UT- Economy forces state to scrimp on treatment for young sex offenders

12-21-2008 Utah:

Budget cuts » The state is scrapping plans for a new center and could close a long-term lockup facility.

Despite Utah's young demographics and a booming number of juvenile sex offenders, upcoming budget cuts will hit kids in trouble hard.

An expected $3 million shortfall through 2010 means fewer juvenile sex offenders will be evaluated and treated as efforts to build a new center have been scrapped. More kids will be crowded together if a long-term lockup center is closed. And funds will be chopped from a slew of community programs including one that gives police a place to take arrested juveniles if their parents can't be found right away.

"We're concerned," said Director of JJS Dan Maldonado. "Anything involving the justice community is really important, and we're a big part of that."

After 15 years of efforts to start a center to identify those juvenile sex offenders in danger of becoming predators, Juvenile Justice officials finally found a welcoming property. The budget downturn will force them to eliminate $600,000 pegged for the center and restart the process of finding land in a time when the number of young sex offenders is exploding.

In the mid- to late-1990s, an estimated 7 to 10 percent of the juvenile offender population was in for sex crimes. The number has now doubled to 20 percent, Maldonado said, and there are many more offenders among the nearly 10,000 kids taken in annually by the Department of Child and Family Services and the courts. Rob Butters, co-chair of the Utah Network on Juveniles Offending Sexually (NOJOS), said the increase is due in large part to more victims coming forward to report crimes.

Butters said Utah now has a pair of gaps in its system. In addition to losing the prospect of an assessment center, Valley Mental Health last year cut contracts providing mentally ill juvenile sex offenders much-needed psychiatric help. Without treatment alternatives, young offenders tend to land in lock-ups more often, he said.

As a clinical social worker, Butters said he once treated a 16-year-old boy who fit a fairly typical mold for young offenders -- exposure to pornography in pubescent stages and being slightly socially awkward or bored. The young man has since gone on to graduate from college, is married, has a child and plans to study law so he can help kids in similar situations.

"If you treat them, they probably won't do it again," Butters said, citing studies that show treated kids re-offend less than 10 percent of the time. "We want them to get on with their lives rather than put a scarlet letter on their forehead."

Treatment for the most common young offenders involves individual and group visits to therapy programs, but one of the major components is simply preoccupying the kids.

"There is some sex-specific treatment, but it's very much focused on all the other things going on in a kid's life," Butters said, adding that workers will often check grades or have youths attend social activities. "This new model really says all this clinical voodoo is OK, but let's really focus on helping these people live healthy, productive, happy lives. Social skills is a big part of that -- if you can't get your needs met one way, you turn to the Internet or underground deviant stuff."

If a child goes untreated, it's harder to change sexually deviant behavior in adults, Butters said.

"If we can stop this behavior now, it will save us so much money," Butters said.

But given the reality of the economy, Juvenile Justice workers know it's more likely they will lose more cash across the board in coming years.

Over the next two years, Juvenile Justice plans to eliminate $3.7 million from community programs, ranging from group homes to psychiatric hospital treatment. It will also eliminate $3 million from holding facilities, such as the Decker Lake Detention Center, which could force the department to cram twice as many juveniles into cells. Other proposed cuts include supervision and diversion programs for juveniles.

"We are very concerned about public safety first and foremost," Maldonado said. "We want to isolate sex offenders, and we spend time and energy in treating all of those kids and affording them opportunities for treatment."

Early treatment costs only a few thousand dollars, said Maldonado, and could help alleviate the heavy burden on the Department of Corrections, which pays around $30,000 per inmate each year and recently reported a growing waiting list for sex-offender treatment at its facilities.

The total number of offenders at the prisons doubled from August 1996 to August 2008, and Corrections says adult sex offenders make up 30 percent of the total inmate population. Even so, low funding means only 235 of the nearly 2,000 sex offenders imprisoned in August were receiving treatment as of November.

The young population of offenders is expected to continue to rise, posing what Maldonado called a "daunting task for the Legislature."

Cuts to social work programs that carry long-term benefits for the community concern some who warn of an "economic aftershock."

"It's when the economy is terrible and people are broke -- that's big business for social workers," Butters said. "People are desperate, but we also stop putting money into programs." ..News Source.. by Steve Gehrke, The Salt Lake Tribune