There are about 5,000 kids in Virginia’s juvenile justice system – many on probation or parole. The state is putting a new emphasis on community treatment programs for young people who commit crimes, but more than 200 are still in one of two correctional centers. Sandy Hausman reports on what will happen to those kids, and why that’s proving controversial.
Earlier this year, several hundred people marched in Richmond to demand state officials stop what’s known as the school to prison pipeline – a system in which kids are expelled or suspended from school, end up dropping out and pursuing a life of crime. One of those marching was 27-year-old Chelsea Ward who, at the age of 14, was locked up.
“My mother told them that I was crazy," she recalls.
" I was getting in trouble in school, didn’t want to be there, so I skipped school, so they put me on medicine. I wouldn’t take the medicine, so the guardian ad litem said, ‘She is not taking the medicine. You’re telling me she’s crazy. Let’s put her away.’ I cried for the first three months, because I didn’t get to see my sisters, I didn’t get to see my brothers, my mom never came to see me. She just basically left me there to rot.”
Six months later she went home, but after a year her mother kicked her out again. She was arrested for drug possession and did another stint in juvenile detention.
“I slept on the floor for the longest time on a cot that wasn’t even an inch off the floor," Ward says. " I had real bad asthma and so they let me have an asthma attack and didn’t call medical assistance until afterwards.”
Experts like Virginia's Secretary of Public Safety Brian Moran say incarcerating kids who commit crimes doesn’t lead to rehabilitation, and the system must change.
“Eighty percent were committing another offense. It’s costing us about $140,000 a year to incarcerate a juvenile," he says. “That's why we’re closing two adult-like prisons for juveniles, and we’re closing them with the requirement that that money stays with those juvenile offenders back in the community so we can provide the necessary services to keep them out of detention.”
When the first facility closes in June, the state expects to save $40 million, and the governor’s proposed budget puts that money into community-based treatment programs. At the Legal Aid Justice Center, attorney Valerie Slater applauds that decision and hopes lawmakers won’t be tempted to use some of those savings for other things.
“Because as you know there is a budgetary shortfall, and every department has been asked to cut somewhere," Slater explains. "We’re asking that Department of Juvenile Justice be given a pass as it pertains to that $40 million so that it does indeed go back into the community, so that children can be rehabilitated closer to their homes, because juvenile prisons don’t work.”
She’s dismayed by the fact that Virginia is building a new prison for kids in Chesapeake, but Brian Moran says for reasons of politics and public safety it’s a necessity.
“Whether a murder, a rape, a robbery is committed by a 16-year-old or a 60-year-old, it‘s a heinous offense, and the public demands punishment in many cases,” he says.
Moran says the new facility will be small – housing about 65 inmates, and he claims it will be more therapeutic than punitive. It’s going up near the homes of many of the kids it will serve, allowing them to keep in touch with their families. More than half of juvenile offenders in Virginia come from Hampton Roads.
As for Richmond resident Chelsea Ward, she’s gotten her GED with a perfect grade point average, and she’s working three jobs, as a greeter, a server and a youth advocate at RISE. That stands for Re-Investing in Supportive Environments. It was established by Legal Aid Justice to advocate for kids like Chelsea who need help but rarely get it in prison.