Linn County expands program helping young offenders

A Linn County effort to steer some youthful offenders away from jail has worked well enough to extend to slightly riskier cases. And that saves taxpayers money.

“We want to keep these kids from going to a higher level of care, or a higher level of placement,” said Peg Pangborn, the county's juvenile detention coordinator. “And we are intent on making sure these kids don't re-offend.”

Launched in fall 2009, the county's Link program assigns a counselor to each selected youth within 24 hour of their arrest. The counselor closely supervises the offender and works with his or her family to address the conditions that caused them to offend.

“It's a very holistic approach,” said Pangborn. “What we discovered is, too often the focus is solely on the child, and they return to a setting where there's no support system.”

“There's a lot research that we can set up expectations in youth - that they start seeing themselves as criminal if we set them up as delinquent,” said Candice Bennett, chief Juvenile Court officer for 6th Judicial District. “At the same time, they're being held accountable, and community safety is our most important goal.”

“One of the main key components I believe is just building that rapport with them right off the bat and building that trust,” said Rich Jackson, one of Link's five intervention counselors (four are full-time). “You're part of the justice system, but you're not trying to keep them in the justice system.”

Intervention has been as simple as a new haircut for a youth and as involved as helping a family recover after being evicted from their home.

“We show them the resources in the community they didn't know about or didn't have access to,” Jackson said. “Keeping your word on something is very important. A lot of parents and kids we've worked with have had people say things and not follow through.”

Jackson said troubled families are often unaware of the help available from non-profit programs, churches, and other community agencies.

Through March, Link counselors have worked with 60 offenders and 34 families, with 29 cases currently active.

Only 7 percent of the offenders have returned to the juvenile justice system, and the number of minority youth held in detention for their first or second offenses has declined 71 percent - important because Link was created largely out of concern over the disproportionate minority presence in the juvenile system.

“Its original premise was we were getting kids at detention who had fairly low-level charges,” said Bennett. “We're actually not getting those kids in the numbers we were, so I rank that as a success.”

Only two families failed to cooperate with the program, Jackson said. Those offenders were referred back to the conventional juvenile justice and probation systems.

Because it costs about $262 a day to keep a prisoner in the county's juvenile detention center, Link, which is funded through the 6th Judicial District, has paid for itself out of savings, Pangborn said.

The county plans to hire two new staffers as the program expands to Johnson County and to serve youth charged with aggravated misdemeanors and felonies - it's now limited to simple misdemeanor offenders.

“I don't think we will be focusing on the offense so much as the level of risk,” Pangborn said.

“We're trying to empower the families,” said Jackson. “Then we step away (saying) ‘you're stable now, you know what you're doing.'”

While most former Link participants don't re-offend, Jackson and other staff members sometimes encounter them again.

“Sometimes I get calls just saying ‘thank you for what you guys have done for us,'” he said. “Sometimes we get the thank-yous, and those are always appreciated.”