Sacramento – Today, Assemblymember Roger Dickinson’s (D-Sacramento) Assembly Bill 526 was approved by the California State Assembly on a bipartisan vote of 65-0. The bill would improve the effectiveness and efficiency in the granting of state and federal funds for delinquency and gang intervention and prevention programs. The bill will next be heard in the Senate.
“The goal of AB 526 is to bring greater coherence to the state’s delinquency prevention and youth development policies and programs,” said Assemblymember Dickinson. “This bill will begin to move the state in a better direction for using available funds more efficiently and effectively.”
Dickinson chairs both the Accountability and Administrative Review Committee and the Select Committee on Delinquency Prevention and Youth Development and has been holding hearings throughout the state on the efficiency, effectiveness and funding of delinquency prevention programs. The Committees have found that 17 different state agencies allocate funding to programs addressing juvenile justice, delinquency and youth development, but with little coordination and collaboration among them.
Additionally, the state spends in excess of $1 billion annually on youth crime prevention and Juvenile Justice funding. Despite these expenditures, the state has little ability to determine which programs have been the most effective at preventing youth crime and lowering recidivism rates among juvenile offenders.
Evidenced based programs, however, have been independently evaluated and proven to be effective in studies comparing program participants to a control group, and then replicated by others with similar successful outcomes. By focusing gang prevention/intervention funding on such programs under the provisions of AB 526 the state is more likely to get a better return on its investment.
Specifically, AB 526 would direct the new Board of State and Community Corrections to allocate state gang intervention and prevention funding to programs which operate according to evidenced based principles, develop incentives for regional partnerships among agencies receiving gang intervention and prevention funding, and consolidate multiple grant application processes into a single application.
Contact: Taryn Kinney, (916) 319-2009
