Helping Young Felons by Letting Them Help Others

LA VERNE —  For the first time in his life, Anthony feels important.

A dark-haired, clean-cut 18-year-old, Anthony gazes out over a playroom filled with mentally and physically handicapped children in wheelchairs and harnesses. As he watches, arms crossed, a small boy careens into his knees with a walker and motions that he wants to play ball.

Anthony pats the boy’s head and smiles.

The playroom, at the El Camino School in Pomona, is a far different world from his barrio in Hawaiian Gardens, and far different too from the regimented surroundings that Anthony, an unwed father, expected to be in when he was convicted of a felony and sent to a boys’ camp.

Instead, at Camp Afflerbaugh in La Verne, Anthony became one of a handful of young felons who find a sense of purpose and direction by working with handicapped children.

“Seeing these kids makes me feel useful,” Anthony says. “I can motivate them.”

Anthony is part of a joint project of Camp Afflerbaugh and the Los Angeles County Office of Education’s special-education unit. Mobility Opportunities Via Education, or MOVE, intends to steer boys away from crime by improving their self-esteem and giving them job skills.

More than 60 Afflerbaugh youths, age 16 to 18, have worked at El Camino since 1990 and helped dozens of severely handicapped children to stand or even walk, administrators said. The program has been duplicated in several other boys camps in California, New Mexico and other states.

“For many of the boys, this is the first time they’ve made a difference in somebody’s life,” said Sue Thomsen, principal of Afflerbaugh-Paige Camp School. “They go through a noticeable change in attitude because of the program.”

The young offenders must apply to participate and are selected only after a favorable review of their behavior on camp work crews, Thomsen said. The job is prized because it satisfies the requirement to work on a camp crew in addition to attending the camp school, which is run by the Los Angeles County Office of Education.

Two crews of seven boys each go to El Camino on alternate days and play with the children under the supervision of school instructors. Therapists teach the youths how to care for severely handicapped children before they are allowed to feed and hold them.

Instructors run recreation sessions twice a day, and Afflerbaugh youths provide much of the muscle needed to move the youngsters--many of whom cannot even sit up by themselves--from cots to specially designed wheelchairs.

“I have to keep an eye on how the kids are doing, because I have kids that depend on me,” said Anthony, whose last name cannot be used because he committed a crime before age 18.

El Camino Principal Mary Higgins proposed the program to Camp Afflerbaugh two years ago as a way to expand therapy for the disabled children. Because of the camp’s participation, El Camino can now help 60 children instead of 20. And, although some of the parents were initially hesitant about the program, the youths’ commitment has changed their minds.

“The boys haven’t let us down yet,” Higgins said.

Camp Afflerbaugh and its neighboring facility, Camp Paige, are run by the Los Angeles County Probation Department and house about 115 youths each. Youths from both camps attend Afflerbaugh-Paige High School. The county juvenile court assigns boys to the low-security camps for crimes as serious as assault, rape and attempted murder. Youths stay in barracks at the camps between three and 11 months, administrators said.

Thomas J. Jeanneret, a supervising deputy probation officer with the probation department, said many juvenile offenders sent to camps have only known success through intimidation and control of their peers.

When they are given the chance to help children who pose no threat to them, they begin to measure success by how quickly they can get the handicapped children to progress toward mobility, Jeanneret said.

Though budget constraints have prevented camp administrators from tracking recidivism, the officials said they believe youths who participated in the program have been less likely to return to a camp for another crime.

“If we can take a kid who’s dangerous and turn him into a productive individual, it’ll save money in the long run,” Jeanneret said, referring to court and prison costs.

Principal Higgins said she often gets phone calls from former MOVE youths looking for jobs in child therapy months after they are released from camp. She and staff members write letters of recommendation, but they have had no other way to help the youths put their experience to use in the world outside. However, that will soon change.

Beginning next year, Afflerbaugh youths will be eligible for a newly funded program--Bridge to Employment--that will find jobs for 20 of them and pair them with adult mentors when they are released from the camp.

“These boys have learned valuable specific job skills,” said Floyd Simpson, director of Camp Afflerbaugh. “It’s a matter of marketing them to employers.”

Simpson said job developers will look throughout the county for employers to match the specific work interest of an Afflerbaugh youth. The employers will look after the youths and keep them out of trouble, with the help of probation officers.

The program will be the first of its kind in a juvenile camp, administrators said. A $25,000 grant from Johnson & Johnson and the National Alliance of Business funded the program for one year. If it proves successful, the organizations will renew the grant for up to two more years.

Anthony said he plans to continue working with disabled children when he is released from camp in January. He is hoping he can find a job in health care through Bridge to Employment or a government-funded job training program.

“This kind of work motivates me to keep heading up,” Anthony said. “This is just my first step.”