http:\/\/media.csosa.gov\/podcast\/audio\/2012\/03\/successful-youth-reentry-program-garrett-college-dc-public-safety-radio\/<\/a><\/p>\n[Audio Begins]<\/p>\n
Len Sipes:\u00a0 From the nation\u2019s capital, this is DC Public Safety.\u00a0 I\u2019m your host, Leonard Sipes.\u00a0 The title of today\u2019s program is Successful Rehabilitation Efforts.\u00a0 I travel frequently through Maryland\u2019s Garrett County, one of the most beautiful places in the United States, resting on the spine of the Appalachian Mountains, and there I read a local newspaper called the Republican, an editorial, and it addressed a college program by Garrett College and serving youth in the area, actually from Baltimore City at a youth camp in Garrett County, and I\u2019ll read very briefly from this editorial.\u00a0 The focus of the story is the Garrett Backbone College Program, which affords an opportunity for youth incarcerated at the Backbone Youth Center to obtain college credit, and more importantly, an avenue for productive life outside of the correctional system.\u00a0 The editorial goes on to say that the recidivism rate ordinarily for juveniles is 70-80%.\u00a0 However, since the Garrett Backbone College Program has been in existence, the recidivism rate of youth who have been in the program is 38%.\u00a0 Not only have two-thirds of the participants converted to a law abiding way of life, but a number of them have become highly successful.\u00a0 To talk about this program today, we have Elizabeth Grant.\u00a0 She is the Director of Liberal Arts and Justice Studies there at Garrett College.\u00a0 The internet address for Garrett College is www.garrettcollege.edu.\u00a0 Elizabeth, welcome to DC Public Safety.<\/p>\n
Elizabeth Grant:\u00a0 Hi, Len.\u00a0 Thank you, it\u2019s good to be with you today.<\/p>\n
Len Sipes:\u00a0 Well, I\u2019m really, really appreciative of you being with us today, because one of the things that I have seen in my 42 years within the criminal justice system is that most programs, when they\u2019re dealing with offenders, the success rate generally speaking is somewhere in the 10-20% ballpark, and when you consider that this editorial says that two-thirds of the people who have attended your program, the Garrett Backbone College Program, that two-thirds have gone on to become successful.\u00a0 To me, it\u2019s a phenomenal accomplishment.\u00a0 So I have two questions to start the program: describe the program, and how did you achieve such wonderful results?<\/p>\n
Elizabeth Grant:\u00a0 Oh, you\u2019re going to have a hard time with me keeping me reeled in!\u00a0 I am so excited about this program, and I love an opportunity to brag on it!<\/p>\n
Len Sipes:\u00a0 Well, brag on it!<\/p>\n
Elizabeth Grant:\u00a0 This started as a brainchild shortly, well actually, prior to my arrival at Garrett College, but I got swept in it in short order, and it was an effort by Mike Lewis, who is currently the principal for the Western Maryland Youth Centers through the department of juvenile services, and our former president, Dr. Steve Herman, and it was centered around an idea that they referred to as redemptive justice.\u00a0 Now restorative justice is kind of on the scene now where offenders have a duty to make good for the harm that they\u2019ve created to society, and redemptive justice goes a step further and says, you know, you\u2019ve harmed yourself as well.\u00a0 You the offender have harmed yourself as well, and you need to do what you need to do to get put back together again, whether it\u2019s getting vocational skills or understanding the impact that your behavior has on the larger culture, and so on and so forth.\u00a0 So they said, wouldn\u2019t it be great if youth that are in the custody of the state have an opportunity to go to college or to have exposure to things that otherwise they may not have, and the youth that we have in Western Maryland actually come from all over Maryland, not just Baltimore, and we do actually serve some kids in DC as well.\u00a0 So we started out in 2006 with 12 kids, and we were at Backbone Mountain, which is one of the four youth centers in Western Maryland, and decided to start small with two classes, so we offered an English class and a Sociology class, and it was very well received, and since that time, we have actually served 180 students for a collective of over 1,000 college credits.\u00a0 We\u2019ve offered 368 college courses, and the students are able to achieve graduation with their GED.\u00a0 So in the short time, which is usually about six months, students are able to get a leg up on getting their GED, so that chapter is accomplished, but then also to move on so that they\u2019re able to see that college isn\u2019t really that scary, and that they have options.\u00a0 The idea has never been to keep them here in Garrett County and at Garrett College, but that this is an opportunity for them to be exposed to, oh, so this is what college is like, and gosh, I can do this.\u00a0 And I\u2019ve had the pleasure of teaching a number of the courses, and I tell you what, they wear me out.\u00a0 I did a course one summer, the summer semesters are condensed.\u00a0 We meet for a longer period of time over a shorter number of weeks.\u00a0 So I ended up doing a sociology class that was four hours long, which ordinarily is just punishment for students and faculty alike!\u00a0 But it was absolutely thrilling to do it up in Backbone, because the students were making connections.\u00a0 For the first week or so, no butter\u2019s going to melt in their mouth, and they\u2019re just too cool for all of this, and then when they have their first taste of, oh my gosh, I get this.\u00a0 I\u2019m not stupid, I can do this, then they just catch on fire, and they ask questions, they integrate the material, they actually do their homework.\u00a0 Now there may be some truth to, they truly are a captive audience, and there isn\u2019t a lot to distract them from doing their assignments, but the reality is, they do their assignments, and they\u2019re, for the most part, an exceptionally bright bunch of kids.\u00a0 I mean, they\u2019re not there for singing too loud in the choir.\u00a0 But they\u2019re able to make the connections and connect the dots, and so over time, we were able to offer a couple of semesters, we were able to offer as many as fifteen credits, which is a full load by any college standard, and so students coming out of their six month, what started out to be getting in trouble and getting sent away, at the end of that, they\u2019re able to leave not only with their GED, but with a semester of college under their belt, and then go home to Montgomery Community College or Anne Arundel or any of the colleges that they want to go to, and these credits, we have decided to make them general education requirements so that these credits will transfer to wherever they are going.\u00a0 They\u2019re not starting cold.\u00a0 They don\u2019t have to make that leap from, \u201cI don\u2019t know what college is like\u201d and whether I can do it.<\/p>\n
Len Sipes:\u00a0 One of the things I do want to get into is because I have direct experience as a gang counselor in Baltimore City, I did a year of, where the judge said either go to a job corps or go to jail, and so I ran a group within a prison system, and so these are not easy individuals to deal with.\u00a0 These are not the cream of the crop that you\u2019re talking about, these are individuals that are caught up in the criminal justice system, they\u2019re juveniles, to the point where the state of Maryland has decided to put them into a center.\u00a0 I\u2019m not quite sure the word incarceration is the best choice of words, but they\u2019ve basically removed them from their homes and put them in these centers, so these are tough kids.\u00a0 These are not easy kids to reach, which is one of the reasons why traditionally, we\u2019ve had such a high recidivism rate with that particular population.\u00a0 Tell me why two-thirds succeeded.\u00a0 What is the secret sauce?\u00a0 What is the magic formula where — I said at the beginning of the program, these efforts, when they\u2019re successful, generally range in the 10-20% level, two-thirds of your people did well.\u00a0 How?\u00a0 Why?<\/p>\n
Elizabeth Grant:\u00a0 Well, you\u2019ve touched upon a really critical differentiation between the criminal justice system and the juvenile justice system, and it\u2019s a philosophical different that unfortunately doesn\u2019t always filter down to practice.\u00a0 The juvenile justice system was created by an act that separated youth, and the term juvenile varies from state to state, but generally anyone under 18, from the adult population because there was this belief that youth are not, don\u2019t think things through as well, and actually a lot of the research on brain development is beginning to bear that out, and that there is a better hope that young people can turn it around.\u00a0 They make stupid mistakes, and they should learn from their stupid mistakes, but then go on to be productive citizens rather than being a drag on the whole society by being an incarcerated adult.\u00a0 Now ideally, we could also employ this kind of mindset in a criminal justice system, but the prevailing thought is that, by the time they are adults, particularly as they get into middle age brackets, they\u2019re less likely to be able to change their behaviors, change their mindsets, understand the impact of their behavior, and so forth.\u00a0 So understanding that the approach to juvenile justice is much different than the approach in criminal justice, has been where, I think, we\u2019ve had our success.\u00a0 Unfortunately, there is no such thing as a juvenile justice bachelor\u2019s degree or graduate degree.\u00a0 They\u2019re all a specialty of criminal justice which, in my mind, is unfortunate, because it\u2019s not the same.\u00a0 You can\u2019t take someone that has a criminal justice mindset and assume that they\u2019re automatically going to understand the nuances of juvenile justice, particularly when it comes to these concepts of redemptive justice and rehabilitation, and for some of the people we work with, it\u2019s not even rehabilitation, because they haven\u2019t had the skills in the first place.<\/p>\n
Len Sipes:\u00a0 All right, but I\u2019m going to take you back to what I read from the Republican newspaper.\u00a0 70-80%, ordinarily within the larger juvenile justice system, fail.\u00a0 The bulk of adult offenders, two-thirds are rearrested after three years, 50% go back to prison.\u00a0 That\u2019s Department of Justice statistics.\u00a0 What is the secret sauce here in your program?<\/p>\n
Elizabeth Grant:\u00a0 We take a radical departure from the lock \u2018em up and throw away the key, and all they need\u2019s a little discipline, and by god, they\u2019re going to do it our way, and they\u2019re going to learn how to respect authority, and those are the tools of the criminal justice system, by and large, and I\u2019m trying to be careful with the way I choose my words, but we basically want to beat them over the head with, you have been a bad member of society, and we\u2019re going to punish you, and that trickles down into juvenile justice because we don\u2019t have a ready pool of people that understand that you\u2019ve got to say, you know what, what you did was a problem, how are we, how are you going to turn it around?\u00a0 Let us show you perhaps some options you might want to think about, including education and so on.\u00a0 And what we have done, and one of the things that puts Garrett College, I think, in the forefront nationally is that we have an Associates\u2019 Degree in juvenile justice, so our specialty and our focus is, this is what it is to work with young people.\u00a0 It is not the same as working in the criminal justice system.\u00a0 So for example, we refer to the students that are in the Garrett Backbone College Program as scholars, and there\u2019s this thread that runs through everything we do that we create things by speaking it, and if we expect these young men to be young men and scholars and gentlemen, I mean, when I refer to them collectively in a group and I\u2019m addressing them, I will say \u201cgentlemen.\u201d\u00a0 And how often has that happened in their life?<\/p>\n
Len Sipes:\u00a0 I don\u2019t know, but I remember my experience in Job Corps.\u00a0 It was not an easy experience.\u00a0 These kids were not easy to deal with.\u00a0 There was, and now again, ours ranged from, say, 16, up to, I think at that point, 22 or 23.\u00a0 It was the most exhausting job that I\u2019ve ever had, and I will, again, go back to the fact that two-thirds of your people, the people who entered this program, were successful.\u00a0 That\u2019s phenomenal.<\/p>\n
Elizabeth Grant:\u00a0 Well, and it takes a willingness on the part of the adults, first of all, to be adults to be willing to pay for the crimes of everyone else that\u2019s ever worked with this youth, because we come into the college program, and actually, we\u2019ve established a little bit of a reputation so that some kids will actually stay longer than they have to just so they can finish the college program, but we come into it, and those, none of the scholars in the Backbone College Program have any reason to take us at our word, or to believe that we are there for anything other than self serving purposes, and so we, the adults going on, have to be willing to earn their respect and pay our dues.\u00a0 I mean, it\u2019s kind of flipping the whole model, it\u2019s like, these, the youth that are in these programs have been through things I can\u2019t even imagine, and probably things that most people don\u2019t even think about, and for us to go in and approach them as, you\u2019re broken, we\u2019re going to fix you, you\u2019re going to do it our way, we\u2019ll tell you what to do, is just more of the same for them.\u00a0 But when you go in and you address them as \u201csir,\u201d or you say, all right gentlemen, we\u2019re going to do this, and you expect, of course you can do this, because you\u2019re bright, and it\u2019s \u2013<\/p>\n
Len Sipes:\u00a0 But you mentioned \u2013<\/p>\n
Elizabeth Grant:\u00a0 – it wrecks their equilibrium.\u00a0 I mean, they\u2019re used to being tough, and nothing\u2019s going to get through \u2013<\/p>\n
Len Sipes:\u00a0 Right, that\u2019s exactly right.<\/p>\n
Elizabeth Grant:\u00a0 – you know, and we disrupt that, and it throws them off balance, so that the responses they\u2019ve always given that are essentially defense mechanisms don\u2019t work for them anymore.\u00a0 While they\u2019re groping around looking for things, we\u2019re suggesting like interpersonal skills and responsibility and accountability, and that sort of thing.<\/p>\n
Len Sipes:\u00a0 But let\u2019s go back before the break in terms of talking about the kids in the program, because most have raised themselves.\u00a0 Most have gotten up and poured their own cereal at 7:00 in the morning and sent themselves off to school.\u00a0 Most \u2013<\/p>\n
Elizabeth Grant:\u00a0 And their younger siblings.<\/p>\n
Len Sipes:\u00a0 And their younger siblings.\u00a0 Most didn\u2019t have a father inside.\u00a0 A lot of times, the mother is not there, they have a lot of times, not all, but certainly a lot of times, they have grown up, and I\u2019m not making any excuses for their criminality, I\u2019m not making any excuses for their behavior, I\u2019m simply stating facts as they are, a lot of times, they are self-raised, and when you become, when you\u2019re self-raised, you have a hard edge towards the rest of the world that is sometimes unbreakable.<\/p>\n
Elizabeth Grant:\u00a0 Well, I think it\u2019s the rare exception when it\u2019s unbreakable.\u00a0 The approach that I like to take whenever I\u2019m working with someone that\u2019s going to be challenging is to truly believe they\u2019re doing the best they can, and that their behavior is serving a purpose for them.\u00a0 Now it may be anti-social behavior, it may be destructive behavior, but it\u2019s serving a purpose for them, and that is certainly true for a number of the students, and almost all of them do have a hard edge.<\/p>\n
Len Sipes:\u00a0 We have \u2013<\/p>\n
Elizabeth Grant:\u00a0 Some of them come from \u2013<\/p>\n
Len Sipes:\u00a0 Go ahead.<\/p>\n
Elizabeth Grant:\u00a0 Some of them come from pretty nice homes that, for whatever reason, something goes south.\u00a0 But I\u2019d like to be able to approach anyone that I\u2019m working with that I think is going to be challenging with the belief that they\u2019re doing the best they can.\u00a0 It\u2019s not working for the rest of us, but it is serving some purpose for them, and to be able to get around to what that purpose is, and then as I said earlier, this whole idea of treating them differently than they expect to be treated, kind of throws them off balance.\u00a0 So now they\u2019re looking for, okay, now what do I do?\u00a0 And that gives us the perfect opportunity to say, here\u2019s an idea, and it does matter that you\u2019re a member of your community, one of the things that we\u2019re doing very well in Western Maryland, I think, is getting youth from all of the youth centers out in the community to do service in the community.\u00a0 They get AmeriCorps credit, which they can then later use, but they are all over the county, and in Allegheny County as well, doing a lot of community service type things that give them a sense, I mean, it gives them practice to be pro-social members of the community, which most of them don\u2019t have an experience with, and then the other benefit to that is it gives the community a chance to see these youth as something other than little criminals.<\/p>\n
Len Sipes:\u00a0 We\u2019re more than halfway through the program.\u00a0 Let me re-introduce our guest, Elizabeth Grant.\u00a0 She is the Director of Liberal Arts and Justice Studies at Garrett College, www.garrettcollege.edu, talking about a program that has proven to help two-thirds of the juveniles who are involved in this program lead successful lives, which is one of the best statistics I have ever read, which is one of the reasons why, when I read the Republican newspaper, I knew I had to do this interview with Elizabeth Grant to find out more about this program.\u00a0 So Elizabeth, we\u2019ve basically established that kids from all over the state of Maryland, they come up to Garrett County, Garrett County is sort of like Maryland\u2019s mountainous county, it\u2019s beautiful forest, beautiful area, the Savage River State Forest is the largest state forest in the state of Maryland, I think 60,000 acres, so it\u2019s a beautiful, beautiful area, so they come from all over the state of Maryland, they come up there, they interact with the college, and you have had quite a rate of success with them, and we\u2019ve talked about the reasons for that success, but the downside of all this is that there is a possibility that the program may go away, correct?<\/p>\n
Elizabeth Grant:\u00a0 Well, yeah, that is a black cloud on the horizon that we\u2019re seeing, and I want to backtrack just a minute.\u00a0 Our students do come from all over Maryland, and we also serve some students from the District area.<\/p>\n
Len Sipes:\u00a0 The District of Columbia, okay.<\/p>\n
Elizabeth Grant:\u00a0 It\u2019s small, and it\u2019s part of Maryland.\u00a0 Or it\u2019s located \u2013<\/p>\n
Len Sipes:\u00a0 Right next to Maryland, yes.<\/p>\n
Elizabeth Grant:\u00a0 We have a couple of issues that I\u2019m not sure if they\u2019re budget related, or from whence they come, but one of the huge concerns in my mind is that Western Maryland Youth Centers are the last of the Department of Juvenile Services facilities that will be assumed by the Maryland Department of Education, and this was initiated actually under Governor Ehrlich to have MSDE take the education role with the Department of Juvenile Services, and because of the mandates for MSDE, there won\u2019t be time for students at any of the youth centers to be out doing the AmeriCorps activities that they\u2019ve done, which are thousands and thousands of hours, and it provides them a stipend of about $1,200 hours that they can use then for vocation or continued education after they leave, nor will it allow time for the college program that we have going on now, and the great big fly in the ointment is that some of the students that are served in residential facilities operated by the Department of Juvenile Services already have a GED or a Maryland high school diploma, and in those instances, they would not be eligible for MSDE education, so they\u2019ve got this block of time during the day, this six hours that, what do you do?\u00a0 And in those cases, the option has been, at least historically with the other facilities, they don\u2019t do anything.\u00a0 They\u2019re basically housed.\u00a0 They may go out and work on the grounds and that sort of thing, but some of the stuff that is going to be cut out for the students are things like the aquaculture program.\u00a0 There have been a couple of initiatives where students have learned to raise fish, either for commercial purposes, like Tilapia, or the Rockfish that they\u2019ve released in streams in Maryland, or the sunfish, and in the process of raising these fish, they not only learn everything from soup to nuts about fish, but they also learn about water quality, and they have done a number of projects where they monitor the streams and do stream cleanup, and they plant native species and help filter the water, and the good thing about that is it translates to a marketable skill once they are out of custody of Department of Juvenile Services, they can go down to, and in fact, we actually have some youth that are placed in programs with Parks and People Green in Baltimore.\u00a0 They\u2019re able to go to the zoo and say, I can test water quality, or they\u2019re able to work with Department of Natural Resources, and the other silver lining to that is that they\u2019re saving DNR a significant portion of their budget in just man hours, because as they\u2019re learning these things and performing these services, then DNR is freed up to do other things.<\/p>\n
Len Sipes:\u00a0 The Department of Natural Resources, right.<\/p>\n
Elizabeth Grant:\u00a0 – organizations that the youth work with, like fire halls and areas, the food pantry and book distribution things, that they go in there, they\u2019re useful.<\/p>\n
Len Sipes:\u00a0 So the whole idea is \u2013<\/p>\n
Elizabeth Grant:\u00a0 There\u2019s value in being useful.<\/p>\n
Len Sipes:\u00a0 The whole idea is to participate in the program through Garrett Community College for the first time to get a leg up on a college education, and at the same time, to go out and do community service work in such a way that it takes the burden off of Garrett County and any county that these camps happen to be located at, so they\u2019re out there basically serving the community, you said the books program, I do a lot of walking on the trails in Garrett County.\u00a0 I\u2019m assuming that they\u2019ve maintained some of those trails.<\/p>\n
Elizabeth Grant:\u00a0 Oh yes, absolutely.\u00a0 And it services the state, actually not just Garrett County, but it\u2019s statewide, the benefits of the youth learning ourselves, and the fact that they can practice being a member of community is huge for a number of the scholars that we have, and the youth that are in facilities, that\u2019s not been their experience.\u00a0 It\u2019s been looking out for number 1 in a dog eat dog world, which they need to be able to do, because they\u2019ll be eaten alive if they can\u2019t.\u00a0 But at the same time, they\u2019ve had no experience and no practice in being community leaders, or as being viewed as anyone positive, and there\u2019s tremendous value in feeling like you do have value to contribute to a community.<\/p>\n
Len Sipes:\u00a0 Well that would be an incredible shame if the program was altered, don\u2019t you think?\u00a0 I mean, it is because of administrative changes, there\u2019s the possibility of the program being affected or the program being shut down.<\/p>\n
Elizabeth Grant:\u00a0 Well, both, and when you say administrative changes, that\u2019s something that the Department of Juvenile Services is chronically having to deal with.\u00a0 The secretary is a cabinet position, which is political.\u00a0 Typically, we\u2019ve had a secretary appointed every four years depending on how long the governor\u2019s able to stay in office, so that\u2019s like new leadership every four years, which each leader wants to come in and leave his or her footprint on things, and sometimes that\u2019s difficult for the people who are actually on the front mind to translate, and it\u2019s certainly difficult on the kids, because policies change with each different administration, so yeah, there\u2019s the change in administration, but there\u2019s also the changes that are coming down that are part of regulations of other agencies, for example, the move with MSDE coming in to take the educational piece of youth that are in DJS facilities.\u00a0 One of the beauties that Garrett College enjoys, and it\u2019s translated to the college program that we operate, and also to the youth centers in Western Maryland, is we\u2019re able to have a degree of autonomy because we are small, and we can put programs into place, and we know the other partners that we\u2019re working with.\u00a0 I mean, I know Mike Lewis who is the principal, and we can put things together because he knows people, I know people, and people are willing to come and be involved in this in part because of our professional reputation, Mike\u2019s and mine, but because of the reputation of the program.\u00a0 They\u2019ve heard about us.\u00a0 They\u2019ve seen our kids out, and so when we say, how about we come out and help you with your fish fry.\u00a0 Great!\u00a0 This is a model that\u2019s understood in juvenile justice, but that\u2019s, it\u2019s still just a corner of the whole industry, if you will.\u00a0 Unfortunately, the prison industry\u2019s the fastest growing, and it extends down to juvenile justice.\u00a0 I\u2019m also familiar with a program called Rite of Passage that operates nationwide, but they have facilities in five different states, and they absolutely have hit on the head what it takes, and it\u2019s getting kids engaged in a community setting, and exposing them to various options.\u00a0 And they have the luxury of being private non-profit.<\/p>\n
Len Sipes:\u00a0 You\u2019ve been able, well let me back up for a second.\u00a0 But you\u2019ve been able to document the fact that two-thirds of the kids are successful.\u00a0 That is very rare.\u00a0 That is very unusual.\u00a0 That doesn\u2019t happen with the vast majority of criminal justice programs, and certainly, well let me ask my question, my question is, certainly others within the criminal justice system, certainly others within government, within the state of Maryland, beyond the state of Maryland, have heard about this program, correct, and the success of the program?<\/p>\n
Elizabeth Grant:\u00a0 Well, anybody that I can get to listen to me!\u00a0 And I know that various secretaries of the Department of Juvenile Services have been excited about what we\u2019ve been doing.\u00a0 But I\u2019m not sure that we\u2019re heard as far and wide as what might be useful.\u00a0 I mean, we have been called by political leaders and educational leaders a model for Maryland, and I might be so bold to suggest that we are a model for the country.<\/p>\n
Len Sipes:\u00a0 You may be!\u00a0 With that level of success, you may be.<\/p>\n
Elizabeth Grant:\u00a0 Well, the problem is that we need to have a degree of professionalism and autonomy that requires a degree of trust that, in this day and age, and I don\u2019t know if it\u2019s just the way things are, but some of the things that have happened on the grander scheme is getting hard to come by.\u00a0 We were right on the money to start keeping statistics the moment we rolled this out \u2013<\/p>\n
Len Sipes:\u00a0 Oh, absolutely!<\/p>\n
Elizabeth Grant:\u00a0 – and I\u2019m so glad that we did, but one of the heartbreaks that we have is the number of students that we don\u2019t know where they are, because through budgeting, and we as a country say that youth are our future, and we want to invest in youth, and every governor I can remember since I was voting has come in on the platform of reform for juvenile justice or juvenile services, or making kids, having more kids turn out well, but the reality, when it comes down to having qualified people in the jobs, not qualified, but highly trained, really, people in the jobs that can distinguish between the criminal justice mentality and the juvenile justice mentality, that\u2019s not as supported by funding and by, quite frankly, status.<\/p>\n
Len Sipes:\u00a0 We only have a couple minutes left, so we\u2019re going to have to start getting down into some very basic facts and questions.\u00a0 Do you see, is there any hope for this program?\u00a0 Will this radio show, will the influence of others save the program?<\/p>\n
Elizabeth Grant:\u00a0 I hope so.\u00a0 I hope so.\u00a0 You\u2019ve given our contact information.\u00a0 I would be happy to talk at length with anyone that wants me to, and I would hope that people that are within earshot of this program will feel comfortable in contacting the governor, Governor O\u2019Malley, and saying, you know, I heard this broadcast, this sounds like a really great program, but I understand it might be in trouble.\u00a0 How can we help support it?\u00a0 And certainly to share that with Secretary Abed as well.\u00a0 They\u2019re aware of the good things that are happening, but I don\u2019t know that the powers that be are aware of the groundswell of support that really this program deserves.<\/p>\n
Len Sipes:\u00a0 Well anytime that you have a major editorial in the newspaper talking about the success of the program, I mean, somebody \u2013<\/p>\n
Elizabeth Grant:\u00a0 Well, the headline of the editorial that says GC program saves lives, and I absolutely believe that.<\/p>\n
Len Sipes:\u00a0 Right.\u00a0 Well if two-thirds are successful, if two-thirds of the kids that you\u2019re touching are successful, considering the rates that we ordinarily get out of programs, there\u2019s something unique and something really interesting happening at Garrett College and the Backbone Mountain Camp.\u00a0 There\u2019s some secret sauce, there\u2019s something really dynamic that is creating this success, and so I was hoping that we would bring out that program, that secret sauce today, and what I hear from you, that it\u2019s commitment.\u00a0 You on ly have a couple seconds left.<\/p>\n
Elizabeth Grant:\u00a0 Yeah, it is commitment, and it\u2019s believing that it can work, because if you believe it can work, then you\u2019ll do what you can to make it work, and the two-thirds success is couched a little bit, because we can\u2019t just back that out from the recidivism rate, which actually, I\u2019m glad [OVERLAY] \u2013<\/p>\n
Len Sipes:\u00a0 Don\u2019t have much time left.\u00a0 It\u2019s now 32%.<\/p>\n
Elizabeth Grant:\u00a0 Right, 32%.\u00a0 But we also have a big chunk of kids, we don\u2019t know where they are.\u00a0 So the success rate isn\u2019t quite as high as two-thirds.\u00a0 It might be.\u00a0 But we aren\u2019t sure, because we don\u2019t know what\u2019s going on with the kids that we can\u2019t track.<\/p>\n
Len Sipes:\u00a0 Our guest today has been Elizabeth Grant.\u00a0 She is the Director of Liberal Arts and Justice Studies at Garrett College in Western Maryland, www.garrettcollege.edu.\u00a0 Ladies and gentlemen, this is D.C. Public Safety.\u00a0 We really appreciate your letters, cards, phone calls, emails, all the suggestions in terms of future programs, and please have yourselves a very, very pleasant day.<\/p>\n
[Audio Ends]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Welcome to \u201cDC Public Safety\u201d \u2013 Radio and television shows, blog and transcripts\u00a0on crime, criminal offenders and the criminal justice system. We currently average 90,000 page views a month. The portal site for \u201cDC Public Safety\u201d is http:\/\/media.csosa.gov. Radio Program available at http:\/\/media.csosa.gov\/podcast\/audio\/2012\/03\/successful-youth-reentry-program-garrett-college-dc-public-safety-radio\/ [Audio Begins] Len Sipes:\u00a0 From the nation\u2019s capital, this is DC Public […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[23,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-783","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-audiopodcast","category-criminaljustice","entry"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pBoKk-cD","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/media.csosa.gov\/podcast\/transcripts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/783","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/media.csosa.gov\/podcast\/transcripts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/media.csosa.gov\/podcast\/transcripts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/media.csosa.gov\/podcast\/transcripts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/media.csosa.gov\/podcast\/transcripts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=783"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/media.csosa.gov\/podcast\/transcripts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/783\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":784,"href":"https:\/\/media.csosa.gov\/podcast\/transcripts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/783\/revisions\/784"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/media.csosa.gov\/podcast\/transcripts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=783"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/media.csosa.gov\/podcast\/transcripts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=783"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/media.csosa.gov\/podcast\/transcripts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=783"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}