The Missouri Model: Reinventing the Practice of Rehabilitating Youthful Offenders

Missouri’s approach to juvenile detention involves a multi-step treatment experience offered in small, regionally dispersed facilities. This departs wildly from the model employed by most states. A new report by the Annie E. Casey Foundation analyzes the successful outcomes from Missouri’s juvenile justice model and explores how Missouri’s approach could factor into a new wave of juvenile justice reform.

The report compares Missouri’s Division of Youth Services’ recidivism rates, educational progress, safety tactics, cost and staff to those of other states. Missouri’s successful outcomes outpaces other states’ outcomes. The percentage of youth sentenced to adult prison within three years of release from juvenile detention is at 8.5 percent in Missouri, far lower than other states like Arizona, Indiana and Maryland—states that all tally the same kind of recidivism data. Additionally, 90 percent of youth earn high school credits while residing in Division of Youth Services facility.

The report argues that the success of the Missouri approach merits serious consideration for replication in other states, especially those that continue to rely on large, prison-like facilities. The authors of the report offer suggestions to make this possible, including the adoption of group-focused treatment, limited use of isolation and an individualized case management system that assigns every young person to a single manager to track progress.

The report was published online in December 2010 by the Annie E. Casey Foundation, an organization dedicated to building better futures for disadvantaged children.
 

Read the report (pdf).