Part 1: Grant Lets Court Help Juvenile Offenders

A grant totaling approximately $374,000 has been awarded to the Clayton-based to be used for its Juvenile Court Diversion Program.

Among other services, the program provides treatment of juvenile sex offenders and support for their families; support and dialogue opportunities for victims; supervision of at-risk youth on weekends and evenings along with mentoring, exercise and private care.

The St. Louis County Council is scheduled to perfect Bill No. 181 on Tuesday and to pass it in early August so the Missouri Division of Youth Services grant can be accepted. Funds for the grant will be used for the program starting this month and continuing through June 2012.

Jeff Osburg, director of court programs at the Family Court, spoke in an interview about the diversion program and the ways in which the grant will be used. In Part 1, Osburg talks about the purpose of the diversion program, focus areas within the program and the history of the state grant. In Part 2, he discusses what the grant means to the Family Court and how it intends to use the money in the coming year.

Part 2 will publish at 3 p.m. Monday.

Patch: What is the purpose of the diversion program?

Jeff Osburg: The simple answer would be that the purpose is delinquency prevention, from the point of view of the Division of Youth Services. In some ways, our detention center is analogous to an adult jail, whereas the Division of Youth Services is analogous to an adult prison.

The research suggests a community-based treatment program is going to be superior, in most instances. It's also going to be more cost-effective. Instead of keeping a kid in a locked facility, if he can be safely maintained and supervised in the community, that's always the cheaper alternative.

Patch: How many juvenile offenders participate in the program each year?

Osburg: Between 250 and 300 kids have participated in the program each year for the last several years. Roughly 60 kids participate per each of the six focus areas we offer, though there is overlap.

Patch: Tell us about some of the focus areas within the diversion program.

Osburg: The Impact of Crime on Victims classes probably have the most participants. It's a series of six, one-and-a-half hour classes involving a group discussion. We follow a curriculum that has been modified for younger kids. The goal is victim empathy. We probably have 40 kids each year in these classes.

We also offer a victim-offender dialogue program. Say I got caught doing something wrong. If we think we can safely do so, we bring together both the victim and the offender so that the victim—who pictured a scary person yet sees a 14-year-old who weighs 100 pounds and begins to cry—feels a little bit empowered. We probably have 12 dialogue participants each year.

We also staff a reporting center. This allows low and moderate-risk juveniles to live at home during the school year. Then, on Mondays through Fridays in the late afternoon or early evening, they must come to the reporting center. It operates from 3 to 8 p.m., which statistically speaking are high juvenile-crime hours.

They do sports and homework, get dinner and snacks. They're supervised in what we hope is productive activity. The program is now 3 years old, and up to 18 kids can participate in it at a time. It's partly to monitor them as opposed to having them in locked facilities, but it's also to engage them in wholesome activities.

We contract with a not-for-profit that hosts discussion groups with the kids. They talk about topics such as peaceful ways to handle conflict and racial pride.

The mentoring program is the oldest we offer. We began providing it in 2000 or 2001. Several times each month, a group of kids meets at mentor sites such as the University of Missouri-St. Louis (UMSL) or Washington University.

At UMSL, for example, there would be a number of university athletes who do an hour of homework with the kids and then do an hour of something fun in the gym, such as swimming or basketball. At Washington University, law students might talk with the kids about what college life is like, learn what the kids want to do in the future. They develop special relationships.

The youth advocate program allows paid mentors to team with parents in an effort to keep their kids out of trouble. The mentor might pick up the kid from school or talk to a teacher. If there's a Saturday crisis, say a big fight at home, the kid could call the mentor, who would then talk with both the kid and the mom.

Along with the advocacy program, we also offer private care and care for juvenile sex offenders.

Patch: What is the history of this $340,000 grant as it relates to the Family Court?

Osburg: We've been receiving this grant for many years. The amount of the grant has been more or less holding at that level for the last five years, maybe the last 10 years. Of course, the same amount of money buys you less over time. We primarily fund personnel with the grant, and it costs more now. While St. Louis County has had a salary freeze for several years, health costs go up.

But we haven't been crushed, and the diversion program has been highly successful. We track the research, and we try to do more of what is shown to be effective.

Come back at 3 p.m. to learn more about how the Family Court uses research to guide its programming and about the court's plans to use the grant in the coming year.