CS for CS for SB 700 - Juvenile Justice Summary

• Revises legislative purposes to emphasize public safety, prevention services, trauma-informed care, family engagement, and placing children in least restrictive appropriate environments rather than residential programs for low and moderate-risk youth.

• Eliminates "home detention" as a detention type and consolidates detention care into secure detention and nonsecure detention (which includes home detention, electronic monitoring, day reporting centers, evening reporting centers, and nonsecure shelters).

• Reduces maximum residential facility bed capacity from 165 to 90 beds per facility for moderate-risk, high-risk, and maximum-risk residential programs to encourage smaller, community-based placements.

• Creates new prevention services framework requiring the Department of Juvenile Justice to provide specialized prevention programs, promote the Invest in Children license plate for funding, and monitor state-funded prevention programs with annual reporting in a Comprehensive Accountability Report.

• Establishes criminal penalties for employees who willfully and maliciously neglect juvenile offenders (third degree felony, or second degree if causing great bodily harm) and requires immediate incident reporting with immunity protections for whistleblowers.