A Schenectady County nonprofit focused on stemming youth violence could benefit from money already allocated in the New York state budget. But, underscoring a larger issue with the Raise the Age funding model, the head of the organization wasn’t even aware the funding existed until recently.
Jamel Muhammad is the CEO of the Youth L.I.F.E. Support Network – a nonprofit organization based in Schenectady and Albany that works with youth and their families in high-risk areas to tackle community violence.
The organization, which runs a gun-and-gang-violence intervention program, is exactly the kind that should be able to benefit from funding included each year in the New York state budget. The money – $250 million annually – is part of the Raise the Age law, which since 2019 has made it so 16- and 17-year-olds cannot be charged as adults except in cases of the most serious crimes. The funding, available to New York counties outside of New York City as reimbursement for existing supports and services, is meant to help adolescents and keep them out of the criminal justice system.
But Muhammad says he had never heard of Raise the Age funding.
“I haven’t seen or heard of anything that was determined to say you know that a certain amount of monies were put aside in the budget and signed into the budget for Raise the Age,” Muhammad said.
That underscores a broader issue. According to a report released in May by State Comptroller Tom DiNapoli, only 39 percent of the $1.71 billion appropriated by the state since the inception of Raise the Age has actually been claimed. In Schenectady County, only $8.4 million out of a total allotment of $15 million has been claimed.
Notably, Albany Mayor Kathy Sheehan raised concerns about underutilized Raise the Age funding after a series of shootings involving juveniles turned Albany July 4 celebrations into chaos.
Raise the Age funding could provide a huge lift to organizations like Youth L.I.F.E. Support Network, which is expecting to receive $50,000 from Schenectady County to support its 1Life2Live gun and gang violence intervention initiative.
That money is coming from the New York State Division of Criminal Justice Services’ Violence Intervention Grant.
Muhammad says the $50,000 enables his program to operate, but additional Raise the Age funding would obviously help even more. He said small organizations like his can sometimes have more difficulty acquiring funds.
“It’s almost as if funding is pre-designated even though it’s not verbalized. There is certain groups, that are traditional groups that maybe have ties politically or otherwise and these are the people that get the funding,” Muhammad said.
Schenectady City Councilor Joseph Mancini was a member of former Governor Andrew Cuomo’s Commission on Youth, Public Safety and Justice created in 2014.
The group was tasked with developing a plan to raise the age of criminal responsibility in the state.
At the time, Mancini was the Director of Probation for Schenectady County. Mancini says Raise the Age funding is a great opportunity for counties. But county leaders may be reluctant to set up new programs that rely on state funding only received after-the-fact.
“It may be fear. Sometimes the state takes really long to reimburse and then they have to front that money to the non-profit programs or the programs that they fund, I think that’s probably some reason for it. And it may just be it’s a new population and it may take some time to ramp up,” Mancini said.
As far as solutions go, advocates have been calling to change the funding model in a way that would make the unclaimed money available directly to community-based organizations like Youth L.I.F.E. Support Network. But a bill that would have established a fund specifically for this purpose stalled in the Assembly this session.
Mancini says he would like to see the state provide more assistance.
“The other alternative is to make funding available directly to the non-profits and they can kind of partner with the counties to create programs cause again they know the communities better than any of us, better than any government agency,” Mancini said.
