Douglas county has spent the last few years updating and improving their juvenile detention and rehabilitation. Over the last 15 years there has been a steady decline in rates of incarcerated youth in Douglas County, falling to record lows in 2021. Kim Hawekotte, the Deputy County Administrator for Juvenile Services in Douglas County, spoke on the work that Douglas County has been doing to reform juvenile detention and make it into a preventative and rehabilitative service instead.

“When a youth is in the juvenile justice system, it is a rehabilitative system,” Hawekotte explained. “It’s not like with adults, where it’s an accountability system. Detention is not a rehabilitative service. Detention facilities are designed to keep the community safe. And being that it’s not a rehabilitate service, youth should be in there for a short time, and then they should be brought together with the needed community programs and services.” 

Douglas made major changes to how it works with young people when it built the new detention center.

“Douglas county, at the same time, I feel made the right decision that a building is a building; that doesn’t change people, that doesn’t change youth,” said Hawekotte. “That at the same time you do the building, you have to expend the money and the resources and the time to create the needed resources and programs in the community to work with these families and youth.”

Douglas County has been putting work into those community programs, which Hawekotte called the ‘Continuum of Care’, working towards a strong prevention and early intervention for young people to help them with the issues that might cause them to commit crimes in the first place.

“For every action, there is a behavior. Behind every behavior, there is a feeling, and behind every feeling there is a need. And if you don’t deal with that need, you’re never going to solve the issue. For kids, their behavior might be doing something criminal, but we have to look behind that to determine what is the need. For instance, let’s say a youth is charged with shoplifting. The need could be they’re shoplifting food because there is no food in the house.”

Hawekotte talked about what she called ‘pink flags’, issues that arise early in childhood that can be markers towards possible criminal issues later in life. “One of the classic pink flags, is they’re 8-9-10 years old, they’re getting suspended or expelled from school for behaviors. Those should be pink flags for us that [a] family needs help, can we get them the help earlier, instead of waiting until they’re 13-14 and entering the juvenile justice system?”

They are also working on programs for once a child is in the system as well, to address those needs that have led them there.

Hawekotte also spoke on many studies done by conservative states that have looked into the cost of running juvenile detention centers. “When you look at the cost of prevention/early intervention, for every dollar you spend on early intervention services, you save fourteen dollars. When you look at it from a fiscal standpoint, a) it’s better for kids, and b) as a taxpayer, isn’t that what you’d want?”

“We have applied for and obtained many grants to build up and maintain these services in the community. In the past three years we have brought in close to $11 million dollars that is going all out to community providers to help develop and build these resources that are needed.”

Hawekotte shared that a nonprofit organization in Douglas County called The BRIDGE Family Resource Connection Network, which will be a series of interconnected family resource centers, will provide services to help children and lower the number of juveniles in the system. It will provide a General Services Path; individual referrals and brief or emergency assistance such as housing assistance, legal aid, and financial help; a Central Services Path; which will have programs to assist individuals such as parenting courses, job or life skills, tutoring, and after-school activities like sports or art; and a Family Coaching Path; which will work with families to set goals and help with progressing towards them. The nonprofit has been created, and they are actively working to build these hubs for helping the community.

“We need something that is easily accessible in our neighborhood,” said Hawekotte, citing a survey they had done of family in the county, “we cannot drive or have transportation issues to get to someplace thirty minutes away. It needs to be in our community, and it has to be people that we trust in our community that are helping us work with it.”

“The families were also very clear that these family resource centers should not be run by the government or the school systems, because those are both big stakeholders. It needs to be its own community-based center.”

Douglas County’s goal is to offer services and options for young people without them needing court involvement or legal action. They are also hoping to address the inequality that is currently taking over the system. As of a study from April of this year, 94% of the juveniles incarcerated right not are BIPOC, with 55% Black and 26% Hispanic. Considering the last census data taken in 2022 showed that Douglas County had a 20.5% BIPOC population, this is drastically unequal.

Douglas County and Kim Hawekotte hope to see the number of children in the system continue to decline as more options are available for them to help lead them from a path of criminal behaviors.

If you would like to learn more about what Douglas County is working towards, you can go to leadingreform.org. For more about The BRIDGE, you can go to bridgefamilynetwork.org.