Metropolitan Government of Nashville and Davidson County

Amount Appropriated?

$2.2M

FFID tracks stages 1–2 — stages 3–5 vary by agency, assistance type, and earmark structure.

Project Description

Black youth accounts for 34.6% of all Davidson County youth under the age of 18 in 2019 and 34.7% in 2020. Between 2017 and 2021, 68.4% of youth arrested were Black and 78% of the youth committed to the Department of Children\u2019s Services as Delinquent/Juvenile Justice youth were Black. Assessment Centers save communities money. The Justice Policy Institute reported in 2020 that the most expensive confinement option for a young person, on average, can cost $588.00 a day, or about $ 214,000.00 a year. The cost of stay for a youth in a secure care facility in Tennessee is $630.14 per day, and $230,000.00 annually. As a cost savings, money saved from funding detention beds can be better used to fund alternatives to placing youth in detention and other community youth-centered systems (i.e., The Nashville Assessment Center). The National Research Council and Institute of Medicine found that formally processed adolescents were more likely to be re-arrested and incarcerated, engaged in more violence, reported a greater affiliation with delinquent peers, reported lower school enrollment, were less likely to graduate high school within five years, reported less ability to suppress aggression, and had lower perceptions of opportunities than informally processed youth. In the absence of an Assessment Center, youth of low criminogenic risk have no protections or diversions from these risks. Implementing an Assessment Center reduces recidivism in a cost-effective manner. According to the National Assessment Center Association, justice system involvement is often ineffective and expensive, and a stay in a pretrial juvenile detention facility increases the likelihood of felony recidivism by 33% and misdemeanor recidivism by 11% (p. 1, para. 2). Assessment Centers have been proven effective to reduce recidivism rates across the country.