Youth justice panel to meet in Cape

When Mark Steward was growing up in Poplar Bluff, Mo., teachers constantly threatened to send him to Boonville, Mo., if he didn't straighten up. Boonville was the location of the state's reform school.

"It was almost like a mini-prison for kids," he says.

The reform school is now a medium security prison, and Missouri has developed a juvenile justice system considered one of the most innovative in the nation, says Steward, who never made it to Boonville and is now director of the state's Division of Youth Services.

Faced with a $1.8 million funding cut for fiscal year 2003, keeping Missouri's juvenile justice system healthy is sure to be one of the subjects discussed when the DYS Advisory Board holds its statewide meeting Wednesday and Thursday in Cape Girardeau. Members will tour the Girardot Center for Youth and Family Wednesday afternoon before a dinner meeting at Mollie's restaurant that night. The board's business meeting will be held Thursday morning at the Drury Lodge.

Southeast Missouri representatives on the 15-member board are Jon K. Rust, co-president of Rust Communications, and Joe Satterfield, associate circuit judge of the 35th District. Among the speakers will be Missouri Supreme Court Chief Justice Stephen N. Limbaugh, a Cape Girardeau native who served on the board previously.

Innovative approach

Most states still have their Boonville and operate juvenile justice systems that are primarily correctional instead of treatment-oriented, Steward said.

One example of Missouri's inventive approach to juvenile justice is the Girardot Center for Youth and Family at 609 N. Middle St., Steward said. The residential home houses 24 males who have been committed by the courts to one of the state's least restrictive facilities.

"The same youths in most states would be removed from their home several hundred miles away, put into a large training school and put in with all types of offenders, including murderers," Steward said.

Cape Girardeau also is home to a day program called the ECHO Life Learning Center at 3435 Armstrong Drive. This program enables youths to remain living in the family home while going to school six hours a day working toward a General Equivalency Degree.

DYS aims to keep juveniles out of the court and penal systems.

"We're the next step after the juvenile officer leaves," says Jim Davis, the Cape Girardeau-based DYS assistant regional administrator.

The 27-county Southeast Missouri region of DYS is headquartered in Poplar Bluff.

The DYS currently is supervising 151 youths in the region, most in residential facilities.

Across the state, 1,300 youths are committed by juvenile courts annually.

Steward said his budget isn't being cut as much as some agencies in the state and thinks the program's success is one reason.

Missouri has a recidivism rate below 10 percent while in many states the rate is above 50 percent, the director said.

Besides the budget cuts, the advisory board will be talking about the need for more bed spaces for females, more jobs and more vocational training.

Steward was unfamiliar with the controversy in Cape Girardeau County over whether a new juvenile detention center should be built, but he said the quality of juvenile detention centers does affect how the DYS system works.

"If they are overcrowded and don't have good treatment and facilities, that system is hurt. And that contributes to the overall system," he said.

sblackwell@semissourian.com

335-6611, extension 182