Organizations across the state that work to keep young people from committing crimes fear that they'll lose more than $22 million in funding unless the General Assembly acts swiftly when it reconvenes this spring.

Uncertainty about the Juvenile Crime Prevention Council money -- which makes up 15 percent of the state Department of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention's total budget -- has many of the nonprofit agencies that depend on the money worrying that they'll have to stop, or at least interrupt, services while waiting on state lawmakers.

The legislature doesn't return to Raleigh until May 13, and the JCPC funding is set to expire June 30. That leaves a small window for the more than 500 organizations that rely on a patchwork of funding sources to line up the rest of their money -- with no guarantee that the state will pay.

"You can pay now or pay later," said Quillie Coath, who runs a program in Durham that reaches out to at-risk youths and gets a large amount of its budget from JCPC funds.

Several legislators and their staff members have all but promised that the money will be reinstated. They say the funds were moved to a one-year, nonrecurring part of the state budget as a signal to department officials and the various programs that there needs to be more oversight.

Such accountability is the price of doing business with government, said state Sen. Linda Garrou of Forsyth County.

"You always hear from any agency that fears losing money for its programs," Garrou said.

The legislature also put the funding for seven other programs in various state agencies in the same position -- including $9.1 million that the N.C. Department of Correction uses for its Criminal Justice Partnership Program, which runs programs in 95 of the state's 100 counties. All had to submit reports in February justifying their funding.

The youth programs, which serve an estimated 30,000 young people, were placed in the nonrecurring budget to "make sure that they're deserving and in need of state funding instead of just rubber-stamped," said Schorr Johnson, communications director for Senate President pro tem Marc Basnight, a Manteo Democrat.

But Sen. Ellie Kinnaird, a Carrboro-based Democrat, said her fellow legislators have since recognized a mistake was made with juvenile justice funding. She hopes to have it return to a two-year funding cycle, so providers will know if they'll have jobs from one year to the next.

"That means tremendous uncertainty for these groups," Kinnaird said of the current system.

Still, she said, there needs to be more oversight of how funds are handled, with county-based councils being more accountable about how state dollars help youths and their families.

Auditing programs

County JCPC councils generally evaluate programs on their own, and the state juvenile justice department reviews grant proposals annually, said Kathy Dudley, an assistant secretary for juvenile justice programs in the eastern part of the state.

The juvenile justice department has conducted audits of only seven of the more than 500 programs it gives money since 2004, said William Lassiter, a spokesman for the department. Of those, six had minor problems and either fixed them or stopped working with the state.

A Mecklenburg County program, Present Day Cares, had its money suspended last year and the department asked SBI to begin a criminal investigation, Lassiter said. Agents opened their probe in November and are still investigating, said Noelle Talley, spokeswoman for the state Attorney General's Office. The state auditor also is assessing how JCPC funds are used statewide, Lassiter said.

A hearing on the funding issue is scheduled March 27, with various appropriations and justice committees meeting at the General Assembly to discuss it.

As they await decisions by legislators, providers fearing the worst have crowded information meetings, fired off letters to lawmakers and begun to search for back-up funds. Some say they've already lost staff and warn that if the money doesn't come in from the state, many teens will either end up at costly youth detention centers or not get the needed help.

Triangle programs

In the Triangle, the programs affected range from teen courts where youth go before their peers to explain misdeeds to group homes for young people. A structured day program for suspended middle school students in Wake, the only one of its type in the county, receives all of its funding from JCPC and would have to shut down immediately, said Regina Hardaway, who runs the program, a part of the Haven House nonprofit that serves 175 children a year.

On a recent day, four students, ages 11 to 14, were at the center, completing their homework and going over social skills. They also spend two days a week doing community service projects such as cleaning out horse stalls for a therapeutic horse-riding program or visiting with elderly residents of local assisted living homes, Hardaway said.

The staff keeps close track of the children once they leave and have seen only a small percentage of them who have been suspended again within a year, Hardaway said. Many likely would be at home -- often alone and unsupervised, if not for the structured day program.

Parent Sheilda Silver was overjoyed to find out she could send her son to the program after he was suspended when he and a group of boys were found playing with a box cutter that another child had brought to school

Her son had never been in trouble before, she said. She took away all of his privileges because of the suspension, but she worried about whether he would fall behind in school.

"This program can give him a little more structure than I can," Silver said.

And that structure, she hopes, will ensure this is the last time he gets into trouble.