State changes tactics with youths

Four new facilities will take a therapeutic approach with juvenile offenders

In a few months, more than 100 troubled youths will be living in four new development centers in an ambitious, multimillion-dollar plan that will change the way the state tries to rehabilitate young offenders.

It's a plan with a therapeutic approach. N.C. Juvenile Justice Department employees will work with youths in a smaller setting, doing more showing and less punishing.

The success of the plan is critical for the development of the state's delinquent youth -- and for the Juvenile Justice Department, which has stumbled since its inception in 2000. A successful plan, which requires more money than the current strategy, could show state legislators that the department is turning things around.

A harsh state audit in 2003 criticized the department for ineffective treatment methods, lack of staff, undertrained workers and buildings that were falling apart.

Assaults at some centers captured headlines, and the SBI looked into allegations of coverups of criminal activity at some centers. And state legislators failed to convene advisory council meetings meant to guide the department's growth.

Five years ago, department Secretary George Sweat acknowledged the audit findings and argued that the department had been underfunded since it began. The audit led the department to push for money to try a new approach, Sweat said.

The construction of the new centers, including one in Siler City, is a $24 million project backed by legislators. The department also wants more money to hire the staff needed to carry out the new method. The department's budget to operate all its youth centers is $55 million this year -- a 25 percent increase over last year.

Now it's up to the juvenile justice department to implement the more expensive therapeutic approach effectively.

"We're trying to be smart in preventing juvenile delinquency, and I think that's where we're headed," Sweat said.

Recidivism is common

Rehabilitating juvenile offenders has never been easy.

More than half of a sample of 4,000 delinquent youths in North Carolina were either rearrested or subject to a complaint by 2006, a report published last year by the N.C. Sentencing Commission shows.

The new treatment approach aims to lower the recidivism rate, said Dr. Jean Steinberg, a psychologist with the department.

Recidivism studies take years to complete. When the results are known, it's possible the therapeutic approach will already have been implemented.

The method aims to cut down on staff barking orders to youths who misbehave. Under the old approach, an offender would be locked down in a room alone for not obeying commands.

That reinforces criminal behavior, Steinberg said.

"People involved in criminal activity use force and coercion to get their way," Steinberg said. "When that's your approach, I think you're teaching the kids to think the way they've been thinking, and that that's the way the world works."

Under the therapeutic approach, when an offender misbehaves, a staff member explains why the action is improper. Then the staff member models the appropriate behavior. The youths must act out the appropriate behavior throughout the day, and progress is documented.

"Most [youth offenders] were never socialized appropriately, Steinberg said. "These are kids who learn by doing and rehearsal."

The approach in action

Although some critics label the therapeutic approach as "soft," Steinberg said it had yielded positive results.

A pilot project helped win over legislators who appropriated money for the new centers. In 2005, youths at Stonewall Jackson Youth Development Center in Concord were treated therapeutically, and their progress was tracked. Another group treated under the traditional approach was tracked simultaneously.