The city of Rockland has won a $450,000 federal grant to support youth in the juvenile justice system and those at risk of entering it, putting it among a handful of communities that will take part in a national initiative to tackle juvenile crime at the local level.
The award represents a major milestone for a grassroots effort in the Rockland area to respond to an uptick in juvenile crime that has frustrated officials for about two years. A stream of headlines about the same kids repeatedly breaking the law have drawn statewide attention to the problem, but, behind the scenes, police, social workers and education officials have been steadily working together to come up with solutions.
“It’s clear that our communities are struggling to support the mental health crisis plaguing our youth and children,” said Jessica Berry, the director of special education services for the St. George Municipal School Unit and director of the MidCoast Community Collaborative, the organization spearheading the grassroots work. “This grant could provide us with some of the support and initial first steps needed to make real substantive change.”
The grant from the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, an agency within the U.S. Department of Justice, will allow the city, its police department and several partner organizations to design a strategy for keeping youth out of the justice system, according to a Friday announcement by the city. The team will also identify which programs and services the Rockland region should develop to better support teens who have already broken the law.
The city and the Collaborative’s partnering organizations are the Restorative Justice Institute of Maine, which provides accountability programming to youth in the justice system; Trekkers, a Rockland-based outdoor youth mentorship organization; the University of Maine; the Place Matters policy lab at the University of Southern Maine and the Maine Health Institute for Research.
Rockland is one of 26 places across the country to receive grant money under a federal initiative to support local interventions for at-risk teens and young offenders, reflecting a national shift in juvenile justice policy away from the use of juvenile detention centers.
Rockland and the rest of Maine, however, have struggled with that shift, largely due to a dire shortage of programs and services in the community, as examined by recent stories co-published by the Bangor Daily News and The New York Times.
Rockland Police Chief Tim Carroll has expressed frustration with the state’s juvenile justice system after watching teenagers in his city repeatedly break the law without seeming to receive any help or consequences. Last year, his department started a youth mentoring program to improve its relationship with kids, work that has existed alongside similar efforts by local organizations such as the Landing Place, a youth center operated by the Knox County Homeless Coalition. Those efforts have helped, but the problem has persisted.
“We are grateful to the OJJDP for this award, and to the many organizations that have been working so hard to make this project happen,” Carroll said in a statement.
Rockland will hopefully provide a blueprint for how similar efforts can be scaled across Maine, the city said in the announcement, a geographically large state where communities vary in the types of juvenile crime they see and what they need to prevent it.
BDN reporter Callie Ferguson may be reached at cferguson@bangordailynews.com.