Authority: Title 2.2, Chapter 2, Article 8, and § 2.2-201, Code of Virginia.
A. The Secretary of Public Safety and Homeland Security shall present revised six-year state and local juvenile and state and local responsibility adult offender population forecasts to the Governor, the Chairs of the House Appropriations and Senate Finance and Appropriations Committees, and the Chairs of the House Courts of Justice and Senate Judiciary Committees by October 15 of each year. The secretary shall ensure that the revised forecast for state-responsible adult offenders shall include an estimate of the number of probation violators included each year within the overall population forecast who may be appropriate for alternative sanctions.
B. The secretary shall continue to work with other secretaries to (i) develop services intended to improve the re-entry of offenders from prisons and jails to general society and (ii) enhance the coordination of service delivery to those offenders by all state agencies. The secretary shall provide a status report on actions taken to improve offender transitional and reentry services, as provided in § 2.2-221.1, Code of Virginia, including improvements to the preparation and provision for employment, treatment, and housing opportunities for those being released from incarceration. The report shall be provided to the Governor and the Chairs of the House Appropriations and Senate Finance and Appropriations Committees no later than November 15 of each year.
C. Included in the appropriation for this item is $500,000 the first year and $500,000 the second year from the general fund for the Commonwealth's nonfederal cost match requirement to accomplish the United States Corps of Engineers Regional Reconnaissance Flood Control Study for both the Hampton Roads and Northern Neck regions as authorized by the U.S. Congress. Any balances not needed to complete these studies may be used to conduct a comparable study in the Northern Virginia region.
D. The Secretary of Public Safety and Homeland Security, or his designee, shall convene a work group to examine the costs and feasibility of the implementation of Senate Bill 134, 2022 Session of the General Assembly. The work group shall include representatives from the Department of Juvenile Justice, the Office of the Executive Secretary, Court Service Units, Juvenile Detention Centers, Juvenile and Domestic Relations District Courts, the Department of Corrections, the Department of Behavioral Health and Developmental Services, the Department of Planning and Budget, appropriate staff from the House Appropriations and Senate Finance and Appropriations Committees, and other appropriate stakeholders. The work group shall develop cost estimates and the associated efforts necessary to implement the provisions of Senate Bill 134, to include the state and local fiscal impact and any cost savings realized by reducing the number of individuals in the adult criminal justice system. In conducting this assessment, the work group shall review the experience of other states that have implemented similar legislation. The Secretary of Public Safety and Homeland Security shall submit a report of the work group's findings to the Governor and the Chairs of the House Appropriations and Senate Finance and Appropriations Committees by October 1, 2022.
E.1. The Secretary of Public Safety and Homeland Security, in collaboration with the Secretary of Education and the Secretary of Health and Human Resources, with the cooperation and assistance of the Department of Planning and Budget, the Virginia Association of Counties, and the Virginia Municipal League, shall evaluate and submit to the General Assembly no later than October 15, 2024, a report on juvenile detention center cost savings strategies. The report shall include a proposal to reduce state formula financial assistance for juvenile confinement in local facilities (“juvenile detention center block grant") in order to incentivize consolidation of juvenile detention centers in the Commonwealth. The proposal shall: (i) recommend five to eight juvenile detention centers for consolidation, identifying the five to eight facilities recommended for closure and alternative facilities recommended to house youth impacted by the closures; (ii) describe the criteria used to identify such facilities including, but not limited to, distance between the facilities recommended for closure and the recommended alternative sites of incarceration, funded and licensed capacity, historical and projected average daily population by region, age and condition of facilities and their electronic security systems, outstanding debt service, deferred maintenance and annual maintenance reserve as a percentage of the replacement asset value, potential for repurposing or sale of facilities recommended for closure, regional distribution of juvenile detention centers, and availability of programming; (iii) estimate the state savings that would result from elimination of juvenile detention center block grant funding for facilities recommended for closure, net any expected increase in block grant or per diem funding for facilities recommended to house additional youth; and (iv) recommend two to five options for reinvesting the net savings in services for youth involved or at-risk of becoming involved in the juvenile justice system.
2. In addition, the report shall assess alternative delivery models for education services at juvenile detention centers, including: (i) determining the extent to which each juvenile detention center currently implements or could further implement cost effective staffing methods, including strategies identified in the 2021 Board of Education report entitled “Recommendations for Appropriate Staffing and Funding Levels Necessary for State Operated Programs (SOPs) in Regional and Local Detention Centers"; (ii) continuing to develop an alternative to the statutorily required 1:12 teacher to student staffing ratio; (iii) utilizing full-time special education teachers to coordinate, plan, and substitute for part-time teachers shared with either the local school division or other state operated programs; and (iv) determining and providing the feasibility and potential cost savings of each alternative delivery model, as well as specific actions to implement each model.