SANTA FE

Alternative to jail for kids in U.S. system

Santa Fe County hopes to use new facility for local youth in future.
The walls here are still made of cinder blocks, just like they were when this place off Airport Road was the old county jail.
But now the walls don't represent a kids' version of an adult jail.
Instead, they contain Santa Fe County's newest program for youngsters who've run into trouble — a center that’s supposed to be more like a home.

The Adolescent Residential Treatment Center, called ARC, is still a place to which youths are sentenced by federal judges, but the program is aimed at helping kids get jobs, an education and life skills.
The kids hold a job at a mall while serving a sentence for robbery or they volunteer in a soup kitchen while doing time for trafficking drugs. At the center, they’ve got their own room; chores such as laundry, cooking and cleaning; exercise equipment and board games for down time; and plenty of watchful eyes.
Each youth is assigned a case worker and therapist and has daily interaction with supervising floor workers. The center’s treatment model is about stages of change, said Robert Apodaca, lead supervisor. It allows residents to make choices about their own future while they learn to cope with anger management, addiction or other issues.
“It all depends on where they are at,” Apodaca said.

ARC has a contract to serve people under 21 who are sentenced for federal crimes. But county Corrections Department Director Greg Parrish said he’s planning to work with federal officials to also make the facility available for local offenders who are sentenced in Children’s Court.
Many children’s advocates say that’s exactly what the community needs.
“I think it’s fantastic,” said clinical psychologist Susan Cave, a member of the county Correctional Advisory Committee. Cave was among several dozen who toured the pastel-colored girls dormitory Thursday. “It’s too bad it’s not for local use. There are no treatment beds for girls north of Albuquerque. It’s something that we need.”
County officials heralded the opening of the center as the future of juvenile corrections.
“Noah built the ark and gathered all the animals so they didn’t sink and drown. That’s what we did here,” said County Commission Chairman Mike Anaya. “We built the ARC so we can save our kids, so they don’t drown.”
Santa Fe County began converting part of the Youth Development Program building into the residential treatment center early this year. The project was budgeted at about $450,000, but it ended up costing about $1 million to renovate that portion of the former jail into the youth center.

The rest of the building contains a 40-bed secure detention wing and a day reporting program for kids in the local jurisdiction, a federal training school that houses about 40 more federal juveniles and the headquarters for the state District Court’s electronic monitoring for both adults and juveniles.
County Sheriff Greg Solano said programs for juveniles have come a long way since he was a kid growing up on Hopewell Street.
Then, the justice system had the CHINS program, which stood for children in need of supervision and meant everyone from runaways to underage drinkers ended up at the adult jail.
“Things have progressed and changed so much,” he said.

Julie Ann Grimm
13 August 2005

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