by Jon Baliles

Tyler Layne with WTVR News reported last week another disturbing story about how City Hall has been shortchanging the city’s at-risk youth and leaving a lot of state money on the table that could be helping them find brighter and better futures. According to Layne, about $1 million of available state money meant to help court-involved youth and reduce their risk of re-arrest has gone unused by the city over the last three years, despite the city experiencing an upward trend in crimes committed by youth since the pandemic.

Valerie Slater leads the nonprofit Rise for Youth , with the goal of helping youth before they get into trouble with the law and face court action for an arrest. It and other non-profits try to steer youth onto career opportunities and help them start to develop life skills. The Richmond Department of Justice Services provides some of these programs, but Slater calls the city’s overall effort “so woefully deficient.”

Every locality in Virginia participates in the Virginia Juvenile Community Crime Control Act (VJCCCA), which was set up to deter youth from getting involved in crime or re-offending, and also to divert youth out of the courts without absolving them of responsibility for their actions. The state provides funds to each locality to help provide these services and the flexibility to determine which services it wishes to provide based on the needs of its community from among 30 identified and approved programs.

According to Layne, in our region, Henrico County provided 14 programs last year, including anger management, mental health services, parenting coaching, and mentoring.

Chesterfield County offered 11 programs last year, including social activities, substance use evaluations, and restorative justice.

The City of Richmond had three operational programs last year: community service, community monitoring, and electronic monitoring.

“If all you’re doing is putting an ankle monitor on a child, you’re basically setting them up for failure,” Slater said.

Layne reports:

None of the city’s services are prevention based, and they do not meet VJCCCA’s recommendation of a “balanced approach” model since they do not include competency development programs which aim to “provide opportunities for juveniles to acquire or build on interpersonal, cognitive, and behavioral skills and strengths at home, in school, and at work.”

So that’s the bad part about the lack of offerings for youth in trouble with the law or close to it. What’s worse is that the city is not maximizing every state dollar that is available to it, which means many youth who need help and could be getting it are not.

Layne reports [emphasis added]:

The state matches city funds to operate and administer VJCCCA services, and the city will utilize its local funds first before using state money. However, Richmond has not been using most of the funds provided by the Commonwealth.

Since 2021, Richmond has sent back more than $1 million in unused funds out of the $1.3 million received, according to data obtained through a public records request.

In 2023, Richmond was the only locality in the metro area to return funds. Data provided by the Department of Juvenile Justice showed Henrico, Chesterfield, Hanover, and Petersburg all maximized state dollars for their VJCCCA services.

It’s painful to see that Mayor Stoney is leaving $1 million of state funding on the table that could be helping at-risk youth, yet still claiming the operation of City Hall is the best it has been in a decade. When asked if the city was offering enough programs under the VJCCCA, Dawn Barber, director of Richmond Justice Services, said they have had staffing challenges but that the juvenile court was satisfied with the offerings and there had been no complaints.

When asked why the City was leaving that money unused, Barber told Layne the money is “expended based on the number of referrals [from the Court Service Unit], so the number of kids we have in our programs. We just didn’t have the level of kids that would have utilized all the funds.”

Barber also made the claim that “The number of juvenile intakes have decreased over the number of years. So that is the prevailing philosophy, that if juvenile crime is down, there’s not enough juveniles, which is a good thing, to refer to programs.”

The Virginia Department of Juvenile Justice report showed, however, that Richmond’s intake of youth into the system in fact increased from 665 in 2021 to 915 in 2023, which included 280 felonies and 309 misdemeanors, according to Layne’s review of records. The top offenses involved assaults, weapons, and larcenies.

Furthermore, in addition to not utilizing state funding to help at-risk youth, the city’s Court Service Unit that helps determine and make referrals to programs and services instead of jail, had one of the lowest successful diversion rates in Virginia in 2023 at 3.6% of juvenile intakes that resulted in a successful diversion.

Richmond had one of the highest rates, compared to other Virginia Court Service Units, of juvenile intakes that resulted in a charge and detention order at 50%.

Translated, more of the city’s at-risk youth are going to detention/jail and too few are being enrolled into helpful diversion programs because the city is leaving more than $1 million on the table and only running three diversion programs (two in reality, because one is just the ankle monitor program).

Richmond Commonwealth’s Attorney Colette McEachin, whose office only interacts with juveniles once a petition is filed, said “there is always greater capacity and need” when it comes to pre-charge diversion and post-charge services. She said:

It would be extremely helpful to have the option of temporary shelter care for juveniles in detention who cannot return to their home pending trial and need a safe therapeutic placement. Richmond used to have such a program and I don’t know why it was discontinued.

The sad thing is that the city has partners in the community ready and willing to help. Rise for Youth is one of them.  Valerie Slater said:

Invite us to the table to figure out how to allocate resources and do more. Spend those dollars in the spaces that are doing good work.

When [children] find themselves in trouble, if we are not providing them with positive paths, if we are not providing them with the instruction and opportunities to do differently, then we can’t anticipate that they will do anything other than what they’ve already done.

Given the challenges many of today’s youth face, especially those in our city, you might think someone at City Hall would be making sure that every one of those state dollars is expended and programs are expanded to make sure more at-risk city youth have a better chance for getting on the right track and towards a brighter and positive future instead of a court date and an ankle monitor.

Jon Baliles is a former Richmond City Councilman. This column is republished with permission from his blog Richmond 5×5.