Mentors Put Young Criminals on Right Path : South Carolina: In place of a controversial get-tough approach, county adopts the guidance program with the help of churches.

When Richard Harpootlian was elected county solicitor in 1990, he was shocked to learn how dramatically things had changed from his days as a young prosecutor in the 1970s and early 1980s.

Not only were criminals younger, but crime in this central South Carolina county of 400,000 people also had become much more violent, and he was dealing with habitual criminals more frequently.

Harpootlian at first adopted a get-tough approach to getting parents’ attention: He made them pay for the care and housing of incarcerated children. The plan brought howls of protest from local ministers and civil rights groups, and one mother filed a lawsuit to terminate the practice.

To the surprise of officials in South Carolina’s Richmond County, however, a lower-profile program that was launched as an afterthought has proved far more successful.

Starting from the same premise--that poor parenting is at the heart of rising juvenile crime--the solicitor’s office began recruiting surrogate parents. Working with area churches, Harpootlian assembled a network of adults to act as mentors for youths in trouble.

The program is being credited for a drop in juvenile crime in the county at a time when other big-city jurisdictions in the state are seeing an increase. It has worked so well that other South Carolina communities are copying it; officials say they expect it to go statewide by the end of the year.

Deputy Solicitor Jonathan S. Gasser said the mentoring program demonstrates that prosecutors must look beyond the “hang ‘em high, go for the jugular” approach to dealing with juvenile crime and explore more innovative policies.

“One of the first individuals I dealt with after I assumed office as solicitor was a 14-year-old who had been arrested some 36 times before,” said Harpootlian, now a 46-year-old criminal-defense lawyer. After each arrest, the youngster had been sent back “into the same family environment that created his character or the mentality that caused this conduct in the first place.”

Under the mentoring program, juveniles arrested for crimes as frivolous as fighting in school or as serious as carrying a concealed weapon, drug possession and assault and battery are spared incarceration. Instead, they may choose to be assigned to mentors who spend time with the youngsters, enforce curfews and encourage them to perform better in school.

Almost 750 juveniles have gone through the program so far. The solicitor’s office reports recidivism is 6.43%--a tenth of the rate for youngsters who go through the usual juvenile-justice system.

Youthful candidates for the program are introduced to it via the stern personage of Joshua Lorick, an assistant pastor at a United Church of Christ who has coordinated the program since 1994.

One recent morning, he assembled 10 students who had all been arrested for causing disturbances in high school. All were accompanied by a guardian, usually a mother, as they sat rapt, awaiting news of their fate.

Lorick paced the floor like a drill sergeant in a double-breasted suit, administering the tough love he is convinced many of the youths have been lacking at home.

“This is a very serious charge,” he growled. “I do not want anyone to take this lightly.”

Few of the youths had previous charges. Still, Lorick warned that if they went before a judge and were found guilty they would be sent in handcuffs to a youth center for up to 45 days for evaluation.

He lingered on the details of their confinement. Strip searches . . . no telephone privileges . . . 5:30 a.m. wake-ups . . . no sugar with meals . . . group showers . . . shared living quarters . . . one hour of recreation daily . . . marches.

In addition, their parents--on their weekly visits--would have to submit to strip searches. “Some parents come one time and they don’t come again,” he said. “That don’t sound too good, does it folks? But that’s the real deal.”

Now comes the sweet part: They could avoid these hardships by voluntarily entering the county’s mentoring program. Now Lorick lightens up, even allowing himself to smile. “I’m the best friend you ever had inside a courthouse.”

For Lorick, a longtime youth worker who has two sons, this drill is easy. More challenging--and perhaps more rewarding--are the hard-boiled cases, such as the bright 15-year-old girl with whom he had a one-on-one conference the same day. She also had gotten into a fight at school, only it turned into a near riot. And it was preceded--and followed--by an epidemic of unexcused absences and failing grades.

Family problems were at the root of her troubles. But before using his conciliatory, fatherly tone with her, Lorick broke down her resistance by reducing her to tears. By the end of the session, he was focusing his laser glare and stern words at the mother, whom he had deduced was a drug addict.

“She needs help, ma’am,” he told her, as she tried to deflect blame for her daughter’s problems. “Kids don’t raise themselves. While she’s responsible for her actions, she needs a support mechanism.” Then he added: “That’s what I’m here for.”

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As coordinator of the program, Lorick assigns each of the juveniles to a church, which then selects a mentor who takes on primary responsibility for helping the youngsters. The mentors are church members from all walks of life who volunteer to work with troubled youth.

Each church is free to design its program, within guidelines. Churches plan weekly group activities, such as trips to the library and counseling sessions. In addition, the mentor checks in with his or her charges regularly by phone, offering advice and encouragement and making sure the child is complying with curfews. As a rule, youngsters do not meet privately with mentors, although there have been especially difficult cases where exceptions were made.

Theoretically, Lorick’s role in the youthful offenders’ lives diminishes when they are assigned to a church. But he continues to monitor each youth’s progress. And he always invites them and their parents to call on him if he can help.

The mentoring program was devised after a group of African American ministers came to Harpootlian to complain about the harshness of the child-support payments he had begun extracting without first conferring with community leaders. He also started the child-support program without the benefit of legislation. Acting on his interpretation of existing state law, he simply started filing petitions in family court, “just as a mother would ask an absent father to pay child support.”

A number of states have adopted measures to make parents accountable for their children’s misdeeds. In about two dozen states--including California--parents may be arrested or fined for negligence because of their children’s crimes. The measures have sparked court challenges and complaints from civil rights groups.

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County officials have all but suspended the practice of seeking support payments while they await the state Supreme Court’s ruling on one mother’s lawsuit, Gasser said.

While the solicitor’s office may continue to file petitions in special cases, he said one problem with the program, aside from the court challenge, is that it clogs up an already-overburdened court system.

Harpootlian agrees with Gasser that the mentoring program was the most beneficial of the two initiatives. It began with four churches; now there are 56, including synagogues and mosques.

One measure of the program’s success is that it was started under a Democratic administrator and the new Republican solicitor, who took office in January, is not only continuing it but expanding it.

Lorick was hired last July because the program grew too large to operate without a full-time coordinator. Gasser said the office plans to hire more staff and will pay for growing administrative costs by charging parents $50 for allowing their children to participate.

Times researcher Edith Stanley contributed to this story.