Get Full Government Meeting Transcripts, Videos, & Alerts Forever!
Get email alerts on the Youth Justice topic
No spam. Unsubscribe anytime.
County staff outline youth‑justice data limits and measures after Wisconsin Policy Forum report
Summary
Milwaukee County DHHS presented local data and described efforts to improve measurement of youth justice outcomes after the Wisconsin Policy Forum’s "Youth Must Be Served" report; staff emphasized recidivism limits and said they are developing metrics for desistance, pro‑social connections and program‑level outcomes.
Milwaukee County Department of Health and Human Services staff briefed the Health Equity, Human Needs and Strategic Planning Committee on Thursday about the Wisconsin Policy Forum report “Youth Must Be Served” and county efforts to track youth‑justice outcomes beyond traditional recidivism measures.
Kelly Pefte, administrator for Children, Youth and Family Services at DHHS, told supervisors the county provided data to the Policy Forum and is working to expand local measurement to capture program‑level outcomes, connections to services and long‑term desistance from delinquent behavior.
Pefte said most youth served by the county’s juvenile justice system from 2022 through 2024 were male, identified as Black/African American (non‑Hispanic) and were typically aged 14 to 16. The department reported a youth recidivism rate of 17 percent for 2022–2024 under the county’s operational definition (a new referral that resulted in petition or adjudication). Pefte cautioned that recidivism is an imperfect single indicator: definitions vary across agencies and county records do not automatically include adult criminal records, so long‑term tracking currently requires manual records checks.
DHHS said it is developing program‑level indicators that include measures such as increases in self‑reported goal achievement, connections to pro‑social adults and community resources, and reductions in the severity of subsequent charges when referrals occur. Staff told the committee they are convening partners to identify what additional data are needed and how to build those measures into existing systems rather than relying on spreadsheets.
Supervisors raised concerns about built‑in bias in the juvenile system and asked whether the county is examining racial disparities that appear in referral and deferred‑prosecution data. DHHS staff acknowledged disparities in the system and said the department and partner agencies are seeking better data to analyze systemic bias and to measure outcomes such as desistance rather than only re‑arrest rates.
Pefte told the committee these data‑collection improvements will require technical work with the county’s information systems and collaboration with court and detention partners. Officials said they will pursue cross‑agency planning so the county can better demonstrate program impacts and track youth over time.
