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www.isaccorp.orgHouse of lost youths
Hesperia group home in county's crosshairs
Robert Rogers, Staff Writer
San Bernardino County Sun
August 13, 2006
A mile and a half of rolling, half-paved road is all that stands between the boys of the Fred D. Jones Youth Center and Main Street, Hesperia.
No fence encircles the 10-acre facility, which houses teens who have run afoul of the law but are not deemed dangerous enough to be sent to juvenile hall or the Division of Juvenile Justice.
It's not what the surrounding communities, or the county, had in mind when a 10-year provisional contract was granted to a nationwide, for-profit youth-housing corporation with a nonprofit outpost in California.
Last year, 82 boys sent to the center left without permission, according to the county Probation Department. This year, the controversy has grown stormier, more violent and more public.
From mid-April to mid-July, the county sheriff's station in Hesperia fielded 51 calls for service from or related to the center. In the meantime, the president of LodgeMakers of California Inc., the affiliate of VisionQuest National Ltd. that runs the center, abruptly resigned.
In addition, reports were released by the Community Care Licensing division of the Department of Social Services last year alleging misconduct, including allegations that two female staffers had ongoing sexual relationships with boys at the center.
Then there was James Lemont Bagsby.
Earlier this year, Bagsby was committed to the Jones Youth Center. Because he is a juvenile, there are no public records documenting his stay, but center employees said on condition of anonymity that Bagsby was there early this year.
Bagsby went missing from the center and months later surfaced as the suspect in a San Bernardino schoolyard shooting that left 11-year-old Anthony Michael Ramirez dead and his 13-year-old brother wounded.
By all accounts, Bagsby, who at 15 has been charged as an adult in the June 21 shooting at Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Middle School, was toughened for his age.
Described by family and friends as having delved into trouble around age 10 and surviving a gunshot wound at age 14, Bagsby bounced between San Bernardino's hardest streets and group homes.
When Gary Underwood, police chief for San Bernardino City Unified School District, and a lieutenant arrested Bagsby a week after the shooting at a run-down apartment complex in San Bernardino, Underwood was struck immediately by the 15-year-old's unchildlike qualities.
"It was obvious to us we were dealing with someone who was very street-savvy," Underwood said.
Whether Bagsby should have been placed at the Jones Youth Center, a large, minimum-security boys' home just a stroll from a street where he could catch a bus to San Bernardino, is uncertain. What is certain is that he was not the guest proponents of the facility and its contract with the county had envisioned.
And now it appears the county is considering ending its relationship with VisionQuest, LodgeMakers and the Jones Youth Center. In a memo dated Thursday and drafted by County Counsel Dennis Wagner at the direction of county Board of Supervisors Chairman Bill Postmus, the county gave notice to LodgeMakers that its contract could be terminated in January.
In a news release the same day, Postmus, whose 1st District includes Hesperia, said: "I am concerned by the fact that a high number of juveniles have left the facility without authorization over a period of time and that the county is now incurring extraordinary additional expense by sending more probation officers to the Hesperia facility."
Troubled system
There are more than 100 juvenile group homes in San Bernardino County.
Most house three or four kids, for whom the state and county pay the group home's licensed owner to provide care.
Deputy Chief Probation Officer Michelle Scray said she does not know of any private placement facility in the county openly for-profit. There is a lot of money at stake. In a three-bedroom house licensed for six children, the owner would receive $33,678 per month, or $404,136 per year.
"There are some excellent group homes in the area," Scray said. "And if the group home is being run the right way, there is probably very little if any of that money left over."
The Jones Youth Center was intended to house 144 troubled youths from San Bernardino County and throughout the state, but the center has only been licensed for 108.
The two-year-old, $5 million facility is operated by LodgeMakers, a nonprofit affiliate of VisionQuest, which is a nationwide, for-profit corporation that contracts with governments at all levels to house and rehabilitate problem youths.
The facility receives state and federal funding amounting to $5,613 per child per month. At full licensed capacity, the rate equals about $7.3 million a year. The facility is intended to serve as an alternative to juvenile hall for low-risk teen offenders.
When the Jones Youth Center opened in February 2004, VisionQuest touted the center's "facilities for extraordinary experiences, including an Alpine Tower; a corral with horses and camels; sports and recreation areas; and challenge, fitness and confidence courses."
Postmus hosted the center's grand opening on Feb. 23, 2004.
In a statement at the time, Postmus praised the facility: "This facility will not only help provide positive direction to youth in our community - it will also provide many private-sector jobs to strengthen our local economy."
VisionQuest's role in regard to the Jones Youth Center is ambiguous. Even Mark Contento, VisionQuest's vice president and the lone man who handles all media inquiries into the center, searches for a word to describe the relations, finally settling on "affiliate." No one at the center, all of whom are LodgeMakers employees, will talk on record, referring all questions to Contento and VisionQuest.
Controversy has dogged VisionQuest since its inception in 1973. The company stresses youth accountability and responsibility and holds a philosophy that putting city kids in rugged rural surroundings is a step toward reform. Physical challenges are used as a way to build character.
In the early to mid-1990s, hundreds of boys ran away from the company's Elfrida Wilderness Camp, about 100 miles southeast of Tucson, in Cochise County, Ariz. At the same time, the Arizona Department of Economic Security launched numerous investigations into alleged abuse at the camp, including numerous fights, staff members physically assaulting youths and one instance in which a longtime male staff member allegedly kissed a boy to discipline him in front of peers for making disruptive noises.
In February 1996, in Arizona's Pima County, two runaways escaped from another VisionQuest facility, stole a 9mm pistol out of a U.S. Forest Service truck and carjacked a vehicle in Tucson. When University of Arizona police gave chase in Tucson, the boys used the 9mm to fire at the police helicopter before losing control and rolling the vehicle.
Cochise County Sheriff's Department spokeswoman Carol Capas said rounding up runaway kids is still part of the job. As of mid-July, her department has received 39 calls for service related to the Elfrida camp.
In one case, Capas' department was called when a 17-year-old left the camp without permission. He returned with a rifle, which he fired into the air to discourage anyone from approaching. It took air support and a SWAT team to take the boy into custody without injuries, Capas said.
Meanwhile, a dozen children died in VisionQuest's care in the 1980s from boating accidents and other mishaps. The company has spent the last decade working on improvements and "honing techniques of de-escalation and defusion," Contento said.
The president of LodgeMakers, Jim Sleeper, resigned in May after Department of Social Services reports revealed sexual relations and other inappropriate behavior between female staff and boys at the Jones Youth Center.
A woman in her early 20s engaged in "improper activities" with boys at the group home in 2004 and 2005, said Sergio Ramirez, regional manager for Community Care Licensing, the state agency that grants licenses to private companies such as VisionQuest.
At least two women who worked directly with youths at the Jones Youth Center were fired last year for breaking rules of conduct between staff and kids.
The facility has since implemented more stringent rules against staffers being alone with youths, Contento said.
Unfulfilled promises
Perhaps most disturbing is the notion that the Jones Youth Center is not what it was billed to be - a peaceful group home for low-risk youths, an important distinction given its less-than-remote location - about 1.5 miles from downtown Hesperia.
According to news reports in 2001 and 2002, VisionQuest officials stressed then that the proposed facility was only for nonviolent youths with no previous histories of arson, suicide or sexual offenses.
"We don't deal with psychotic kids," Contento, VisionQuest's vice president, said in 2001 and reiterated in a recent interview.
Citing confidentiality for youths, Contento declined to provide information about the youths at the facility and would neither confirm nor deny whether Bagsby, the suspected gunman in the San Bernardino schoolyard shooting, was ever at the center.
Workers there, however, acknowledged not only that Bagsby was housed there, but also that he was difficult to control.
Al Vogler, a former probation officer from Hesperia, said remarks about the safety and careful screening at the center during the run-up to its establishment were slick marketing.
Contento said LodgeMakers adheres to a rigorous selection process to ensure that the large, low-security population is not infiltrated by "psychotic" kids.
But state investigators found last year that the facility admitted at least one boy who had a history of inappropriate sexual contact. Vogler, who has closely watched the rise of the private, low-security group-home industry for years, said assurances are cheap amid circumstances ripe for disaster.
"In any large population facility like this, that larger number of kids greatly increases the chances for diagnostic errors, and there is a high likelihood that there are at least a handful more kids in there that should not be there," Vogler said.
"Put it all together, the closeness to the city and to other schools and businesses, along with the sheer number of troubled kids and the low security," Vogler said. "This is a bad recipe."
County backlash
In recent years, private youth facilities have become more prevalent in California. The number of juveniles held in private facilities grew from 3,295 in 2002 to 5,465 in 2005, according to the state's Juvenile Court and Probation Statistical System.
Individual counties determine what kind of facilities their young offenders will be sent to - more often now than 10 years ago, when the California Youth Authority handled the majority of juvenile criminals.
For San Bernardino County, the journey with the Jones Youth Center began when it opened its doors two years ago.
Postmus, one of the smiling dignitaries in snapshots taken during the center's groundbreaking, declined to be interviewed for this story, but his chief of staff, Brad Mitzelfelt, said the supervisor was dissatisfied with the facility's performance and had met twice within the past month with Chief Probation Officer Jerry Harper to discuss the program.
"We want to see improvement in the performance of the facility by the operators," Mitzelfelt said. "The county has a contract and an ability to renegotiate or cancel that contract. If there is not improvement, there will definitely be some action."
On Jan. 1, an out clause will kick into the 10-year contract between the county and LodgeMakers that began in 2002. Thereafter, the Board of Supervisors can vote to terminate the contract, Mitzelfelt said.
"Much will depend on what happens through the rest of the year," Mitzelfelt said. "The board will continue to monitor the situation."
An e-mail provided by a spokesman for Postmus in mid-July underscored the supervisor's turn from aggressive support to concern: "Supervisor Postmus strongly supported bringing the facility to Hesperia because of the jobs it has provided to the area. However, our office has been informed of several incidents of concern, and we are having ongoing discussions with the Probation Department about how to address those incidents."
Who's responsible?
What is scary, critics say, is that youths escape all the time from a facility that has no fence - on average, more than one youth escaped a week last year. Employees at the center cannot physically prevent them from leaving.
Contento maintains security is not normally a problem.
"Once we put these kids in a safe environment, they turn into little kids again," he said.
Still, changes have been made in recent months, increasing activity and vocational training while instituting a policy that prohibits one-on-one, private meetings between employees and teenagers, a direct result of the sexual-abuse allegations, he said.
But youths will inevitably leave the center, making careful placement all the more important because, unlike many of the VisionQuest locations, the center is not in a desolate, rural area.
"It's tricky. Is an agency responsible and at fault if a kid walks off and something happens?" said Max Scott, executive director of Boys Republic, a group home in Chino Hills that, like the Jones Youth Center, houses and educates troubled youths in a minimum-security environment.
Regardless of whether the Jones Youth Center has any responsibility in the Bagsby shooting case, it has come back to smack the facility like a boomerang.
"The Jones Center has become what we knew it would be all along," Vogler said. "They call themselves an assessment center, but they take very hardened kids, have no fence, and an unsophisticated staff with a high turnover. It's a tragedy waiting to happen."
Contento said turnover at the Jones Youth Center is among the highest in the VisionQuest system, but that the facility has more than adequate supervision, and recently added about 10 more staff to bring the total to 175.
"Every issue always comes back to supervision," Contento said. "With no walls or fences, the best way to remain effective is through positive personal relationships with the kids, and we have increased activities available and increased staffing to improve the quality of our service."
In addition to turnover, Scott said, low pay and lower hiring standards can be a problem at private facilities.
A bevy of employment Web sites advertise positions available at the Jones Youth Center. The posts say applicants for child-care workers must have a high-school degree or a GED, be at least 21 and that prior experience working with at-risk youths is preferred. Applicants must also be able to perform physical tasks and have the social skills required to work with troubled youths in adventure-based programming, according to the posts. The pay for workers with college degrees tops out at $14 an hour.
As the head of a nonprofit corporation who reports to a board of directors, Scott is adamant that profit-seeking, juvenile care corporations like VisionQuest can be more beholden to monetary incentives - getting a body in the program means $5,613 per month for a facility - than what is best for kids in their care.
"If you're a for-profit corporation, the bottom line is necessarily what matters most to your organization, and with that comes a whole range of problems," Scott said.
Scott said the policy at his facility in Chino Hills is to hire college graduates for all positions except a few work supervisors and night watchmen.
Contento conceded the company's college and experience requirements are low, but he defended its hiring policies and said the Jones Youth Center has high "ethical standards."
"We don't require a college education for those front-line positions because over the years we've found that education and professional experience are not always indicators of who is going to make good staff," Contento said. "We look for certain qualities during the interview process, we look at intangibles."
Scott said low wages and standards within a large corporation for those directly supervising children is an indicator of misplaced priorities. As for the 51 calls the Sheriff's Department has logged from the Jones Youth Center in the last three months, Scott said, "That's a big number."
In the end, an 11-year-old is dead, and a 15-year-old has been charged with his murder. Both have loved ones devastated by the loss, and the incident has created more questions about the center from which Bagsby came and the circumstances that led him there.
"This is a failure all the way down the line," Scott said. "There may have been some negligence, but it probably suffices to say the whole system, the courts, the probation offices, the facility, is just imperfect. Human behavior is an inexact science."
