Building Futures: A Second Act

The Second Chance Act provides a comprehensive response to the increasing number of incarcerated adults and juveniles who are released from prison, jail, and juvenile residential facilities and are returning to their communities. The FY 2013 Second Chance Act Juvenile Reentry Program helps ensure that the transition the youth make from secure confinement facilities to the community is successful and promotes public safety. A secure confinement facility may include a juvenile detention center, juvenile correctional facility, or staff-secure facility. Eligible juveniles must have been confined under juvenile court jurisdiction. CATEGORY 2: Implementation Projects must include specific strategies for implementing the ten Mandatory Requirements of a Comprehensive Reentry Program.

Youth in Maricopa County entering the juvenile justice system has decreased in recent years; however, the rate of juvenile recidivism, remains constant and too high. Particularly for medium to high risk youth with mental, behavioral and/or substance abuse issues. Continuity of care in education, mental and behavioral health, and family treatment, early and throughout transition has been absent, and/or disconnected for this group of at-risk youth. Additional analysis reveals that Arizona and Maricopa County must increase coordination of case management and use evidence-based practice by all juvenile serving agencies to decrease recidivism. The Maricopa County Education Service Agency Second Chance Act Reentry program, Building Futures: A Second Act (Building Futures) will reduce recidivism through the following: (1) improve coordination among education; (2) increase capacity of stakeholders to address criminogenic needs of juveniles in the targeted areas; (3) increase family involvement; (4) increase continuity of services in the community while in aftercare; (5) improve access to community-based treatment and ancillary services; (6) improve juvenile clients mental health; (7) decrease recidivism; and (8) increase continuation of services, and supportive relationships between youth and program staff. Building Futures will expand the extant literature about overall effectiveness of family-focused juvenile reentry and the impact of specific programing and implementation strategies. CA/NCF