A particular program offers substantial financial support for the juvenile justice system. However, the question arises: does it prevent the system from incarcerating violent young individuals? This issue is thoroughly examined by 3News Investigates.
CLEVELAND — Violent juvenile crime has devastated families, pushing communities across Northeast Ohio to demand tougher consequences.
An incensed mother from Euclid expressed her viewpoint to 3News, stating, “Let them see the consequences of their actions.” She advocated for the parents of violent juvenile offenders to face imprisonment alongside their children when they exhibit disruptive behavior. “Imagine if it were you and your parents in jail – then you’d see how you behave!”
Lighter sentences explained
Statistical data from law enforcement agencies indicate that individuals under the age of 18 are displaying increasingly violent and destructive behavior. Surprisingly, over the past decade, there has been a decline in the number of juveniles detained in Department of Youth Services facilities, both at the state level and in Cuyahoga County.
But as industry experts point out, most young offenders eventually return home, even after serious crimes. Their reintroduction into society makes rehabilitation even more crucial.
“We’re trying to address the underlying needs that people present to the youth justice system,” explained Bridget Gibbons, a court administrator for the Cuyahoga County juvenile court. “The easy answer is, ‘Lock them up, throw away the key, forget about it!’ But we know these young people are going to return home to their communities.”
State officials, including Ohio Department of Youth Services Director Amy Ast, say locking up troubled teens can lead to even more dangerous adults.
“The intent of the court is have them in, serve their time, and come home,” Ast said, admitting that lower-level teens can be negatively impacted by time in detention facilities. “It doesn’t happen. They end up staying because they’re exposed to things they wouldn’t normally get exposed to.”
The Cuyahoga County Prosecutor’s Office has called out light sentences on social media more than a dozen times over the last several months, from a 14-year-old in a high-speed chase to an 11-year-old with a loaded gun and teens too young to drive committing drive-by shootings. The office has posted a series of disturbing and dangerous crimes, along with the seemingly light sentences that judges gave offenders.
The program that runs the system
At the center of this controversy is Ohio’s “RECLAIM” program, launched in 1993 to reduce overcrowding in detention centers. It funds initiatives to treat troubled youth at home through therapy, sports, and community support.
Many counties, including Cuyahoga, take advantage.
“We utilize RECLAIM funding for everything we fund here,” Gibbons admitted. “It funds our in-home therapy, substance abuse, family treatment. … I think it’s been effective in many ways in keeping young people in their communities safely.”
To address public concerns, the DYS commissioned a study by Bowling Green State University to decide whether RECLAIM was recklessly releasing juvenile offenders. The results were published in 2023.
“It showed that we haven’t been compromised,” Ast proclaimed. “Public safety wasn’t worse.”
However, the system isn’t done evaluating its practices or evolving.
“What we should be doing is evaluating whether or not what we’re doing is working,” Ast insisted. “We’re putting some things in place to evaluate that.”
Survivor’s experience
Waverly Willis runs his own Cleveland barbershops. A self-made success today, his story starts in the streets.
“The streets will adopt you, and they will take you in. They’ll show you love,” Willis admitted, acknowledging the pull that young teens can experience. “They’ll show you teamwork and camaraderie, all the things you’re missing.”
But what that life gave Willis it took back with interest, from selling drugs and carrying a gun during his teenage years before ultimately losing everything to addiction and homelessness.
“It gets very complicated, because a young mind is an impressionable mind,” Willis said, recounting his days as an impressionable young man. “Kids do what they see. Kids do and follow their role models, and a role model can be a good or bad thing.”
Nowadays, the only time Willis spends behind bars is as a volunteer in local juvenile detention centers, cutting hair and connecting with kids. There’s a distinct difference he sees between their experience and his own.
“These kids have access to, like, military weapons now, and it’s quite scary,” he exclaimed while shaking his head. “We can literally leave here right now and I can point you down certain streets that you, me, or a teenage child can go get a weapon right now.”
Troubled teens find firearms
The data backs Willis up: Firearms are everywhere, and kids can find them.
Aggravated murders by minors in Cuyahoga County have skyrocketed across the past 10 to 15 years. Even simple gun possession and use of firearms among youth is on the rise.
Juvenile justice officials insist they aren’t ignoring the threat.
“When someone is engaged in highly violent behavior, repeat violent behavior, we will reserve secure detention for those young people,” Gibbons insisted.
“We have the highest risk, highest needs, and I would say hardest to reach kids in the state of Ohio,” Ast pointed out.
Treating troubled teens is one thing, but officials say the problems start earlier than that. By the time a minor is arrested, authorities often discover a tangled knot of trauma.
“Those are kids touch the Department of Mental Health and Addiction Services,” Ast explained. “They touch children’s services, the Department of Disability, education.”
Willis sees himself in the kids he visits behind bars, and the experience can be heartbreaking.
“It’s not the kids that I see when I go down to the juvenile detention center,” he said, pushing back against public perception of juvenile offenders while wiping tears from his eye. “It’s just, you know, these kids got dealt bad hands, man.
“These aren’t bad kids, man. I’m telling you! They’re not. I meet them.”
Hope on the horizon
Cuyahoga County just received a federal grant from the Department of Justice’s Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention to create wraparound care for at-risk kids. There’s hope that an upgraded system would reach kids in troubled homes and provide care that helps them get to and engage with school and avoid trouble outside their home.
“(It would) take a look at some of the gaps in our system, to do some resource mapping and to create a continuum of care as a diversion to get kids away from the youth justice system,” Gibbons outlined.
The coordination meetings for where those funds are directed and how they’ll be used started in January. While still in the planning stages, there is optimism.
Willis, who didn’t identify his own trauma until adulthood, believes comprehensive care is the right approach.
“We have to provide the wraparound services and not continue to wait, because we’ve been waiting,” he huffed. “They can do it, but it’s not going to be easy. It’s not!
“It wasn’t easy, but it’s worth it. and that’s what keeps me going.”
Resources for troubled youth or families that are having difficulties can be found at dys.ohio.gov.
Jobs for ex-offenders in Ohio can be found at ohiomeansjobs.ohio.gov.
The Ohio Council of Churches also offers a gun prevention program.
