New TACIR reports address homelessness, juvenile detention
The Tennessee Advisory Commission on Intergovernmental Relations (TACIR) has published new reports dealing with what improvements can be made to address homelessness and juvenile detention capacity.
The TACIR report “Improving Tennessee's Continua of Care with Flexible Funding, Better Data, and Greater Collaboration across the State,” was established as part of a federal program through the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development to determine if the 10 Continua of Care (CoC) in the state are operating compared to other states and what improvements can be made. Each of the state’s CoC cover at least one counties and work to address homelessness, organizing funding applications, collecting data on homelessness, and coordinating services.
Key highlights from the report include that flexible funding, enhanced data sharing, and greater coordination between CoCs and state agencies could improve performance.
“The CoCs face an enormous challenge with limited resources, and as letting people remain homeless can cost a community more than it does to rehouse them, preventing them from becoming homeless is better than trying to resolve it after the fact,” the report stated.
Recommended findings from the report included appropriations from the General Assembly to incentivize homeless service organizations to participate in data reporting, to have the University of Tennessee’s Social Work Office of Research and Public Service (SWORPS) to aggregate data from all 10 CoCs, and to cover expenses not funded from the federal government.
TACIR also recommended re-establishing a state interagency council on homelessness with representation from all CoCs in the state and stage agencies with a goal of improving coordinated entry procedures.
The second TACIR report, “Assessing Juvenile Detention Capacity in Tennessee,” looks to address concerns among state and local officials aboutw hether there are enough facilities for housing and providing rehabilitative services to youth who have been accused or convicted of serious crimes.
The report noted that juvenile crime has decreased overall in Tennessee during the last decade, though there have been certain types of offenses for juveniles—specifically, murder, aggravated assault, motor vehicle theft, and crimes in which firearms were used— that are increasing.
TACIR found $333 million for three new juvenile detention facilities will meet post-adjudication needs, but that a new juvenile detention center could be used in West Tennessee with temporary beds for pre-adjudication. TACIR also found more oversight needs to be built into the juvenile justice system by requiring local governments operating them to be licensed by DCS and to authorize the Tennessee Commission on Children and Youth and/or DCS to levy financial penalties on pre- and post-adjudication facilities that violate state or federal requirements.