The luncheon session at the workshop featured a panel of youth, parents, and professionals who all have had direct experience with the juvenile justice system in Arizona. The panel included Jessica and Kobe, two young adults formerly on juvenile probation, as well as Tim, Deeana, and Allie, parents of youth who have been on juvenile probation. The other participants were Kae Rima, a licensed clinician at Coconino County’s Juvenile Court Services; Lionel Scott, a probation officer with the intensive services team in Coconino County’s Courts; Carly Smith, a juvenile probation officer with Coconino County’s Juvenile Court Services; Tony Randall, treatment and services manager for Coconino County’s Juvenile Court Services; and Ted Reed, presiding Juvenile Court judge for Coconino County.
This diverse group of panelists was brought together to share personal and professional knowledge among themselves and with the workshop participants, explained Bryon Matsuda, the director of juvenile services for the Coconino County Courts, who moderated the session. While the quality of juvenile justice services has been trending in a positive direction overall, both in Arizona and across the country, unintended negative outcomes remain frequent, persistent, and inequitable, Matsuda observed. In particular, people from lower social economic levels and those with high mental health needs often bear the brunt of these unintended negative consequences. Coconino County’s goal for the 21st century is to produce more positive outcomes in the juvenile justice system, specifically for these underserved populations.
Throughout the years, strategies employed in juvenile justice services have ranged from successful to promising to harmful for the youth and parents involved in the system. Matsuda said that he started working in juvenile justice services in 1974 while finishing his master ’s degree in counseling. To this day, he remains haunted by some of the standard practices enforced in his early years as a program officer. Early in his career, direct care workers were trained to handle youth who were resistant to their efforts with increasing power and authority. Since then, studies have shown that this approach is ineffective, illustrating the importance of research and testimony from direct care workers in separating effective from ineffective approaches, Matsuda said.
Fifty or sixty years ago, juvenile justice services operated under the belief that youth did not need to have legal rights because the system would take care of them, Matsuda explained. People were told to trust the system because it was working in youth’s best interests. However, studies have shown that youth were not receiving the services they were promised, largely due to a lack of resources and funding, a problem that continues to this day. As Matsuda was told by one judge in Utah’s Seventh District Juvenile Court, “the court is only as good as its resources.”
Finding the right staff to provide evidence-based juvenile justice services is another major challenge. During the late 1980s and 1990s, the public started to think of youth in the system as “super predators,” and people became convinced that it was in the public’s best interest to treat them as adults and lock them up, Matsuda said, which led to many mistakes in the juvenile justice system. Direct care workers now know, he observed, that the majority of youth in the system are neither predators nor dangers to the community who need to be imprisoned.
More communication between researchers and field workers would prevent these kinds of misperceptions and better factor the human component of juvenile justice services into the formation of policies and practices. For instance, a combination of research and experience has shown that long-term secure lockups are harmful to most youth and should be reduced, Matsuda said. Six to eight years ago, it was common for youth to be committed to the ADJC, which Matsuda called “the kids’ prison.” Since then, increased comprehensive services for youth and their families have driven a significant reduction in these numbers. Additionally, an increased understanding of the developing brain, including the effects of trauma on youth, their parents, and direct care workers, has improved standard practices in juvenile justice services. “They are not little adults that we can treat like adults,” Matsuda said.
A third major challenge in juvenile justice services is that parental supports are frequently overlooked, even though they are necessary to bring about positive development and increase community protection. For example, at the national conference of the American Probation and Parole Association shortly before the workshop, only one of approximately 200 sessions dealt with the families and parents of youth in the juvenile justice system, Matsuda pointed out. Coconino County has one of the few juvenile justice systems geared toward working with and supporting families. These services are based on data and research, a practice that should be employed in juvenile justice systems nationwide, Matsuda said. Coconino County’s Juvenile Court Services also uses evidence-based practices, including risk assessments, targeted interventions, skills training with direct practice, positive reinforcements, and intrinsic motivation, to help youth and parents develop the necessary skills for success. In addition, the system engages outgoing positive support systems, employs major relevant practices, and provides measured feedback to youth and staff. Data have demonstrated improvements in the recidivism of youth both in the juvenile justice system and in the adult system in Coconino County, Matsuda said. For example, the percentage of youth once on probation who were later reordered to probation has dropped from 20 percent to approximately 12 to 13 percent.
By focusing on the entire family, Coconino County’s Juvenile Court Services aims to achieve five major goals:
- Develop a positive support system.
- Learn how to have a positive daily routine with rules and expectations.
- Follow the law.
- Learn how to be accountable, how to make things right, and how to go to school.
- Prepare for the future.
The three primary objectives for the parents of these youth are:
- Empower parents to take more effective parenting actions that provide positive leadership and to love to their children.
- Learn to develop more positive structure and supervision in their children’s lives.
- Model and teach pro-social success skills that will allow their children to thrive in the future.
The development of these pro-social success skills for youth and their parents is intended to create both short- and long-term successes. In pursuit of these goals, Coconino County’s Juvenile Court Services employs youth- and family-centered practices based on the Step-Up Juvenile Justice Model, a seven-step model of success, skill development, supervision, and support. After each step, youth undergo an interview with a staff member to determine whether the step has been successfully completed. Parents are similarly quizzed after each step in the process, and services and support are scaled to each child’s needs. Youth with low pro-social skills require high levels of structure, supervision, and support, Matsuda said, with supervision decreasing as youth develop these skills. “We need to work with folks where they’re at, not where we want them to be. We want to involve the youth and the parents in their own assessment and planning processes.”
OBSERVATIONS OF THE PANELISTS
After his introduction, Matsuda began a discussion of client-centered practices with the panelists. In response to a question about what drew him to the juvenile justice system, division manager Tony Randall explained that he worked on mental and behavioral health with youth and their parents for 30 years. As a side job in the 1970s, he worked in shelters in Bloomington, Indiana, and surrounding Monroe County. Though he was in school at the time, he found that he preferred hanging out with
the youth at the shelter to going to class. To this day, when Randall gets frustrated by the administrative aspects of his job, he meets with youth in the detention center, which brings him immense satisfaction in seeing youth improve, he said. Coconino County’s Juvenile Detention Center is run more like a community behavioral health center with the authority and support of the court than like a traditional system, he added.
Coconino County’s Juvenile Court Services clinician Kae Rima explained that she was driven to work in juvenile justice because she was a child at risk, growing up in poverty with a mother who abused substances. One day at church she was told that children like her would never amount to anything. On that day, she decided that she would not be counted out. “I’m working with these kids because I’m not going to count anybody out,” she said.
Similarly, being a product of the system drove probation officer Lionel Scott to enter the field. Scott lost his older brother to prison and his younger brother to the streets. “I’m a walking testimony, and I want these kids to know that you can make it,” he said. “I want to be the Ace of clubs that I had when I was growing up that helped me turn it around.” Many youth that Scott meets have given up hope. His mission is to show them that they can make it out of the system and to support them along that journey, he said.
When juvenile probation officer Carly Smith was young, her parents worked with people who were 6 months away from being released from prison, helping them develop the life skills they would need once they were released. In the 6 months following their release, her parents then worked with these people at a halfway house. Between the ages of 11 and 18, Smith was inspired by the many success stories that resulted from her parent’s work. She remembers that when she was 13, one of the people in the program told her that he was proud of her for graduating middle school. Smith had not considered this a big accomplishment until she saw it from this man’s perspective. At that moment, she realized how much she loved these people and how she wanted to continue working in the justice system. Though she had thought she would not work with children, over time she discovered the beauty of watching youth realize their potential even through their hardest moments. These moments of hope give her the energy she needed to continue working in a broken system, she said.
Matsuda next asked the youth panelists to describe the support that they received from the juvenile court staff during their time in the system. Jessica responded that many people in Coconino County’s Juvenile Court Services believed in her and helped her grow up. As a teenager, she struggled to escape from peer pressure and negativity and felt that she did not have anyone to whom she could reach out for support. Since she entered
the system, many people, including several on the panel, have offered their help and guidance. “It’s nice to see that I have grown as a person and to know that I do really have the potential to do something great,” Jessica said. “I owe it to them, even though they say I did it by myself, but I really couldn’t do it without them.”
Kobe, another youth panelist, similarly described how his juvenile counselor helped him through hard times. Kobe’s father was an alcoholic, and his mother was becoming one. Even when he recently had to attend his mother ’s funeral, Kae (his counselor) was there to support him and his brother and to ensure that they remained on the right track. Kobe’s parents had always taught him not to show his emotions, but his experiences in the system showed him that emotions are a natural part of life. “To be stronger, we got to have each other ’s backs, because that’s how the world was made,” he said. “You can’t build a building in a day. It takes a long time and you can’t build it by yourself.”
Kobe’s counselor was like a second mother, he said. He could be open with her and talk to her about anything. Though he did not graduate from high school, he has found a career job managing a meat department. He loves his work, makes decent money, and met a woman who went to college and got her bachelor ’s degree. “Everybody always wonders why I got her, because I had no high school diploma or stuff like that,” Kobe said. “I made sure that I won’t let the life that I grew up define me, because I don’t want to be like that.” Many youth struggle, but counselors can help them improve their lives beyond their childhood circumstances, he said.
Matsuda next asked the parents on the panel whether they felt the court staff cared about them and their children, and how that affected their lives. Deanna described how her son entered the system at 12 or 13 years old and remained in the system until he was 18. Over that time, they met almost every staff member in the department. “Everyone was rooting for us,” she said. “Had he not been in the system, it could have been so much worse.”
Allie agreed that the immense support provided by Coconino County’s Juvenile Court Services allowed her and her son to grow. She frequently met with her son’s probation officers to discuss how things were going at home and where they could improve. She provided updates to Judge Reed at the review hearings, despite being afraid to speak, and Judge Reed was warm and receptive and genuinely wanted to know how they were doing. An article published in The Huffington Post about Coconino County’s Juvenile Detention Center called it, “A Jail That Does More Than Just Lock Kids Up.” “That’s truly what our program does,” she said.
Coconino County’s Juvenile Court Services reach into youth’s and parents’ lives to provide an integrated, comprehensive system, Allie con-
tinued. When her son was first arrested, the officer allowed him to hug his dad before being taken away. Since then, Allie and her son have been treated with great kindness and consideration by everyone involved in the system. “It saved my kid’s life,” she said. “You’re watching your kid commit a slow suicide when they’re on drugs, and it’s terrifying and you feel so helpless as a parent.” Having a supportive community allowed her son to recover and thrive.
Tim, Jessica’s father, reiterated the challenges of figuring out how to support a struggling child. “You don’t know what it’s like to just wonder if your child’s just going to disappear,” he said. Through Coconino County’s Juvenile Court Services, he and his daughter learned that they were not alone. “The whole system is set to save your child,” he said. “They take good care of her. I don’t know what I’d have done without them.”
Matsuda then turned the discussion to why and how these trusting, caring relationships are built. Rima said that her second-grade teacher instilled her with the desire to help others. Jessica added, “Every single staff there honestly cares about you with their whole heart. They want to see you grow as a person.” When Jessica entered the system, she was stuck in a deep depression. Rima helped pull her out of it, stop self-harming, and see her potential, she said. The staff at Coconino County’s Juvenile Court Services want to see them grow, she added.
Deanna also described the many trusting relationships that she and her son developed over the course of her son’s time in the system. As a single mother, Deanna lacked a second opinion when making decisions regarding her son’s upbringing. She constantly second-guessed herself and struggled to deal with her own issues, which made it extremely difficult to make solid decisions for her son. But the staff at Coconino County’s Juvenile Court Services always had her back, she said. If she ever had a problem, she felt confident that they could help her make the right decision.
Allie agreed that she felt strongly supported throughout her son’s recovery. Her son was originally detained for 21 days before he was allowed to go to Oregon for treatment. In Oregon, he spent 100 days in the wilderness, where he met with a clinical therapist every week to work on his trauma. When he returned, Allie was concerned with how to support his progress, but the juvenile detention center and probation officers helped provide wraparound services to keep him on the right track. On her son’s first day back from Oregon, they met with his probation officer to discuss how to work on the Step-Up strategies and how to continue developing pro-social skills. Allie put the pro-social skills into a spreadsheet so that she could track her son’s progress and gauge his growth and development. “I’m so thankful for the Step-Up program,” she said. “That’s one of the most awesome pieces of our program that helped me as
a parent.” In addition, working with the judge helped them stay on track. When Allie and her son had slip-ups, the judge held them accountable, but not in a punitive way.
Matsuda then asked the youth to describe their experiences in the juvenile justice system. Jessica said that probation taught her how to open up to people and made her recognize that people could help her in the long run. The staff taught her the five major life skills she needed to be a successful adult, including how to make things right and how to stay out of trouble. “All five life skills that they have taught me have helped me every single day,” she said. In addition, the social skills and coping skills that she learned during probation have allowed her to help others in similar positions. The most important message she gives them is not to give up. “It’s going to be difficult for a while, but you’ll get through this. You just have to make yourself open and willing to accept the help that they’re trying to give you because they really can help you.” The staff are not only knowledgeable and experienced but also fun to be around, she said, adding that she never would have thought that she would develop such deep connections with people who work in law enforcement.
Making things right and staying out of trouble were the two prosocial skills that particularly impacted her son’s life, Allie said. At first, her son resisted involvement in the 12 Step program. However, Judge Reed encouraged him to participate in some of the activities with other youth in the program. Soon, her son got a sponsor and became much more invested in the program. He looked forward to the three 12 Step meetings that he attended each week. Today he talks about how he loves recovery and prefers to spend time with other youth in recovery, Allie reported. He spends time playing board games and reading literature with his new friends. Sometimes, when Allie calls her son at midnight to check in on him, he tells her that he just said a prayer with his sponsor. Helping her son develop the pro-social skills to move forward has been the key to his success, she said.
The lessons that both Allie and her son learned during her son’s time in the system changed their relationship in many ways. Most importantly, they allowed her to build a higher level of trust with her son. Now her son never hangs up the phone without telling her that he loves her. She has watched her son emerge from such a low place and come back to life. She was in a domestic violence situation with her son when he was first locked up. Now, Allie is no longer afraid of her son. “Every day has meant the world to me,” she said.
Deanna described a similar trajectory in her relationship with her son. When her son entered the system, he was diagnosed with oppositional defiant disorder (ODD), clinical depression, and very high anxiety. During his time with Coconino County’s Juvenile Court Services, he had
opportunities to be around normal, productive men in society. Before her son entered the system, Deanna’s lifestyle was not the healthiest and her son had few positive male role models. Her son’s skill trainer in the Coconino County program helped him develop confidence and believe in himself. Though her son had later setbacks, the services that he received through Coconino County helped him get on a better path. He got his GED and currently works as the assistant manager at a restaurant. Deanna is grateful not only to the juvenile justice system but to the entire county’s justice system. “It took the entire county to be my village to help me,” she said.
The experiences that Tim and his daughter had in the juvenile justice system also allowed them to build a better relationship. For a long time, his daughter barely spoke to him. No matter what he said, she accused him of never listening. “She was the teenager from hell for a lot of years,” Tim said. “There was nothing that I could do that was right.” For many years she self-harmed, abused drugs and alcohol, and ran away. One time she disappeared for 19 days, and he had no idea if she was safe or even alive. Upon entering Coconino County’s Juvenile Court Services, staff members helped Tim learned how to handle his daughter ’s aggressive attitude, and their support enabled him and his daughter to save and strengthen their relationship. “We couldn’t have done it without them,” he said. “It would be a great disservice to the children in the system now to lose the counseling and support system that they have for these kids,” he continued. Tim believes that without the system’s help, his daughter would currently be dead, a drug addict, or locked up. “And without these systems in place, that’s what’s happening to a lot of these kids in other places,” he said. “I’m glad it’s not happening in our community any more than necessary.”
This page intentionally left blank.
