Troubled teens have to know the way to San Jose for drug
treatment and anger management
Morgan Hill – Redemption is a faraway thing for many Morgan Hill and Gilroy teens.
South County’s deliquents face long drives or even longer bus rides to San Jose programs that wean them from drugs and help dim their rage, programs they can’t find closer to home. To twist the old adage, South County has its pound of teen crime, but barely an ounce of prevention.
“Young people in Gilroy who are trying to correct the problems in their lives have to go 30 miles north to San Jose or 30 miles south to Salinas, in order to overcome their problems. Problems they experienced in Gilroy,” said Timoteo Vasquez, a youth organizer working with Communities United in Prevention, a grassroots coalition in Gilroy.
He’s heard the stories over and over, from troubled teens who want to change. But South County offers few outpatient drug treatment programs, no anger management programs and county probation officers send juvenile addicts to only one residential drug treatment program: Advent Group Ministries, in San Jose.
The distance is one more road block to rehab for area at-risk teens, says Karen Fletcher, deputy chief probation officer for the Santa Clara County Probation Department.
“The transportation issue is huge for minors in South County,” said Fletcher. Years ago, the county paid for bus passes to get Gilroy youth to San Jose programs. Today, after budget cuts axed the passes, teens pay their own way.
It’s a frustration to youth advocates, who say it’s hard to steer kids straight without the programs they need close to home. Gilroy teens are more likely to reoffend than other Santa Clara County teens: 19 percent of Gilroy’s 221 teen probationers went back to court for additional offenses from Dec. 1, 2005 to Nov. 30, 2006, compared to 13 percent of teen probationers countywide. Of Gilroy teens who committed additional crimes, 15 percent came back for violating the terms of their probation, compared to 10 percent countywide.
“You really need to supervise these kids to turn them around,” said deputy district attorney David Soares, team leader of the office’s Juvenile Delinquency Unit. “If they don’t have programs there to chemically test kids and hold them accountable, giving them an excuse not to use [drugs], not to hang out …” His voice trailed off.
From where Enrique Arreola sits at the Mexican American Community Services Agency, the connection is clear.
“Part of their probation requirements are anger-management programs. There aren’t many here. Many of them are forced to go to San Jose – and transport is an issue,” said Arreola, director of prevention and intervention programs. “I think that’s why South County has one of the higher [teen] recidivism rates in the county.”
Even drug-testing facilities are limited to San Jose, and when teens skip their drug testing, they violate their probation and end up in crowded county jails, said County Supervisor Don Gage.
“There’s no services for South County that are adequate as far as I’m concerned,” he said. “There’s no treatment beds down here. And the problem we’re having is, we’re going to have to cut way back because of our deficit.
“We’re the ugly stepchild,” he lamented. “Nobody thinks of South County.”
The cash-strapped juvenile justice system can’t afford South County outposts, Soares explained. Over the past decade, funds have been drained from the system. At a 2004 Community Crime Prevention Associates retreat, youth service providers calculated that 645 South County youth would have to lose services, in light of 2005 budget cuts. Two years later, the situation hasn’t improved. Soares expects juvenile probation to go under the knife again in the next round of budget cuts, as Santa Clara County faces a projected deficit of more than $200 million.
“The county is acutely aware of the costs of probation,” he said. Soares dreams of cloning programs like the Santa Clara Alternative Placement Academy, a probation-run high school in San Jose. “It’s hard to send a kid from Morgan Hill or Gilroy to this school in south San Jose. Ideally, we’d have one in South County, one in North County. But it’s tough to get the funding, and the critical mass for it.”
Besides, he said, “we only have three juvenile court judges. we only have one juvenile hall and one juvenile probation department. It’s difficult to decentralize that.”
A handful of South County programs are aimed at teens’ needs. Since September 2006, a teen class, Health Realization, operated by the county’s Department of Alcohol and Drug Services (DADS) meets Wednesday afternoons in Gilroy.
At Gilroy and Mount Madonna high schools, a DADS counselor is available twice a week for on-site counseling. Group meetings like Narcotics Anonymous and Alcoholics Anonymous also count toward teens’ outpatient drug rehab requirements, but Fletcher says that many aren’t age-appropriate. And for teens with private insurance, Kaiser Permanente offers a range of treatment options.
“But they’re the exception,” Fletcher said, “not the rule.”
The need is here, Vasquez insists. But the programs just aren’t.
Emily Alpert covers public safety issues for The Dispatch. She can be reached at 847-7158, or at [email protected].
