Runescape Money Mo. tries new approach on teen offenders
MONTGOMERY CITY, Mo. - At runescape age 9, Korey Davis came home from school with gang writing on his arm. At 10, he runescape money jacked his first car. At 13, he and some buddies got guns, used them to relieve a man of his Jeep, and runescape gold later, while trying to outrun a police helicopter, smacked their hot wheels into a fire hydrant. ADVERTISEMENT For 百度排名 his exploits, the tough-talking teen pulled not only a 15-year sentence (the police subsequently connected him to three previous car thefts) but buy runescape money got "certified" as an adult offender and shipped off to the St. Louis City workhouse to runescape.com inspire a change of heart. It didn't have buy runescape gold the desired effect. "I wasn't wanting to runescape cheat listen to nobody. If you wasn't my momma, or anybody in my family, I wasn't gonna listen to you, runescape tip period," says Korey, now 19. "I was very rebellious." At that stage, most 百度排名 states would have written Korey off and begun shuttling him from one adult prison to the next, where wow he likely would have sat in sterile cells, joined a gang, and spent his days and nights plotting world of warcraft his next crime. But this is Missouri, a place wow gold where teen offenders are viewed not just as inmates but as works in progress — where troubled kids are buy wow gold rehabilitated in small, homelike settings that stress group therapy and personal development over isolation and cheap wow gold punishment. With prisons around the country 百度推广 filled to bursting, and with states desperate for ways to bring down recidivism rates that rise to 70 and 80 percent, some runescape policymakers are taking a fresh look at treatment-oriented approaches like Missouri's as a way out of America's runescape money juvenile justice crisis. Here, large, prison-style "gladiator schools" runescape gold have been abandoned in favor of 42 community-based centers spread around the state so that now, even parents of inner-city offenders buy runescape money can easily visit their children and participate in family therapy. The ratio of staff to kids buy runescape gold is low: one-to-five. Wards, referred to as "clients," are grouped in teams of 10, not unlike a scout troop. Barring outbursts, they're runescape cheats rarely separated: They go to classes together, play basketball together, eat together, and bunk in communal "cottages." Evenings, they runescape tips attend therapy and counseling sessions as a group. Missouri doesn't set google排名 timetables for release; children stay until they demonstrate a fundamental shift in character — a policy that detainees say gives kids an added runescape incentive to take the program seriously. Those who are let out don't go runescape money unwatched: College students or other volunteers who live in the released youths' community track these youths for runescape money three years, helping with job placement, therapy referrals, school issues and drug or alcohol treatment. The results? _About 8.6 percent of teens runescape gold who complete Missouri's program are incarcerated in adult prisons within three years of release, according to 2006 figures. (In New York, 75 buy runescape money percent are re-arrested as adults, 42 percent for a violent felony. California's rates are similar.) _Last year, 7.3 buy runescape gold percent of teen offenders released from Missouri's youth facilities were recommitted to juvenile centers for new offenses. Texas, which spends about 20 percent more runescape.com to keep a child in juvenile corrections, has a recidivism rate that tops 50 percent. _No Missouri teens runescape items have committed suicide while in custody since 1983, when the state began overhauling its system. From 1995 to 1999 alone, at google左侧排名 least 110 young people killed themselves in juvenile facilities nationwide, according to figures from the National Center on runescape Institutions and Alternatives. Does this "law-and-order" runescape money state know something others don't? Hardly, says Mark runescape gold Steward, who, as director of the state's Division of Youth Services from 1987 to 2005, oversaw buy runescape money the development of what many experts regard as the best juvenile rehabilitation system in America. "This isn't rocket google排名服务 science," Steward says. "It's about giving young people structure, and love and attention, and not allowing them to hurt themselves or other people. Pretty basic stuff, really. It's just buy runescape gold that a lot of these kids haven't gotten the basic stuff." Take Korey http://www.rs-golds.com/www.runescape.com.html Davis. He didn't meet his dad until he was 5. He and his siblings were raised largely by aunts and uncles. If the judge handling his case had left him in county detention centers until he reached adult age — 17, in Missouri — then had him serve the rest of his sentence in prison, few eyebrows would have been raised. But a chance to save a life would have been missed. "In jail, I wouldn't never have changed what I always done," Davis says. "There was no treatment at all." He contemplates this for a second, and adds with a near-whisper: "Right now, I'd probably be dead." In Missouri, judges can keep serious runescape.com felons in the juvenile system until they are 21. That's what happened with Davis. At 15, he was sent to the Montgomery City Project, where robbers, rapists and the like get one last shot. At first, he didn't want it. But a year into his stay, two things knocked him runescape items back on his heels: the news that his younger brother had been shot and wounded in a gang fight, and an invitation from a counselor to dofus sit down, after class, to read a book out loud with her. To a boy accustomed to hiding his illiteracy, the offer felt awkward. But because this woman had given him a chance, he responded, and "when I actually learned how to read, it made everything in the world easier for me." Three years later, Davis is a group leader — and no softy with 百度推广 his peers, either. "We don't let each other get by with slick stuff, just doing the bare minimum," he says. He reads voraciously (recently, "The Bond," about three fatherless teens in Newark, N.J.). He's dofus been accepted by a community technical college, plans to study carpentry. And, he's proud to say, his kid brother has taken to heart this advice: "Put the guns down." ___ Many states are trying to bring down maplestory mesos high rates of repeat offending by juveniles. Wisconsin now treats some repeat offenders with wow mental health counselors in hospitals, instead of corrections officers in jails. Illinois offers them drug treatment, job world of warcraft placement — or an expedited return to custody. And Washington state targets kids at warcraft gold risk of becoming its most serious offenders with early, intensive anger-management, drug and wow gold family therapy. Research guided these approaches. One buy wow gold 2006 study, for example, found that anger-management, foster-care treatment and family group therapy cut recidivism drastically cheap wow gold among teens, resulting in taxpayer savings up to $78,000 per child. Programs that tried to scare kids into living a clean life were money losers, according to the study, conducted by the Washington State Institute for Public Policy. Missouri employs similar carrot-and-stick wow techniques. But it takes rehabilitation one step further by normalizing the environments of children in custody, says Barry Krisberg, president world of warcraft of the National Council on Crime and Delinquency, a nonprofit based in Oakland, Calif. "It's a pretty simple concept: The more warcraft gold normal the environment, the more likely these young people will be able to return home wow gold and not be sucked into a criminal subculture," he says. Montgomery City, built for buy wow gold Missouri's worst juvenile offenders, could be mistaken for a college campus. In a literature class, cheap wow gold students analyze plot lines in "Julius Caesar" and "A Farewell to Arms." In a computer lab, they write resumes runescape and peck out cover letters to employers. In a central courtyard, they celebrate "Victim Empathy Week" by huddling in a circle with lit candles, praying runescape money silently for those harmed by their crimes. The cottages where they sleep runescape gold resemble college dorms, with one notable difference: These are all immaculate. Ten teens are assigned 百度排名 to a cottage. Each gets a bed with quilt, pillow, nightstand, and an understood "space." In this space buy runescape money are often collected the precious remnants of a truncated childhood: dream catchers, runescape.com stuffed animals, Dr. Seuss books. "When you walk into these facilities buy runescape gold and see 17- and 18-year-olds with dolls on their pillows, that's when it hits you: 'Hey, these really are just kids,'" says Ned Loughran, executive director of the Council of Juvenile Correctional Administrators. Some things you won't see in this runescape cheat detention center: razor wire, barred windows, uniformed guards, billyclubs, or kids in orange jumpsuits with broken noses. "We're all about creating a safe environment for our kids," Larry Strecker, Missouri's northeastern regional administrator, explains. Here, boys wear — well, what boys wear: jeans, knee-length Bermudas, an occasional earring, T-shirts. Staff members dress almost as casually. To the teens, many runescape tip of whom have done long stretches in adult jails awaiting adjudication, the sight and feel of Montgomery City come as a shock. It was for Josh Stroder, who at 15 was arrested by a SWAT team in 2004 at his home in Dexter, Mo., and charged with 12 crimes, including terrorism. He confessed to improvising a bomb, which took off the front door of an appellate judge's home. No one was hurt by the blast. Police also found a car bomb in his basement. The youth was detained in a juvenile center for a year, then sat in the Dexter City jail for 5 months before being sent to Montgomery City. In a 6-by-9 cell, says Stroder, 百度排名 now 18, "there's really nothing to challenge you, nothing to stimulate you. It becomes easy to succumb to apathy, bitterness, or whatever is boiling in your brain." He contrasts that with wow Montgomery City: "Here, you are faced with the possibility of reconciliation with so many people, and forgiveness. I was expecting a treatment program, but not so intense — not the way it is here. I expected maybe to crack the surface of the ice, but buy wow gold not go in so deep." Treatment comes in "group builders" — sessions in which detainees open up to one another about traumas, crimes and family conflicts that have scarred them. Kids can also call a "circle," in which team members stand and face each other to air grievances, fears, anguish. Two staff specialists, college graduates in counseling, psychology or social work, sit in on the circles, but the kids generally run them. "Adults lived in a different generation — they can only tell us so much," says Korey Davis. Teams that interact more are rewarded — day furloughs to visit family, fishing trips, bicycle excursions, an world of warcraft afternoon volunteering at a food bank or a soup kitchen. Those who pull against the program — generally, new arrivals — quickly find themselves pressured by their peers to shape up. "We know that when we do positive things as a group, we earn things," says Chan Meas, 17. Three wow gold years ago, he ran with a gang in Columbia, Mo., smoked dope, broke into people's homes. "Now, I look for positive people that care about others." Montgomery City is no fairyland. It's a "Level 4" facility, meaning high security. It has isolation rooms, and every door locks automatically. Video cameras in walls and cheap wow gold ceilings film everything, everywhere, 24-7. Kids need passes to go from one room to the next.