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- Efforts to support at risk youths in Memphis and Shelby County tonight on Behind the Headlines.

[intense orchestral music] I'm Eric Barnes with The Daily Memphian.

Thanks for joining us.

I am joined tonight by a number of folks from in and around county government.

We'll start with Dr. Bernard Williams, Chief Probation Officer for the Juvenile Court.

Thanks for being here.

- Honored to be here to discuss all the activities that we're doing to prevent our youth from being in the system.

- Yeah well I'm glad you're here.

Jerri Green is a policy advisor to Mayor Lee Harris.

Thank you for being here.

- Thank you so much for having us.

- Dr. Cedrick Gray is Director of Education for Shelby County government.

Thanks for being here.

- Thank you for having us.

- Along with Bill Dries, reporter with The Daily Memphian.

I'll start with what each of you do at this kind of various programs that at the county level and the various areas to address at risk youths to help them, to as Dr. Willams said try to keep kids out of the system.

And this is against a backdrop of COVID, two years of COVID, a national spike in crime, especially violent youth crime, and including in Shelby County very frustratingly very sadly.

And for some people and a very scary thing.

But I'll go just 'cause you're right here on my right Dr. Gray, for you what are you trying to do to tackle this huge I mean what can be a very generational complicated multi-faceted problem?

What are you trying to do?

- Thank you for having us again and a great question.

From the Office of Education we believe our position is really to support efforts that are going on throughout our community.

So we come alongside school systems, we also come alongside the work at the juvenile court.

And so the Youth and Family Resource Center is designed to be that level of support.

We are a preemptive strike if it would, a preventive measure.

A diversionary program that allows youth and their families to come to us when the youth began to see tinges and twinges of trouble.

So we're hopeful that we can make a difference not only with the youth that maybe eventually go down to juvenile court, but in the neighborhoods and communities and schools.

- I wanna come back to that, pretty much a relatively new program I think you've said you've-- - Right.

- But let's get everybody in and we'll come back to that.

- Yeah sure.

- For you Dr. Willams Chief Probation Officer, you've been there 12 years.

This spike, is it different than other times where crime is happening in terms of youth?

I mean what are you seeing that's different, and what are you trying to do differently if anything?

- I would say that the level of violent crime, I've never seen it this way.

I remember when I first started my career, any time you would see a murder case the whole building would almost stop and we would pour attention into what happened.

Now we're seeing it at a rate with gun violence in rates I've never seen.

I think we're up to about 67% increase in violent crimes, carjackings, aggravated robberies.

So like he mentioned we are trying to get ahead of these things by being integrated in the community so that we can get the early warning signs.

- Yeah and we'll come back to all that.

- Okay.

- But again let me get you in here Jerri Green.

You're a policy advisor to Mayor Lee Harris, also an assistant county attorney.

What is can the Mayor's Office do when the Mayor's Office doesn't have explicit authority, I mean does not run the school system, the mayor does not run juvenile court.

As I've said we've done a lot of shows on crime and crime-related issues over the last six months, and it is constantly obvious that there's this I keep calling it an archipelago and I don't know why, but it is of all these islands.

MPD, the sheriff, the DA's Office, what happens up at the state and the state laws and how those impact us.

There is not a whole point person or a holistic approach really despite maybe best intentions, to how we address crime and how we help prevent crime.

- So the mayor and our administration believes we have a moral duty to these children in our community to do what we can to help put their lives back on the right path.

And so we kind of have a toolbox, and we are trying to figure out how we can improve all the tools within the toolbox.

So we'll provide a space and a place and funding for staff for the Youth and Family Resource Center.

We have doubled the number of precinct liaisons out in the community.

We now have two after school reporting centers.

We continue to find ways and places that we can invest with all of those archipelago that you said, so that we can be supportive of efforts that help shift the tide.

- And we'll go deeper into each of those kinda efforts you just talked about, but let me bring in Bill Dries.

- And what strikes me about all of these descriptions is that you're talking about efforts that are long-term efforts that are going to take time.

And what I wonder about is how much pressure is there, as you talked about, when there is a murder that comes up?

I think the tendency is well we've gotta do something now to protect people now.

And then the shift moves away from the long-term efforts.

How do you deal with that kind of response to a specific incident versus the long-term goals and policies that you want to pursue to head this off at the pass in the first place?

- Absolutely, long-term sustainability's at the core of what we're trying to do.

We're at three precincts, four precincts right now, and that individual is integrated with law enforcement and the DA's Office.

And we have buy in from leadership.

Judge Michael, the DA's Office, and even with Mayor Strickland, and she said Mayor Harris.

So the leadership that has the vision.

And we're trying to execute everything that we can so that it is sustainable.

And you will see the data that it supports that.

It is working, we are diverting a lot of kids away from the system and we are getting 'em connected to services.

- Let me interrupt just a second.

For those not as familiar with the program, when you say liaison what does that mean, what is the background of that person?

Go a little deeper on that and we'll go.

- Absolutely.

So the community liaison, we call them the precinct liaison, they are a juvenile services counselor that is trained thoroughly on adverse childhood experiences.

They understand how to assess youth and on the child adolescent needs and strengths.

And they understand ways to get youth connected back to mentorship, mental health services, but more importantly we try to keep those kids from coming back through the system.

So diverting kids at the community level instead of them historically being transported in a police car, brought all the way to our detention facility.

So you're seeing that this person is actually going before their arrest.

- Okay.

- Doing a lot of that preventative work.

- And one of the things that he, and it goes to your point, these people do address children as they're brought in one at a time.

But because they're embedded in the community they also have eyes and ears on the ground and know what's needed out there.

And so they do other community wide events like summer camps, back to school backpacks.

They are able to serve the community as a whole as well as the individuals.

So they do both, that we're pulling the drowning people out of the river and we're going up the river and we're seeing why people are drowning.

- Absolutely.

- And trying to solve that as well.

- Dr. Gray.

Talk a little bit about diversion and what needs to happen in the school system.

Because if they're not in the system the question is then okay they're not in the juvenile justice system, but what's happening in the school?

Because the school seems to be like a fall back, if they're not going to court are they getting what they need in the school system?

- A great question.

And so I will lean a little bit back where we began.

Right so this is a support system which is what we've developed at the Youth and Family Resource Center.

And so the school's response to whatever offense that a youth has is to offer additional options.

And the Youth Family Resource Center is another option.

A former principal as I am, I understand that when little CJ comes to the office he has done something that's brought him there, he has broken a rule and or unfortunately sometimes a law.

But we wanna be able to exercise some sort of responsible response that doesn't immediately send him to the detention center.

- Absolutely.

- Right.

And so the schools now will have another option which is what they really really want.

So there are some diversionary programs already in some schools.

The Youth and Family Resource Center comes alongside it to offer additional options for that.

But I believe that's the schools responsibility to do more of what they already wanna do, and that's give good options right that help the youth and now just detain them or punish them.

- And we're already seeing that.

We've had a soft opening, and one of the first clients that walked into the doors to the Youth and Family Resource Center was a mother who was experiencing homelessness.

She had her 13-year-old son with her in the middle of the day on a school day.

And they said "hey what's going on here?

"Why isn't he in school?"

Well they found out he had been expelled, he had been having behavioral problems.

He's having obvious stressors because of experiencing homelessness.

Our staff went back to the principal and said "Here's what's going on with this family.

"We're gonna work on the housing piece, "can you get this child back in school?

Can we undo him being expelled?"

And they said, "Absolutely."

And that's the sorta thing that if you take one kid you can change his whole trajectory.

- Absolutely.

- And that's the work that these offices are doing that we're trying to pour supports into.

- So is this one system, or is this several systems?

Because as you mentioned, this may come as a surprise to the school that this child is in juvenile court, or it may come as a surprise to juvenile court that this child has been expelled or has been suspended.

- That's where the partnerships come in.

We have the liaison that is in the Austin Peace Station.

Has relationships with the principals in all the schools in that area.

So instead of calling law enforcement they will call one of our liaisons to come out and intervene.

So instead of an officer showing up to that school and getting an arrest and all that type of stuff, that liaison will come and work with that family and get to the basic needs that are occurring with that child so that there is no escalation.

And then of course it is one system as well because we can then take that youth over to the program that the Mayor's Office is talking about.

- And we wanted to create, or we're looking to create a comprehensive response or a continuum right.

So if you imagine CJ driving down the highway, there are lots of exits that he can get off of.

So sometimes the furthest exit would be detention, but maybe if we can guide him to the first exit, right a preventive approach.

Come down to Youth and Family Resource Center, let us screen, asses and provide and help build behavioral plan and then refer to services.

So just like Attorney Green has already said, the youth has changed but more importantly the family is changed.

- What does that, I mean, I'll start with you, the capacity.

I mean this has just started, and I mean so I don't wanna be deflated, but look I mean I think a lot of people probably listen and say this is what we need, we want a holistic proactive approach to this.

But it's just launched.

How many kids and families are you projected to get to every month, year?

I'm not sure what your measurement is.

- Well we so the anticipation right now is walking in baby steps right.

- Yeah sure.

- We wanna sorta ease into this and sort of pilot it in certain areas so that's what we've done.

We're in the former Raleigh Library, a gracious gift from the City of Memphis.

And we are currently connecting relationships with the high schools in that area.

And so we anticipate this next year possibly be maybe 2 to 300 youth.

But also hiring on additional staff where appropriate.

We'll have as many as four case managers in the Youth and Family Resource Center along with the deputy administrator that runs it.

And all of us will be, all of them will be trained.

So we're anticipating a shift from maybe 300 the first year to as many as the capacity can handle after that.

- And is that really the focused on the Raleigh area right and those schools in that area?

- Right.

- And so is the idea to pilot that and maybe try to go to other areas of the city and county?

- Absolutely, absolutely.

- And for you with the liaisons, I think you said there are three right now.

- Yeah so there's three liaisons.

I have one at the Austin Peay station, in the Raleigh area very close to the Family and Resource Center.

We also have one at the Tillman station that is serving that community.

And then our third one is kind of split between the Ridgeway station and the Mt.

Moriah station.

And we've served already, even in midst of the pandemic, over 600 families.

A lot of this stuff that she's talking about is preventative stuff.

Families can walk in and receive services.

So we do have a lot of walk-ins in which law enforcement doesn't bring those families in, they actually just come on their own.

- If you wave a magic wand how many liaison officers would you have reasonably?

- Right well with the help of the Mayor's Office now we're gonna be at seven precincts, there are nine precincts total.

- So you again-- - So it's seven.

- Get that yeah.

- So yeah we'll move into the Mt Moriah, I mean not the, not the Mt.

Moriah, the Airways station that is a community that needs a lot of support.

- Okay.

- We'll move over the Crump station, that'll serve a lot of south Memphis.

And then we'll go down to Raines.

So a lot of youth that you've got some big schools over there, Whitehaven and a lot of schools in that area that we'll be able to serve and partner with.

- One more question.

You said 600 in the last year, or was that-- - Yeah yes yes yes yes.

- Give or take that you were able to.

How many kids, how many young people go through juvenile court in a given year?

I'm putting you on the spot.

Give or take.

- Yeah, so probably right over 5,000 youth we handle.

- Okay so you're a little over 10, I'm just trying to find some benchmark for you know what I'm saying?

Okay.

And how many in the jail, youths in the jail?

- Yeah so as of today we hae 58 in our detention center.

And I'll let me just put this in perspective.

- Yes one more.

- There's a lot of empirical research that talked about the school to prison pipeline.

In 2011 we had over 5,000 youth that were admitted to our detention facility.

So with close relationships with the schools and law enforcement now we're at a 88% decline of youth being in our detention facility.

We used to be easily over 100 kids in our detention facility.

So a lot of these initiatives that we're talking about have been instrumental.

- Right.

- In decreasing youth being transported to the detention center.

- Back to the Mayor's Office, and with about 10 minutes left here, how do you fund this?

How do you find more money for it?

I mean how do you, again people are desperate for, we'll get to more of the law enforcement side, but just for these, I hear it from people all the time, this is what we wanna do we wanna intercede beforehand and try to get people off the path they're going on.

These are after all kids.

They're capable sometimes of really horrific tragic acts, but how do we fund it?

- Well it's budget season.

[Jerri laughs] And so you have to make it a priority.

And our mayor has made it a priority.

One example of that is what we're doing with the detention facility that we are revamping.

And we actually had to find additional funds, again because of the pandemic, because of supply and labor issues.

But that new facility is going to be so different from what we have now.

There's one classroom where they are now, there's gonna be 10 in the future facility that has computer labs.

There's spaces for mental health services, social work services, there is a rec area where they can go outside and move their bodies.

There will be an actual library.

Right now what we have is a cart that gets pushed around.

There's places for visitation for families.

We make it a priority in our administration to when these kids touch our services that they get what they need emotionally and educationally to be able to move off of this path and into a better future.

- Bring Bill back in.

- The center at Raleigh had kind of a rough start because there were laws about if the police transport a juvenile then the juvenile has to be handcuffed.

I take it that at this stage after that kind of false start of this that it's up to the parents to bring the child, that an appointment is made and a referral is made and then the youth and their family come later right?

- Yes sir that's correct.

So the way the process will work now is when a police officer who is in the community and apprehends a youth they now issue a summons.

Right and so the youth has to take that summons and report down to juvenile court.

Now Memphis police will have the option of taking that summons and on top of it placing what we're calling a deferment letter.

And on that letter's information for the youth and their families to contact the Youth and Family Resource Center.

So they all have 72 hours in which to do that.

Simultaneously those records also come to the Youth and Family Resource Center so staff at the Youth and Family Resource Center will also be contacting that youth and their family so that we can make that appointment and move as quickly as possible to get that youth some support.

- And what he's not saying is there is no place in the country that we know of that is doing it this way.

This is something new.

- That's right.

- And groundbreaking.

Most places make you go to juvenile court, make you go through that process, and then be referred.

And when you have that touch with the system it impacts that child for the rest of their lives.

We are trying to divert that, and we're the only place in the nation that's doing it.

- So yeah, go ahead.

- I wanna add this.

My goal is for that child not to even have handcuffs put on him or take a ride at all.

We wanna get involved early on, we don't wanna exasperate any type of trauma.

We wanna get them the services that they need and show them support of the community.

- And aside from the deferment letter, this is not a case of where they get the deferment letter and the kid can take the letter and just maybe wad it up or just the parent doesn't see it.

There's a follow up on this?

- There is a follow up.

If we do not hear from the youth and their family within 10 days, then that paperwork continues on its original trajectory toward juvenile court.

So there is a sense of urgency that the youth and their family will have to follow.

We want to provide these supports, but we also know you need to wanna help yourself.

Right so the responsibility will fall on the youth and the family to get in touch with us.

We'll make the reach, but in order for us to get this in order for this to work it is a partnership.

- What do you say to a parent who their son or daughter is taken into juvenile custody for the first time and they don't know where this came from, or they do know where it came from but they just don't know what to do about the behavior they're seeing?

And how common is that?

- Yeah we see parents all the time that are having a hard time.

I have a teenager of my own.

So let me just say first, it is sometimes difficult.

But we wanna partner with parents, get them the help that they need, get them parenting classes if they need help with that.

We have partners that will help with that.

In addition, if they have questions, we welcome them to be able, we're public servants, we want them to reach out to us and we'll be glad to help 'em out any type of way with any type of questions.

- I assume but tell me if I'm wrong, that for the most part we're talking about these diversion and alternative, these are youths who've been accused of or who have done nonviolent, I mean where is the line?

I mean if a young person shoots someone, whether or not they're killed, do they go through these programs or do they go down a different path?

- Yeah based upon state law you've got a weapon related charge.

- Okay.

- Then you have to go before a magistrate judge.

- And also the carjacking kind of situation if there's a weapon.

- Yeah those are violent crimes.

- Okay so we're talking about things like.

- We're talking about misdemeanors and very low-level felonies, simple assault, vandalism, and things of that nature right.

So-- - Things that by law can be diverted on their first case.

- Exactly.

- Okay.

- Exactly.

So we're excited that the Memphis Police Department partnered with the Mayor's Office to come alongside and develop these specific charges.

- Right.

- That will allow youth to come visit us.

- You mentioned state law and we just wrapped up the session, a lot as I mention before.

And I mean anybody who's followed crime, a lot of it, not all of it, but a lot of it the laws, the sentencing, the what can and can't be done where guns can and cannot be and so on are set by the state, they're not set by City Council or County Commission or the Mayor's Office.

Did you get anything in the, you, from this point of view anything happen in legislature that helps, anything happen that hurt?

- I would say that one of the things we've constantly been pushing against is the open carry.

And that was not brought down from 21 to 18.

[Jerri laughs] While we're talking about youth 18.

- Yeah for people who don't know, there was a proposal that made quite a bit of headway to allow everyone down to 18-years-old to open carry a weapon in Tennessee.

- So not bringing it down to 18 is obviously helpful because that just leads to more guns to people who are even younger than 18 having it in our community and more violent crime.

And that's something we definitely wanna head off.

But there are a lot of wonderful legislatures there that are working on this issue, especially around the issue of mental health treatment for the youth.

And I know our administration has just partnered with the University of Memphis to put 10 telehealth mental health suites in different schools.

Again another place where we can catch these kids and these issues earlier.

But we're gonna have to work here on the local level up to the state level to get to these problems.

- What would your wish list, I mean it's a long ways away, but for the next session?

Because again so much of this is set by the state.

- Yeah well I just hope that as they work through the legislative session they keep in mind these children and their families and the supports they need, and help provide funding for us to be able to create places like this.

- Other wishlist from the state.

- My wish list is that we can go around the clock having liaisons.

Because crisis happen after five o'clock.

So we wanna be able to respond to families late at night.

My wish list is I will have liaisons-- - But that would be state funding.

- Yeah absolutely.

- Right the state has a limit you from doing that I assume right now.

- Yeah no I don't think so.

No I don't.

- Wish list from the state?

- Similar to the ones that have presented, funding, but also just a comprehensive look also at how we respond to adverse childhood experiences and trauma that children experiences.

So those are the things that connect the dots to the disorderly conduct which is the other charge that I forgot to mention.

Connect the dots to what Attorney Green is saying.

So the charges themselves are shaped around what we know are responses that youth have to adverse childhood experiences and trauma.

So when the state begins to look at policies, and especially funding around those areas we'd love to entertain any advancement in that area.

- Yeah just a couple minutes left Bill.

Last questions.

- Yeah.

In terms of adverse childhood experiences this could be just seeing violence on a daily basis.

How much of that is the story of juveniles who get into trouble or children who get into trouble?

- Oh it's a pretty powerful reflection of it, and unfortunately what we tend to see.

I know what I experienced as an educator is we tend to see is if for example CJ is a teenager, his older brother is involved in a gang and doing all kinds of mischievous very, very bad things, this is what he sees.

Right and so this is unfortunately also what he does.

And so what we wanna do-- - Hurt people hurt people.

- Right exactly.

[Jerri laughs] - Generational side.

- Exactly.

- The brothers and sisters.

I think the Family Resource Center I like that name because we wanna attack the generational piece.

Think not just one generation, but second and third generation so that we can have sustainability as we mention earlier.

- With just a minute left, I should mention this is an election season that we are recording this on Thursday.

Mayor Harris just won the primary.

We will be reaching out to Mayor Harris to come on the show to talk about this and other issues as well as Worth Morgan who will be running against Mayor Harris who is running against Mayor Harris, and get a chance to talk some of this.

So I know there's a political backdrop to all this, especially in election season.

Judge Michael we've reached out to and hope to get him on, he's up for re-election, am I right about this Bill?

- Yeah.

- 'Cause there are too many elections.

[everyone laughs] [Eric mumbling] Every year I say there's just too many to keep track of.

But we thank you all for being here.

Thank you for the work you're doing, we really appreciate it.

And we have next week Jim Strickland, mayor we'll be talking to him about crime but also about all kinds of other issues going on with the city.

And in two weeks we'll have the Election Commission folks on, Linda Phillips as well as Mark Luttrell who is the head of Election Commission of course, a former county mayor.

Please join us then.

If you missed any of today's show you can get the full video at WKNO.org or on YouTube.

You can also get the full podcast of the show wherever you get your podcasts.

Thanks and we'll see you next week.

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