REPEAT OFFENDERS COMMON; OFTEN THE PRODUCTS OF JUVENILE SYSTEM

Few first-time offenders are in the court system.

In Scott County, Circuit Judge Anthony Heckemeyer presides over juvenile and adult courts. He said many first-time drug offenders in adult courts are familiar to him from juvenile court.

A drug and alcohol treatment program administered by the Missouri Department of Corrections is filled with young men who began a life of crime at an early age.

Many of the young men in the Mid-America Teen Challenge program, which provides Christian-based treatment and rehabilitation for young offenders, were bounced around the juvenile court system with little positive effect.

Randy Rhodes, a juvenile officer in Cape Girardeau County, said he realizes many of the children he works with eventually will end up in the adult court system.

"When we watch the indictments or go over to Jackson and look at the court docket, we'll see people we dealt with before," Rhodes said. "They're in adult court on drugs, but they've been through our system on property damage or stealing."

Craig Hayden, also a juvenile officer in the county, explained that the juvenile courts are restricted by law when it comes to criminal proceedings against young offenders.

"The juvenile system is set up to divert people from the adult courts," Hayden said. "But with a juvenile you've only got so many options available."

The only thing juvenile court can do that parallels jail time is to commit young offenders to a type of reform school at the Division of Youth Services.

"The judges and juvenile officers have no say-so over how long they're kept in there," said Rhodes.

The officers' cases derive from referrals from parents, teachers, law enforcement officials and other state agencies. The goal of the juvenile system is to divert offenders before they find themselves in adult court.

Does the system work?

"We hope so," said Hayden. "We have cases with kids where we put a lot of time into them, and they pop back up in the adult courts system.

"But we also see kids come back and say they're doing well and that they're thankful for what we did."

"We wouldn't be here if we didn't have a couple a year that show some change," said Rhodes. "A lot of times there are a couple who you're happy that maybe what you did kept them alive another year."

Despite an increase in drug cases in adult court, Rhodes and Hayden said few of their referrals are related to drugs or alcohol. The office handled 1,350 referrals in 1992, of which only a dozen were drug or alcohol cases. Eight of the 12 drug cases were dismissed.

"Most of them are assaults, stealing, property damage or status offenses, which are those offenses that are only illegal because of their status as a juvenile," Rhodes said. "The number of juvenile drug referrals has been running about the same since 1987.

"I think one of the reasons juvenile offenders become involved in drug offenses when they're adults is because it's more lucrative than other types of crimes," he said.

When a juvenile faces a misdemeanor drug possession charge, he'll go through a process that parallels the adult judicial system.

Though more informal, there are court proceedings, and the offenders could face the loss of their driver's license, enrollment in an alcohol and drug education program, and community service work.

Joshua Aldridge, 16, of Valdosta, Ga., and Shannon Reeves, 19, of Fort Campbell, Ky., are familiar with the juvenile court system.

Both were subject to its most stringent sanctions, yet both continued to break the law. It wasn't until they were charged as adults that they feared retribution.

Aldridge had his first beer when he was 9. "Ever since, it was OK to do it as long as my mom and dad didn't know it," he said.

His first run-in with law enforcement was when he stole a truck. He was put on probation, and four months later he stole another truck.

He was placed in a group home, which he referred to as jail, where he began selling and taking drugs, particularly crack cocaine.

"I sold to a doctor, a school teacher, and a lot of friends from school who didn't know how to get it," he said.

While in the group home, Aldridge was arrested for breaking into a liquor store, and police found he was carrying crack and marijuana.

His troubles with the law continued, and he was arrested for battery and threatening to shoot someone. He was arrested again, but this time he was charged as an adult.

Reeves started drinking alcohol when he was about 13. He repeatedly ran away from home, and his parents had him committed to a psychiatric center.

"I did real well, was sent home, and after a week I threatened my mom's life," Reeves said.

Sent back to the center, he ran away, stole a car and was involved in a high-speed chase with police.

This time he was sent to a military school for 10 months. "It was intensive discipline, but I did real well there, so I was sent home," he said.

Home again, Reeves threatened his mother, started stealing and was thrown out of the house.

"I started hanging out and breaking into cars, vandalizing them," he said. "In the last incident, I broke into 23 cars. When I was arrested, they told me they were going to charge me as an adult."

In similar situations, both recall praying to God for help. Now they're at Mid-America Teen Challenge a Christian-based, 14-month rehabilitation program primarily for offenders with a history of drug or alcohol abuse.

Now born-again Christians, Aldridge and Reeves see the juvenile court system as futile in its attempt to coerce a change of heart.

"Every time I went to jail it just got twice as worse because you meet new people and they tell you their tricks," Aldridge said. "You didn't learn nothing but how to break the law even worse than you were doing before.

"Here, you change your life for the better. You don't focus on what you can get away with, you focus on your problems."

Jack Smart, director of the Teen Challenge Center in Cape Girardeau where Aldridge and Reeves are students, said 90 percent of the students there have a history of drug or alcohol abuse.

Smart said most of the students at Teen Challenge have had some involvement in the juvenile courts.

"They don't wait until they're 18 to get arrested," Smart said. "It's a long strain of things.

"When you start the drug and alcohol lifestyle, you're going to have a lot of trouble with the courts."

Smart said he's amazed at the age youths begin to experiment with drugs. "We have a guy whose brother gave him his first joint by 8," he said. "Many were doing a lot of alcohol and drugs by 12."

Smart said juveniles need more than to have their access to drugs and alcohol restricted; they need to "deal with the underlying problem of drug abuse sin.

"There's no such thing as a mentally and spiritually healthy drug addict or alcoholic," he said.

Teen Challenge has successfully treated and graduated thousands of young men, who, years later, remain drug-free. But it's not a program for everyone, and generally doesn't accept juveniles.

That leaves the burden on juvenile courts to divert young offenders from crime before they're embroiled in a less forgiving adult system.