GIRL: My mom met a guy,
and it was just awful.
He would lock us
in the basement.
He would burn my private areas
with cigarettes.
At age twelve,
I was addicted to heroin.
BOY: There's always violence
on the streets--
fighting, people getting shot,
everything.
BOY: My brothers, they grew up
selling dope
and stuff like that.
When I turned 12,
my big brother got shot in head,
and he didn't make it.
GIRL: I let my anger build up
and I started going
down a path of destruction.
TIM DECKER: We often think
about the youth
in the juvenile justice system
and the risk that they pose
to others.
We don't often think
about the trauma
that's happened to them.
STEVEN TESKE:
Everything that we do here
at the Juvenile Court
of Clayton County
seeks to redirect
and rehabilitate young people
who've gotten into trouble.
VICTORIA HARRIS:
A lot of the children
that do come to the attention
of the court,
there is some sort of trauma
in their background.
A lot of times it's hidden.
STEVEN TESKE: When we do
risk and needs assessments
to determine why kids
get into trouble,
we need to start asking,
"Is it because he or she
has experienced trauma
in their childhood?"
MAN: Would everyone please just
look through your package,
and you can actually see a case
that we're going to be staffing.
STEVEN TESKE: The Clayton County
Collaborative Child Study Team
is a bridge
between the school system
and the providers
in the community.
VICTORIA HARRIS: We don't just
look at what the offense was,
but everything else:
family dynamics, things that are
going on in the neighborhood,
things that are going on
in the school.
WOMAN: He's getting in trouble
for not following directions,
cutting class,
doesn't really have a lot of
respect for authority figures.
STEVEN TESKE:
It's a multi-disciplinary panel.
They meet on a regular basis,
and they assess the kid
and the family.
WOMAN: This family has
some trauma in their lives.
His uncle was murdered
in the home.
MAN: Did you all provide
any counseling
or therapeutic interventions
to help the family out?
SHANNON HOWARD:
We all sit down at the table
with the service providers,
the school counselor
and social worker
as well as with the parent,
and come up with that plan
to modify the child's behavior,
to keep them from going
into the juvenile system.
The ultimate goal
for the program
is to redirect our youth
and strengthen family.
We will be developing
a community intervention
treatment plan for him.
STEVEN TESKE:
One of the greatest first steps
in rehabilitation
is helping a child,
a young person,
understand the concept
of empathy,
to put a face
on the person they hurt.
For some youth,
if they've experienced trauma,
there's a part of them
that has shut down.
Alternative Dispute Resolution
plays a very,
very significant role
in increasing the competency
of the juvenile.
SHELIA KEY:
Mediation allows the respondent,
along with the victim,
an opportunity to resolve their
differences with one another,
versus actually going
through a formal process
involving the judge.
MEDIATOR: If we do come up
with an agreement,
and all of the terms are met,
then the case will be dismissed.
STEVEN TESKE:
It is extremely important
that the victim has a say
in this process.
VICTIM: I want her to face
some kind of consequences.
SHELIA KEY:
Once they have a chance
to actually talk with the child
and really find out
what's really going on,
a lot of the times the victims
will even decide
that they want things
to be put in place
whereby the child can go on
to be a productive citizen.
MEDIATOR:
Do you think an apology
might be an appropriate
first step?
SHELIA KEY: This child
hopefully would not have
any other court involvement
or have any problems at school
or in the community.
VICTORIA HARRIS:
Anything that I can do
to avoid putting a child
in detention, I'll do it.
If we keep
locking this child up,
they're with other offenders.
They're learning
new tricks and trades.
They come out,
and they're gang members now.
All we're doing
is creating a situation
to lock them up as an adult.
STEVEN TESKE: All right, let's
go over some of the reports.
We now have
the Second Chance Court program
that focuses on
designated felony kids.
These are high-risk kids.
You commit a crime,
you do wrong,
you violate the conditions--
that's the only time you need
to be scared of me.
It's an alternative
to detention.
They're on house confinement.
They go to school.
They can't leave the house
unless they're with a parent.
They meet with me and we get
reports from all the kids,
and the parents are there.
And it's an informal setting.
They receive
life-skills training,
therapy depending
upon their needs,
and then they do
community service.
The most important change
you have to demonstrate
is your attitude.
What we've found
is that we've cut
our designated
felony commitments in half.
JUVENILE: I must set high goals,
but they must be realistic.
STEVEN TESKE: Very proud of you!
VICTORIA HARRIS:
We make a great impact
working with
the therapeutic approach
because until we can treat
that trauma,
everything else that we
are doing with the child
is going to be ineffective.
TIM DECKER:
When we have traumatized youth
where their challenging behavior
is dealt with
through hours of isolation,
who are restrained
with handcuffs and shackles,
we do further harm.
We can't place young people
in environments
where we take
all their choices away
and we have this autocratic,
coercive approach
and then expect them to go home
and make good choices.
All of the young people served
by Missouri DYS
have committed some sort
of juvenile offense,
and about two-thirds of those
are felony offenses.
There's deliberate attention
to creating environments
that are as homelike
and natural as possible.
We're not just attending
to the youth's behavior.
We're also attentive
to the trauma
the youth has experienced.
We go through a whole process
designed to help them
resolve their trauma.
Research has shown that,
for adolescents,
group approaches are by far
the most effective.
The second most effective
are actually mentoring programs
that actually help them develop
healthy relationships.
There's a real attention
to having a structure
that reinforces
healthy boundaries
and the staff being facilitators
versus being guards
or enforcers.
Sometimes there's
skepticism about,
"How could it possibly be safe
if there are not handcuffs
and isolation rooms?"
And what actually has been found
in research
is that young people
in correctional models
are four-and-a-half times
more likely
to be assaulted and injured
than they are
in Missouri DYS programs.
So using a therapeutic
and developmental approach
actually achieves
a public safety outcome.
TOM NOBLET:
Kids come into the system
with a lot of unresolved trauma,
most of the time,
and they're acting out
on that trauma
through violence or fighting.
FRANK WEICHLEIN:
We've had kids in here
whose siblings have been victims
of homicides.
We've had kids here
who have been shot.
The domestic violence
within their homes is profound.
TOM NOBLET: Kids coming into the
Kalamazoo County Juvenile Home,
it is about rehabilitation,
it is about help,
even though they're being
contained and detained
for doing something wrong.
They're brought here
because they victimized
someone else in the community,
and that needs to be dealt with.
Our concern is for keeping
the community safe
so that more people
don't get victimized.
If we don't do something
with them now,
then they remain angry,
they fight with staff,
they fight with each other,
and when they leave,
we can expect them to return.
The purpose
is to try to help them
get their lives back on track.
We have a cognitive behaviorally
based program
where kids get interventions
that target the areas of need:
THERAPIST: Let's talk about
social skills today, guys.
TOM NOBLET: Anger management,
substance abuse,
intensive case management.
THERAPIST: What new thinking
have you been using
to reduce some of your
high-risk thoughts and feelings?
TOM NOBLET: The services that
are here can help them resolve
some of the trauma
and the victimization
that the kids have experienced
at some point in their life.
Sixty-five percent of the kids
who have gone through
our residential program,
after a year,
have not been involved
in any more criminal activity.
FRANK WEICHLEIN:
We just show them
there's a different way to live,
different way to make decisions,
and be part of this community
in a much more positive way.
