|
Keeping Kids on Track
 "We'll even see a kid for stealing a candy bar," said Glenna White Crawforth
'68, supervisor of the Ada County Juvenile Court's Neighborhood Accountability
Board, a volunteer program in Boise, Idaho, that resolves police complaints
a-gainst young first-time offenders.
"NAB--appropriately named," said Crawford--"addresses shoplifters, minor cases
of arson, runaways, kids who'd either drop through the cracks or clog up the
courts." If youngsters do go to court, she said, months might go by before
they'd see a judge, "who is more likely to get car thieves and so blow the kid
off. Kids got the message that it was no big deal."
Crawforth recruits and trains some 40 adult volunteers for the NAB program,
which stresses accountability, community protection and rehabilitation. Two or
three members meet in a private room for half an hour in an evening with an
offender and his or her family, going over the police report, compiling a
family social history, discussing options. How does the offender feel? Are the
parents handling the situation appropriately? Should the case go to a probation
officer?
"We can close a case right there," said Crawforth. About 90 percent of the
offenders face community service, restitution, essays, letters of apology, even
anger-management classes. "We can do everything a judge can do except put a kid
in detention," she said.
Fresh out of Colby with her English major and several courses in psychology and
sociology, Crawforth planned to teach but instead traveled and worked in Europe
for IBM for two years. Then with her husband, Rich, she headed west to his
hometown of Boise.
She was a part-time manager for Tupperware for eight years, then resuscitated
an ailing study-abroad program at Boise State University, then switched to p.r.
work with the Meridian, Idaho, chamber of commerce. A self-described "complete
easterner," the Cambridge, Mass., native and mother of three says she knew
Idaho was "the rodeo rather than the ballet," but what really got her goat at
the week-long Meridian Dairy Days was the female mud wrestling.
"I have a tendency to come in and create a program or fix something," she said
(Meridian got a program of authentic craftsmen instead). "Then I tend to move
on."
After four years of helping the kids of Ada County, Crawforth says NAB is
"really having an impact." In one year's time the program dealt with 1,580
kids, and only 20 percent reoffended, a third the number in the court system.
"We've become a prototype for Idaho," she said.
Crawforth also has been president and board member of the Idaho State
Historical Museum, which she says was a great way to learn local history. In
the meantime Boise has acquired a performing arts center, a philharmonic
orchestra and a ballet company.
"We keep getting listed as one of the best places to live," she said, an
easterner who counts the transition to westerner as one of her successes.
"Don't tell anybody about what a great place Boise is. I worked for the chamber
of commerce in Meridian, but now I'm ready to close the door."
Sixties Class Notes |
Table of Contents | Seventies Class Notes
|
|