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Va. juvenile justice shift at legislative crossroads; lawmakers ponder options for prison as advocates push for community programs

News & Advance - 2/6/2018

Albert was preparing to leave Bon Air Juvenile Correctional Center after more than three years in Virginia's last remaining maximum-security youth prison, and his mother wanted him home in Henrico County.

But Albert (whose real name is being withheld to protect his identity) made a different choice. He asked to be discharged to a step-down residential treatment center in Richmond operated by United Methodist Family Services, a nonprofit organization that now goes by UMFS.

"I thought I wasn't ready to come home," he said.

Albert, now 18, is living with his mother in an apartment in Hanover County, away from the neighborhoods where he got into trouble. He is nearing the end of his parole from Virginia's juvenile justice system that is trying to shift its resources from incarceration to intervention for youths facing criminal charges and their families.

"I see a world of difference, including with his mother," said Henrico parole officer Alicia Winston, a former counselor at Bon Air who knew Albert during his incarceration at the state correctional center in Chesterfield County.

Albert was 13 when he was charged with felony grand larceny for breaking into a Henrico auto body shop. He and his mother are now receiving joint family therapy under a new treatment model the Department of Juvenile Justice is establishing around the state.

The state has created four teams for "functional family treatment," including one in Henrico and Petersburg, as part of an escalating investment in community services to divert troubled kids away from prison confinement, or keep them from returning.

The therapy "has helped me and (Albert) transition to being a family again," his mother said.

Legislative crossroads

But the intensifying effort to transform Virginia's juvenile justice system and improve the chances of the young people in it has reached a crossroads in the General Assembly.

The legislature's budget committees are considering whether to commit state resources to build two smaller juvenile prisons or keep one big one in the Richmond area at Bon Air or, potentially, Beaumont in Powhatan County. Its closure last summer generated much of the money the state has used to expand community treatment programs.

The possibility of reopening Beaumont was raised in the House Appropriations Committee budget retreat in November after Chesapeake, facing a public backlash, backed out of a plan to build a 60-bed state correctional center and a 48-bed local juvenile detention center on city-owned property.

"I think going back to Beaumont would be a step backward," said Andy Block, now in his second term as director of the state juvenile justice agency after an academic and legal career that included founding the JustChildren program at the Legal Aid Justice Center in Charlottesville.

Call for a pause

But JustChildren is part of a coalition called RISE for Youth that opposes construction of new juvenile prisons. Instead, it advocates for more state investment in community programs to keep kids out of the system and, if secure confinement is required, house them in small units near their families.

"Right now, we just need to take a pause. ... We need to stop and look at what's working elsewhere," said Valerie Slater, coordinator of the RISE coalition and a lawyer at the center's Richmond office.

The state and advocates agree that Virginia's old juvenile justice system was not working for the youth in it. Depleted by deep cuts in state spending and juvenile crime control grants after the recession, the system's recidivism rates showed 48 percent of youths released from juvenile correctional centers were rearrested after a year and 78 percent after three years.

Block shared those outcomes with legislators in a presentation more than three years ago that led to a state commitment to transform the system. Since mid-2013, the number of juveniles in state correctional centers has fallen by 68 percent, with just over 200 held in Bon Air, an aging campus facility that holds up to 272.

Community placement

At the same time, Virginia has sent more juveniles to community placement and detention re-entry programs run in partnership with local juvenile detention centers that function as jails rather than as maximum-security prisons.

The state also has established a system of 124 vendors to provide a wide array of direct services in communities through regional service coordinators overseen by two companies - AMIkids for the eastern and southern regions (including the Richmond area) and Evidence Based Associates for the northern, central and western regions.

The resources for the system's community investments came largely from the closure of Beaumont. The state has already saved about $4.5 million, even with paying overtime during consolidation into one facility at Bon Air.

The 672-acre Beaumont property overlooking the James River in western Powhatan is coveted by the county's economic development authority, chaired by former Sen. John Watkins, R-Powhatan, and his allies in the legislature.

"We did not divert the resources," said Sen. Ryan McDougle, R-Hanover, chairman of the Senate Finance public safety subcommittee that directly oversees juvenile justice. "We allowed the money to be put back into the system."

Which path?

The Senate Finance and House Appropriations committees say they have not decided about which path the state will take with secure detention of juveniles committed by judges to the department's custody.

The department still wants to build a smaller, 60-bed facility that is closer to families in the Hampton Roads and Peninsula regions, from which more than half of the juveniles in state custody come. It is considering a 20-acre property at the Shirley T. Holland Intermodal Park near Windsor in Isle of Wight County or next to St. Brides Correctional Center for adults in Chesapeake.

Isle of Wight Assistant County Administrator Donald T. Robertson said Friday that the county is willing to donate the land for a juvenile center largely because of the estimated 240 jobs it would bring to the community.

"Obviously, if our site can be advantageous from the standpoint of families in Hampton Roads by reducing their travel time and keeping the families connected, we think that's beneficial," Robertson said.

The other options would be to renovate Bon Air or build a new, smaller 96-bed correctional center there, as a department-led task force recommended.

"I think clearly it is cheaper to build a new facility at Bon Air," McDougle said. "There are some cost-positives, but there are some location-negatives."

House Appropriations Chairman Chris Jones, R-Suffolk, said he's still assessing the additional state costs to build a facility in Hampton Roads after the failure of the Chesapeake plan.

"We don't have the original deal we thought we had," Jones said.

Block estimates that if the state builds the two smaller centers, it could save an additional $15 million a year by closing the sprawling Bon Air Center, which is already generating savings from the closure of its reception and diagnostic center several years ago.

The advocates in the RISE coalition say families in affected communities in Hampton Roads favor a completely different approach. Instead of building new prisons, they want the state to invest more resources into impoverished communities to prevent crime and, if secure detention is necessary, to house offenders in small facilities of no more than 24 to 30 beds.

"We just really don't want to repeat the mistakes of the past," Slater said for RISE. "We need them to listen to what the communities want."

Personal impact

For Albert and his mother, the transformation of the juvenile justice system has been real and personal.

From being shackled when he was 14 because of his behavior, Albert gradually realized the hole he was digging for himself. "I decided to do what I needed to do to get out," he said. "It's not a place you want to be."

He and his mother also witnessed changes in the way the state operated Bon Air, which it converted to a community-based model on every residential unit. That meant more engagement with the center's staff - counselors, therapists, teachers - and more time with families, which Bon Air began to allow to visit their children on the residential units instead of a tightly controlled meeting in the gym.

"That was a huge change, and the kids really loved it," said his mother, who also asked not to be identified in this story.

Bon Air staff also worked closely with UMFS to aid a transition that was uncertain for Albert and the residential facility. He was the first juvenile from a correctional center to be placed at the facility, which houses and treats children with a wide range of psychiatric and behavioral challenges.

"It's what we look at for all of our kids," said Nancy Toscano, chief program and strategy officer at UMFS. "We're really looking at how well they'll do once they leave here."

"From our perspective, it's been very, very positive," Toscano said of the organization's new affiliation with the juvenile justice system, which has accepted another youth on parole and provided a Spanish-speaking therapist to help at Bon Air.

Follower to mentor

While at UMFS, Albert evolved from being what his mother described as "a follower" to acting as a leader and mentor to other kids in the facility. He played on the football team and counseled kids when they were upset, talking them back into the classroom.

His message to other youths during the commencement ceremony was blunt, recalled UMFS Chief Administrative Officer Jay Ziehl, who previously worked in the state juvenile justice system for 23 years. "He said to the other kids, 'You have no idea what will happen if you don't work on your program and try to avoid being incarcerated.'"

Albert now attends an alternative high school in Hanover and wants to play football for Lee-Davis High School. He's proud of the role he played as a mentor to other youths at UMFS.

"I just want to help everyone in the world I can," he said. "I know I can't help everybody, but I can sure try."