Bypassing detention centers

Bypassing detention centers
Program aims to keep youths at home, out of trouble
By Maria Cramer, Globe Staff


Isaiah is a soft-spoken sixth-grader with poor grades, virtually no relationship with his father, and a police record that includes attempted breaking and entering and assault and battery - the latter on his mother and sister when he was 11 years old.

He also has something else: a new lease on a young life, courtesy of a juvenile judge.

When Isaiah was arrested last November for trying to break into a friend's house in Dorchester, Judge Leslie Harris could have ordered him to be locked up in a detention center that resembles an adult prison.

Instead, Harris decided on a less punitive option. He referred Isaiah to an innovative program, through which the boy - and about 30 other Boston children charged with serious crimes - lives at home and stays in school. Three to four times a week, the children, who range in age from 11 to 17, go to a community center in Roxbury, where they meet with advocates who make sure they stick to court-ordered curfews and attend school. They receive counseling and take tours of nearby colleges on field trips their advocates hope will expand their world view beyond the street corners that seem to cause them so much trouble.

The fledgling program, known as the Detention Diversion Advocacy Project, was born in 2005 from a concern that too many minority children and teenagers are held at the state's juvenile detention centers. Incarceration at that age, statistics suggest, is even more likely to lead to a life of crime than being in a gang.

The program, which is funded with a grant from the federal Department of Justice and administered by the state, is part of a growing trend in recent years to steer children and teenagers away from detention. In 2006, more than 5,400 youths across Massachusetts were ordered held on charges ranging from trespassing and larceny to aggravated assault with a deadly weapon. Only about 1,000 of them were eventually found guilty of their charges.

In Suffolk County, about 91 percent of the 1,019 youths detained were minorities. Most of them were black and Hispanic.

"I very seldom have a day where I'm not sending kids to DYS," said Harris, who works out of Dorchester District Court, which refers children to the program. "I also know that locking up kids isn't always the answer. I believe I see kids who are stressed and depressed, and having a program like DDAP can give them individualized attention before they become part of the system."

The state does not measure recidivism among teenagers and children who have been detained, but studies in other states show that youths who are locked up while they wait for their court dates are more likely to drop out of school, become depressed, and meet gang members who will try to recruit them. In Wisconsin, 70 percent of the youths detained were arrested again or returned to a detention center within a year after their release, according to a 2006 study of detention programs by the Justice Policy Institute.

Department of Youth Services Commissioner Jane Tewksbury said the state is in the preliminary stages of developing alternative programs that would focus on keeping children charged with less serious crimes, such as shoplifting, from being held while they wait for their court dates.

"I was aware of the dangers of detention," Tewksbury said. "For us, detention reform really is getting the kids with the less serious offenses out of the system."

Isaiah, who always wears a knit cap and favors baggy Dickies pants, describes his arrests with bravado. He laughed as he recalled one incident two years ago, when he said a zealous officer charged into his grandparents' house and pointed a gun at him and his grandmother. The officer showed up after Isaiah had run away from home following a fight with his mother and sister, who called the police to report the assault.

"Some white guy came in and said 'Freeze,' " Isaiah said, chuckling at the memory. "My grandmother said, 'Is this really necessary? He's only 11 years old.' " When he was referred to the Dorchester-based program, rather than being grateful to be kept out of detention, he was annoyed that his schedule was disrupted and suspicious of his advocate, Deborah Duncan, who remembered an angry boy who just wanted to go home.

" 'Why I gotta do this?' " she recalled him grumbling. "I thought it was going to be a hard one to crack, but he came around."

Isaiah eventually embraced life at the center, showing up almost every day and participating in activities organized by groups like Mission Safe, a nonprofit organization that runs after-school programs for teenagers and middle-school students. Isaiah's family asked that his full name be withheld because he is a juvenile.

Most days after school, Isaiah shoots pool in the basement of the community center or visits Simmons College, where he talks with students about their majors or conducts science experiments.

One Wednesday afternoon, he made ice cream with Boston University students in the community center, though the results were less appetizing than he expected.

"It was watery," he said with a grimace.
He now says he wants to be a police officer, but emphasized that his policing style will be "way different" from some of the officers he has met. He wants to do better in school, though mostly because his mother has promised him a new bike if his grades improve.

"He's very articulate, he has a lot of potential, and I don't want him to give up on himself," Duncan said.

If he is not arrested and shows up for every court date until his case is decided, he will be considered a success story for the program.

The number of detained children in the state has dwindled in recent years, from 6,408 in 2003 to 5,438 in 2006.

But as alternative programs like DDAP struggle to find funding, advocates worry that without them, judges will have no choice but to continue incarcerating children, who can quickly adapt to life behind bars.

"People who are at DYS think they can now handle prison, so they're not afraid of going to prison and they should be," said Harris, the juvenile court judge. "We've developed, in my mind, a bunch of kids who think they've earned their red badge of courage, because they went into the system."

Isaiah, who already has been detained at the Department of Youth Services, shrugged when he was asked if he feared being locked up.

"Not really," he said. "I'll get out sooner or later."