The new $15 million Youth Development and Justice Center facility, set to open in Jonesboro in August, isn’t just another kiddie jail.
For starters, there are no beds or cells in the four-story, glass-and-brick complex. (Jail-bound kids end up at the 60-bed Martha K. Glaze Regional Youth Detention in nearby Lovejoy.) Authorities here are so dead set against creating a jail-like atmosphere that there are only a few temporary holding rooms for kids who end up going to the fourth-floor courtrooms.
The facility is a reflection of the collaborative effort among police, schools and the court that has made Clayton a national model for keeping kids out of jail. Juvenile justice systems in Alabama, Connecticut, Indiana, Louisiana, Massachusetts and Los Angeles are copying it. Bibb County recently set up a collaborative system modeled after Clayton’s to cut its 14 percent school suspension rate, which is twice the state rate.
In Connecticut, two cities have pilot programs based on Clayton’s. “We’ve seen a dramatic reduction in the number of arrests out of public schools,” said Lara Herscovitch, senior policy analyst at the Connecticut Juvenile Justice Alliance. “It still holds kids accountable for their behavior.”
Clayton’s approach is part of a larger national effort to reshape America’s juvenile justice system. Over the past two decades tougher policies put more police on school campuses and more kids behind bars for schoolyard fights or other minor dustups.
In Georgia, kids who skip school or shoplift can end up in jail, where many graduate to more serious crimes. Their jail stay is often marked by violence. Last year, the Department of Juvenile Justice reported nearly 100 rapes and 4,300 injuries — including death — in eight long-term lockup facilities and 20 short-term regional youth detention centers. Georgia spent about $266 million in 2011 to lock up young criminals and could spend as much as $279 million by the time the state’s fiscal year ends June 30.
The Clayton method is viewed as an “incubator or test tube for improving the juvenile justice system,” said Joe Vignati, administrator of the justice division in the Governor’s Office for Children and Families in Georgia. Clayton received a grant of nearly $75,000 from Vignati’s division to help 40 more young repeat offenders a year avoid jail by participating in a behavior-changing program that lets them stay in their communities.
“They’ve re-engineered the system in Clayton to keep kids out of detention and out of the system altogether,” said Bart Lubow, director of the Juvenile Justice Strategy Group for the Annie E. Casey Foundation in Baltimore. “The traditional juvenile justice system is oriented around a deterrent and punishment model. This one is oriented around the youth development model. That’s different from ‘we need to punish the hell out of them so they’ll never do it again.’ It’s a completely different mindset and culture.”
Other metro Atlanta juvenile justice systems — DeKalb and Fulton, for example — have all services under one roof. But Clayton’s new complex is believed to be the first to set aside space solely for local groups to meet and work with kids and their families. It also will be home to the Youth Policy and Law National Resource Center, a training ground for juvenile justice officials nationwide to learn Clayton’s method.
Clayton County’s current juvenile court facility is a converted parking garage built in the late 1970s. The new youth development facility feels more like a hotel or conference center.
“Typically when we build a courthouse, the focus is on the courtroom” said Mike Corum, senior project manager at The Potts Construction Co., which is building it. “Here, the focus is on all different departments doing their part. Driving the design is collaboration.”
The four courtrooms are on the top two floors. Center stage belongs to the large oval glass-encased meeting room where law officers, attorneys and school officials can meet with social services workers, community volunteers and child advocates to help kids and their families find alternatives to jail. A few feet away is the resource center for visitors who want to replicate Clayton’s work. The building also is home to authorities working with abused and neglected children and kids in foster care.
Red tape should be reduced. On the second floor, offices for social services, attorneys and others who regularly work together will be a few feet instead of miles away from each other.
At the helm is Steven Teske, a 52-year-old bowtie-wearing judge with an unorthodox way of dealing with kids teetering on the edge. Last August, for example, he sentenced a teenage girl tied to the daycare death of a toddler to two years’ probation, but not before ordering her to create a memorial to the dead child. The teenager’s hand-sewn quilt in memory of the toddler will hang in the new facility.
“The whole building was designed around community collaboration,” Teske said. “Everything we do involves all agencies public and private who work with kids.”
After noticing school referrals for minor offenses were clogging his docket, Teske devised guidelines with schools and police to keep minor offenses from reaching his court. First-time offenders get a warning. The second time, it’s a two-hour in-school program on nonviolent communication, problem-solving and behavior management. Strike three earns a kid an appearance before a judge.
The result: fewer kids in court, fewer weapons in schools, fewer school fights and graduation rates up 24 percent since 2004, according to studies that have tracked Clayton’s work. Teske teaches Clayton’s collaborative model nationally.
“They used to lock up more kids before trial. Now they’re locking up fewer before trial because Judge Teske and others have created better risk [assessment] instruments,” said H. Ted Rubin, a retired Denver Juvenile Court judge who has written six books on juvenile justice.
The youth development building has been in the works since Teske took the bench in Clayton 13 years ago. “With all the collaboration, we didn’t have the facility to do it all,” Teske said.
That won’t be a concern after August.
-- Staff writer Rhonda Cook contributed to this article.
CLAYTON JUVENILE JUSTICE CENTER
Name, location: The Clayton County Youth Development and Justice Center, 9163 Tara Blvd., Jonesboro (next to the Harold R. Banke Justice Center)
Opens: Mid-August.
Cost: $15 million, from a Special Local Option Sales Tax approved during a 2009 election.
Features: 65,279-square-foot, four-story facility. A Youth Policy and Law National Resource Center to train visitors in alternative detention methods; a multipurpose meeting room for community, police, court, school, social services, mental health and child advocates to work with kids and families.
About the Author
