Title II State Formula Grants
What it is: Title II of the Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act (JJDPA) provides grants to support state and local delinquency prevention and intervention programs, as well as efforts to strengthen the juvenile justice system.
How it works: The U.S. Department of Justices Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP) administers grants to help each state receiving the grant to implement a comprehensive juvenile justice plan based on a detailed needs assessment. State funding levels are derived from a formula based on the number of youth in each state. State Advisory Groups (SAGs) direct policy and help prepare and implement the Formula Grants state program plan.
Why its important: Title II State Formula Grants support a broad range of effective, research-proven prevention and intervention programs including Functional Family Therapy (FFT), Multidimensional Treatment Foster Care (MTFC), and Multi-Systemic Therapy (MST). Many juvenile court judges are faced with very limited sentencing (or disposition) options for a delinquency case (e.g., lock up or probation), and often neither is appropriate in that case. State Formula Grants can help states and communities to expand that range of options and ensure that the most effective approach can be used for each case. By strengthening the juvenile justice system and deterring youth from committing more serious crimes, Title II State Formula Grants make our neighborhoods safer and save lives. For example, Title II can support Multisystemic Therapy (MST), which works to address multiple factorsin peer, school, neighborhood and especially family environments that are known to be related to delinquency. One MST study followed juvenile offenders until they were, on average, 29 years old. Individuals who had not received MST were 62 percent more likely to have been arrested for a violent offense than similar youth who received MST.
Overwhelming unmet need: Similarly, even if only half of the nearly 400,000 juvenile offenders on probation and half of the 150,000 juvenile offenders eligible for out of home placement are eligible for these effective intervention programs, the number of young offenders who could benefit from evidenced-based approaches would still amount to 7 times the 35,000 total currently being served by MST, FFT, and MTFC.
Fiscally responsible: Multisystemic Therapy (MST) is more cost-effective than other mental health and juvenile justice services like residential treatment and incarceration, saving taxpayers $4.27 for every dollar invested. MST saves the public an average of $18,000 per youth treated.
Legislative Recommendations: FIGHT CRIME: INVEST IN KIDS recommends that Congress continue to strengthen the Title II Formula grants program during this years reauthorization process by increasing the funding authorization and by directing federal funds toward proven-effective intervention approaches.
For more information, please contact Nick Alexander at (202) 464-7014 or nalexander@fightcrime.org
