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.

10 and 11 Year Old Kids Do Not Belong in Juvenile Hall

This past weekend a friend of mine was cleaning out her garage and came across an article written by J. Edgar Hoover, Director of the FBI, from the January 1955 edition of The American Magazine.  “You Can Help Stop Juvenile Crime”  urged readers to help stop the juvenile crime wave by returning to family values and religion.  He reported that one out of 18 youth between the ages of 15 and 17 were delinquent and if the trend continued there would be a huge population of delinquents in the 1960s.   I guess we all know what happened to those youth from the 60s!  I found the article interesting because the examples he gave of the delinquents were kids who were 13, 10 and even 9-years-old – very young kids.  He blamed the crime wave on the media for “debunking moral codes and standards of adult conduct.”

Yesterday I met with leaders from the Santa Clara County Social Services Agency and the Probation Department to discuss where very young offenders (under age 13) could be sent when home wasn’t an option and Juvenile Hall wasn’t appropriate.  The meeting was in response to a San Jose Mercury News  article that uncovered that a 10 year old was put in juvenile hall with his 11 and 12 year old siblings in February 2009 for 4 days for allegedly molesting a younger sibling.  The charges were later dropped but members of the County Board of Supervisors requested an alternative be put in place to prevent very young children being jailed with older offenders.  Bill Wilson Center works with young offenders and youth out of control (status offenders) so I volunteered to accept young offenders into our shelter and temporary foster homes.  Our goal is to reunite kids with their families and to provided needed services to prevent future delinquency.

Although juvenile crime rates are down substantially from the mid 90s there is much discussion lately that kids are committing more serious crimes at a younger age.  The Federal Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention tracks the numbers of crimes and has studied this issue.  The crimes younger kids are committing follows the same crimes older kids are involved with so there is no unusual trend.  In fact, juvenile crime for all ages have decreased since 1995.

Bill Wilson Center’s philosophy is to treat kids in the least restrictive setting.  Our foster homes and shelter provide services in a home-like setting where kids get the family, individual and group counseling they need to make the successful transition back home.   Most kids do not need to be locked up in Juvenile Hall and would be better served in community programs that will involve the family and provide treatment.  Placing 10-year-old kids who commit crimes they don’t fully understand in an institution designed for holding youth who are a danger to society can only make matters worse.  92% of the youth graduating from our residential program do not commit new offenses.  We will continue to speak out for the kids who don’t have anywhere to turn to for help.

Remembering a 17-Year-Old Runaway Who Died Alone

Tamara Thompson, a 17-year-old resident of Mountain View, was killed last Monday night in Oakland, after being sexually assaulted. (San Jose Mercury News, 4/04/09). Police are investigating it as a homicide. The girl had been in the Santa Clara County Juvenile Ranch but was allowed to visit home on weekends. Unfortunately, four weeks ago she ran away, perhaps to hook up with a boyfriend in Oakland.

I hope Tamara’s life and death aren’t soon forgotten. I never met Tamara nor was Tamara ever seen at the Bill Wilson Center. However, we see many like Tamara every year – a girl with hopes and dreams who somehow got off track and ended up in Juvenile Hall.

Recently, we moved our Quetzal House program to Mountain View. This program works with troubled girls like Tamara. We also have two host family homes that can also shelter runaways. I only hope the next Tamara is sent our way before being sentenced to the County Juvenile Ranch. Often juvenile probation and the court are quick to order girls to the secure Ranch rather than seek alternatives in the community. Probation staff systematically send girls off to the Ranch without seeking community alternatives first.

Once allowed back home these girls often revert back to old patterns unless other help is provided for them in their home communities. When Tamara was allowed to visit home on the weekends, she did what many girls do – she took off to visit a boyfriend. The consequence for this action was steep — once she spent a night away from home she was in violation of her court order and a warrant was issued for her arrest. She would have known this and most likely was afraid to return to be locked up in Juvenile Hall. So, instead, she stayed on the run, far enough away from the local authorities. Oakland is not safe for girls on the run.

I wish Tamara knew to call Bill Wilson Center or the Status Offenders Services Network. We would have arranged to pick her up and have her stay at our youth shelter. I hope her probation officer and the supervisors from the Ranch will remember Tamara. The Chief Probation Officer should call a group together to review her situation and see if something different could have been done for her.

Preventing Poverty While We Are Ending Poverty

Bill Wilson Center’s long-range vision is to prevent poverty.   Yesterday I was part of a discussion with other homeless housing providers on how we can end poverty in Santa Clara County.   Catholic Charities is launching an effort to reduce poverty in Santa Clara County by 50% by the year 2020.  Bill Wilson Center is part of this movement.  City of San Jose officials through the Destination: Home Program have committed to end chronic homelessness by funneling more resources to that population.  Both have joined forces to help end one of the more vexing problems in San Jose and Santa Clara County: getting the chronic homeless population into housing.

Bill Wilson Center provides supportive and housing services to homeless youth and youth aging out of foster care and other institutions.  By federal definition, this population does not fit the “chronic homeless” category.  Neither do seniors living on a fixed income at the poverty level, or women who are victims of domestic violence living in emergency shelters.  While nonprofit agencies serving these groups applaud the effort to end chronic homelessness they are concerned that limited resources may be redirected away from their services.  How do we assure that we prevent poverty by serving youth, seniors, and victims of domestic violence and at the same time end poverty by housing the chronic homeless?

I believe we can do both, however, we need representation from various groups to be at the leadership level on Destination: Home when funding and policy decisions are being made.  Up to now, the Blue Ribbon Commission to End Chronic Homelessness and Destination: Home have only representation from public officials, foundations, United Way, and private corporations.   The nonprofit representation has been only at the coalition level.

The argument for not including individual nonprofit representation on the leadership groups has been that one nonprofit cannot represent another.  This is the same argument that occurs throughout the United States from the city to the state level.   If one city can represent all cities on the leadership or executive level why can’t the same occur for a nonprofit agency?  If we are to end poverty we need to start including the agencies that are on the ground floor doing the work.  In the nonprofit field we have been choosing leaders to represent our issues on numerous collaborations for many years.

A second common argument for not including nonprofit representation is that funding decisions may be made by the leadership group and an agency may steer funds their way.  Policies and procedures can be put in place to assure no “self-dealing” takes place.

Housing providers serving the chronic homeless and nonprofits working with homeless youth, victims of domestic violence, or other “non-chronic homeless” populations need to be represented at all decision-making levels  to prevent poverty while we are ending it.    Bill Wilson Center will continue advocating for connecting all young people to the community with the necessary resources to prevent poverty.  That includes speaking out for more inclusive public policy.