By Marcia Moore
The Daily Item
MIDDLEBURG — Juvenile delinquency is on the decline in Snyder County, and across Pennsylvania, as more proactive programs are being offered to help strengthen families and connect youth to their community.
“We’ve had a drastic drop in juvenile cases overall,” said Craig Fasold, probation chief in Snyder County, where juvenile delinquent cases dropped 18 percent, from 182 in 2012 to 149 in 2013.
He and deputy chief probation officer Andy Stahl attribute the decline to Children and Youth Services programs designed to keep struggling families intact by connecting them to resources and other relatives, and to the Youth Accountability Program.
The Youth Accountability Program involves community volunteers entering the lives of first-time juvenile offenders who are given an opportunity to avoid going through the traditional legal system.
Instead of appearing before a judge, a juvenile who admits guilt will be supervised by a probation officer as he or she works with a three-member community panel to create a plan of action that to date includes more than 400 hours of community service, about $1,000 in restitution paid to victims, counseling, letters of apology and improved school grades.
Launched in fall 2010, the Youth Accountability Program has served 57 juveniles and has a recidivism rate of under 5 percent, said Snyder County District Attorney Michael Piecuch.
“That speaks to the quality of our volunteers,” he said, describing the program as a “short jolt of accountability” that removes the cloak of anonymity surrounding juvenile delinquency by connecting community members with youth.
Fasold has worked in county probation for 38 years and attributes dysfunctional families as a main contributor to juvenile delinquency.
“Their model is uneducated, unmotivated and voluntarily unemployed parents,” he said, crediting programs like Children and Youth Services’ family preservation and reunification program with helping break the cycle in some families.
Community-based programs are being adopted across the commonwealth and are working to keep kids on the right path, Fasold and Stahl said.
Statewide, the number of juvenile dispositions fell by 30 percent between 2009 and 2013, according to a report by the Juvenile Court Judges’ Commission.
Some of that may be attributed to reforms in the juvenile justice system following the “Kids for Cash” scandal that rocked Pennsylvania when it was disclosed in 2008 that two Luzerne County judges, Mark Ciavarella and Michael Conahan, had accepted kickbacks from the owner of a for-profit youth detention center and sent thousands of youths to the center for minor offenses.
In 2013, there were 28,957 delinquent-related dispositions in Pennsylvania, or 6.8 percent fewer than the year before.