Letter to the Editor: Conferencing Can Help Kids and Taxpayers

On April 27, 2004, the Baltimore Sun published an article about a decision by the Department of Juvenile Service (DJS) to renege on its commitment to fund the Community Conferencing Center, a highly successful alternative to the juvenile justice system for youth that was started by OSI-Baltimore community fellow Lauren Abramson. In response, OSI-Baltimore Director Diana Morris wrote a letter to the editor in support of the program, pointing out that DJS would likely have saved hundreds of thousands of dollars by funding the program. Morris's letter, which was published on May 5, is reprinted below.

To the Editor:

It is ironic that the state Department of Juvenile Services' excuse for reneging on its $750,000 commitment to fund a highly successful and innovative juvenile justice initiative is lack of money ("Turning feuds into hugs," April 27).

The state estimates that it costs $50,000 to $100,000 a year to provide residential treatment for a juvenile offender. Lauren Abramson's Community Conferencing Center would have needed to divert only 15 young people from residential treatment—places such as the notorious Cheltenham Youth Facility and the Charles H. Hickey Jr. School—to pay for itself.

Yet for $750,000, Ms. Abramson had planned to divert 600 young people from the juvenile justice system through community conferencing over the next 18 months. Of course, without conferencing, all of these youths would not end up in residential treatment. But the program's cost savings to our overburdened court systems, police departments, public defender's offices, communities and families would still be enormous.

And conferencing works. Unlike incarceration, for which the recidivism rate is nearly 80 percent, the recidivism rate for young people who resolve disputes through community conferencing is only 10 percent to 15 percent.

The conferencing program involves a relatively small investment for a very large payback.

It is not too late for the Department of Juvenile Services to rethink its position and make good on its commitment to our children's future.

Diana Morris
Baltimore