Understanding the Funding and Management

Understandably, for any business or office to run efficiently and effectively, certain elements must be in place. Certainly, an organization must have the raw materials with which to work and the money for these materials must come from somewhere. On top of this, a particular entity must have the knowledge and skills to know how to best utilize that money.

The nature of grants for youth detention centers follows somewhat of a trickle-down effect. Of course, an individual youth detention center will have its own director at the helm and a treasury/finances/accounting department to handle budgeting and other financial issues, but they have their own responsibilities without being fundraisers too.

For financing youth detention centers at the State level, there are a few routes by which the U.S. Federal Government may allocate monies to the states. Most youth detention centers, though, operate at the county level, and so a second handing down of monies must occur.

It should be noted that even if Federal monies are not specifically designed for criminal and juvenile justice, if they are employed in the service of children and the public interest, they may be used toward the costs of building and running youth detention centers. For example, there is precedence for states allocating stimulus money from the U.S. Department of Education to this very cause.

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