BALTIMORE — The last interview of WMAR-2 News’s “Year End” review, highlights opinions from leaders within the Department of Juvenile Services.
Secretary Vincent Schiraldi spoke with WMAR about success and challenges he faced within his role throughout 2023 with youth crime as the focus.
Schiraldi also talked about what we can expect to see next year from his office as it relates to youth crime.
Schiraldi’s role within DJS includes setting the mission and vision for the office. This includes hiring the right people and deploying the correct resources when it comes to public safety and rehabilitating kids involved in violence.
He said next year they plan to continue this work in a way which helps young people turn their lives around.
When it comes to the youth crime in Baltimore city and throughout the state, it’s a sensitive topic even for the leaders working to combat it.
“Nobody wants more crime. Everybody wants this problem solved,” Schiraldi said.
Maryland secretary for the department of juvenile services, Vincent Schiraldi said they’ve implemented new initiatives this year to get to the kids early on.
“Biggest achievement of the year is to launch the Thrive Academy which is focused very specifically on the kids in our care most likely to be involved in gun violence,” Schiraldi said.
These kids either had a history of prior arrest, or recently lost a loved one to gun violence. It’s why they are paired with a life coach and a specialized case manager.
“The very first thing that will happen is they will sit down with that young person and their parents and say, this is the ramifications of gun violence, you could come to harm, you could harm somebody else, you could go to prison” Schiraldi said.
Diverting youth from gun violence and putting together resources to help them is the mission for Thrive academy.
“We can help them go to college, we can give them a stipend, a job or service learning experience to service to the community, we can actually move their family in them if they're in danger of coming to harm. We're going to expand to Prince George's County this month, and Anne Arundel County next month, and then the rest of the state,” Schiraldi said.
They also implemented a YES working group that’s made up of prosecutors, defense attorneys, and the police. The Yes group collaborates to talk about the outcomes of the kids who participate in youth service programs so that every youth at risk for violence gets robust services. DJS also faced many challenges this year, especially as it relates to funding the youth programs.
“There was a lot of cuts in services to kids that are involved in a system, and we have to kind of build that back up. One obvious example is, there is literally not one residential drug treatment program that you can access if you're poor, in the state of Maryland, for an adolescent, not one," Schiraldi said.
Schiraldi said over the past decade cuts were made to juvenile services. Programs like therapeutic group homes and in home family services to name a few. Its why they’re working with the department of human services to change that.
“Juvenile justice system really is set up to help young people turn their lives around, rehabilitate them, while simultaneously holding them accountable. If you do both of those things, you improve public safety,” Schiraldi said.
According to the bureau of justice statistics 4% is the national average of people who go into adult prison before they turn 18. In Maryland, that number is twice as high at 8%.
“I think that's too many kids get tried as adults, and 90 percent of those young people are youth of color, they’re black and Latino. I think the juvenile system could handle many of those young people, and we have a lot more programs for them, and we make them less bad. The adult system has been shown to increase, not decrease recidivism,” Schiraldi said.
That’s something Schiraldi said needs to be looked at deeper.
“We need to do a lot more work on fixing the way we administer youth justice,” Schiraldi said.
In 2024 DJS will analyze all of the youth programs that exist, to identify which are most effective and eliminate what’s not.
In January DJS will also be releasing data on the recidivism rates. So far Schiraldi said 92% of the kids they divert do not get reconvicted within a year.
