The Department of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention(JJDP) provided a continuation review of Juvenile Crime Prevention Councils (JCPC) to the General Assembly on February 1. According to the budget bill from 2007, the report was to cover seven areas

(1) A description of the program, including information on services provided, the recipients of the services, and the
resource requirements.
(2) Meaningful measures of program performance and whether the program is meeting these measures.
(3) The rationale for continuing, reducing, or eliminating funding.
(4) The consequences of discontinuing program funding.
(5) Recommendations for improving services.
(6) Recommendations for reducing costs.
(7) The identification of policy issues that should be brought to the attention of the General Assembly.

You’ll be surprised to learn that the review provided “evidence of significant accomplishments in demonstrating program effectiveness by JCPC programs” and recommends that the best way to reduce costs is to reinstate and increase JCPC funds. The review also provided results from surveys of “1,000 JCPC members” and “500 JCPC service providers,” who clearly had unbiased perspectives on the program’s value.

In response to this glowing review from an objective source, the General Assembly did indeed reinstate $22.7 million in JCPC funding and added $500,000.

Before we rejoice in this clear example of fiscal responsibility and wise public spending, consider today’s performance audit from the State Auditor’s Office, which found financial an performance evaluation conflicts of interest among JCPC members who also served as managers or directors of JCPC-funded programs. Monitoring of JCPC programs is insufficient at both the local and department levels.

The auditor also found that there is no objective standard for measuring program effectiveness:

The lack of standardized performance objectives allows each provide to set its own objectives and claim that its program is effective, whether it is or not. It also makes fair comparisons between similar programs difficult. The lack of standardized performance objectives could also create a fairness issue if the Department wanted to end funding to a program based on lack of effectiveness because the Department would not have an objective standard on which to base its decision.

In other words, it’s much easier for bureaucrats to continue funding programs if they have no way to know whether the program is effective.

HT: KB