Moving right along...The Calhoun County Sheriff's Office may
claim it's not a "Scared Straight" program, but it
sure sounds like one to me! :ftard:
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The Anniston Star ·
AlabamaLegality of jail program questionedby Cameron Steele · [email protected] · Anniston Star
Apr 06, 2011
The Calhoun County Jail is shown in this file photo from 2003.[/list]
A Calhoun County Sheriff's Office program for youthful offenders and suspended-from-school teenagers to work in the county jail sounds remarkably similar to programs banned by federal and state law, officials and child advocates say.
Those programs, commonly called "scared straight" or "shock incarceration" programs, became popular in the 1970s as a way to scare or shock youthful offenders or juveniles prone to misbehaving into more appropriate behavior, a policy expert at the Washington D.C.-based Coalition for Juvenile Justice said.
But a range of state and national juvenile-justice officials said that years of research have proven the scared straight concept to be in error; those same officials say that such programs are violations of the federal and Alabama laws, which prohibit youthful offenders from being detained or confined in adult corrections facilities.
And all of those officials say the description of a Calhoun County program jointly run by the Sheriff's Office and Family Links, Inc., a children's behavior task force for the county, falls under the umbrella of those legally questionable programs.
The program has come under scrutiny since The Anniston Star published a video last week that shows Sheriff Larry Amerson using manual force against a boy in a jail jumpsuit. A lawsuit filed Tuesday by the boy's mother claims he was at the jail as part of a scared-straight program.
The sheriff's office says the program doesn't qualify as a scared-straight program and says it's a way for children to perform community service when they might otherwise be unsupervised.
Only a few details of the program have been made available to the public. But child advocates say it sounds like a scared-straight program.
"This (Calhoun County) jail program, while well-intentioned, I wouldn't spend my money on it," said Linda Tilly, the executive director of Voices for Alabama's Children, a state children's advocacy group. "It wouldn't have much impact in changing behavior... This (Calhoun County) program sounds like it has the same intent without going quite as far as most scared straight programs did. The point to me is this program doesn't get to the root of the behavior in the first place."
Tara Andrews, the deputy director of the national nonprofit agency Coalition for Juvenile Justice, said the Calhoun County program might not be as hardcore as some scared straight programs, but said its operations are still questionable.
"It may not be as extreme in that the young person isn't being turned over to the custody of the prisoners, but you don't have all the details so you don't really know what happens, or what goes on," Andrews said. "I would label it a scared straight program. The goal is to frighten the young person; it's negative reinforcement."
Sheriff's Office: Not a scared straight programMultiple attempts to reach Calhoun County Sheriff Larry Amerson, Chief Deputy Mathew Wade and Family Links Director Lyndsey Gillam to discuss the details of the jail program were unsuccessful Tuesday.
But a news release posted on the Sheriff's Office website Monday stated the juvenile jail program was not a scared straight program but, instead, 'an opportunity for community service."
"The program is intended to give parents an alternative to having their children unsupervised while out on suspension. The activities will be structured in an environment that will educate the student about responsibility, respect and discipline under the direct supervision of a corrections officer," the release said. "The child will be required to perform manual labor tasks such as cutting grass and cleaning."
The release also noted that juveniles who participate in the program do not have direct contact with inmates, one of the main issues juvenile justice officials have with scared straight programs in general.
Other than the release, Amerson and Gillam have provided scant details about the juvenile jail program, except to say in interviews with The Star last week, that the Sheriff's Office and Family Links began the program as a way to let high-risk kids see what jail might be like.
But that kind of reasoning is exactly what Andrews is talking about.
"That's what makes it a scared straight program: 'let me show you what prison life looks like to scare you away from prison life,' " Andrews said.
Anthony Petrosino, a senior researcher at a Massachusetts nonprofit dedicated to researching and children's education and development, has spent much of his career studying scared straight programs.
"If we were doing a review of these programs now, we would include this (Calhoun County) program as a juvenile awareness program that attempts to deter them (juveniles) or scare them," Petrosino said.
How the Calhoun County program worksJuvenile justice officials say that the details the sheriff has provided about the way the jail program is structured indicate the program may be in violation of federal and state law.
Parents sign a waiver for their children to arrive at the jail at 8 a.m. and to be picked up by 3:30 p.m. While at the jail, the juveniles dress in orange-striped inmate jumpsuits, eat the food that is served to the inmates and perform menial labor tasks under the supervision of jail officers, Amerson has said.
Gillam noted last week the program was only for students who have been suspended from school or youthful offenders who have been ordered by the court to attend the Success Academy, which is a Family Links service program.
Parents of youthful offenders who act violently at the Success Academy or threaten violence are given options.
The juvenile's probation officer can be contacted and he or she might have to face a family judge in court again, or the parents can sign a waiver and allow their children to participate in the jail program as "kind of our last step" before having to go back to juvenile court, Gillam has said.
Juvenile justice officials question program legalityWhat bothers most juvenile justice officials about those descriptions of the program is that the federal Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act (JJPDA) expressly prohibits youthful offenders from having any sort of sight or sound contact with inmates.
Furthermore, the Alabama Juvenile Justice Act restricts children under public authority — like the ones who are Success Academy students — from being "in secure custody in a secure section of a jail, lockup or correctional facility for adults as a disposition of an offense or as a means of modifying his or her behavior."
"If the child is under public authority, if they take kids in and handcuff to them any sort of unmovable object, that's a violation (of federal and Alabama law). If they lock them in anywhere, if they (the children) are behind any locked door, that's a violation," said Joe Vignati, the coordinator for the Governor's Office of Children and Families in Georgia.
Basically any sight or sound contact, "meaning the juveniles can be seen or heard by adult inmates," are violations of federal law, Vignati and Andrews said.
And the waiver the Sheriff's Office has parents sign does not "relieve the violations of the JJPDA act," Vignati said.
Details about where exactly in the jail juveniles work, how long the program has operated, how many juveniles have participated in it and how much it costs to run the program are unclear. Requests to provide The Star with paperwork that document the procedures and history of the jail program went unanswered Monday and Tuesday.
Alabama Department of Corrections spokesman Brian Corbett said it is DOC policy not to allow youthful offenders to even tour state prisons, because that would be a violation of the Alabama Juvenile Justice Act.
'Different developmentally and physically'Officials point out that localities or states in violation of the federal law could stand to lose federal funding through U.S. Department of Justice grants.
"Folks take this (federal law) and get emotional about it, but realistically we have two separate systems: we recognize that kids are different from adults," Vignati said. "The reason isn't to mollycoddle kids or to be soft on kids; the reason is to recognize they are different developmentally and physically from adults."
And scared straight programs don't pay enough attention to that difference, juvenile-justice officials say.
"Juveniles who went through scared straight, and similar types of programs like it, committed more new delinquent offenses than the juveniles not exposed to the program," Petrosino said of a 2003 review he and other scholars conducted on the effects of scared straight programs.
Petrosino said the information available about the Calhoun County program indicating that it isn't technically a scared straight program is inaccurate.
"This sounds like they've toned down on the language, but it's interesting, they've increased the experience of incarceration...putting kids in the inmate clothes, working around the jail," he said.
Contact Star Staff Cameron Steele at 256-235-3562.Copyright © 2011 Anniston Star.
