§ 63-19-350 — Community services.

The department shall provide community services as the director shall assign to it which shall include, but are not limited to: (1) family court intake screening and referral counseling; (2) serving, advising, and counseling children placed on probation by the family court; (3) serving, advising, and counseling children in institutions as may be necessary for the placement of the children in a proper environment after release and for the placement of children in suitable jobs where necessary and proper; (4) supervising and guiding children released or conditionally released from institutions; (5) counseling children released or conditionally released from its commitment facilities; (6) coordinating the activities of supporting community agencies which aid in the social adjustment of children released from its commitment facilities; (7) providing or arranging for necessary services leading to the rehabilitation of delinquents either within the department or through cooperative arrangements with other appropriate agencies; (8) providing counseling and supervision for a child under twelve years of age who has been adjudicated delinquent or convicted of a crime or who has entered a plea of guilty or nolo contendere, when other suitable personnel is not available and upon request of the court; (9) providing detention screening services when a child is taken into custody for violation of a law or ordinance as provided for in this chapter; (10) providing prevention services including short- and long-range planning, establishing statewide priorities and standards, developing public awareness programs, and providing technical assistance to local government in the development of prevention programs; (11) developing secure and nonsecure alternatives to jail; (12) providing a variety of community-based programs to augment regular probation services including, but not limited to, volunteer services, restitution, community-work programs, family counseling, and contract probation with specific sanctions for various types of behavior; (13) providing a variety of community-based programs to serve as alternatives to institutions including, but not limited to, halfway houses, work release, intensive supervision services, restitution, forestry and wilderness camps, marine science programs, and other residential and nonresidential programs; (14) providing programs to divert juveniles, where proper and appropriate, from the juvenile justice system; (15) juveniles must be assigned to intensive probation or aftercare services by the Department of Juvenile Justice. Juveniles assigned to these intensive supervision services must be those juveniles who require enhanced supervision, monitoring and contacts, or a higher level of treatment services. Intensive supervision must be provided by the department in all regions of the State. In conjunction with establishing these intensive supervision services, the department shall develop an array of graduated sanctions and impose these sanctions on offenders being provided intensive supervision services for technical rule violations and minor infractions, whenever feasible to do so, in lieu of re-incarceration of the juvenile in a secure correctional facility. The array of graduated sanctions developed by the department may include, as a condition of probation or parole, placement of a juvenile in a staff or environmentally secure residential program. Case workers selected to monitor, supervise, and serve juveniles assigned to intensive supervision services shall have caseloads of no more than twenty juveniles.

Legislative History

HISTORY: 2008 Act No. 361, SECTION 2.