Rhea County Judge James “Jimmy” McKenzieBY THE NUMBERS• $51 million: Fiscal Year 2012 cost of operating the state’s major Youth Development Centers, including costs of the now all-female New Visions facility• $8.5 million: Projected annual savings in closure, including increased costs of staffing and female student housing• $12.3 million: Taft Youth Development Center budget• $11.3 million: Mountain View Youth Development Center budget• $12.1 million: Woodland Hills Youth Development Center budget• $11.3 million: John S. Wilder Youth Development Center budgetSource: Tennessee Department of Children’s Services, state and local officials
While lawmakers in Nashville and Gov. Bill Haslam’s office wrestle over numbers and the proposed closure of Taft Youth Development Center, a judge in Rhea County says closing the facility is a “smoke screen” for eventual privatization of juvenile justice in Tennessee.
The real dispute isn’t about jobs, Rhea County Juvenile Court Judge Jimmy McKenzie said.
“We’re not talking about economics, we’re talking about children,” he said.
“They think that they’re going to put everything out and contract all of these [juvenile] inmates … to a private enterprise to avoid these detention facilities,” McKenzie said of the Department of Children’s Service recommendation to close Taft.