I'm Thinkin

With another front page article regarding the woes at the Division of Youth Services, the question crops up again: is the system at DYS working. Maybe the question needs to be: has it ever worked? Lacking a better term, DYS is a juvenile prison. It takes on the kids that our Juvenile Courts have deemed unfit to remain in their communities for any number of reasons. Their crimes (or delinquincies) range from low misdemeanors to the most violent of felonies.

But there is almost always one common denominator, and that is, there is usually some type of dysfunction in the home. It might be no parents or one parent. Many times it's simply parents who don't have a clue about how to raise a child. And too often we see mentally disturbed kids with nowhere else to go but juvenile prison. In the end, the lack of direction and supervision puts these young people at odds with the law and societal norms.

What do we do? We send them to DYS and expect to have a rehabilitated kid back in our town after a few months. In some cases they are better off than when we sent them; but if you put a child back in the same old environment they have no chance. I do believe the state, and the independant companies who have contracted with them over the years, could do a better job of staffing their facilities and keeping some of these problems from happening. There have been too many deaths over the years that I believe should have been prevented.

I propose we do several things to improve the chances of getting some of these kids into a winnable situation. Number one is to regionalize the facilities. Simply put, keep your kids closer to home. That way the juvenile court can keep a closer watch over kids it has familiarity with. Also allow the Judges to mandate to the parents or guardians that, they too, take an active role in the rehabilitation process. The second thing is to make education a priority and staff it accordingly. We should approach education for these juveniles like a mini Lakeview case and demand excellence from the staff and family members to ensure progress. Thirdly, allow the schools and court sytem to identify these children and their families early on. Then be willing to pay for the proper community based services and have judges ready to sanction parents and guardians who fail in their parental responsiblities.

I believe the answer to solving problems facing DYS and our state should start at the grass roots level, and everyone, from parents, to judges, to DYS and its staff, have to be put on the same page. This is in no way a recipe for curing all of the ills that helped create the problems. But we have to be willing to make it better. Because this sytem's broke and it needs fixing. If not, we'd better start building more prisons