NATCHEZ — Reforming youth offenders before they become career criminals requires a long chain of programs with many vital links.

But Adams County Youth Court Judge John Hudson said he fears one of the strongest links in the chain could be broken, causing the entire system to stumble and possibly fail.

Because of fiscal issues at the state level, Oakley Training School, a place of last resort for the worst of the state’s young criminals, is on the chopping block. Hudson said the school’s funding has already been cut by 34 percent in one year, about twice the cut received by other state programs.

“The closure of the facility is something the governor recommended last year,” he said. “That recommendation was done without any communication with juvenile justice practitioners so we were caught off guard.

“What my belief is, is that the recommendation was done without truly understanding the system.”

Oakley Training School is the state’s only remaining juvenile reform school. The state once operated separate facilities for girls and young boys, and Oakley was reserved for older boys.

Oakley currently houses approximately 50 youth — less than one per Mississippi county — from across the state who have committed either a felony or three misdemeanors, making it a final option before sending juveniles into the adult corrections system, Hudson said.

There are approximately 20,000 youth in juvenile justice systems across the state, Hudson said.

“As you can tell this is a much more intensive population at Oakley now,” he said.

And that is the way it should be, Hudson said.

Hudson has been on the bench in youth court since 1983 and only recalls two instances where he has sent youth directly from his courtroom to training school. Hudson handles approximately 600 youth court cases a year and has been involved in more than 16,000 cases in his career.

All other cases have been, and are currently, dealt with using the numerous programs operated at the county level, such as the Adolescent Offender Program and Youth Drug Court.

But, for some young offenders, the local programs can only be successful if the state continues to operate Oakley Training School. Hudson said with the possibility of being sent to the training school lingering over their heads, many youth will do what is necessary to stay at home.

“It is like the hammer at the end of the row,” he said. “That fact is the foundation on which all the other programs grow.

“If the motivation for doing what is right in the beginning is to stay out of the training school, that is OK. That gives us time to shift that motivation to ‘I’m going to do what is right because that is who I am.’”

Criticism and a federal lawsuit about the state’s handling of training schools led to the closure of the training school at Columbia. It housed females and young male offenders.

The same lawsuit and criticism led to reform at Oakley, that made it a viable option for juvenile reform, Hudson said.

For approximately 15 years, Oakley has been operated under a mandate from the federal lawsuit that called for changes in the way youth were housed, treated and taught.

Hudson said the federal mandate set up programs that gave substance to the facility.

“For the first time, kids that I sent to Oakley were coming back better than when I sent them,” he said.

Part of that was because youth were enrolled in programs long enough to create change. Previously youth were at the facility for as little as 12 weeks.

Hudson was part of the group of juvenile justice practitioners who worked to lengthen the stay. Part of that was the development of a grading system that gives youth a number between one and seven based on their criminal activity. Under that system, the worst offenders, those ranked close to seven, were put in the program for six months to a year.

Now, because of funding, that is sliding backward.

“We are back to the front door dictating how long people stay,” Hudson said. “There are so many people waiting at the front door, that people are having to be pushed out the back door quickly.”

That means more stress put on counties that aren’t always equipped to handle the situations.

“It isn’t just Oakley that is at risk for losing funding,” Hudson said. “Many times county systems are at risk as well.”

But Hudson said the repercussions of ignoring the importance of juvenile justice are great.

“It becomes a public safety issue because science tells us that we have a greater chance to reform someone and make them a productive member of a community when they are a juvenile than when they get into the adult system,” Hudson said. “Adult facilities are not equipped to handle the physiological changes of youth. When they get in the adult system, what comes out many times is a career criminal.”

And once that happens, Hudson said, the financial burden for the state is heavy.

The reason Oakley is up for elimination comes down to dollars and cents. Oakley is operated under the Mississippi Department of Human Services and not through the Mississippi Department of Corrections.

Most DHS programs are able to parlay their state funding into at least three-to-one matches on the federal level. That is not possible with the budget for Oakley, Hudson said. All of the money running Oakley is state money.

“The mindset at DHS is understandably ‘we have to maximize our funds,’ and something that is all state money becomes an easy target, Hudson said.

“Our job is to make it understood that they can’t do that on the back of juvenile justice. We are willing to allow Oakley to operate on a shoestring and do what we can on a county level in this hard time.”

Hudson said if Oakley is closed Mississippi would become one of only two states in the nation without a juvenile detention training school.