There are stories counselors and law enforcement officers tell. Stories of girls, not even old enough to drive, whose parents sell them on the street, sex in exchange for drugs. Stories of young men, once high school athletes, who started using methamphetamines, became dealers and are now sentenced to what will most likely be the rest of their lives in jail.

These stories are true, and these stories are set in Western North Carolina.

However, these stories only hint at the learned behavior and patterns coming through an increasingly busy juvenile crime system.

“People who are victims, if there’s not some kind of intervention involved, they usually become offenders,” said Jackson County Sheriff Jimmy Ashe.

The key to reining in juvenile crime across the board is involvement and education, to prevent rather than rehabilitate, counselors and law enforcement officials say. Program administrators say that while they may not be able to prevent the first offense from occurring, intervention provides some sense of hope for the future.

“From my perspective, anything we can do with the kids now to keep them out of the adult system is prevention,” said Crystal Altman, director of the Macon County Criminal Justice Partnership Program and head of Macon’s JCPC.

But in what some may say is a rare occurrence, Western North Carolina is serving as a model for the rest of the state. In the past five years, WNC has been transitioning to a system that focuses on intervention and prevention. The system, developed by 30th Judicial District Chief Court Counselor Lee Crites and called The Far West Model, is shaping the future of the juvenile crime.

“We’re way ahead of the rest of the state in terms of services and access to services,” Crites said.

Where we stand

Comparatively speaking, Haywood, Jackson, Macon and Swain counties are on the low end of the spectrum in terms of the number of delinquent juveniles and the number of offenses they commit.

According to 2002-2003 statistics from the N.C. Department of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, there were 25,181 delinquent juveniles in the state. Those 25,181 delinquent juveniles were charged with 39,649 offenses, an average of about 1.6 offenses per juvenile. Haywood, Jackson, Macon and Swain counties came in below the average in terms of the number of offenses. Haywood, Macon and Swain registered approximately 1.4 offenses per juvenile, while Jackson is on par with the state average.

A majority of Jackson County’s juvenile complaints are generated from reports within the school system, said Sheriff Jimmy Ashe — weapons on school property, larceny, fighting, drugs.

School resource officers and school officials attempt to handle these incidents within the realm of school policy; however, more serious offenses result in a complaint being registered with the justice system. In such a scenario, juveniles are entered into a program of counseling, and a “diversion contract” is written.

Diversion contracts are double edged — they aim to both provide juveniles with a diversion from committing additional crimes, and divert the youth from entering the adult justice system.

“It relieves a lot of burden from law enforcement,” Ashe said of the contract system.

Contracts include degrees of counselor supervision, similar to the adult parole system, possible commitment to a youth development center or entrance into one of four JCPC funded centers: Hawthorn Heights, Operation Aspire, Project Challenge and Western Carolina Pacesetters.

In general, youth development centers — a politically correct term for a fenced detention facility that provides treatment for violent or sex offenders and juveniles with substance abuse problems — have been found not to be as effective as other programs, Altman said.

“Macon County hasn’t committed a child to a youth development center in three or four years,” Altman said.

There are only five such centers in the state, the closest of which, Swannanoa Youth Development Center, is located in Black Mountain. Consequently, juveniles are being removed from their communities to treat their problems. Removal only increases a juvenile’s feelings of “not belonging” to a community, of being an unwanted outsider, Altman said.

“Society as a whole is not as interested in their neighbor as they used to be,” she said.

An additional problem is that Swannanoa YDC only services males who commit crimes between the ages of 10 to 18. (As a result of the Juvenile Justice Reform Act, violent offenders may remain in custody at a development center until age 21.) There are few resources for female offenders, which is something that will have to change as females make up a significant portion of the juvenile system, Altman said.

According to the N.C. Department of Juvenile Justice, female offenders in Haywood and Macon counties outnumber males nearly 2 to 1.

“Female juveniles are more often victims of crime and in turn become offenders,” Ashe said.

Showing what we can do

The Far West Model, as it is known, brings together several interagency services to address the needs of the children, their families, and the community. The model’s four primary programs — Hawthorn Heights, Operation Aspire, Project Challenge and Western Carolina Pacesetters — offer a variety of services ranging from behavior modification to service learning, life skills to individual counseling. The intent is to teach kids as much about themselves as anything else.

Programs are largely funded by local JCPCs, which receive state funds based on the number of delinquent youth — for example, this year Macon’s JCPC will distribute $94,181, while Swain will dole out $69,546. County governments are required to make a 30 percent match to the state’s funds.

Funded programs generally service youth ages 12 to 15. These middle school years can prove to be some of the most difficult for youths to handle in terms of emotional and physical development, Altman said.

“I just think it’s a transition time for kids,” she said. “They’re really susceptible to their peers at that age.”

Hawthorn Heights is a short-term, co-ed emergency shelter located in Bryson City that serves the seven westernmost counties. Youth may stay at Hawthorn for up to 90 days. During that time they receive problem solving training, conflict resolution and communications skills along with individual and family counseling.

Operation Aspire provides a day supervision and treatment program for youth who have been suspended or expelled from the public school system, be it for three days or a year.

“By the time they get to us, they’ve established a history,” said Kimberly Castano, program director.

Rather than simply miss school and get behind in their work, students may continue with lessons and receive partial school credit under the exceptional children’s program at their school. With out-of-school suspensions, it is not only the child that suffers, but also the system that must later deal with bringing that child up to speed in the classroom, and the parents who must find a way to provide supervision during the suspension, Castano said.

Aspire is in the process of earning state certification akin to that of a home school and hiring a licensed teacher to supervise curriculum so that students may receive more credit for their work.

In Project Challenge, adjudicated and diverted youth repay their victims and society by earning a small fee for service hours they perform. Most often work is done within the offender’s own community through Adopt-a-Highway programs, Habitat for Humanity or local humane societies. Monies are sent directly to victims.

“We try to involve the kids in different activities, introduce them to new opportunities,” said Project Challenge Area Administrator Chris Norman. “It’s not just punishment.”

The program serves 33 counties at a cost of approximately $1,200 per year per youth. In comparison, it costs approximately $80,000 per year to detain a youth in a residential facility.

Youths in Project Challenge stay a minimum of 90 days, with a release goal of 180 days or less. Maximum time spent in the program is a year.

“I see our program and I think it’s our philosophy in we feel we are a prevention system, either from another offense or from entering the adult system,” Norman said. “With our program it seems like our kids, when they re-offend, it tends to be a lesser offense.”

Western Carolina Pacesetters is an adventure based learning program that provides structured after school activities on a weekly basis. The program gives latchkey kids something better to do than just hang out, unsupervised, said executive director Gil Evans.

“Lo and behold, as I got deeper and deeper into this, it came out that they’re not (committing crimes) at night, they’re doing it after school, in broad daylight,” Evans said.

Every six weeks, youth participate in a high adventure activity such as rafting, spelunking, or ropes courses — skills Evans picked up while working as an outdoor guide — all designed to build self-esteem, problem solving skills and interpersonal relationships.

Technically, these are programs that are only used once juveniles have entered the system. The hope is that the intervention prevents a more serious crime from being committed in the future. More needs to be done to keep those first offenses from ever happening, Evans said.

“I think that’s where we’ve got to go, we’ve got to put more money into prevention programs,” he said.

A step ahead of the rest

Macon County, along with Clay and Graham counties, is one of only a handful of counties in the state to have taken its goal of prevention to the next level.

“Other counties have talked about it, but haven’t had the personal energy to do it,” Crites said.

Through the local branch of the N.C. Community Foundation — a foundation established to raise funds to provide for the safety and growth of the state’s non-profit organizations — Macon’s JCPC created the Macon County Youth Endowment.

The youth endowment allows for grants to be issued to non-profit agencies serving county youth, such as schools groups, structured day programs, temporary shelter services, guided growth programs and the Department of Social Services.

“It is a huge measure of a county planning ahead for their own independence,” Crites said.

Grants may total up to 5 percent of the monies held in the endowment fund. Currently, the fund totals more than $10,000.

Macon’s Save our Students program, which provides affordable middle school students with after-school activities, was selected to receive the youth endowment’s first $500 grant, Altman said. Monies will be used to pay program registration fees for involved children during the summer months.

However, the feasibility of awarding the grant may be endangered. SOS recently lost its home at the Union Learning Center in Franklin due to space requirements of the center’s incoming technology program. There’s little hope on the horizon for locating the program as the school system is out of space — SOS needs storage room, in addition to room for a class. Without a home, SOS may be forced to close down come fall.

Regardless of special endowment funds, what has made The Far West Model truly successful is the willingness of personnel involved in the juvenile justice system to work to find a solution to juvenile crime, not just maintain the status quo, Crites said. Law enforcement, caseworkers and judges have become child advocates, creating a support network for juvenile delinquents that treats them not just as offenders but as victims too.

“You have to be an advocate, you have to go the whole nine yards where that victim is known by a lot of people and a lot of people are reaching out to that victim,” Ashe said.

Each case is an individual in a unique scenario that must be dealt with in the battle against crime. As for feeling as though they’re making headway, opinions tend to differ.

“Life is good, believe me it really is good,” Crites said.

“Until the next one comes,” Ashe said.