The Last-Chance Ranch : Budget Crisis Blurs the Future of Joplin Youth Reform Center

Arnold has made it. You can tell from the blue shirt he wears that sets him apart from most of his colleagues at the Joplin Youth Center.

The 18-year-old knows that some of his peers call it the “smack shirt,” meaning that he kisses up to authority. But that doesn’t bother him.

The color of his shirt means that in his eight months at the center, where he was sent after he stabbed a man with a broken beer bottle in a fight, Arnold has learned a new sense of responsibility.

While at Joplin, Arnold has passed a high school equivalency test and studied culinary arts. Next week, when he is set free, he plans to enroll in Orange Coast College to learn to become a chef.

“Sometimes, you need somebody to get you back on track,” Arnold said, crediting his new-found self-confidence to Joplin’s teachers and counselors. If it hadn’t been for them, he said, he might still be dealing drugs.

This week, Orange County’s administrative office recommended shutting down the corrections center for teen-age boys as a quick way to save $1.5 million a year and thus help balance the county budget.

The idea is not a new one. For the past three years, there has been talk of closing the 35-year-old facility, situated at a former ranch on a rural and picturesque hill in Trabuco Canyon. And this year, as in the past, its supporters are rallying to keep the center operating.

With beds for 60 juveniles, the center frequently gives teen-age offenders their last chance to reform before they are committed to the California Youth Authority, which operates facilities more like a traditional prison.

The average stay at Joplin is five to six months--enough time, counselors say, for the youths to shake any drug or alcohol dependency and regain their physical and emotional health.

“It just can’t happen,” Arnold said Wednesday when told that the center may shut down. Speaking during lunch at the center’s cafeteria, other boys at the table nodded in agreement.

And they may be right. Orange County Supervisor Roger R. Stanton opposes the idea and other members of the Board of Supervisors, which will make the final decision, also have expressed reservations.

Michael Schumacher, the county’s chief probation officer, said he wants to retain the center and is searching for alternatives.

“I think it is an extremely valuable program and I will do anything I can to save it,” he said. “Joplin has a tradition of helping countless young men turn their lives around, and that would end.”

Norman Shattuck, assistant division director of Joplin, has been working at the camp for 11 years and has stayed because of the staff’s commitment to rehabilitating young offenders.

“The minute we would begin just warehousing kids, I wouldn’t want any part of it,” he said.

In today’s climate of gangs and problems at home, Shattuck said it is more important than ever to keep Joplin open.

In the early years, he said, many of the youths sent to the camp were guilty of such relatively minor offenses as running away from home or school truancy. But a state law was passed in the mid-1970s that weeded minor offenders out of the correctional system.

Currently, Shattuck said, 74% of the young inmates at Joplin are there for felonies ranging from car burglary to assault with a deadly weapon.

Gangs are another problem. In 1981, only about 10% of the youths at the center were gang members, he said. Today, 85% belong to gangs. The center keeps an updated roster that currently shows 29 gangs, including such violent ones as the Crips and Bloods, represented at Joplin.

Youths coming to Joplin now can receive classes designed to help them break away from gangs, alcohol and drugs. Alcoholics Anonymous and Narcotics Anonymous hold weekly meetings at the center. Classes in how to control anger and deal with being a father are also offered.

“A number of kids here are or are about to be parents,” Shattuck said. They are taught everything from how to change diapers to the economic, emotional and social responsibility of being a parent. It is something that must be learned, he said, since “many of them don’t know their fathers or haven’t seen them in years.”

In addition, each youth is required to attend academic classes where he proceeds at his own pace. Most of the youths had dropped out of school or attended irregularly.

John, 18, said when he came to Joplin he hadn’t been in school for three years.

“I had almost completely forgotten the times (multiplication) tables.” But he said a teacher at Joplin helped him raise his mathematics ability from a fifth-grade to high-school level in six months so he could pass a high school equivalency test. Now he draws cartoons for the camp newspaper and hopes to go to college to become a commercial artist.

“I’m not going to come back,” John insists.

Besides academic classes, the youths can choose occupational training ranging from food and laundry service to computer programming and repair.

As the youths progress and win the confidence of the Joplin staff, they are given more privileges that are reflected in the color of the shirts they wear--red for newcomers, brown and then blue.

Shattuck readily acknowledges that not all Joplin inmates will become law-abiding overnight.

“Many of them will not buy what we are selling,” he said.

But sometimes, Shattuck said, the results can be gratifying.

Recently, he said, a young man who had been an inmate at Joplin before leaving in 1985 dropped by to say hello. He said he now has a job with traffic court and is doing well.

“He wanted me to know he had heard what we said. He finally understood,” Shattuck said.