Tuesday, June 01, 1999
Ohio's Reclaim programs help keep youths out of jail
Judge: 'You commit a kid, you've lost him'
The Associated Press
COLUMBUS — A program known as Reclaim Ohio is giving delinquent youths a chance to change their lives without being put behind bars.
It's proving successful in Franklin County, where it served 770 youths last year, up from 520 in 1995, when it began.
Reclaim, which gets its money through state grants, has contracts with nine social agencies in Franklin County. They provide more than 20 programs, including family counseling, help for teen-age parents and support to earn the equivalent of a high-school diploma.
This gives delinquents opportunities beyond the three options they had before Reclaim was started.
Limited options
Those options are probation, with officers checking on youths weekly; locking up young offenders with the Ohio Department of Youth Services (DYS); or handing them over to Franklin County Children Services for placement in residential drug or mental-health centers.
County Juvenile Court Judge Yvette McGee Brown said she supports the Reclaim program because sending offenders to state youth centers doesn't appear to help in most cases.
“Our experience with DYS is six out of 10 times, you commit a kid, you've lost him,” she said. “DYS should be the last resort — while the stated goal is rehabilitation, it is a prison.”
Carol Rapp Zimmermann of the Youth Services Department oversees the Reclaim program statewide. She said the department wants only those youths who are too much of a risk to be free.
Diversion from jail
She said the department pays counties not to send it young offenders, with counties using the money to pay for Reclaim programs.
“Lower-level offenders who go to incarceration tend to get worse,” Ms. Zimmermann said. “One of the risk factors for someone to re-offend is whether they associate with delinquent peers. That's 100 percent of what we've got.”
For most youths, community treatment is more effective and “you can treat two or three for the price of incarceration,” she said.
In Franklin County, less than 25 percent of youths in Reclaim programs committed new crimes or were locked up last year.
Young offenders from the county who were committed to the Youth Services department didn't fare as well. Of the 170 locked up last year, 34 percent already were on parole and had committed new crimes or violated parole in some other way.
Judge Brown said few youths who complete the counseling or tutoring they're assigned by Reclaim get into trouble again. But nearly one-fourth fail their programs and another quarter are moved into more intensive treatment or a different program.
Going with what works
To increase the success rate, Reclaim's staff of four is constantly trying to find and develop different services. Programs that fail to help enough youths are dropped or altered.
To try to reach more delinquents, Reclaim for the first time has set aside $280,000 of its $1.2 million budget for services to help youths who commit misdemeanor crimes.
“They shouldn't have to wait until they are felony offenders to get services,” said Caroline Rankin, Franklin County's Reclaim coordinator.
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