In September, the Arizona Department of Juvenile Corrections (ADJC) reached an agreement with the U.S. Department of Justice to continue to correct deficiencies in the treatment of children held in the state’s correctional facilities.

Problems were uncovered in an investigation conducted under the Civil Rights of Institutionalized Persons Act (CRIPA) after a child committed suicide at the Adobe Mountain juvenile facility in Phoenix.

When Governor Napolitano took office in 2003, she ordered changes at ADJC in advance of the release of the results of the CRIPA investigation. In October of that year, she appointed Michael Branham interim director to oversee those changes. In March of 2004, Mr. Branham was named permanent director of ADJC.

In January of this year, the CRIPA investigation findings were made public. They identified five areas in which ADJC was under performing: suicide prevention, juvenile justice, education, medical care and mental health and rehabilitation services.

ADJC receives referrals for approximately 74,000 youths each year and houses roughly 800 children at its four facilities in Phoenix, Buckeye and Tucson. Mr. Branham recently sat down with Arizona Capitol Times to explain some of the changes the department has undergone and will likely see in the future.

Arizona Capitol Times

You have a background in law enforcement – how did you make the transition from law enforcement into administration and public policy≠

Mr. Branham:

I started with the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office, shortly after my 18th birthday, and spent a couple of years working in the jail there, and then went on to the City of Peoria as a police officer, and then, from there, I was the public safety director for Youngtown and then the assistant city manager for Surprise and then the director for the Criminal Justice Commission. So, I’ve spent pretty much my whole life serving in law enforcement or criminal justice.

I was fortunate early on to be mentored. Some of my original teachers and mentors when I went into the police department recognized that I could do a lot of different things and helped me succeed and helped me gain promotions, all the way up to and including chief, and on through my government career. That’s something that I very strongly believe in as well; mentoring is very important for all of us. But I’ve been fortunate in that way. I’ve gotten a chance to try a lot of different assignments. I ran a multi-jurisdictional unit that bought stolen property and drugs, and I worked at the federal drug test course, and those were all a direct result of people having faith in me and giving me the opportunity to show what I can do.

How does your law enforcement background influence the way you approach juvenile corrections≠

It’s really more about fitting into a community, and this is a community. I learned community-policing concepts early in my career that helped turn around neighborhoods and made cities safer, and that same environment works for us. We’re kind of like a little city, or, in our case, four little cities, that all have unique roles, so you have a lot of different kinds of competing interests in there that you need to learn how to recognize what they need and how they need to work in concert with others to gain success, so a lot of the skills I learned as a police chief, in particular, are pretty interchangeable with this job.

How difficult has it been to begin to correct the problems identified by the CRIPA investigation≠

Every one of those issues is in need of addressing and has really been a major project over the last year. It was a year last week that I got here on temporary loan from the Criminal Justice Commission. A number of people really did roll up their collective sleeves to help with that: the Legislature, certainly the governor has been a big leader. We brought a number of new staff people on board to change the way we’re doing operational business and to look, quite frankly, ahead, to make sure we don’t hit the same kind of landmines in the future.

What changes have been made in the department since the CRIPA investigation results were released≠

I think there are a couple of things. The first is an acknowledgement, probably, of the hard work that the department was taking even before the CRIPA agreement came out. There were a number of things that the old director had begun to put into place, but it’s really been sort of an enhancement, a real project drive under the Governor’s Office, under Governor Napolitano’s leadership, to make sure that we got a lot of this stuff done. So, once we acknowledged that, the second piece is to take a look at every single thing we’re currently doing in our department and find out how we can do it better, how we can do it a lot more efficiently and how we can learn from prior mistakes, because this is the second time, of course the department’s been into a situation we’ve had monitoring from the outside. Some of the issues above the first two, then, is to make everything we’re doing now a permanent change in the way we do business. So, all of those things are going on simultaneously.

What has the strategy been within the department to make sure that procedural changes are effective in making ADJC more effective≠

First and foremost is the fact that we used to be an organization that was very focused in facilities, what we call “behind the fence.” We have now begun to address the idea that our real job in life is to make sure that the kids who are assigned to us, who are adjudicated to us by the courts, successfully reenter communities and show up with the tools necessary to go on and become successful adults. And to do that is everyone’s job in the agency. We’re all about successful reentry of the kid in the community. So, that’s one of the most major changes. That used to be just a part of our agency called “community corrections.” Now everybody is about that.

One of the other pieces to the puzzle is to hold all of our employees personally accountable for their actions, both on duty and off duty. We believe the public holds them to a very high standard and with that high standard comes the responsibility to do the right thing. We call it integrity, but integrity is really just doing the right thing for the right reason and making sure that everybody understands that that’s their role.

And the last place, again, is to make sure that the kids who come to us learn and accept the new tools and the abilities and the education and treatment that they are being given so they don’t come back to us. That’s a major, important piece. These are difficult kids in some cases. Well over 90 per cent have substance abuse problems, a very large portion of them have mental health issues, a number of them come from settings in which they really need positive adult role models to be in their lives, so our staff has to learn to deal with all of those issues, while, at the same time, pushing this personal accountability piece.

Changing the purpose of the department is hard and takes long to do. How is the transition coming along≠

Well, I’ve been pleased. I think the first thing is to acknowledge there were a lot of good people here prior to my arrival that really want to do a good job. They want to be community role models, they want to make sure that the kids in their care are treated with respect and dignity and they want to make a difference. And there are a lot of those people here. That was one of the reasons I elected to stay.

The other pieces of the transition, I think, are going pretty well. There are days when I think that the tasks are pretty daunting, but we try every day, we make positive steps every day. In some cases, I call them baby steps, but the baby steps are paying off. C
hanging a culture is difficult. I think we’re recruiting differently than we were before. I think we’re working at retaining really good people and making sure they understand they have a career with ADJC.

And again, the kids in our care that want to change their delinquent behaviors, can go back to the community and not re-offend, not victimize other people, and so that makes us a crime-prevention alternative in addition to being a treatment and education piece, and I’m real pleased with all of those roles. It’s just a long ways to go.

What steps have to be taken to rehabilitate kids instead of serving as a tool for punishment≠

The first thing is you’ve got to break a cycle for them. If they’ve never had positive role models and they don’t value education and they don’t understand why the substance abuse issue is important for them to overcome, then they can’t succeed. They’re simply going to re-offend and re-offend and re-offend to the point where, you know, they become institutionalized. So, we have to find ways to break that. We have to offer kids an honest alternative to any one of those problems. We have to get them to understand their own weaknesses. They have to accept the challenge of finding ways to improve personally. In a lot of cases, we have to give them self-confidence. A lot of them suffer from self-confidence issues. They don’t think they can make it and our staff has to be appropriate and supportive and give them the ability to become self-supporting and confident adults, and we do that.

And then the other piece, again, is to make sure that they get a solid education and to do more in the area of vocational education, so they go out in the world and they have skills to offer to employers. Again, if you have an education and you have a job skill and you’re no longer using substances and you’re confident in yourself, there’s very little else that can keep you from succeeding. But, if you don’t have any of those tools, you have very little chance of succeeding when you do go to the outside.

What role does a child’s family have in the rehabilitation process≠

One of the other things we’re doing differently nowadays is we’re involving the family in more of the programming than I think we’ve done in the past. Certainly, family has always been important, but I think we’re putting a real solid effort on making sure that, particularly if a parent is having trouble with a child, that as they come back home again and they’re going to reintegrate back into the same neighborhood, we give the parents and their families more tools to deal with these problems. Again, the child’s success is dramatically related to the thoughts and wishes of the parents and the parenting they get in their young lives.

What tools do you give the parents to make them more effective in helping their child≠

A lot of it is ways to understand how to keep them from getting back into trouble again. This can be difficult. If the family has issues, then we have to treat the whole family or make sure that people are getting other services from other state agencies, like the Department of Health Services or the Department of Economic Security, so that the whole family is in that process of getting to be a healthier, stronger family.

How have the families responded to that≠

It’s been pretty positive. I have been very impressed with the level of involvement of a number of parents, and there have been many more who have just simply said, you know, you’re right, it’s going to take all of us to make sure that little Johnny doesn’t come back to the facility again. How can we help, what can we do differently≠ We’ve added to our public Web site a whole new series of information for the general public to use in dealing with problem youth. We had some things on the original site before, but we’ve really beefed that up and given folks more tools and more ability to sort of recognize early on some of the symptoms of delinquency that can lead to a child being placed in one of our facilities.

Prior to your arrival, was the department failing at rehabilitating kids to return to the community≠

Failing is an interesting word. Again, there were a lot of good programs; a lot of people here have worked really hard for many, many years. I think the difference is that you’ve got to understand why standards are important, you have to work and meet those standards every day and you have to work every day to make sure that the standards raise every time there’s a reason for us to raise the bar higher, that we get better as an agency.

Is it just a matter, then, of changing the focus of the department≠