In Charlotte, troubled teens go to jail for ‘kinder, gentler’ wake-up call
The scowling 13-year-old had threatened to shoot another student.
Now he was standing in a cramped cell at the Mecklenburg County jail, listening to a detention officer tell him what was ahead if he didn’t change his ways:
He’d have to wake up by 4:30 a.m and eat food he didn’t like. For much of the day, he might be confined to a cell with a window so small and clouded it offers no view of the outside world.
“Do you want to stay in here 22 hours a day?” the officer asked him.
The boy shook his head.
“Then what are you going to do different?”
On Saturday, eight youths took part in Mecklenburg’s “Juvenile Diversion Program,” which gives kids a look at where they could be heading if they don’t make better choices.
The youths, ages 9 to 15, had not previously been arrested. But they had worried parents and school resource officers because they had been fighting and stealing, using drugs and joining gangs. And many of them had been suspended from school.
It was a far cry from “Project S.T.O.R.M.,” a jail program in Chester County, S.C., that is designed to scare at-risk kids into better behavior. Video shot by a Rock Hill Herald photographer showed sheriff’s deputies in that program pushing youths against jail-yard fences, yelling and cursing within inches of their faces, and forcing them to run for long periods, ignoring pleas for breaks until some vomited. Five experts interviewed by the Observer and the Herald called the treatment child abuse.
Unlike the deputies in Project S.T.O.R.M., the Mecklenburg detention officers did not yell at the children or handle them aggressively.
Instead, they asked the youths why they were there and what prompted them to behave so poorly. They explained healthier ways to deal with people who bothered them. And they warned what could happen if they didn’t straighten up.
The Observer is not identifying the youths because they have not been charged with crimes. But the mother of one 15-year-old — who had repeatedly gotten into trouble for stealing, fighting and smoking marijuana — summed up why many of the parents decided to bring their children to the program.
“If he doesn’t change, he’ll wind up here — or in a casket,” the mother said, while sitting in the lobby of Mecklenburg’s Jail Central with her son, waiting for the program to start. “This is a last resort.”
Detention officers guided youths through the arrest and intake process. They took their mug shots, ordered them to put their hands against a jail wall and frisked them. They also locked them up for about 15 minutes in jail cells where they wrote letters to their parents, apologizing for their behavior.
‘Some people get stabbed’
The youths got their toughest talk from an inmate who was in the jail on a federal gun charge. He lectured the kids loudly and intensely, his face about a foot from theirs, telling them that their behavior will lead to consequences they don’t want to face.
Addressing the boy who had threatened to shoot another student, the inmate said: “Some people don’t even make it home, man! Some people get stabbed up in here!”
The inmate also had angry words for a 14-year-old boy who had assaulted his mother, his sister and a teacher: “Man, I better not ever hear about you putting your hands on your mother or your sister. Or I’m going to f*** you up.”
Mecklenburg used to run a tougher program than the one put on Saturday. In that program, featured in a 2011 episode of the A&E show “Beyond Scared Straight,” detention officers got within inches of youths’ faces and yelled. One 15-year-old girl was reduced to tears.
“I’m going to get (youths) to break,” said one sergeant who was interviewed on the program. “The biggest and baddest is the ones who are going to break first.”
Former Mecklenburg Sheriff Chipp Bailey said his office suspended the program around 2011 because he decided “it wasn’t worth the time and effort to continue it.”
Bailey said that when he learned some deputies were shouting in the faces of youths, he told them he didn’t think that was needed. He said he saw the benefits of showing youths what jail life was like, but did not want anything resembling a boot camp.
“I really had mixed emotions about the whole thing,” he said.
‘A different day’
Many studies have found there’s a fundamental problem with “Scared Straight” programs: They don’t work.
A tamer version of Mecklenburg’s program — called the “reality program” — was launched under Irwin Carmichael, who was elected sheriff in 2014 and was defeated in his bid for reelection last year.
During a talk with the parents of the teens in the Mecklenburg program, Sheriff Garry McFadden stressed that his officers were not running a “Scared Straight” program.
“This a program of learning,” said McFadden, who was elected last year. “It is a different day at the sheriff’s office. And we are going to make sure we take care of your children today.”
Many of the detention officers made efforts to be kind. One 9-year-old boy began to cry after he was corrected for failing to follow a direction. A deputy tried to reassure him: “Listen. Don’t get frustrated.”
Another officer encouraged the boy to wake up early each morning, make his bed and do something nice for his mother.
Sheriff’s officials said they are working with the schools to stage the program throughout the academic year, and may try to operate it year-round. McFadden said that if the sheriff’s office can find the resources, he would like his staff to meet with at-risk children weekly.
Dr. Desmond Runyan, a pediatrician who co-founded a child abuse center in Chapel Hill, said a program like Mecklenburg’s might help some at-risk kids, particularly if it is based on reason rather than intimidation. But determining for sure whether the program is effective would require follow-up study, he said.
“It strikes me that this is a kinder, gentler and probably more effective version of Scared Straight, if you were going to have such a thing,” he said. “But it would be interesting to follow it.”
McFadden said he wants his office to do follow-up studies to determine how the young participants do after they leave the program.
“Where are you four years from now?” McFadden asked. “Are you still stealing? Well then, it’s not working.”
This story was originally published March 20, 2019 at 10:10 AM.
.JPG)