Jack Martin, director of the Clark County Department of Juvenile Justice Services, poses in his office Wednesday, Nov. 29, 2017. The boxing gloves are part of a youth boxing program sponsored by Title Boxing.
Monday, Dec. 11, 2017 | 2 a.m.
As Nevada and the federal government look at reforming aspects of the criminal justice system, some attention is being paid to juvenile justice.
About 14,000 youths are cited or arrested each year in Southern Nevada. Their encounters with law enforcement include lesser property crimes such as graffiti, or more serious offenses such as possession of drug paraphernalia.
But what happens after their initial interaction with the law has the potential to affect the rest of their lives.
“A lot of research nationwide suggests that kids who land in systems tend to stay in those systems for an extended period of time,” said Jack Martin, director of Clark County Department of Juvenile Justice Services.
Trying to divert youths from entering the juvenile justice system, Clark County has looked at alternative solutions, such as the newly developed juvenile assessment center known as the Harbor.
In the past year, youths coming into the program have been able to access tutoring, mentoring, drug education, conflict resolution, anger management, job skills development, counseling sessions and behavioral therapy.
Martin recently sat down with The Sunday to talk about the Harbor.
What exactly is the Harbor?
In October 2016, we opened up the Harbor, which is a juvenile assessment center that serves children before they become trapped in the system. (The Harbor) diverts kids from the system by offering wrap-around services and addressing the root cause of the issue at hand.
You see a kid changing. He is 9, 10, 11 or 12, and his mom and dad get a divorce, so he starts acting differently and going down the wrong path. Instead of waiting for him to become justice-involved, there is now a resource for parents.
Once they come to the Harbor, we do two assessments and try to wrap that child into meaningful services.
We understand in our system that children are often the symptom bearers of dysfunctional families. So when the kid arrives, we are hopefully going to see what’s going on with the mom and dad, or whoever is raising them, so we can offer them some services to stabilize the family unit and stop the spiral.
This is the right thing to do and also the best use of taxpayer dollars.
In its first year, the Harbor served 2,200 families, with less than 5 percent failing their time or program. We set our first-year goal at 50 percent success, so we were pleasantly surprised. It’s only one year’s worth of data, but we are collecting all the data to make sure we are providing meaningful services.
What were the alternatives before the Harbor?
There was peer court or trial by peers, and the coroner’s programs. There are a lot of smaller programs that address part of what the child needed, but there wasn’t a holistic approach, and there wasn’t a lot of assessment being done.
We weren’t targeting what was going on with the kid. We were saying, ‘This is why you’re here, and this seems like a match,’ as opposed to the approach of assessing and drilling down to what was going on. You might have been painting the side of the building, but the reality is, you’re mad that Mom and Dad are separating or Mom is doing drugs. There are other drivers. If we can get our work wrapped around those drivers, we can stop those behaviors.
Are there other models like this throughout the country?
Yes. We aren’t reinventing the wheel. We went to Portland, Ore., and saw its program. We went to Colorado, which actually made programs like this law, and it’s had a dramatic effect on their juvenile justice system, education system and child welfare system.
We then had a local group do a gap analysis for us so we could have an academic study to get stakeholders in our community on board.
How do you foresee the program growing over the next few years?
We were fortunate enough to have Gov. (Brian) Sandoval grant us $1.9 million, which was part of Assemblyman (Jason) Frierson’s bill last legislative session to expand the program. It’s going to allow us to expand the program to 24 hours and also expand to another location so we are closer to other communities in need. We’re hoping to be somewhere near Charleston and Jones boulevards.
We’re also hoping it will be less of a public-run program and more of a public-private partnership.
What role does community play in addressing this issue?
In my three decades of working in this field, I’ve never seen so many collaborative parts come together and create a true safety net for children.
It’s not 100 percent perfect, and we will never be, but the effort to make this program as seamless as possible has been great.
That being said, community is a huge partner.
We can, as a community, wrap our arms around these kids. We always downplay the role of mentors and the impact they can have. Mentorship is a game changer.
I can’t speak for the school district but it has made strides, such as getting rid of zero-tolerance policies, because research shows they don’t work.
One of the major reasons we started the Harbor was because of our teachers. Oftentimes, we think cops are the first responders in preventing these situations but it’s actually the teachers who see these problems.
They are seeing their students five days a week. They are the first ones to recognize if a student has been wearing the same clothes for three days. We are hoping we can convince teachers and principals that the Harbor is a valuable tool.
What about kids who already are in the system? How do you work with them?
We are in the second-chance business. Just because they came to us, doesn’t mean it’s all over.
Of the 14,000 kids who came in last year, only about 250 escalated to state. We had a couple who had repeat offenses.
(For those repeat offenses), we use repetitive sanctions, and sometimes it’s the second or third time that we use this repetitive ideology that you take a different approach or assignment.
I tell people all the time that I have my own children. I’ve taken away my son’s cellphone multiple times. I don’t take it away the first time, then take it away a second time and then put him in the electric chair.
We have lots of programs and options to expose these kids to different things and get them to come around. This can be in-home therapy or counseling sessions. One of the evidence-based programs is meaningful community service — not just picking up cigarette butts, but actually doing service projects to help their community become better. These connect our kids to our community.
