Terrebonne hopes to SPARC area’s youth with program

Terrebonne Parish adopted the Single Point Assessment Resource Center program to help local youth.

The parish set aside $250,000 to establish a location, office staff and anything else the SPARC program will need to be effective.

Mirrored after similar programs in Lake Charles, Shreveport and Jefferson Parish, Terrebonne Parish President Michel Claudet said SPARC is designed to keep young people out of the penal system.

“[Statewide], SPARC programs have helped divert many young individuals, outside of the penal system, into being productive members of society,” Claudet said. “Of course, that is our goal.”

SPARC is designed to educate children about conscience decision-making.

“It is going to be an educational program, which will give juveniles the do’s and don’ts and right and wrongs, which should help them make better decisions,” said Maj. Malcolm Wolfe, chief of detectives for Terrebonne Parish Sheriff’s Office.

Wolfe believes children tend to model their peers, which is where the SPARC program excels.

“A lot of things kids get into are learned behaviors. This program will help make children aware of the consequences of the things they do as followers,” he said. “When you have hands on and you’re guiding them through decisions, you will help them make better decisions and better people overall.”

And poor decision-making – the kind that results in trouble – does not necessarily result in detention time for young offenders.

“The program is designed to place children in the community in better situations,” said Joseph Harris, who is director of the parish’s Juvenile Detention Center. “If we put someone in detention, then that kid really needs to go to detention.”

Law enforcement officers, social workers and detention center staff will evaluate offenders and determine if admission to the facility or alternative programs best serve the juvenile.

“Let’s say an 8-year-old comes in because he or she got in trouble, we would evaluate the kid and we may think, ‘Hey, this kid needs health or family services.’ That can help catch things at an early age,” Harris said. “If that child goes untreated, then he or she could keep getting in trouble until they eventually commit a real bad crime.

“The program will help us get to these kids early to keep them out of detention.”

Locally, detention centers are the only avenues for discipline, which can be problematic, according to Claudet.

“We believe that kids are put in [the detention center] when they shouldn’t be,” he said. “Sometimes, they learn more bad things [in there].

“If you are associating with people who have bad attitudes or doing things they shouldn’t be doing, it can get the ball rolling for the child who was placed there when [authorities] really had opportunities to divert them from the entire system.”

Equally troublesome, the parish president said, personal stature and one’s geographical background can come into play.

“If you have a 100-pound kid and you throw him in with 200-pound kids, it is not good. You have East Side/West Side, H.L. Bourgeois, Terrebonne or South Terrebonne; it is a major amount of things that go on everyday,” Claudet said.

Detention center stays are not always the best answer, the man charged with overseeing the Terrebonne facility said.

“They are just part of the process. They are not the whole process,” Harris said. “We want to be able to have different alternatives because sometimes it is not just the kids.

“We have plenty of kids who come in and do well with correctional facilities and things like that, but when they get back to their normal environment, they deteriorate,” he continued. “It is the same thing when a child goes to school. They may do well, but the second they go home, they change. Everything you build toward falls.”

Harris is optimistic the program will also curb the parish’s number of repeat juvenile offenders.

“Most of our kids are repeat offenders so if we can cut that in half, we would be doing well,” he said.