SOUTH SIDE Funding to fight juvenile crime

The city's South Side has the highest juvenile crime rate in the county.
By DAVID SKOLNICK
VINDICATOR STAFF WRITER
YOUNGSTOWN -- Mahoning County Juvenile Court will use a $129,518 federal grant to increase its presence on the city's South Side, where many of its clients reside, in an effort to reduce crime.
Judge Theresa Dellick announced today that the court received a Project Safe Neighborhoods Task Force grant, awarded by the U.S. Department of Justice.
The goal is to prevent crime and to reduce the recidivism rate among juvenile offenders, Judge Dellick said.
"We all want to get guns off the streets and kids into their homes," she said. "We want to bring our children home and bring structure and support to them and their families."
The anti-crime program will begin shortly, and the federal money will fund this initiative for two years.
What's in store
The program gives the court's probation department the ability to:
UEnhance juvenile probation operations on the South Side.
UPay for technology to track and identify crime trends among youths and intervene before a situation becomes a crisis. This would include a computer program to map the locations of juveniles on probation as well as cellular telephones, pagers and police radios for probation officers. The court also will hire another probation officer.
UWork with the Youngstown Police Department, the Adult Probation Authority, Ohio Department of Youth Services and other law enforcement officials on the South Side. This would include having probation officers and other law enforcement agencies drive through that area to monitor the activity of juveniles on probation from the court.
UWork nontraditional hours to monitor juvenile probationers and enforce court-ordered terms and conditions of probation. The fund will pay for probation officers to work on weekends and past 4 p.m. on weekdays.
"The idea isn't to catch people doing the wrong thing, but to keep them from doing the wrong thing," said Ralph M. Ricci, the court's chief probation officer. "We want to identify kids under our jurisdiction and deter crime."
Juvenile crime rate
The city's South Side is by far the highest juvenile crime area in the county, Judge Dellick said.
Of the 600 youths on probation, more than one-third live on the South Side. Also, more than half of the youths on intensive probation status and more than 40 percent of the youths detained in the juvenile detention center live on the South Side, Judge Dellick said.
"The South Side is a very important part of our county," she said. "If we don't target it, we might as well say goodbye to the rest of the county. We need to intervene at the earliest possible time with children."
skolnick@vindy.com