The Crime Report (https://thecrimereport.org/2022/08/23/battling-the-punishment-mentality-a-healthier-approach-to-at-risk-youth/)

Gian Paul Gonzalez, creator of Hope + Future, an organization located in New Jersey, uses athletics and physical fitness as a means of addressing youth at risk. PHOTO BY Shy Obillos.

When I was 13 and living in Brooklyn, N.Y. a police officer showed up at my front door to question me about a friend who had run away from home.

The officer was accompanied by the boy’s stepfather, who glared at me and sighed impatiently when I lied, “I have not seen him.”

They both stared down at me, as if they were expecting me to suddenly become afraid and tell them where to find him. When I would not acquiesce to their intimidation, they left, defeated.

Later that night, I foraged my fridge for leftovers and stuffed them into an old Jansport. I told my mom I was going down the block to a friend’s house, but I secretly met my friend who had run away from home.

He had been hiding out for days in an old treehouse in an area buried by weeds and desolate trails—a forgotten spot in the neighborhood usually occupied by bums and drunks.

He confided in me that his stepfather had been abusing him, and he had the bruises and scars to prove it. He seemed to be subject to abuse from most adults, including the school principal, an old-school nun who he claimed used to strike him on the knuckles with a ruler.

By the end of the year, he was boasting to have made a homemade bomb and was planning to blow up the home of one the teachers. Not only was he expelled from school, but he was carted off to a juvenile detention center, where he stayed for several months.

In hindsight now as an adult, I still believe I made the right choice to lie to the police.

However, I was too naïve at the time to know that not only his family, but the education system and criminal justice system, had failed him miserably. I’d realize later that no one ever truly tried to help a boy who was simply labeled as a problem child.

He was either beaten, yelled at, or locked up, all of which worsened his behavior over time. Research now tells us such methods are ineffective when addressing aggressive behavior in adolescents. Different treatments are now available.

So, why is this story still far from unusual today?

According to the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), on any given day, nearly 60,000 youth under the age of 18 are incarcerated in juvenile jails and prisons in the United States.

Most of them are subject to a regime of discipline or punishment that experts claim have proven their effectiveness.

Paul Boxer believes such methods do more harm than good.

In an interview with The Crime Report, Paul Boxer, a psychology professor and the director of the Center on Youth Violence and Juvenile Justice at Rutgers University, said authorities still  mistakenly “punish” young people into better behavior.

Programs like those depicted in the now-famous documentary “Scared Straight,” for instance, are still widely used in many states, but are ineffective, he said.

Such programs “actually made them more likely to offend because they were no longer concerned about what jail might be like,” he said.

Other programs house young people in facilities far away from their homes.

So, what will effectively help adolescents decrease and eliminate violent, aggressive, and antisocial behavior?

In a 2005 case study, Boxer described a more successful strategy that he used with a boy whose problems were very similar to my friend’s—an “evidence-based approach” which involved arousal control and teaching strategies on how to overcome anger and/or anxiety, such as deep breathing exercises and counting to ten.

Additionally, he and his patient worked on problem-solving skills and role-playing, specifically when feeling provoked by a peer.

Boxer also involved his patient’s family in the treatment, so they could practice these exercises at home. Within 10 to 12 weeks, Boxer attests that his patient stopped getting into trouble and was able to complete the sixth grade.

“You have to use some of those relationship-building skills to get to the point where they become receptive and willing to hear you out,” Boxer recalled.

Some of these ideas are now embedded in innovative programs.

Gian Paul Gonzalez, creator of Hope + Future, an organization located in West New York, N.J., uses athletics and physical fitness as a means of addressing youth at risk. The program is offered in inner-city public schools and juvenile detention centers.

What’s important, he told The Crime Report, is using the programs to build relationships with young people.

“You can always find a place with better equipment —more technology, better video game systems,” Gonzalez said. “But without relationships, it will just be a place.”

Gonzalez learned the importance of building these relationships by working within a juvenile detention center while he was attending college.

He and some other classmates began with a once-a-week commitment to play basketball with the young detainees.

Gian Paul Gonzalez (left) with participants in his Hope + Future program. Photo by Shy Obillos.

Eventually, staff would use the basketball program to modify the detainees’ behaviors, meaning they could only participate if they stayed out of trouble, and it worked.

Following their basketball game, Gonzalez often invited the kids to join him for a meal.

“Eating together—they see ‘oh, you’re not just playing and leaving and you’re eating the same food I’m eating. You’re sitting next to me at these tables and these benches that are bolted into the ground.

“That was really important…psychology shows there’s nothing greater that you can do than family dinner around the table. It’s powerful.”

Boxer agrees. He believes sports offer an important way to control and modify behavior.

“If you’re going to actually try to be better at basketball or be better at football or whatever sport, you have to be able to control your body,” Boxer said.

“You have to be able to stay calm, you have to be able to visualize the ball going into the basket…so there’s all kinds of skills that are just routine in the context of sport.”

Boxer suggests it takes someone who is reliable and caring when building these relationships that can ultimately shift the way adolescents think and improve their behavior.

“If you’re able to relate to kids who are going to say sometimes pretty horrendous things about you…they will be willing to start to listen and they’ll be willing to at least give you the time of day, give you the benefit of the doubt, and kind of stay with you there,” he said.

Such a relationship not only can change the course of one’s future, but it can also provide a long-lasting message of hope, which is what Gonzalez set out to accomplish when he first had the idea to begin his foundation, Hope + Future.

After working with kids in the detention center, he eventually went on to become a high school teacher where he continued his commitment to help at-risk youth

Gonzalez offered one example of how a student exposed to domestic violence at home used this experience to spark the blueprint of Hope + Future.

The student asked Gonzalez to lead a self-defense class, primarily for girls within the school.

Since the student was well-versed in kickboxing and knew how to get out of a chokehold, he wished he could have taught this skill to a family member who suffered the consequence of such violence inflicted upon her by her boyfriend at the time.

Gonzalez responded by offering a self-defense class in Hope + Future.

Since 2010, Hope + Future has grown significantly. It thrives not only in Union City, but in other neighboring communities.

“Our goal is to organize some kind of event every week to two weeks out in the community that uses physical fitness as a hook,” Gonzalez said.

“Because if you say we’re gonna do a gang prevention rally, no kids are gonna show up. But if you say basketball tournament, soccer tournament,’ or offer prizes, a dance off, then they start talking and it goes viral. Before you know it, you can get a couple hundred kids, and who knows what they would otherwise have been doing at that time on that night.”

Both men believe funding such initiatives, called MST (Multisystemic Therapy) programs, would be a major step towards curbing adolescent misbehavior.

Many reformers have called for eliminating juvenile detention centers altogether. According to Boxer, these programs offer a viable alternative by working with high-risk youth in the communities where they live.

“If you had a program like MST that could service those kids, who typically would otherwise get arrested at the time of the first indication that they’re on that pathway, you can prevent them from ever getting arrested, or at least prevent them from getting arrested for crimes so severe that would warrant secure custody,” Boxer said.

Boxer concedes there is a lot of resistance to the idea.

“A big part of the resistance is the [cost],” he said. “But I also think that we’re still dealing with   a mentality that suggests that people should be punished severely for their wrongdoings.”

Meanwhile, the programs on the ground, like Hope + Future, are looking for ways to be

An ad for the Hope + Future program

The center has also received a grant which was used to purchase a soundproof pod that will be used for therapy sessions with local cognitive behavioral licensed therapists.

It is also developing a program this fall that will enable young people to obtain a certificate in “coffee education,” to help them get a job as baristas.

Ultimately, both men show that the specifics of the programs matter less than the caring attention provided to youth, who would otherwise be drifting into behavior that harms themselves or others.

Gonzalez describes the approach in a compelling phrase.

“You can make a mistake, but you’re not born a mistake,” he said.

Maria DiLorenzo, based in Brooklyn, N.Y., is a contributing writer to The Crime Report. She recently started a blog called Beyond the Crime. Follow her on Instagram @beyond_the_crime.

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