COUNTYWIDE : 21 Social Programs Endorsed for Funds

A county advisory group has recommended that more than $5 million in state money be used to support 21 programs for preventing crime and for counseling juvenile offenders, according to a draft copy of its final report obtained Monday.

The report, prepared by the County Justice System Advisory Group, endorses 21 programs for available state funds, ranging from probation services to youth shelters, from drug prevention agencies to foster home programs.

“Some very tough decisions were made across a wide variety of programs, but I think the process worked very well, and these programs will go a long ways toward addressing the needs of the county,” said Mike Schumacher, the county’s chief probation officer and a member of the advisory group.

Members of the group have been meeting for months and reviewing programs that requested money through state crime prevention and juvenile justice funds. That money is allocated by the county, but the recommended expenditures have to be submitted to the state for final approval.

This year, as in previous ones, the requests for funds far outpaced the supply, leaving many groups short of their need. In the area of juvenile delinquency prevention, for instance, thirteen organizations made requests totaling $644,410. Of those, only eight were recommended for funding and they would have to split $218,021.

Although representatives of the panel and several of the groups selected for funds commended the list of recommended programs, some intend to appeal the recommendations when they come before the Orange County Board of Supervisors on April 25.

One of the groups that is not recommended for funding is Programa Shortstop, a proposed Spanish-language extension of the highly touted Shortstop Program, which steers youth offenders into classes run by judges and locks the youngsters in holding cells to scare them out of crime.

“It’s a scared-straight, reality program,” said Kathy Bonner, Shortstop’s program director.

Schumacher agreed that the program has compiled a commendable record and said it was left off only because the group had a limited budget to work with.

“It’s a matter of simply not having enough money to go around,” he said. “There’s still much more that needs to be done, that goes without saying.”