The Informant

Jessie Hodge

The success rate for juvenile offenders in places like St. Louis has risen to around 80 percent.

As California contemplates Governor Jerry Brown’s proposal to shut down the juvenile prison system, eyes are increasingly turning to the state of Missouri. The Missouri Model of juvenile justice–often referred to as the “Missouri Miracle”–has become famous for its apparent success in giving kids who run afoul of the law a second chance. The state has closed down its youth prisons and moved towards a model focused on rehabilitation and therapy. Kids on probation there are now housed in small groups of 15-30 and their treatment is personalized, handled by attentive staff, and involves family and community members. In 2007, the state’s system posted a 7.3 percent recidivism rate. (In California, the rate at which kids return to either a juvenile facility or enter an adult prison within three years of release hovers around 56 percent.) To find out more about how Missouri’s system works, we called up Mark Steward, who was a counselor in Missouri’s juvenile correctional system when the new model was a pilot project. Steward eventually became Director of the Missouri Division of Youth Services and now runs a consulting group called the Missouri Youth Services Institute, devoted to spreading the Missouri Model nationwide–and he says he’s been getting a lot of inquiries from California counties looking to change their systems.

Mark Steward

When did Missouri start to transform its juvenile justice system and why?

Like other systems, we had large juvenile prisons back in the 1950′s and 1960′s and they were so bad because of all the sexual abuse and violence that went on. We decided to try a new approach in the 1970′s and being just out of college, I was a guinea pig. I was one of the first counselors in the pilot program. Since then, the program has grown, improved, and spread. But it’s still focused on small, therapeutic groups in non-prison-like environs.

One of the concerns in California is that if we get rid of the higher-security, more punitive option of youth prisons, that counties aren’t going to want deal with kids who’re convicted of things like rape and murder, and they’ll end up in adult prisons. Has that been the case in Missouri?

Well, there is a lower age of certs Missouri [meaning that kids as young as 12 can be tried as adults]. But the number of certs have actually gone down. More and more kids are coming into the juvenile system and that’s because it’s really looked at by the public and everyone else as effective. We actually have a dual sentencing system that’s been very successful. That allows us to keep kids until they’re 21. And even those who’ve been sentenced to go onto adult prisons can be released on five years of community supervision.

There is a new report out, however, that says that African-American kids in Missouri are disproportionately ending up in adult court. Is that a byproduct of the Missouri Model? Or is it simply proof that no system is perfect?

That’s the courts, we have no say in that whatsoever. The reality is that a lot of kids are coming into the system from the inner cities of St. Louis and Kansas City, where there are some tough streets and serious gang activity. And there’s a high percentage of youth of color in those areas. We’ve had James Bell [of the W. Haywood Burns Institute in San Francisco] come out here and raise these issues. We do see disparate minority confinement and that’s something that needs to be worked on.

Do kids coming from St. Louis and Kansas City have similar success rates in the program as kids from more rural areas? There’s some skepticism that such an approach could work in places like Los Angeles, where some kids are coming into the justice system with serious backgrounds and gang affiliations.

We did a review of the recidivism rates by region and they’re very similar. We’re finding an above 90 percent success rate for kids, and that includes kids who are coming in with gang involvement, drug sales, and violence. The length of stay in the program is different. And it’s tough, it’s definitely not easy. But it’s the same with when we came into Santa Clara and the San Jose area. The same thing was said, that there’s multigenerational, family gang involvement. And the gang climate was tough, Nortenos and Surenos would not speak to each other. But kids are kids and people are people, and when it comes down to it, they really prefer to be safe. They don’t care to be prayed upon. And when you get to what’s causing their anger and delinquency, you can have success. Same in DC, same in New York. Kids are defensive at first, but eventually they’ll listen.

Have you gotten a lot of inquiries from California counties?

We’ve spoken with several jurisdictions that are interested. We had a large group from Los Angeles come out. We’ve had members of the judicial system and advocacy groups. Books Not Bars [an Oakland-based group of people who've been in or had family in a youth prison] came to our secure facility in Kansas City. They saw kids walking around in their own clothes, addressing the staff members by first name, and they were blown away. It looks more like a junior college than a reform school.