There is no debate that juvenile crime is of great concern in the United States. According to the FBI, youths younger than 18 commit almost 20 percent of all serious crimes, 13 percent of violent offenses, and 20 percent of crimes involving property. It’s also been found that a single lifetime of crime amounts to a $1.3 to $1.5 million burden on society. Knowing that makes it even more imperative to keep adolescents from becoming habitual criminals.

Where there is debate is how to deal with this problem and where to allocate funds earmarked for it. There are many who lean toward paying as little as possible upfront. Policymakers and those who sign the checks are under pressure to come up with programs that reduce crime without draining the budget. Often, they choose individual therapy instead of a program like Multisystemic Therapy (MST). What they overlook is the long-term savings when a treatment such as MST is implemented. It has been shown that youths commit fewer crimes following MST. That means lower future expenses for taxpayers and crime victims relative to the expenses associated with individual therapy.

MST provides parents with the tools to build strong families

When I think about the kids I meet and the families who invite me into their homes, I think about the despair that no one should have to experience. These parents at some point lost the power, not only to their child who is acting up but to the system. If you have ever held the hand of someone who is fighting back the tears as the judge is preparing to announce the decision he or she has made about the child's future, you know what despair I'm talking about.

We, as a nation, are sometimes riveted to something in our popular culture that we can’t stop talking about it and wait anxiously for the next episode or revelation. We speculated about Walter White’s motivation and moral compass as we collectively watched “Breaking Bad.” We repeated snippets of dialogue and mourned many deaths on “Downton Abbey.” Today, it’s not a TV show that has captured our national attention. it’s a podcast, “Serial.”

For many listeners, it’s a true “Did He Do It?” Did Adnan Syed, then 17, kill his former girlfriend? Did he, along with a small-time drug dealer named Jay, drive her body and ditch it in a park, as Jay told the police? Or was Syed at a library across from his high school, as one witness named Asia, who was never called to testify, maintains?

It’s a murky, complicated 15-year-old case that sent Syed, declaring his innocence, to jail for life. Most people were drawn to the podcast because of the mystery and anticipation for the next installment. They have theories about the case and how information was highlighted or downplayed, based on personal perspective. The Marshall Project interviewed legal minds right before episode 11, and it’s no surprise that lawyers leaned toward explanations and theories that were consistent with whether they “played offense or defense.”   I am drawn to it, in great part, because I filter everything through my MST lens.

Kids get into trouble. Some kids get into a lot of major trouble. They know right from wrong, but commit crimes anyway. So what to do with them? We want to be fair to these children by giving them the best shot at succeeding. Their success is ours, too. Stopping their crime will make all of us safer.

But as it is, our juvenile-justice system operates like a bike that can’t get out of first gear. That gear being incarceration. But is that right answer?

You may be wondering just how bad the situation is. So a few kids get sent away, big deal. But take a step back. Without question, incarcerating youth costs too much and makes them more likely to commit future crimes. Wouldn’t it make more sense to switch gears. 

Provide drug treatment, mental-health services, job training. And very importantly, give parents and caregivers the tools to change their children’s behavior. 

Take a look at this infographic that shows the costs of youth incarceration. Sometimes seeing makes it easier to believe. Going state by state, it’s pretty staggering how many juveniles end up in facilities and the price tag associated with putting them there.

The state of Pennsylvania adopted a new strategy in 2012 to improve its juvenile justice system. It was intent on following the precepts of the federal Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention’s Balanced and Restorative Justice philosophy, which seeks to help young offenders and their families while protecting the community.  

As part of this goal, a conference is held annually to share ideas, study results, and run workshops highlighting the practices, programs, and initiatives provided across the state. A part of this year’s theme was “The Right Service for the Right Youth for the Right Amount of Time.”

Two different evidence-based programs each have unique pros

SHIELDS for Families has been using both Multisystemic Therapy (MST) and Functional Family Therapy (FFT) off and on since 2004. Some might ask why not one or the other? They both are evidence-based models and work with the whole family and the offender—with good results.

Before going further, it should be said that at my agency, SHIELDS, they are used quite differently. MST deals with youths who are repeat violent offenders having committed several serious crimes. Many can be characterized as hard core and will very likely end up incarcerated. FFT works with high-risk juveniles who might have committed lesser crimes.

On Thanksgiving, people count their good fortune for many things—small and big. You snagged the last package of fresh sage for your stuffing. The lump proved benign. Your family will make it through the blizzard and be together feasting on turkey and all the scrumptious side dishes.

Kathy has a different reason to be thankful. But let her tell it.

This story doesn’t start out with the warm and fuzzies. It starts with pain, tears, anger, worry, and frustration. It starts with a mom and a daughter on opposite sides of a deep chasm. I was convinced we’d never reach each other, and frankly, I was already giving up. I was in a place of pain. And whenever pain takes up residence in your heart, you carry it like a curse. I couldn’t figure out how we got so far apart, so fast. I felt as if I were screaming into a void.

The MST program was first suggested to me by my daughter’s middle-school counselor, but I was sure it was a lot of hype and would be of very little help. There was nothing they could tell me to do that I hadn’t already tried. How were these people going to make anything happen? And if they thought they were going criticize me, if they thought they were going to judge me, they had another thing coming. No one was going to tell me I was a bad parent. And that was that.

Meanwhile, that chasm was growing wider and wider. My daughter seemed so unreachable. It was as if I had never known her. It was heartbreaking, devastating, and hopeless. I was losing myself in the absolute sadness of it all. I cannot describe the ache that was centered in my chest. Sleepless nights. The nights I did sleep, I had nightmares. My daughter was lost in the darkness and cried for me. Me searching for her, trying to find her, waking up with tears on my cheeks. I felt like a failure as a mother. That is a gut-wrenching battle that never gets easier.

The numbers are frightening. Right now, 2.3 million Americans are behind bars. That’s 1 in 137 people, and the majority are African-American and Latino. 

It’s mind-boggling that the U.S. has the highest incarceration rate of any country on earth. Is the country overrun with evildoers, or are we are doing something different than, say, Canada, which only has 40,500 people behind bars. Even Iran, considered an oppressive nation, has a prison population of 218,000.

The consensus at yesterday’s American Justice Summit at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York City was we are doing something exceedingly counterproductive—and it’s not sustainable.

As John Wetzel, secretary of the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections, said about incarceration and its aftermath, “Higher-risk offenders leave lower-risk. Lower-risk offenders leave higher-risk.”  And what does that mean? Simply that we may be locking up too many non-violent wrongdoers and turning them into hardened criminals behind prison walls.

Fewer than 15 years ago, Connecticut’s network of contracted programs to rehabilitate juvenile offenders was in jeopardy. The programs were not producing good enough results to justify their cost. And yet, in the past five years, there has been a 40-percent decrease in arrests. So, how did Connecticut turn the tide?

Crystal had reached the “What more can I do?” stage. Her 17-year-old daughter, Danielle, had been getting in trouble for years. It reached crisis overload when the girl disappeared over a Memorial Day weekend. Crystal was sure she had run away but hesitated involving the police.

As time passed, the mother felt she had no choice and had a PINS (People In Need of Supervision) warrant issued on her daughter. This meant that if found, Danielle would be returned to New York City, where they lived, and brought before a judge. 

Getting a warrant wasn’t a decision Crystal took lightly. She knew she ran the risk of losing her child to the juvenile justice system. Danielle was found safe in Washington, D.C. And then things changed dramatically for mother and daughter. The New York City’s Administration for Children’s Services (ACS) had a mandate to keep kids out of the system and with their families whenever possible.

So instead of Danielle being carted away, the court recommended Multisystemic Therapy (MST) as her treatment plan. Crystal was “skeptical,” as she later put it. After all, she and Danielle had been seeing individual therapists for two years at the great out-of-pocket expense with little evidence her daughter was improving. MST was different, Crystal was told. A therapist would be assigned to the case, she would work with them in their home—and it wouldn’t cost the family anything.