{"id":8196,"date":"2013-10-11T15:53:29","date_gmt":"2013-10-11T19:53:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/coatesvilletimes.com\/?p=8196"},"modified":"2013-10-11T15:53:29","modified_gmt":"2013-10-11T19:53:29","slug":"health-education-resources-key-in-juvenile-justice","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/coatesvilletimes.com\/?p=8196","title":{"rendered":"Health, education resources key in juvenile justice"},"content":{"rendered":"

Experts discuss ways to promote rehabilitation, avoid recidivism<\/span><\/strong><\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

By Kyle Carrozza<\/strong><\/span>, Staff Writer, The Times<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

\"Rob<\/a>

Rob Manriquez and Isaiah Heverly share their stories of being in the juvenile justice system.<\/p><\/div>\n

COATESVILLE \u2013 Especially in Pennsylvania, where more adults are serving life sentences for crimes committed as juveniles than in any other state, alternative punishments must be implemented to keep kids from spending their lives in the justice system.<\/p>\n

These alternatives were the focus of Thursday night\u2019s forum held at the Brandywine Center.<\/p>\n

Organized by the Coatesville Youth Initiative and Child and Family Focus, Inc., speakers at the forum shared stories from the juvenile justice system and discussed ways to rehabilitate juvenile convicts without entering them into a system that leaves permanent marks on their records and makes them more likely to reoffend.<\/p>\n

\u201cAny efforts to keep kids from penetrating the system are worthwhile because once you get sucked into the system, you get a record, and you start being sent away to places where you might be associating with negative peers, it gets harder and harder to get out of the system,\u201d said Associate Director of the Juvenile Law Center Lourdes Rosado.<\/p>\n

Rosado, who works in Philadelphia to implement programs to keep children out of detention centers, said that the efforts have to be multifaceted, whether that means working to break the school-to-prison pipeline, obtaining fair trials, or expunging records for people who are found guilty of crimes as children.\u00a0\u201cIt\u2019s important to identify those points early in, \u00a0 where kids come into contact so you can get them off that track,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Rosado said that many children are treated unfairly even before they enter the system.\u00a0\u201cStudents of color and students with disabilities are disproportionately being arrested,\u201d she said.\u00a0She also said that over 70 percent of students who are arrested are Hispanic or black, and black children are three times more likely to receive out-of-school suspensions than white students, even though they make up a smaller portion of the population.<\/p>\n

Once juveniles are arrested, they often face unfair trials, and some kids waive their rights to attorneys. In 2008, the Juvenile Law Center\u2019s petition to the Pennsylvania Supreme Court helped end the \u201cKids for Cash\u201d scandal, in which Luzerne County judges received money for sending children to various detention centers.<\/p>\n

In addition to helping children stay out of the justice system, programs need to keep children who have been found guilty of crimes from returning to it.\u00a0Through various programs, many offenders can be set on “diversion” paths, allowing them to be punished in other ways than detention centers.\u00a0\u201cThere\u2019s been a lot of empirical research in the last 10 to 15 years about what works and what doesn\u2019t work with juveniles who get into trouble with the law,\u201d said Rosado.<\/p>\n

She cited the example of boot camps, which used to be a popular form of disciplinary action. She said that kids who come out of them have higher rates of reoffending. Long-term placement out of the home often hurts more than it helps.\u00a0\u201cWhat has really shown evidence of working are programs that keep kids in the community and in their homes and work intensively with the family and the community,\u201d said Rosado. \u201cThe problem is, if you send kids away, they may get better in this sterile, rarified environment, but they come back in their communities facing the same challenges and issues.”<\/p>\n

Functional family therapy and multi-dimensional foster care are two of the ways to rehabilitate the child and cut down on the risk of recidivism, she said.\u00a0Rosado also emphasized the importance of expungement. Crimes committed as a juvenile create a record for a person, and often, people do not realize that they have to go through a process to have those records destroyed.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt [having a record] can affect you in employment, it can prevent you from being accepted into the army. It can also impact your ability to get federal aid when you go to college,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Two men who went through the system as children also spoke at the panel, sharing the stories of how they got there and how they recovered.<\/p>\n

Rob Manriquez, now a youth support partner at Child and Family Focus, said that he grew up with an abusive father and parents who were not always together. After various arrests, he ended up in the juvenile justice system and when he tried to escape that, a jail in Mexico.\u00a0\u201cOne morning, I woke up, looked in the mirror, and saw my father,\u201d he said, describing the moment when he realized he had to change his life.<\/p>\n

Manriquez said that he starting pursuing his passions, including using his experience to help prevent young people from making the mistakes he did.\u00a0\u201cFind the one thing in life you want more than anything else,\u201d he advised young people. \u201cIf you\u2019re not going after something, something\u2019s going to come after you.\u201d<\/p>\n

Isaiah Heverly, now a senior at Phoenixville Area High School taking college-level courses, said that he got stuck in the system.\u00a0\u201cI didn\u2019t like being in the system. I didn\u2019t know how to get out of it,\u201d he said, commenting that once he left a center, he\u2019d return to his old ways.<\/p>\n

Heverly said that eventually, it was his desire for education that changed him. One staff member at George Junior placement facility pushed him to pursue his education, which changed everything.\u00a0\u201cHe really drilled it in me: \u2018There\u2019s potential in you; use it,\u2019\u201d he shared. \u201cThat was the a-ha moment for me, I guess you could say.\u201d<\/p>\n

Providing resources, such as education and mental health services, for children inside and outside of the system was also one of the concerns on the night.\u00a0\u201cWhen I was a kid, if you didn\u2019t give me something productive to do, I would\u2019ve found something else, and I would\u2019ve gotten in trouble,\u201d said County Commissioner Ryan Costello. Costello believes that with all the talk of revitalization in Coatesville and West Chester, people must keep the youth in mind.<\/p>\n

Debbie Willett of Child Family Focus emphasized the importance of mental health services for children.\u00a0\u201cMy one son went through the juvenile system, ended up in the adult system, and he had suffered from mental health issues his entire life. He was in the adult system not receiving any kind of mental health services, and a year ago, he committed suicide in prison,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Willett said that the justice system needs to offer mental health services.\u00a0\u201cThey\u2019re not criminals; they\u2019re mentally challenged, and they need to be able to have a normal life as much as possible,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Positive changes are occurring because of the efforts of people like Rosado and Willett.<\/p>\n

Laws that require courts to explain why a detention center is the best option for a child, rather than alternative programs, \u00a0are on the upswing.\u00a0A recent Supreme Court decision, Graham v. Florida, determined it is unconstitutional to impose harsh sentences on juvenile for crimes other than homicide, as children are more likely to rehabilitate than adults.<\/p>\n

An Allentown community panel program has won accolades. Making kids do community service severely cuts down on the number of children adjudicated as delinquent, research has found.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Experts discuss ways to promote rehabilitation, avoid recidivism By Kyle Carrozza, Staff Writer, The Times COATESVILLE \u2013 Especially in Pennsylvania, where more adults are serving life sentences for crimes committed as juveniles than in any other state, alternative punishments must be implemented to keep kids from spending their lives in the justice system. These alternatives […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":8202,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,3],"tags":[2948,595,2947,258,2949],"class_list":["post-8196","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","category-featured","tag-associate-director-of-the-juvenile-law-center-lourdes-rosado","tag-brandywine-center","tag-child-and-family-focus-inc","tag-coatesville-youth-initiative","tag-county-commissioner-ryan-costello"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/coatesvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8196","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/coatesvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/coatesvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/coatesvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/coatesvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8196"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/coatesvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8196\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/coatesvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/8202"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/coatesvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8196"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/coatesvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8196"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/coatesvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8196"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}