Consider the Consequences

Two white large vans drop off a few dozen people at the Macon-Bibb County Law Enforcement Center. Guards yell at them to separate by gender and walk in straight lines into the dim beige building that they will call home for a day. Inmates yell at the newcomers from inside their cells through the food door opening. One guard brings out a cart carrying their new attire: orange slippers and black and white striped jumpsuits. The guards prepare their paperwork and fingerprints. A guard carries one of them who cannot reach the table where the fingerprints are taken. This is not a regular inmate process. These “inmates” are all children between the ages of 9 and 17 as part of the jail intervention program Consider the Consequences.

“The goal of the Consider the Consequences program is to impact the lives of young people between the ages of 9 and 17. What we try to do is impact them at a point in which they may be showing signs of misbehavior,” Sheriff David Davis said.

The program was founded in May 2015 with the hopes of reducing juvenile delinquency. After serving approximately 150 children during the year of service, it raises the question of the amount of children that actually benefitted from this program.

Unlike programs like Beyond Scared Straight, Lt. Ellis Sinclar and Sheriff Davis emphasize that their purpose is not to scare. Beyond Scared Straight is a reality show that follows at-risk youth through a jail intervention program where they have inmates and guards intimidating them in hopes of changing their behavior.

“We’re trying to get our young people to change their behavior. It’s not anything about wanting to scare them,” Lt. Sinclair said.

The program’s components such as: eating jail food, meeting with Judge Verda Colvin, meeting with inmates and following order has a psychological effect that will change behaviors. The psychological effect of the program is not aimed scaring the participants, Sheriff Davis said.

The purpose of the program is not to scare children because “kids now a days are more savvy…They know some of the things that these inmates are screaming at them and talking to them about may not happen,” Davis said. “It’s more of a psychological impact when you put that jail jumpsuit on, when you hear that clinging door of that cell, when you’re shackled up, when you’re told to stand on the wall, when you’re told what to do, when your cellphone is taken away from you and when your connection to the outside world is taken, it has a psychological impact.”

Despite claims of not “scaring” children, the actual components of the program differ. Two guards carried and shoved a crying 9-year-old boy into a cell with an inmate inside. Inmates yelled at children to do push-ups. Three guards handled a young girl for disobeying orders.

Even if their motive is not to scare, there is still skepticism on what kind of effect this type of program has.

“I’d be more skeptical of the exposure part where the kids are going to the jail and seeing what it’s like,” said Mercer University Criminal Justice professor Winston Fletcher. “At least by itself, I doubt that would have much of an impact especially given our fairly higher rates of recidivism in the United States when people are actually in jail and return to it. I’m not sure that by itself would be helpful but some of the additional supports provided through the program could be helpful.”

For this reason, participants of the Consider the Consequences program are required to join a year-long follow-up program which meets monthly. The participants meet for two hours and are taught about bullying, respecting authority, the danger of gangs and drugs and danger of social media. Their parents are also required to have a separate session during that time, Lt. Sinclair said.

“We measure success through the life skill training program,” Lt. Sinclair said. “We follow up with the child and the school they are going to, to see if their behavior has changed. We talk to the school counselors.”

There is no concrete statistic that demonstrates the success rate of the program’s participants. The success is measured based on observations of those that passed through the Consider the Consequences program and the follow-up. This makes it hard to see whether this program is actually effective since there is no overall recidivism statistic.

“One of the ways we measure whether or not we have been effective is if in a few months the parents come back and say ‘look my son or daughter are going back into some of the same behaviors they had before’…Out of the 150 kids we have had, we’ve had very few do that,” Sheriff Davis said.

Whether or not the program is effective, there are hopes for the program to expand.

“I see the program expanding to a point that it might take more than doing it more than just once a month,” Lt. Sinclair said. “Maybe it can branch off even more to other agencies.”

Along with reaching more children, there are hopes to improve how success is measured on those that already went through the program. Without concrete statistics or studies, it is hard to see whether or not the program has helped.

“We’ve just been in this for a year so we probably plan to do some studies looking at kids that went to it last year,” Sheriff Davis said. “As any corrective behavior, it’s going to work for a little while but it may not work for the long-term so one of our strategies is to circle back and see if there is any long-term positive effects from [the program].”