CLEVELAND, Ohio – Cuyahoga County is working to address disparities in juvenile justice and prioritize prevention amid reporting and widespread criticism over how the system is currently working for area youth.
Cuyahoga County Council has created a temporary subcommittee to review how the juvenile justice system is working and make recommendations to enhance services and improve outcomes for youth, and a new grant announced this week will kickstart “a groundbreaking effort to reshape the juvenile justice system.”
The five-member committee is tasked with assessing how current court programs are working, whether new programs should be added, and where funding is needed to implement reforms, according to Council President Pernel Jones, Jr.
Members include:
- Ron Adrine, retired Cleveland Municipal Court administrative judge
- Marvin Cross, a former Cleveland police commander
- Robert McClelland, a retired Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Court judge
- Jennifer Blumhagen Yarham, executive director at Applewood Centers, Inc., one of the nonprofits that provides mental health and residential treatment services for county youth
- Bridget Gibbons, deputy administrator at the juvenile court
The committee will meet for the first time at 9 a.m. on July 1, in council’s committee room A. They are to report recommendations back to council by Dec. 31.
The Plain Dealer and cleveland.com’s recent series, “Delinquent: Our System, Our Kids,” may help with that charge.
Delinquent: Our System, Our Kids
- Delinquent: CBIC uses education, therapy to prevent crime. It transformed Bryson, but can’t always overcome a child’s homelife
- Delinquent: MST supports families after crime, but Cuyahoga only has 2 staff, limiting services. Daniel was lucky to get in
- Ohio collective launches campaign to promote Plain Dealer/cleveland.com special series on Cuyahoga County juvenile justice system
- Delinquent: Diversion can disrupt crime at the first sign of trouble, helping kids like Mariah avoid criminal records
Following a rash of juvenile car thefts and gun violence, as well as concerns about why Cuyahoga County transfers more children to adult court than any other county in the state, two reporters spent seven months inside the juvenile justice system to better understand the influences that lead youth to crime and how court services work to redirect them.
The resulting series, unfolding over six weeks, touches on the history of why juvenile courts were created, the laws that allow youth to be prosecuted as adults and some of the court programs that aim to rehabilitate kids when they offend. Underlying nearly every story is poverty and neglect, which not only contribute to crime but can also create barriers to reform.
The series questions the state laws that have created a direct pipeline from the juvenile system to adult prison, without first assessing a youth’s life circ*mstances, role in the crime or their potential for reform.
It highlights the need for increased staffing to support impactful court services, like Multisystem Therapy and the Community Based Intervention Center. And it shares one story of how a different approach to youth correction, such as what’s being tried at Lighthouse Youth Center at Paint Creek, can be transformational.
But primarily, the series puts focus on the need for reforms inside the community itself, before youth touch the justice system. Youths share how greater emotional and financial support, as well as educational, vocational and recreational opportunities might have changed their lives and kept them from offending. Most of the youths were also searching for a friend or role model, highlighting a dire need for mentors.
“There was no way for me to go down the right path growing up because I wasn’t seeing the right path,” a youth we identified as Cameron told us during the series. (You can read Cameron’s story here.)
The Cuyahoga County Juvenile Court recently received a $450,000 grant to create a continuum of care to focus on early intervention and prevention strategies to address such root causes of youth crime – and hopefully divert kids away from the juvenile justice system.
The initiative, which also partners with the Cuyahoga County Office of Reentry, Third Sector Capital Partners, Inc., and Case Western Reserve University, is being called “Care First Cuyahoga.”
It will target youth ages 12-17 – particularly Black youth from low-income communities with disproportionally high juvenile arrest rates – and their families to provide individualized development and support in their own neighborhoods, “from community organizations they trust,” according to the US Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, which provided the grant.
Partners will work together to offer a range of community-based services, including mental health counseling, educational support, vocational training, and family therapy to help divert youth from the juvenile justice system, according to a county news release. They are also expected to work collaboratively with council’s subcommittee, a council spokeswoman confirmed.
“This grant allows us to innovate and implement strategies to address factors contributing to racial disparities in the youth justice system,” Juvenile Court’s Administrative Judge Thomas O’Malley said in the release. “By serving youth with necessary community support, we will create a more equitable and effective juvenile justice system.”
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