Early intervention: Model assessment center reduces youth arrests

Steve Evangelista, longtime NYC educator, and Anthony Celestine, director of the Office of Juvenile Justice Services at Calcasieu Parish, Louisiana, talk about  Calcasieu's Multi-Agency Resource Center. MARC, an assessment center that coordinates services for struggling families, has been extraordinarily successful in reducing young people's involvement with the juvenile justice system. 

Transcript

Click here to see the full transcription of this episode. 

Overview

00:00-00:50 Intros 

00:50-01:28 How Steve and Anthony met 

01:28-03:19 What the MARC is and how it is innovative

03:19-04:51 Families’ fears 

04:51-07:59 Educator’s perspective on demystifying assessment centers

07:59-15:16 Matching needed services with referrals 

15:16-18:57 Building support from different stakeholders 

18:57-25:23 Changes in community attitudes over time 

25:23-27:11 Patterns of success and difficulty with assessment centers

27:11-32:43 Environmental conditions for successful assessment centers

32:43-33:21 Schools reaching out for intervention before explosions

33:21-36:26 Suggestions for listeners 

36:10-   Outro

References

• The Casey Foun­da­tion’s Juve­nile Deten­tion Alter­na­tives Ini­tia­tive® - J.D.A.I website
• Multi-Agency Resource Center - MARC's website 

• Check out Steven's new newsletter called "The Bending". It is intended for educators to learn about the juvenile justice system and bring those two worlds together in the name of disrupting the school-to-prison pipeline.  

Soundtrack by Poddington Bear