Every year, Baltimore County authorities identify 2,200 juveniles headed down the wrong path.
They run away from home. They skip school. Their parents just can?t control them. About 500 end up becoming what police call “repeat serious offenders” who need to be behind bars for the public?s safety.
But how can authorities know which of the kids who appear to be going in the wrong direction actually will become dangers to society? The Baltimore County Criminal Justice Coordinating Council is designing a new screening tool that it hopes will help determine that.
With the help of the Maryland Department of Juvenile Services, the county is drafting an approximately 30-question form that officials say will identify the “highest-risk” juvenile offenders before it?s too late. Depending on the answers to these questions, the juvenile is then assigned a point total to assess how likely he or she is to become a repeat serious offender.
“If we can get to them early on, hopefully we won?t be getting them back later,” said Lee Ohnmacht of the Baltimore County Bureau of Mental Health. “If we can take these kids and get better at identifying them after a first arrest, we may get better at keeping them from going deeper into the juvenile system.”
Meg Ferguson, the county?s criminal justice coordinator, said the point of the new screening tool is an attempt to get good data on the county?s most troubled teens.
“There?s a small number of kids the police call ?frequent fliers? that cause a large number of the problems,” Ferguson said.
Maryland Department of Juvenile Services Secretary Donald DeVore said he could provide assistance to the council as members create their screening tool.
He said the state of juvenile services in Maryland has no place to go but up, considering its recent checkered past, which includes the death of a Baltimore teenager at the private Bowling Brook facility in Carroll County.
“I know how disappointing DJS has been to the citizens of Maryland,” he said.
But, he said, Legislature recently approved a $24.2 million supplemental budget for his agency and he plans to open a new secure facility for juvenile offenders by July 1.
With drastic changes in the state?s juvenile system, teenage offenders will better get the services they need to become rehabilitated, DeVore said.
“We know that 55 percent of our kids at detention centers have a diagnosed mental illness,” he said.
Some of the things the screening tool tracks
» How much the juvenile is supervised by parents
» Whether the child is abused or neglected
» The extent of the juvenile?s class-cutting and behavioral problems in school
» The student?s grades
» How much the juvenile abuses drugs
» How manythefts the juvenile has committed
» How often the student runs away from home
