. It is not Agora's description of what the bill does.