A large-scale program aimed at diverting children from juvenile correctional facilities toward in-home services better suited to address their needs has faced delays, but officials say it’s nearly back on track.

The program, the Juvenile Justice Reform Act, was enacted last year with staged deadlines ranging from Jan. 1 to this July and beyond. The entire bill is supposed to be in effect by 2019.

In December, Randy Bowman, director of community-based services for the Kansas Department of Corrections, asked for additional time to “fully vet through policy issues” before the organization could make formal recommendations to the state.

The KDOC is partnering with the state’s Office of Judicial Administration to put the bill into action.

Bowman said in December that two problem areas were causing the delays: the Immediate Intervention Program and a Detention Risk Assessment Instrument.

Tuesday afternoon Bowman addressed the House Corrections and Juvenile Justice Committee, which is currently examining the bill, and told the members that one of the two problem areas — the Immediate Intervention Program — is complete and the other is set to wrap up by April.

The KDOC on Tuesday published its standards and procedures for the bill’s Immediate Intervention Program online, Bowman said.

Essentially the IIP allows certain children, often without a criminal record and who have committed low-level crimes, to divert the charges being filed against them.

The issue causing delays with the IIP was a lack of a centralized database allowing prosecutors to look up a child’s criminal history in order to see who qualifies for the diversion program, Bowman said earlier in January.

Now that the KDOC’s standards and procedures are published, prosecutors on the local level have what they need to see who qualifies for the program, Bowman said. All that’s left now is “implementation for the local level.”

The second problem area is the development of a Detention Risk Assessment Instrument, which categorizes juveniles into low-, medium-, and high-risk. The score will then determine whether a child needs to be incarcerated.

Bowman said the KDOC and the Office of Judicial Administration are working to develop the DRAI and that work should be finished around the end of February.

“In addition, the Secretary of State has issued public notice for hearing on proposed permanent rules and regulations for April 11, 2017,” Bowman wrote in a memo to the committee.

Rep. Russ Jennings, R-Lakin, who oversees the House Corrections and Juvenile Justice Committee, said he was pleased with the progress and that the group will be addressing issues related to the bill for the foreseeable future.

Rep. Russ Jennings, R-Lakin

Among the potential problems presented by the bill is an anticipated uptick in the number of children sent into the custody of the Kansas Department for Children and Families.

In October 2016, the DCF hit a record high of 6,911 children in custody, followed by 6,846 in November, according to the department’s website. Those numbers have been increasing steadily over the past five years.

A provision within the Juvenile Justice Reform Act will allow courts to refer juveniles to DCF custody in certain situations. Jennings said earlier this month that he had “no doubt” this would increase the DCF’s already high numbers.

However, Benet Magnuson, executive director of Kansas Appleseed and an advocate for juvenile justice reform, said the net positives of the JJRA outweigh any negatives.

Magnuson attended Tuesday afternoon’s hearings, later calling the KDOC and Office of Judicial Administration’s delays “small speed bumps” when compared with what the bill hopes to achieve.

The DCF’s record numbers are a significant, however separate, issue from the JJRA, Magnuson said. And in comparison with the DCF’s already-increasing numbers, the JJRA’s impact will likely be relatively small, he said.

“The problems that are leading to those record numbers are much larger, and they need to be addressed, but probably in a different way,” he said.

In reality Magnuson said it’s “too early to tell” how strong of an impact the JJRA will have on the Department for Children and Families. And if the bill sends more children to that department, then that is where they will best be served, he said.

“It is moving children from the juvenile offender system into the children in need of care system and that is exactly what we should be doing as a state,” he said. If there are kids in the juvenile offender system who are not there because they’ve committed offenses, and everybody really agrees they’re children in need of care and we’re putting them in the juvenile offender system because it’s a little more functional at this point… then what that means is we’re criminalizing kids for being children in need of care.”