Youth Justice Awareness Month event draws appreciative crowd
Rev. Jack Crans, a 1968 graduate of CASH and well-known Coatesville advocate, opened the program with a prayer.
By Kathleen Brady Shea, Managing Editor, The Times
A program on youth justice Thursday night began with horror stories about teen abuse in the adult system but concluded with a dramatic tale of success: a Coatesville man who served federal prison time and now uses his rehabilitation to inspire others.
Jerod Hines captivated an audience of about 60 at the second annual parent-initiated Youth Justice Awareness Month event at the Brandywine Center. The program was designed to provide insight, support, and resources for those who have experienced the juvenile justice system or work within it.
Hines said he entered the juvenile system at age 13, ending up a detention center that Chester County formerly used in Lima. In 1998, he received a federal sentence of 11 years and three months for drug trafficking. Hines said the experience was brutal, but “I’m kind of grateful that God put the brakes on me.” In 2009, he lost a brother to violence in Coatesville.
“I still walk on eggshells,” he said. However, he stressed that a problematic start does not preclude a rebound. In prison, his ordeal led him to write a novel about beating the odds entitled “Wrath of the Suburbs: The Weakest Link,” which is available on Amazon.com. A father of three, Hines is now attending West Chester University, working as an aide at Scott Middle School, and operating a retail shop in Coatesville named after one of his children: Jade’s Jewels.
Don Corry (left), deputy director of the Chester County Juvenile Probation Department, chats with Coatesville Police Officer Rodger Ollis after the program.
When he began his presentation, Hines asked the approximately 20 teens in the audience to line up against the wall. Before he completed it, he handed an overstuffed trash bag to the first boy in line and directed him to look in a mirror Hines had positioned in the corner of the room. Then he asked the boy to hand the bulging bag to the next kid and repeat the exercise.
Responding to the teens’ perplexed expressions, Hines explained that the bag represented a fraction of the material he accumulated in his fight to exit the legal system, a struggle the teens should strive to avoid. “You don’t want to become that person,” he said. “Take advantage of all the opportunities you have.”
Hines’ remarks followed presentations by half a dozen others, including Don Corry, the deputy director of the Chester County Juvenile Probation Department; Chester County Commissioner Ryan Costello; Shanta Gray, program coordinator for the National Parent Caucus; Sue Badeau, a Philadelphia advocate currently working as an administrator for Casey Family Programs; and Debbie Willett from Child and Family Focus, Inc., one of the program’s organizers.
All stressed the need to reduce the estimated 250,000 youth who are tried, sentenced or incarcerated as adults annually across the country by pushing lawmakers to institute reforms. Corry said Chester County continually implements changes to prevent having youthful, “knucklehead behavior” ruin lives.
Jerod Hines, an author, student, businessman and former inmate, has a message for Coatesville-area youth: You can avoid the mistakes I made.
He said the use of school-based probation officers has improved services because the workers, who must constantly seek a balance between social work and law-enforcement, get to know the students. “Historically, we would only see kids when there was a problem,” he said.
A new assessment tool will enable workers to identify risk factors better, which should also help avoid problems, he said. Recent research – “a huge eye-opener” – showed that in some situations, too much intervention can actually worsen bad behavior .
Corry said that attempts to improve the juvenile-justice system in the county are ongoing and have shown some positive results. In 2008, 146 youth were put in placements out of their homes, a number that decreased to 107 in 2012.
Willett, a mother of 12 who received hearty applause for organizing the event – a collaboration among Child and Family Focus, Inc., the Coatesville Youth Initiative, and the Campaign for Youth Justice – said she was pleased with the outcome. She pointed out that awareness not only spurs reforms, but it also helps reduce the stigma for parents, many of whom need to know they are not alone.
“We had a very diverse group of attendees,” Willett said, “but I would have liked to have seen more people attend, especially parents and family members who have/had a youth in the youth justice system.”
