Juvenile probationers in Lehigh County, Pennsylvania, are involved in a variety of activities - some work at an area recycling center, others paint murals with local college students and some perform skits about high-risk behavior for other kids in the community.  Thanks to the many partnerships the Juvenile Probation Department has formed with neighborhood organizations, these juveniles have an opportunity to give back to the community in a meaningful way while they are on probation.

The county's Juvenile Probation Department began partnering with local organizations, like school systems and community groups, more than a decade ago to improve the quality of the services it offers to juveniles and to address the needs of victims and the community, as a whole.

"One of the benefits behind this move is that the kids get to know their community a lot better," said Andy DeAngelo, Deputy Chief Juvenile Probation Officer for Lehigh County.  "Some of the kids that we work with feel alienated or disconnected [from] their community," he said.  "By engaging the community we help to develop a bond between the offender and the community; it makes it difficult for them to go out and commit crimes against people they know and respect."

According to DeAngelo, back in 1990, the department began to form partnerships in the community to become more involved in the lives of the probationers under its supervision.

"We started seeing that having kids report to the courthouse wasn't really all that effective in terms of understanding their needs and also getting a good grasp on their behavior in the community," DeAngelo said. 

So, the Juvenile Probation Department teamed up with the Allentown School District to put probation officers on-site at some schools. 

"What we found from doing that is that kids' behavior and grades started to improve because of the intense contact with their probation officers in the schools," said DeAngelo. 

With that partnership already in place, the department expanded its efforts to work in collaboration with community organizations in 1995 when legislation was enacted in Pennsylvania that called for the agency "to provide balanced attention" to the needs of victims and the community as well as juvenile offenders, DeAngelo said.

"In essence we [now] have three clients: the victims, the offenders and the community," said DeAngelo.  "It changed [our mission] a great deal because this meant that we are moving out beyond just the needs of the offenders and we are looking at what areas need to be addressed concerning the needs of the community and victims of the juveniles' crimes," he said.  "You really need to get the community involved and develop partnerships, which include the community in our work."

To get citizens on board with the idea, probation officers began going out into neighborhoods - attending crime watch and religious meetings and civic organization and social group gatherings - to explain their role in the juveniles' lives and promote public safety.

"Initially, there was some apprehension about working with juvenile justice," said DeAngelo.  "[But] people see things from a different standpoint [when] they begin to realize kids in the community do make mistakes."

The probation officers tried to convince the community groups how they could play a vital role in helping juveniles' to rehabilitate and go on to lead productive lives, DeAngelo said.  From this effort to educate and inform local organizations, several partnerships emerged aimed at reforming juveniles and giving them a way to repay their debt to society.

Programs Through Partnerships

As part of conditions of probation, officers can require some juveniles to participate in a variety of activities that help them rehabilitate, while at the same time give something back to the community.

According to DeAngelo, an agreement with some area colleges enables juveniles go to campus once a week and meet with college students who serves as mentors and help the youth with their homework.  Afterwards, he said, the juveniles are involved in some type of constructive activity.  For example, juveniles recently painted murals with their college counterparts and donated them to local organizations, he said.

Another program involving some juvenile probationers takes place at an Allentown recycling center.  Their work there benefits the victims of juvenile crime, DeAngelo said.

"The kids are credited minimum wage for each hour they work," he said.  "That money goes directly to the victim - they don't get a penny of it."

Aside from the recycling center, some juveniles are required, as a condition of their probation, to work for Habitat for Humanity rebuilding old, run-down homes.  According to DeAngelo, the project generates income for the community and provides the juveniles with an opportunity to learn marketable skills like carpentry and construction.

While some juvenile probationers are renovating homes in the community, others are performing educational skits in front of their peers.

"We have kids on probation and kids from the community doing skits about high risk behavior, like drunk driving or teen suicide," said DeAngelo.

The skits, which are performed at school assemblies or during after school programs, send a message to other kids in the community about the impact and negative consequences of a variety of risky activities, he explained.

A Focus on Therapy

Beyond the activities in the community, high-level offenders receive in-home therapy thanks to a partnership between the Juvenile Probation Department and the Connecticut-based Community Solutions, Inc., which provides multi-systemic therapy (MST) for juveniles and their families.

According to Susan Pribyson, Vice-President of Youth Services for Community Solutions, a supervision and treatment provider for adult and juvenile offenders, the therapy takes place in the juveniles' homes for four to six months and involves the children, their primary caregivers, their siblings, the school system and the neighborhood.

"We look at the whole ecology as far as what it is in this child's life that allows him to keep reoffending or remain at high risk," Pribyson said.  "What we try and do is target an area where we can make the smallest amount of change [with] the longest amount of impact."

Pribyson said the therapists look at all aspects of the juveniles' lives, including their peer group and the culture of the community where they live. 

"If you make community changes around the child, the changes are going to be more sustainable than if you put them back in the same community," she said.

According to Pribyson, this approach to dealing with offenders has been very effective for Community Solutions, which has a success rate of 70-85 percent for offenders who remain crime free for at least one year after they are discharged.

And keeping juveniles out of the criminal justice system is the ultimate goal of all of the partnerships the Lehigh County Juvenile Probation Department has formed, DeAngelo said.

"I really think the kids understand better the impact their behavior had on the community as well as themselves," DeAngelo said.  "I think the community has so many resources available that can help young people straighten out their lives and get back on the right track," he said.  "It's just a matter of accessing those systems [and] those services out there.  We spend so much money on building jails and prisons when we can find the solution within [our] neighborhoods."

Resources:

DeAngelo (610) 782-3143

Community Solutions (860) 683-7100