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.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.
D. The Secretary of Public Safety and Homeland Security, with the cooperation and assistance of the Virginia Association of Counties, the Virginia Municipal League, the Virginia Sheriffs' Association, the Virginia Association of the Chiefs of Police, and other appropriate stakeholders, shall evaluate and submit to the General Assembly no later than November 1, 2024, a report to establish authority in the Code of Virginia for local civilian-led units designed to respond, investigate, and handle calls for services related to minor traffic accidents and other duties as assigned. The report shall include potential legislative language, any costs savings to local police and sheriff departments, research around best practices from other states, recommendations for implementation and tasks that could be assigned to local civilian-led units, and a list of potential challenges the units could face being set up by local jurisdictions.
E. The Secretary of Public Safety and Homeland Security shall complete a review and assessment of the sufficiency of fire and emergency medical services funding in the Commonwealth. The review and assessment shall include, but not be limited to, (i) identification of local, state, and federal funding provided to support local fire and emergency medical services by locality or region, and to the extent possible, trends in funding by source; (ii) consideration of identifiable fire or emergency medical service funding needs by locality or region; (iii) identification of factors that influence or differentiate the ability of localities or regions to meet the funding needs of local and regional fire and emergency medical services; (iv) factors influencing the ability of localities or regions to meet fire and emergency medical services funding needs; and, (v) consideration of the costs and benefits of consolidation state-level administration of fire and emergency medical services funding and oversight, to include an assessment of administrative models used in other states. In completing the assessment, the Secretary shall convene at least three stakeholder group meetings whose membership shall include, but not be limited to, representatives from the Department of Fire Programs, the Office of Emergency Medical Services, the Virginia Fire Services Council, Virginia's Regional EMS Councils, the Virginia Fire Chiefs Association, the Virginia Association of Counties, and the Virginia Municipal League. Included in the appropriation for this item is $150,000 the first year from the general fund for the Secretary to procure the services of technical experts to complete the review and assessment. The Secretary shall provide a summary report of the findings of the review and assessment, as well as any recommendations, to the Chairs of the House Committee on Appropriations and the Senate Committee on Finance and Appropriations no later than November 1, 2024.