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Georgia Reforms Gave Us More Choices, Better Results [jjie.org]

 

As Bill Gates famously said in his book, “The Road Ahead” (1996), “We always overestimate the change that will occur in the next two years and underestimate the change that will occur in the next ten.”

At the Department of Juvenile Justice in Georgia, Gov. Nathan Deal and his leadership team have seen remarkable change in half that time.

In 2013, the Georgia Department of Juvenile Justice (GA DJJ) was identified by Gov. Deal as a department where change was possible and reform was necessary. Commissioner Avery Niles took a leading role in orchestrating the process of change. At the time, GA DJJ was spending nearly two-thirds of its $300 million budget on out-of-home placements for youth (about $90,000 per bed per year), was experiencing readjudication rates of more than 50 percent (65 percent for youth leaving Georgia’s youth facilities) and was overseeing inconsistent community-based practices. As stated in the report by the Georgia Council on Criminal Justice Reform in July 2013, “Georgia’s juvenile justice system, which was heavily reliant on expensive, out-of-home facilities, [was] producing poor results for taxpayers and youth alike.”

[For more on this story by Joe Vignati and Dan Edwards, go to https://jjie.org/2018/07/18/ge...ices-better-results/]

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