Every year, thousands of Illinois teenagers are brought into the juvenile justice system who are struggling with poverty, substance use issues, mental health challenges, trauma, and other factors that contribute to risk-taking behavior and/or illegal activity. The harm of arrest, detention, and incarceration on the lives of these youth and their families is immeasurable. The cost to the state is enormous. Rather than incarcerating youth, the Illinois Department of Human Services (IDHS) funds the Redeploy Illinois program within the Bureau of Youth Intervention Services. Redeploy Illinois provides a community-based alternative to incarceration.
Funding from Redeploy Illinois provides individualized services to prevent further justice involvement and an opportunity for each youth to reach their full potential. The program’s holistic youth development approach addresses overall need based on assessment. Redeploy Illinois offers culturally and developmentally appropriate services and resources to youth, ensuring lasting public safety. Along with rehabilitating youth, the Redeploy Illinois program creates a strong infrastructure of collaboration between local juvenile justice stakeholders and social service providers, reshaping how the juvenile justice system works with and for youth and the communities they live in.
In January 2005, when the Redeploy Illinois program began, 1,725 youth on average were being housed in Illinois youth correctional facilities at a per-capita annual cost of $70,827 per youth. The cost of a youth commitment has increased yearly to $161,000 in 2016. While the cost per youth continues to increase, the Illinois Department of Juvenile Justice (IDJJ) has been increasingly successful in reducing its overall youth population in facilities every year since the Redeploy Illinois Program began.
Redeploy Illinois began as a pilot project in four sites and 15 counties in January of 2005. By the end of 2023, Redeploy Illinois had expanded to 12 active sites covering 47 counties, and one planning grant site scheduled to start implementation in early 2024. From its inception 18 years ago, Redeploy Illinois programs have provided individualized, intensive services to 4,842 youth and their families. The successful implementation of this program has resulted in Redeploy Illinois counties reducing commitments to IDJJ by 67%, 4,638 fewer youth being committed to IDJJ, and a cost avoidance for Illinois taxpayers of more than $183 million in unnecessary incarceration costs. In 2023, the average per-capita annual cost to serve a youth in the Redeploy Illinois program was $8,126.89, approximately 19% of the per-capita annual cost to house a youth in an IDJJ facility.
Redeploy Illinois has proven to be an essential state program for youth and families. The program endured the State Budget Impasse of FY2016 and the Covid-19 Pandemic of 2020. During the budget impasse, Redeploy Illinois sites sustained and, in many cases, rebuilt their programs after an extended time of no funding to serve youth. Additionally, providers immediately adapted to the Covid-19 restrictions, ensuring families had access to food, school supplies (including Chrome Books and internet hot spots), personal protective equipment (PPE), and teletherapy. Today, Redeploy Illinois programs and planning grantees are identifying ways to address the issue of gun violence as they plan for future programming.
In recent years, IDHS staff, the Redeploy Illinois Oversight Board (RIOB), and Redeploy Illinois Program sites have increased collaborative efforts with other programs, state agencies, and social service providers. Some Redeploy Illinois Programs have expanded to include Individualized Education Program (IEP) Specialists, Legal and Educational Advocates, Parental Engagement and Support Specialists, Juvenile Justice Specialists, and Client Care Coordinators. RIOB and IDHS staff have increased communication with the Illinois Department of Juvenile Justice (IDJJ), the Administrative Office of Illinois Courts (AOIC), and the Illinois Criminal Justice Information Authority (ICJIA). Collaborative meetings between IDHS-funded programs, including the Redeploy Illinois Program, Comprehensive Community Based Services (CCBYS), and Homeless Youth will be a targeted focus in the future.
In the past, ICJIA collected aggregate monthly program data on Redeploy youth served. In 2015, IDHS implemented eCornerstone to improve data quality. eCornerstone is a web-based case management system used for collecting individual youth data, creating case plans, and generating reports. In 2017, the RIOB made a commitment to continue improving data collection for the Redeploy Illinois program. The Redeploy Illinois Program is evaluated at some level every year to ensure compliance to program and fiscal standards, performance measures, etc. That said, multiple full-scale evaluations of the Redeploy Illinois program have been conducted over the years, most recently by ICJIA. The results of this study were made available to the RIOB in 2020 and published soon after. What became clear was the data collected for the Redeploy Illinois program did not provide sufficient information to determine if the youth going through the Redeploy Illinois Program “got better” and achieved the outcomes that they desired. To address this, the RIOB dedicated time and resources to develop a new Redeploy Illinois Core Service Area matrix. Adopted at the December 2020 RIOB Meeting, it was designed to measure positive outcomes rather than failures. It is also intended to allocate responsibility for supporting the youth and their family among various service providers so that everyone contributes to the youth’s success.
The RIOB is working with Orbis Partners to develop a tool and a data collection and case management system based on the new Core Service Area Matrix adopted by the RIOB. This new tool (screen) and system will guide Redeploy Illinois Programs in case planning and monitoring, ensuring Redeploy Illinois Program efforts support and complement probation’s efforts while not overwhelming youth and their families. The goal is to ensure youth leave the Redeploy Illinois Program better than when they came in, with supports in place, motivated and engaged, and in a position to not only avoid further involvement in the juvenile justice system, but to be a productive and active member of their community.
Evidence increasingly supports the conclusion that the Redeploy Illinois Program provides a significant return on investment in terms of financial and human resources. The Redeploy Illinois Annual Report presents data, analysis, and findings substantiating this claim. The report highlights efforts related to expansion in new counties and recent changes in program philosophy and approach. Further, it presents the program’s activities and highlights from FY2022- FY2023.
For more information, visit www.redeployillinois.org