Douglas County Juvenile Detention, Lawrence, Kansas. They have a private intake facility. They also have a day school attached. Much of the Parole Violatiors were truants. So they get picked up by a school bus and are forced to be in school at the Detention Center. Classes are separate and populations are separate. The only way you would know the kid is going to Day School at Probation is by the teacher’s names. The detention center has 12 kids as residents and 14 kids as Day School. One is in Drug and alcohol treatment. We are licensed for 18. We rarely go over 16. There are issues with unproductive activities and kids sitting around waiting for trial. We serve NE Kansas Counties where there are a few smaller regional facilities. The largest in the state is in Kansas City, Kansas in Jefferson County. We have a graded system. Each kid is allowed 2 cool downs per shift. They can sit alone, or go to their room for a self-cool-down to regain composure or the guards can tell them to…or they can be locked down. Varying degrees of punishment, isolation. There is open architecture and the staff have great lines of sight and always help each other. The population may look mixed on paper but the ten year old is kept away from the 17 year old. We go from 10-18. Typically the average is 17. When kids are suspended, they can come to Day school rather than languish at home. We were overcrowded with parole violations for truancy, so we built the day school. The rooms can double as six person cells for detention if we need to shift. It was easier building new classrooms than detention cells. So the wiring and plumbing is all there… if we need it. The Day school, they come here every day and go home at night. They are under house arrest. We do random checks to make sure they are home. When they are good, they can buy time or a later curfew. We call them clients, residents, students, youths. The staff are “corrections officers” in “detention.” We have 14 assigned to School, 11 attending residents, 1 AWOL and one sanctioned for violation parole- he’s a 6th grader here for two weeks. We hold them up to 90 days but we can ask for exceptions. We have four kids here all with the same crime that we have to keep separated. Armed robbery and kidnapping. The fifth is in adult system as more priors than the others and more dangerous. Ringleader. He was REMANDED to adult world. We have 67 kids under case management for Juvenile Justice including the juveniles in Day School there are about 85 in Douglas County. We have group homes in Lawrence, and the Villages in Topeka and Kansas City. Of the 12 residents, 4 are African American (same crime) 2 hispanic and one Caucasian. There are no girl residents today. For boys the average stay is 15 days. The ones now with trial by jury stay longer and this is the pattern of longer stays with trial by jury. Most Hispanic kids come “corria.” 3 came from Jefferson County- a meat-packing industrial-agricultural area. The school district provides breakfast and lunch. We have 26 kids in school, Day school and residents. There are 3 teachers from the district and the residents get one teacher. Five para-professionals. Two of the four teachers are special education. Today there is an art teacher…instructing in drawing and pottery/clay. School district pays for mental health. We don’t get kids that far behind in school. In their shifts, some of the kids work diligently on their school work. We are looking forward to working with an objective assessment tool. We need it. Sometimes the kids are obvious in their needs, other times, more obscure. There are no status offenders here…but we have a kid who is doing two weeks for a fight, and seems to have been sent here directly by the judge. Intake is organized by a PRIVATE organization that also operates shelters. It is a community based organization. We have some CHINS- Children in need of services. The Intake is staffed from 10-7 every day and ON-CALL staff. Director here, Pam Weigarden was involved with site selection, architect, building etc, from 2 years prior to it being built. So she knows the building inside and out. We have now been open 15 years and are starting to get a second generation of people. TALL BEE KEEPER ON THE LEFT. CLINT. Goes to Day school. Age 17. From Rosebud South Dakota. He is a Lakota Sioux. Been in Lawrence 7 years. Failing grades. Truant, disorderly conduct. Weed, alcohol. Dad has been sober for 5 years. Director disputes this fact. Mom lives in Bismarck, ND. Lots of alcohol there. Has 8 brothers and sisters. 2 older brothers live on the reservation in Rosebud and don’t talk to him. He is in 12th grade and needs to stay focused and pass all classes to get a high school diploma. His Dad goes to Johnson Community College and is studying computers. Sister is a student in Lawrence High. Father wants to send him to ND to live with Mother. Director says he is doing well here and his moving would be terribl

Tagged by Rich from Boston and Bren from Adelaide . . . 0. Some of the opinions listed below may contain traces of nuts or may have been processed on equipment that processes nuts. 1. I grew up on a farm. It had to be sold after it became too unprofitable, due to drought and it just not being large enough, when I was 10. 2. I was once stomped on by a goose when my Mum was collecting eggs in the chook (common Australian slang; translation 'chicken') house. 3. Feeding lambs that had lost or been rejected by their mums was the best bit about growing up on a farm. 4. I was really small when I was a child. Always the first kid in the line at school as they were arranged in height back then. Shortest at the front. I still think of myself as a delicate little thing. 5. I have had braces on my teeth twice in my life and surgery to break my jaw so that my teeth would meet up properly. I was about 19 at the time and it was an absolute confidence crusher but, of course, was absolutely necessary. 6. I have been a primary school teacher. 7. I went back to university to get a degree in Journalism when I was 30. 8. I’ve read a lot of books in my time and have kept a list of all the titles since I was about 25. I read a lot of non-fiction - it gives you a huge background of knowledge from which you can draw . I believe you have more chance of spotting BS in the wider world with that sort of self directed education. 9. I’m talking less as I get older. 10. Tom Hanks should have stopped acting after ‘Splash’ and ‘Big’, his best two films. 11. I don’t realise I’m reading the subtitles when I watch a film in another language. 12. I love Pedro Almovodar films. 13. I’d rather be chauffeured. 14. Sport is something you do, not watch. 15. I’m nearly always listening to music and our TV box for the computer has been unplugged for over a year. 16. In the scheme of things (Life, the Universe & Everything) I know I am completely insignificant. I just wish some of our ‘leaders’ and ‘leading egoists’ had a faint understanding of their own temporariness and superficiality. 17. Men are nice.