strongernow
06-16-2004, 01:08 PM
A 'success story' in the making
Instead of prison, Griffin boy lands in facility
By JANE O. HANSEN
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Published on: 06/14/04
MACON — Eric Walker was 15 when he saw the devil in a store window.
It was red and had horns, the boy said, and it made Eric bust that window, reach in and grab a baseball bat. He then called police and calmly told them what he'd done.
Like many youths with mental disorders, Eric easily could have wound up in a youth prison for his burglary charge. But once he was taken to jail, an employee noticed that the boy had psychological problems and might need treatment more than prison.
So Eric became one of the lucky ones. He was diverted into a rare alternative program for troubled boys — one of only two in the state.
Today the boy is back home in Griffin, doing well in school and getting the help he never had before he was in trouble with the law.
"He's a success story," said Dr. Debra Osborne, a child psychiatrist and medical director of the Macon treatment center where Eric spent his three-month sentence. "It's a shame we don't get the kids until they get locked up."
Georgia could save money and damaged lives if nonviolent children with mental health problems were treated in alternative programs rather than prison, say juvenile justice and mental health experts.
Of the nearly 29,000 Georgia children locked up last year in a youth jail or prison, as many as half had a mental disorder. Historically, the state has treated most lawbreaking youths the same: It has thrown them behind bars, even those whose behavior stems from mental illness.
Critics say Georgia has done a poor job of assessing children's mental disorders at an early age and helping them before they commit a crime and are sent to prison.
Part of the problem is the difficulty of identifying childhood mental problems. Among teens, it's particularly challenging to distinguish between pathological disorders and the normal wackiness and turbulence of adolescence. It's easier just to label these children "bad kids" or the products of poor parenting, experts say.
Without help, many children's behavior deteriorates and they wind up in Juvenile Court. Once there, judges and the Department of Juvenile Justice often have few options but to lock them up in penal institutions.
On an average day last year, about 2,700 children and teens were locked up in the state's youth jails and prisons. At the most, 260 delinquents with mental disorders were sent instead to a treatment program.
Eric was one of them.
'Where are the fences?'
At the Macon Behavioral Health System residential treatment center, mushroom-shaped hedges and freshly mowed grass greet visitors before they enter a lobby with overhead fans and deep-cushioned furniture. An oversized checkerboard covers a coffee table. This may be a locked facility, but it doesn't look or feel like one.
"The first thing our children say when they come in and we take off their chains is, 'Where are the fences?' " Osborne said. Instead of cells, the boys stay in motel-like rooms with their own bathroom and a view through green-curtained windows of the lake out back. The beds are wooden, not concrete, and covered with pink blankets.
Compared with the Augusta youth prison, here "they trust you more, they don't have razor wire," said one boy who's been in both facilities. "You got a good bed to lay on, you have your own shower, you get your own dresser and you get a blanket on your bed that's more warm."
The private program, opened early last year, is under contract with the Department of Juvenile Justice and has room for 50 boys, ages 9 to 17. Nearly all have been found guilty of minor crimes and sentenced to up to 90 days in the juvenile system. All have been diagnosed with mental disorders.
"Usually their mental issues have exacerbated their legal problems, sometimes caused them," Osborne said.
When boys arrive, the first challenge is to make an accurate diagnosis and, if necessary, prescribe medication. Common diagnoses include bipolar disorder, major depression, psychosis and severe attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder.
The boys' daily routine includes school, individual and group therapy. A reward system for good behavior gives them the chance to earn longer visitations, more phone calls, outings to movies and other privileges. At the highest levels, they get to go fishing.
"They love that," Osborne said. "They'll work hard to do that."
It costs $240 a day for each boy in a program like this; youth prison costs $164 a day.
But Osborne hopes to prove that her program is more cost-effective in the long run. Since the program took its first boys, Osborne and her staff have treated 440 boys. By the end of the first six months of operation, of the 80 boys discharged from the program, two re-offended.
Osborne said she believes many never would have gotten into legal trouble had there been more mental health services in their community. Her job is to make sure boys like Eric don't penetrate the juvenile justice system further.
'He needed help'
Eric is the kind of child this program was made for, Osborne said. He's also the kind of boy Georgia's youth prisons are full of.
"He's thriving here," Osborne said before he was discharged last fall. At the time, the stocky 16-year-old was having lunch with a group of younger boys in the sunlit cafeteria. A sign over the salad bar said "Farmers Market," and the boys said they liked the food.
"He's in a younger unit so he won't be victimized," Osborne said. "It gives him a chance to be a role model."
Eric was not even 3 when he was hit by a car, suffering severe head injuries. The toddler remained in a coma for three months. "I didn't want to see him like that," said his aunt, Jeanette Smith, 65. She and her husband, Willie Bo Smith, have raised Eric since the accident.
When he awoke, doctors said the boy was brain-damaged. He had been a bright, busy little boy who had been walking before the accident. For the next year, he only crawled. Then one day, "Lord, he started walking," said his uncle. "I was so happy, tears got in my eyes. He been walking ever since."
But the trauma of the accident had lasting effects. Eric grew up dragging his foot and walking with a hop. Today his right arm is smaller and weaker than his left, and he holds it bent by his side. He has an IQ of 55.
For years, children taunted Eric, calling him "Crip" and other names. When he was 13, he took a stick to school in his book bag.
"This little boy kept picking on him and he took the stick to beat him up," his aunt said.
White kids called Eric, an African-American, racist names. "They be saying he can't throw, he can't walk," his uncle said.
After puberty, Eric's behavior grew more erratic. In October 2002, "he changed just like that. He just got outrageous."
After a boy pushed him off his bicycle, Eric stole a .38-caliber gun his aunt kept hidden in her bedroom. He went to the boy's house and dared him to come outside, then ran from police. They charged him with aggravated assault, but charges were dropped.
"The court said that he needed help," his aunt said. "They know something was wrong with him."
There were other fights with neighborhood boys. Twice, police took him to Central State psychiatric hospital, where he stayed several days until he calmed down.
But his behavior didn't improve. One night last summer, Eric busted out a store window and stole the baseball bat. "He said he saw the devil," his uncle said. "He was messed up." Eric later said he had taken the bat for protection. "People, they like to pick on people. They try to beat on me," he said.
A judge sentenced Eric to 90 days in a youth prison.
"The Department of Juvenile Justice asked he come to us because somebody picked up he had mental health issues," Osborne said. "Before, these kids weren't even identified and certainly didn't have alternatives for treatment."
Osborne said Eric showed signs of depression, alcohol and marijuana abuse and bipolar disorder, which is marked by extreme mood swings. As a complication, she said, he has a low IQ.
"This kid has psychiatric problems secondary to brain injuries he sustained as a kid," Osborne said. "He went through all his life without getting counseling, meds, nothing. The first time he gets any attention is after being violent."
At the Macon treatment center, Eric worked hard in school. In gym, despite his handicaps, he played basketball with the other boys, giving one a high-five after making a basket.
"He's done great," Osborne said. But to sustain his progress, Osborne said, he'd need help when he got home. Unlike in youth prison, the staff starts working on a plan for a boy's exit as soon as he enters the center.
"If you put him back there with no more support at home than he had before he came here, he's not going to make it," Osborne said. Eric needs continued help on controlling his anger and impulsive behavior, and he needs to learn job skills, she said.
Nationally, one of the most promising alternatives to prison for children like Eric is a program called "multisystemic therapy." Therapists provide intensive services to troubled kids, often in their homes. It succeeds, experts say, because it treats the causes of a child's anti-social behavior in the environment where it occurs.
"If you have a kid and you send him off, you can get him to shape up while he's off someplace," said Scott Henggeler, one of the program's founders and a psychiatry professor at the Medical University of South Carolina. "But when he comes home, nothing's changed."
National studies show the program reduces the likelihood of rearrest among chronic offenders and those with mental health problems. The program is cost-effective because it helps prevent a return to prison that can cost more than $50,000 a year. In Georgia, the likelihood of a child's return to prison is as high as 70 percent.
Reductions in rearrest rates of kids in the program would save taxpayers a net of nearly $8,000 per child in future costs to the criminal justice system, researchers estimate.
"I don't have any problem punishing kids who mess up," Henggeler said. "The issue is how do you effectively reduce crime. If sending a kid to boot camp increases crime and costs more money, there's no logic."
Community services
Since Eric came home last fall from the Macon program, he has been in a similar program under the supervision of Chuck Walker, a juvenile probation officer.
"We wrapped him up real good with services back in his community," Walker said.
Eric continues to take medication to control his impulsivity and attends regular counseling sessions with a psychologist. Before summer break, he was back in school full time. Through a vocational program, he worked three mornings a week at a Big Lots store, where he swept and straightened shelves.
Walker, no relation to Eric, said the boy has responded well to treatment, but he cautioned there are no guarantees. "I don't know if he's going to re-offend," Walker said. "Not because he's a bad kid. But he's very gullible and he lives in a bad neighborhood. That's his lifestyle."
But for now, "he's doing good," Eric's aunt said recently. As the family sat in its modest split-level home, the boy smiled while describing his day. "Get up about 7, wash my face, brush my teeth and go wait for the bus," he said.
Eric sometimes has trouble getting his words out. But he's always liked school and he loves to read. Dr. Seuss books are among his favorites.
"He's a sweet child," his aunt said. "He smiles all the time. Everybody who meets him likes him."
The love of his family, Osborne and Walker said, makes him particularly fortunate.
"Anyone who knows him will tell you he's not a bad child," his uncle said. "It's what happened to him. I know we raised him right."
Instead of prison, Griffin boy lands in facility
By JANE O. HANSEN
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Published on: 06/14/04
MACON — Eric Walker was 15 when he saw the devil in a store window.
It was red and had horns, the boy said, and it made Eric bust that window, reach in and grab a baseball bat. He then called police and calmly told them what he'd done.
Like many youths with mental disorders, Eric easily could have wound up in a youth prison for his burglary charge. But once he was taken to jail, an employee noticed that the boy had psychological problems and might need treatment more than prison.
So Eric became one of the lucky ones. He was diverted into a rare alternative program for troubled boys — one of only two in the state.
Today the boy is back home in Griffin, doing well in school and getting the help he never had before he was in trouble with the law.
"He's a success story," said Dr. Debra Osborne, a child psychiatrist and medical director of the Macon treatment center where Eric spent his three-month sentence. "It's a shame we don't get the kids until they get locked up."
Georgia could save money and damaged lives if nonviolent children with mental health problems were treated in alternative programs rather than prison, say juvenile justice and mental health experts.
Of the nearly 29,000 Georgia children locked up last year in a youth jail or prison, as many as half had a mental disorder. Historically, the state has treated most lawbreaking youths the same: It has thrown them behind bars, even those whose behavior stems from mental illness.
Critics say Georgia has done a poor job of assessing children's mental disorders at an early age and helping them before they commit a crime and are sent to prison.
Part of the problem is the difficulty of identifying childhood mental problems. Among teens, it's particularly challenging to distinguish between pathological disorders and the normal wackiness and turbulence of adolescence. It's easier just to label these children "bad kids" or the products of poor parenting, experts say.
Without help, many children's behavior deteriorates and they wind up in Juvenile Court. Once there, judges and the Department of Juvenile Justice often have few options but to lock them up in penal institutions.
On an average day last year, about 2,700 children and teens were locked up in the state's youth jails and prisons. At the most, 260 delinquents with mental disorders were sent instead to a treatment program.
Eric was one of them.
'Where are the fences?'
At the Macon Behavioral Health System residential treatment center, mushroom-shaped hedges and freshly mowed grass greet visitors before they enter a lobby with overhead fans and deep-cushioned furniture. An oversized checkerboard covers a coffee table. This may be a locked facility, but it doesn't look or feel like one.
"The first thing our children say when they come in and we take off their chains is, 'Where are the fences?' " Osborne said. Instead of cells, the boys stay in motel-like rooms with their own bathroom and a view through green-curtained windows of the lake out back. The beds are wooden, not concrete, and covered with pink blankets.
Compared with the Augusta youth prison, here "they trust you more, they don't have razor wire," said one boy who's been in both facilities. "You got a good bed to lay on, you have your own shower, you get your own dresser and you get a blanket on your bed that's more warm."
The private program, opened early last year, is under contract with the Department of Juvenile Justice and has room for 50 boys, ages 9 to 17. Nearly all have been found guilty of minor crimes and sentenced to up to 90 days in the juvenile system. All have been diagnosed with mental disorders.
"Usually their mental issues have exacerbated their legal problems, sometimes caused them," Osborne said.
When boys arrive, the first challenge is to make an accurate diagnosis and, if necessary, prescribe medication. Common diagnoses include bipolar disorder, major depression, psychosis and severe attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder.
The boys' daily routine includes school, individual and group therapy. A reward system for good behavior gives them the chance to earn longer visitations, more phone calls, outings to movies and other privileges. At the highest levels, they get to go fishing.
"They love that," Osborne said. "They'll work hard to do that."
It costs $240 a day for each boy in a program like this; youth prison costs $164 a day.
But Osborne hopes to prove that her program is more cost-effective in the long run. Since the program took its first boys, Osborne and her staff have treated 440 boys. By the end of the first six months of operation, of the 80 boys discharged from the program, two re-offended.
Osborne said she believes many never would have gotten into legal trouble had there been more mental health services in their community. Her job is to make sure boys like Eric don't penetrate the juvenile justice system further.
'He needed help'
Eric is the kind of child this program was made for, Osborne said. He's also the kind of boy Georgia's youth prisons are full of.
"He's thriving here," Osborne said before he was discharged last fall. At the time, the stocky 16-year-old was having lunch with a group of younger boys in the sunlit cafeteria. A sign over the salad bar said "Farmers Market," and the boys said they liked the food.
"He's in a younger unit so he won't be victimized," Osborne said. "It gives him a chance to be a role model."
Eric was not even 3 when he was hit by a car, suffering severe head injuries. The toddler remained in a coma for three months. "I didn't want to see him like that," said his aunt, Jeanette Smith, 65. She and her husband, Willie Bo Smith, have raised Eric since the accident.
When he awoke, doctors said the boy was brain-damaged. He had been a bright, busy little boy who had been walking before the accident. For the next year, he only crawled. Then one day, "Lord, he started walking," said his uncle. "I was so happy, tears got in my eyes. He been walking ever since."
But the trauma of the accident had lasting effects. Eric grew up dragging his foot and walking with a hop. Today his right arm is smaller and weaker than his left, and he holds it bent by his side. He has an IQ of 55.
For years, children taunted Eric, calling him "Crip" and other names. When he was 13, he took a stick to school in his book bag.
"This little boy kept picking on him and he took the stick to beat him up," his aunt said.
White kids called Eric, an African-American, racist names. "They be saying he can't throw, he can't walk," his uncle said.
After puberty, Eric's behavior grew more erratic. In October 2002, "he changed just like that. He just got outrageous."
After a boy pushed him off his bicycle, Eric stole a .38-caliber gun his aunt kept hidden in her bedroom. He went to the boy's house and dared him to come outside, then ran from police. They charged him with aggravated assault, but charges were dropped.
"The court said that he needed help," his aunt said. "They know something was wrong with him."
There were other fights with neighborhood boys. Twice, police took him to Central State psychiatric hospital, where he stayed several days until he calmed down.
But his behavior didn't improve. One night last summer, Eric busted out a store window and stole the baseball bat. "He said he saw the devil," his uncle said. "He was messed up." Eric later said he had taken the bat for protection. "People, they like to pick on people. They try to beat on me," he said.
A judge sentenced Eric to 90 days in a youth prison.
"The Department of Juvenile Justice asked he come to us because somebody picked up he had mental health issues," Osborne said. "Before, these kids weren't even identified and certainly didn't have alternatives for treatment."
Osborne said Eric showed signs of depression, alcohol and marijuana abuse and bipolar disorder, which is marked by extreme mood swings. As a complication, she said, he has a low IQ.
"This kid has psychiatric problems secondary to brain injuries he sustained as a kid," Osborne said. "He went through all his life without getting counseling, meds, nothing. The first time he gets any attention is after being violent."
At the Macon treatment center, Eric worked hard in school. In gym, despite his handicaps, he played basketball with the other boys, giving one a high-five after making a basket.
"He's done great," Osborne said. But to sustain his progress, Osborne said, he'd need help when he got home. Unlike in youth prison, the staff starts working on a plan for a boy's exit as soon as he enters the center.
"If you put him back there with no more support at home than he had before he came here, he's not going to make it," Osborne said. Eric needs continued help on controlling his anger and impulsive behavior, and he needs to learn job skills, she said.
Nationally, one of the most promising alternatives to prison for children like Eric is a program called "multisystemic therapy." Therapists provide intensive services to troubled kids, often in their homes. It succeeds, experts say, because it treats the causes of a child's anti-social behavior in the environment where it occurs.
"If you have a kid and you send him off, you can get him to shape up while he's off someplace," said Scott Henggeler, one of the program's founders and a psychiatry professor at the Medical University of South Carolina. "But when he comes home, nothing's changed."
National studies show the program reduces the likelihood of rearrest among chronic offenders and those with mental health problems. The program is cost-effective because it helps prevent a return to prison that can cost more than $50,000 a year. In Georgia, the likelihood of a child's return to prison is as high as 70 percent.
Reductions in rearrest rates of kids in the program would save taxpayers a net of nearly $8,000 per child in future costs to the criminal justice system, researchers estimate.
"I don't have any problem punishing kids who mess up," Henggeler said. "The issue is how do you effectively reduce crime. If sending a kid to boot camp increases crime and costs more money, there's no logic."
Community services
Since Eric came home last fall from the Macon program, he has been in a similar program under the supervision of Chuck Walker, a juvenile probation officer.
"We wrapped him up real good with services back in his community," Walker said.
Eric continues to take medication to control his impulsivity and attends regular counseling sessions with a psychologist. Before summer break, he was back in school full time. Through a vocational program, he worked three mornings a week at a Big Lots store, where he swept and straightened shelves.
Walker, no relation to Eric, said the boy has responded well to treatment, but he cautioned there are no guarantees. "I don't know if he's going to re-offend," Walker said. "Not because he's a bad kid. But he's very gullible and he lives in a bad neighborhood. That's his lifestyle."
But for now, "he's doing good," Eric's aunt said recently. As the family sat in its modest split-level home, the boy smiled while describing his day. "Get up about 7, wash my face, brush my teeth and go wait for the bus," he said.
Eric sometimes has trouble getting his words out. But he's always liked school and he loves to read. Dr. Seuss books are among his favorites.
"He's a sweet child," his aunt said. "He smiles all the time. Everybody who meets him likes him."
The love of his family, Osborne and Walker said, makes him particularly fortunate.
"Anyone who knows him will tell you he's not a bad child," his uncle said. "It's what happened to him. I know we raised him right."