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.
