Rhode Island General Laws Title 42. State Affairs and Government § 42-72.6-1. Legislative findings

The Rhode Island Training School for Youth (RITSY) is charged with the responsibility for the custody and rehabilitation of juvenile offenders, and a permanent legislative oversight commission has found, and continues to find, grave shortcomings in the rehabilitative and educational programming at the RITSY. The general assembly finds that the failure to rehabilitate and educate these youths will cause immeasurable pain and cost to the state through preventable injury to other citizens by former, unrehabilitated RITSY residents and through the substantial cost of maintaining former RITSY youth in the adult correctional institutions, and/or the state mental health and/or income maintenance systems. The general assembly has provided resources to the department for children, youth, and families (DCYF) in excess of ninety-five thousand dollars ($95,000) per year per incarcerated youth, and the Rhode Island Training School for Youth has lost accreditation for its present educational system. The department for children, youth and families is currently in violation of the law passed by this general assembly to maintain an appropriate educational system for every youth incarcerated at the RITSY, and the failure to provide an adequate system of rehabilitative and educational programming is the consequence of the ineffective use of vital and limited public resources.