Officials laud Juvenile Resource Center

Oct. 21--ASHTABULA -- Heading toward six months since the Juvenile Resource Center became a 24-hour, seven-day-a-week operation, those in charge say the system is working as planned.

The county Youth Detention Center closed permanently April 30 and since that time the Juvenile Resource Center has processed 208 cases, according to Caron Fenton, Juvenile Resource Center supervisor. The center opened in November of last year, and so far this year more than 430 youth and families have come through the doors, she said.

Of those cases 64.5 percent have been boys, 35.5 percent have been girls and the average age is just shy of 15. Of the 208 cases processed since the detention center closed, 86 were for unruly children, 107 involved misdemeanors and 15 involved felony cases, Fenton said.

The detention center cost around $800,000 to operate and the Juvenile Resource Center costs around $1.2 million, according to Juvenile Court Administrator Andrew Misiak, but it is completely grant-funded and doesn't use county money.

Fenton, who had worked with juveniles as a probation officer for 16 years, said she has seen youth she worked with end up in prison as adults. Many started out with stints in the detention center for things like truancy or unruly behavior, she said.

"Kids were coming out causing more harm and committing more high-level crime," she said. "They had been in with individuals who were higher risk and maybe needed to be in detention."

Youth who commit serious offenses like felonious assault or felony-level domestic violence are still sent to detention in Trumbull and Mahoning counties, Fenton said.

All youth who come through the Juvenile Resource Center are given an assessment and screened for things like trauma and mental health issues, Fenton said. From there it's determined where they will go and that could mean home, released with an ankle monitor, a relatives home or secure detention.

Fenton said most kids who come to the center are ultimately found to have experienced some sort of trauma. However, the center is now seeing children and their families sooner and they are able to get connected to services quicker than when they had to wait two months to go to court, Fenton said.

The idea is to get some early intervention for youth who are in trouble, Misiak said. When Misiak and Judge Albert Camplese arrived in 2015, the juvenile court was averaging about 18 children a day in the detention center.

They joined a Juvenile Detention Alternatives Initiative with the aim of getting to the root of the problems that brought them before a judge in the first place, Misiak said.

"All the studies show that once a kid enters detention they are more likely to not graduate high school, to go to prison and all of those negative things," Misiak said.

Misiak said he hopes parents or guardians reach out for help through the Juvenile Resource Center when they encounter problems with their child. It is not necessary to wait until police have been called to seek a solution, he said.

"Now the Resource Center is the main entry point for all juveniles in Ashtabula County, from unruly children to those with felony offenses," Misiak said. "We want parents to know they can just come down if they are having issues with their child. We can try to give them some tools to deal with the issue so they don't have to call the police or go to juvenile court."

Camplese said the whole concept of using a resource center to interdict in a juvenile's life and to give them tools to use to enact meaningful change is exciting.

The end-goal is to try to build systems that will allow children to make mistakes, and as a system to redirect efforts to respond to those mistakes, Camplese said. Locking a child up is reserved for those who actually hurt people, Camplese said.

Recidivism rates stand at less than 10 percent, Camplese said. The new approach comes with the added benefit of not having to risk the child's freedom and the trauma that comes with that such as disruptions in education and social structures.

Even if a child's only social structure involves coming home and seeing a dog everyday, Camplese said taking that away has real consequences. And when a child is locked up in a detention center, it gives other parents a reason not to let their children play with that child, teachers a reason on a subliminal level to discount them and it sets in motion a string of events that aren't really necessary, Camplese said.

Camplese said he feels the new approach has been transformational.

"To regard juveniles as adults is flawed thinking," he said.

"Juveniles do things for reasons that are different than why adults do. There isn't one of us that hasn't made a mistake as a juvenile that we could have been charged for."

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