Javier starts High School in San Francisco

Today my son, Javier, started Gateway High School in SF.  It is a new beginning for both of us because it is the first day that he is no longer living with me during the school week.  It seemed best for Javier to go to SF to live with his dad, stepmom, and little brother, Oscar for high school, and we have been planning the move for over 6 months.  He was lucky to get into a top-notch charter school and his little brother adores having his big brother around.  Javier will still come down to visit on weekends but I expect, as time passes, he will want to spend more time with friends and less time with his mom.  After all, that is what teenagers do.

Javier grew up at Bill Wilson Center so it seemed only fitting that I should blog about our changes. My goal is to have fun with him on the weekends and to have a life during the week.  I know it would be all too easy for me to just extend my work hours in the evening.  I plan to text Javier, write him on Facebook, and occasional call him, although we both prefer other methods of communications.   I already miss him.

Enhanced Ranch Program: Change for Double the Cost and Time

The Santa Clara County Probation Department has completed its evaluation of their new Enhanced Ranch Program and the news is mixed at best.   While violent incidences are down for kids while in the ranch, outcome for kids 12 month after leaving the program show little difference from the original ranch program.

Today the Santa Clara County Public Safety and Justice Committee will accept a report from the Probation Department on the new Enhanced Ranch Program.  Sheila Mitchell, Chief Probation Officer commissioned the report from the National Council on Crime and Delinquency.   The final report documents the changes that occurred at the two county ranches, the James Boys Ranch and the Muriel Wright Center, both located in South County.  The report compared two cohorts:  youth who were in the ranches from 2005-2007 before the enhanced program was implemented and a group of youth who completed the new program.  The report focuses on evaluating the violations and failures of the youth (as identified by the Probation Department) while in the facility and 12 months after leaving the program (see page 36 of report).

The new Enhance Program is loosely based on the Missouri Model where kids were removed from locked facilities and treated in smaller, homelike settings and they wore street clothes.  Although the Probation Department did change the setting to create “pods” instead of the old dormitories, the James Ranch is still surrounded by a high chain-linked fence topped with razor-wire which is exactly what the Missouri Model removed.   The study refers to the facilities as “open” omitting the fact of the wire.  Oh, well, maybe kids don’t see the wire from their comfy new couches.    Also, kids are still required to wear uniforms in the facility, not their own clothes which is a key component of the Missouri Model.  The report does state that the probation department hopes to change the uniforms to street clothes soon.

There are several questions I have about the evaluation such as the cost of the program before and after the changes.  The staff ratio during the day are now 1:6 while before were 1:15.  Also, kids stay an average of 8 months now with 6 months of aftercare while before they stayed 4-5 months.  For double the cost and double the time 28% of the kids in the new program were rearrested while 31% in the old program were rearrested — only a 3% improvement.  Nine percent had a probation violation compared to 11% from the old program.   Not exactly stellar outcomes for the program.  The report does say that these outcomes are “promising” but  “not definitive” which means not much change at all.  In other words, the jury is out on whether there is really any long-term impact on the Enhanced Ranch Program.

I have talked to kids who stayed in the old ranch program and the new one.  They agree the staff are nicer and there are better services.  However, they complain that they waited months in juvenile hall to get into the program and while in the hall did nothing but sit around in their cells for hours.  The real issues is that there is little programming in juvenile hall where less serious offenders wait for months to either go to the ranch or to a placement or just go home.  Santa Clara County has one of the longer stays for kids in juvenile hall than any other large facility in the state.  I hope that can retrain staff in juvenile hall and start releasing these kids sooner to community based programs.

The report also shows that the ranch kids are now younger and 80% are Latino and 78% male.   The report does not identify the percentage of Latinos in the first cohort group although it does breakdown age for both groups.  I would hope we are not sending even more Latinos to the Ranches than before.  If so, it would really show a failure of our Juvenile Justice Detention Reform effort which had the goal to reduce the overconfinement of kids of color.

Questions I still want answered:  are the kids in the ranches really failing group homes before being sent to the ranches?  How do they define group home failures?  Kids often leave group homes which are truly in an open setting without permission but they usually return.  Often group homes now complain that probation is quick to remove kids from their programs and “violate” them when before kids were given more chances to settle into the programs.

If they are taking kids that would normally be sent to California Youth Authority why aren’t they taking the most serious violent offenders like 707 violators?  Why aren’t they taking kids with serious alcohol and substance abuse problems when they refer these kids to open group homes?  Also, with all the cutbacks to community based programs this year, are the aftercare programs and other services gone and what new programs are planned?

Stay tuned as I explore these questions more.