Girl Scout Cookie Madness

I am almost off topic today, but instead will merge two life events. I have been given the task of asking my coworkers if they would like to buy $4 boxes of Girl Scout Cookies. I have never been much of a salesperson, so this is not a natural activity for me, but my six year old is very convincing. The parallel to the JDAI/DMC measures and expediting children out and away from being detained is that I have to sell those concepts to my coworkers, as well.

Selling Girl Scout cookies is easier. Sure, it costs $4, but at least the person gets a yummy box of fattening goodness for their trouble of being bothered for cookies. The barrier that has to be overcome to sell a box of cookies is that the buyer just needs to succumb to the temptation of the cookie. When they buy the cookies, they can even rationalize to themselves that it is for a good cause and helps all those young girls fulfill their dreams. That same rationalization is there when that person (whom oddly resembles me to a great degree) eats the entire box of Samoas, then has to let the belt out a notch. At least when I ate those Samoas, it was for a good cause!

Selling a program that does right by kids and promotes racial justice, without calories, sounds like it should be so much easier than taking people's money for an amalgam of sugar, fat and wheat. The barrier to overcome with putting lower risk kids in juvenile detention is that it requires a belief that detention does not "cure" delinquent behavior by juveniles. I have plenty of books and research in my office on this topic, and I'll include some links in case you want to review some validated research material yourself, instead of just going off anecdotes, misconstrued beliefs and the non-researched practices of the past forty years.

http://www.jdaihelpdesk.org/Pages/Default.aspx
http://www.nctsnet.org/nctsn_assets/pdfs/edu_materials/trauma_among_girls_in_jjsys.pdf
http://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/ojjdp/grants/219743.pdf
http://ojjdp.ncjrs.gov/dmc/pdf/dmc89_01.pdf
http://ojjdp.ncjrs.org/dmc/

In an ideal world, people could read the researched material, go off the data and start working towards solutions. Even after the material has been made available, there are still a lot of kids in detention that are there for needs such as mental health, education, counseling, life skills and becoming substance free, rather than for committing serious offenses, being a chronic offender or refusing to show up and take care of their legal matters. The anecdotal response is much the same as justifying eating that box of cookies and just letting the belt out a notch in when things get uncomfortably tight, and buying a bigger pair of pants when that doesn't work. "Detaining those high needs kids is for their own good," declare those that do not believe or accept the research and more and more high needs kids get detained, which just turns them into higher needs kids now in crisis and more likely to commit more offenses in the future.

The researched response knows better and realizes that instead of just loosening the belt and eating all the cookies you want, exercise and restraint are required to make the pants and belt fit the way you want them to. Likewise, restraint of detaining kids based on need and diligent exercise in making sure that policies and procedures involving interaction with kids is as race neutral as possible lead you to the result of detaining only the kids that won't show up to court otherwise or are a danger to victimize the community and having transparent processes in which people of all colors feel secure and confident are based on only the behavior involved, not on any other factors. My cookie tie-in with this point is that buying cookies supports the Girl Scouts, the cookie is a bonus to you for doing so. Working towards justice for all and supporting JDAI/DMC is the right thing to do. That you have less crime and recidivism, along with more money to deal with problems and pay staff, becomes the good and tasty benefit of doing the right thing.

I'm up to 17 boxes of cookies sold, thanks to a valuable ally (Nancy, you are amazing!) I have at the Court. Now I just need allies to sell the JDAI/DMC initiatives so that they are devoured by staff as much as those cookies will be...

May God bless you!

Greetings and Salutations

I am the Detention Expediter for the Pima County Juvenile Court Center. I hope to be able to describe what a Detention Expediter is, and the importance of having positions like this involved in the lives of children that are involved with the juvenile justice system. I am also hoping through this blog to describe a movement taking place in America dedicated on the belief that positive behavioral changes can be made in children without the use of incarcerating children in detention centers.

The Annie E. Casey Foundation is leading the way with this initiative, and their web-site is: http://www.aecf.org/Home/MajorInitiatives/JuvenileDetentionAlternativesInitiative.aspx

I hope to be able to go over what the Juvenile Detention Alternative Initiative (JDAI) is and what it isn't, at least from my perspective!

Another of the leaders in this field is the W. Haywood Burns Institute, and that organization is trying to bring justice to all, not to just some. Their web-site is;

http://www.burnsinstitute.org/

May your 2008 be blessed in every way!