rootstock II's List: restorative-justice-rehabilitation

Project Empower grew in response to a decade of "get tough on crime" politics, which had failed to curb juvenile crime, said Darin Carver, a licensed clinical social worker who oversees the program.  
    Carver's patients are referred to him by a judge. They're high-risk offenders; the 10 percent of Utah's youth responsible for 80 percent of juvenile felonies. 
    Their next stop is juvenile prison, said Carver. "The courts are saying, we'll give you one more shot." 
    The program wasn't tailored to treat addiction. But, Carver said, the risk factors for juvenile delinquency and substance abuse "are almost identical." 
    About 80 percent of his clients use drugs and alcohol, or suffer from behavioral disorders. More than half come from low-income families earning less than $30,000 a year. Most are white, young men who started "acting out" six years prior to entering the program. 
    Project Empower is a mixed batch of counseling strategies designed to meet "people where they are." The youth are assessed by a psychiatrist, provided tutoring, and meet in role-playing groups where they rehearse steps for responding to failure or group pressure. 
    But it's the parental involvement that sets the program apart. Family sessions typically start in the home. 
    "Parents are busy," said Carver who first tackles families' material needs, whether it's helping a parent find a job, or buying school clothes for the children. 
    "Whatever it takes to engage a family is what we do," said Carver. "Once they're engaged, we take careful aim at other risk factors." 
    Carver added, "You can't just build a kid's self-esteem. You need to address Mom's drug problem, Dad's rage, or the gang down the street." 
     
    'I'm pretty proud' 
     
    The therapy isn't pleasant. One 17-year-old patient acknowledged the role-playing has helped him deal with anger, but said, "I have better things to do than listening to other people's problems." 
    But "it works," said Carver. Traditionally half of 100 juvenile offenders will re-offend. But programs in other states like Project Empower have yielded a 30 percent reduction in recidivism. 
    "Thirty-five will still re-offend, but that's 15 lives saved, and tens-of-thousands of dollars in avoided costs to the system and crime victims," said Carver. 
    By comparison, said Carver, studies show that participants in the far more popular teen wilderness camps are more likely to re-offend. 
    Koch never went that route. But, more than once, her son had undergone treatment for substance abuse. Booze and marijuana were his drugs of choice. 
    The peer counseling helped her son learn to steer clear of negative influences, said Koch. "He was always the type who wouldn't tattle on anybody," she said. 
    And the family therapy "opened up communication for all of us," said Koch. "Having a neutral person there helped my son talk about resentments he had been harboring, and it gave me tools for how to react, or not to react, to his outbursts." 
    Her son graduated from high school and now attends a technical college in Phoenix.  
    "If somebody asked me then if I thought he would go through with his schooling, I would have said, 'No way,'" said Koch. "I'm pretty proud of him."