- (female announcer) Production funding for Behind the Headlines is made possible in part by the WKNO Production Fund, the WKNO Endowment Fund, and by viewers like you, thank you.

- A look at juvenile justice in Memphis and Shelby County tonight, on Behind the Headlines.

[intense orchestral music] I'm Eric Barnes with The Daily Memphian.

Thanks for joining us.

I'm joined tonight by Tarik Sugarmon, Shelby County Juvenile Court Judge.

Thanks for being here again.

- Thank you for the invite.

- Absolutely.

Along with Anthony Alexander, Director of Shelby County Division of Corrections.

Thank you for being here.

- Thank you.

- Along with Bill Dries, reporter with The Daily Memphian.

Let's start, and I'm gonna start, if I can, with you, first time on the show, we appreciate you being here, Anthony, and talk about what the director of the Division of Corrections for Shelby County is and really what it isn't.

It's not the jail, it's not the penal farm, but it is some very important institutions here in Shelby County.

So talk about that so people are oriented.

- Absolutely.

So Shelby County Division of Corrections, I am appointed by the mayor of Shelby County, it is operated under his administration.

We house state felons sentenced up to one to six years.

We have contract with the United States Marshals Service.

We also have misdemeanors that have been sentenced here locally.

We also have the Office of Re-Entry and the Redemption House, which is a transition house operated by Shelby County Government.

And as of October 1 last year, we now have the Youth Justice and Education Center.

- Which we'll talk about quite a bit.

But I wanna start with you, Judge Sugarmon.

The crime is way down, right?

The stats, you know, in the first two months of the year, fifty percent drop, year-over-year drop in violent crime, motor vehicle thefts down, I think it was 68%.

What is going on, so, and some of that, you know, some people say, is the task force.

Some of that, people point out, it was happening before the task force got here and we can talk about all that.

But you're three plus years into the eight-year job-- - It'd be four in September.

- Yeah, came in at a time when crime generally was really rising and then really spiked nationally and locally in Shelby County and Memphis.

What do you see in terms of the juvenile stats, and what is working, and what is the reason behind the drop in crime?

- There are several significant factors.

One, coming outta COVID, we had a lot of children who were displaced.

They took a couple of years to really get back on track, and that was the trend that we saw coming out of COVID where the numbers were going up, in terms of violent offenses especially.

We have put more services in place.

We have our community partners who probably signed up, I think, over 140 now.

And these aren't just nonprofits that call us up and say, "We have a service to provide," we actually go in and we do a site visit and then they have to file an application quarterly, and we re-up and they have to give us their data.

So we make sure we're tracking the trends of work they're supposed to be doing.

And job opportunities.

We're getting youth in the job training programs.

But now, I wanna say, the delinquency cases are only a small fraction of the cases we do.

The majority of our cases are on the child welfare side, seventy-nine percent of those cases are child welfare.

- Yeah, and I wanna come back to that.

Let me stay with crime just for one second.

It's been so heavy on people's minds for a few years, and, again, with task force stuff, and so on.

Do you work with the task force, I mean, do you see any impact on a daily or weekly basis from the activities of the task force?

- Yes.

We can't quantify the numbers.

Of course, law enforcement are responsible for arrests, detention is responsible for admissions.

And we're responsible for cases.

That's what we track, is our cases.

So you'll look at numbers from law enforcement, and there'll be a higher number.

And then of course detention, those admissions, you'll have some, they've dwindled out because they're not detainable.

They could be diverted from the system.

And then the cases we actually handle in court, those are the numbers we track.

- Yeah, let me bring you in and, you know, I'll ask you a bunch of questions and some you're always welcome to say, "I don't know," or that's not really in your purview.

But you've been in corrections for, I think, we talked before the show, almost 40 years.

- Correct.

- You've been the director of Corrections for Shelby County since, what, eight years now, is that what you told me?

- That's correct.

- From your point of view, what has worked in the reduction in crime?

- Programming on the inside.

You have to address the needs of the individuals who are entrusted in our care.

And so once they arrive at the facility, we have to give them some type of skill set so when they return to the community they won't re-offend.

And so we try to do that through vocational activities, cognitive-based programming, and such programs such as that.

But you have to invest inside the facility because if not, you're just warehousing individuals and that's not something we wanna do.

- And it doesn't always work, you know, to give those opportunities, vocational, I mean, what does that feel like in your role when it's just somebody isn't taking the opportunities you're trying to give them in that situation?

- Well, you have to assess each individual individually.

And so you have to see what their needs are.

Everyone is not gonna be employable, we understand that.

And so what we have to do is look for entrepreneurship programs.

Master Barber program, we have that at the Division of Corrections.

We're now starting a vocational mechanic school where they're taking a virtual reality mechanic school.

We're looking to do something similar at the Youth Justice and Education Center, culinary arts programming.

And so you look for programs that if they're not able to be employed, they can start their own business and franchise, hopefully.

- Let me bring in Bill.

- Director, talk a little bit about the difference between training a corrections officer to work at the Corrections Division and training a corrections officer to work at what's called YJEC with juveniles.

- So what we've intentionally done at the Division of Corrections is try not to make a difference.

Because what we've found is what works at the Youth Justice and Education Center can also work inside the adult facility.

What we've added is additional components of addressing mental health needs.

We have CIT-trained staff.

We have mental health first aid classes that we have going on, handle with care programming.

We're constantly looking for additional programming here to train our staff, both to work in both facilities, because you have to address the needs based on the staffing, the population numbers, that way we can interchange staff a little bit more accessible.

- Does working with juveniles give you some insight into how the adults you see at the correction center, how maybe they got to where they were?

- To some degree.

You know, it's interesting, so we've adopted what we tried to do because there are statistics out that show that if a child can't read by the third grade, they're most likely will face some form of incarceration.

And so we've adopted an elementary school here in Shelby County as our facility, trying to offset that going in, teaching them how to read, mentorship and programs such as that.

But we also see that at the Youth Justice and Education Center, we see the parallels.

I actually started my career in Juvenile Court here in Shelby County.

And when I transferred to the adult side, I saw a lot of young men and women that were at the juvenile facility, at the adult facility as well.

- Judge, as we mentioned in the intro, this arrangement with corrections has been in place since October.

How are things going?

- From the court's purview, excellent.

It couldn't be better.

We have been able to have more docket space obviously since they're now transporting to our court system where we have 5 courts, approximately 110 cases we're able to handle per day, as opposed to, at the Youth Justice and Education Center, we were only handling delinquency and detentions there, we were limited to about 30 cases a day.

In regards to the transport, Director Alexander and his team have done a masterful job working with us.

Even before we began the transport, we worked through the logistics, the numbers that we needed to have transported, the timing of the deliver there to the court and then back to the detention.

And the other things, little small things have counted significantly in the morale of the students that are there, the detainees.

Things like having polo shirts, gray color, and having several changes of clothes, to have shower shoes, little things like that, pajamas, it boosts the morale and increasing the visits with family.

That has been key to the rehabilitative process, keeping the family and youth connected together.

- Director, those considerations, talk about them and what you've seen day to day at the center.

- I've seen an uplift in the morale of the staff as well as the residents that we house at the facility.

As the judge stated, one of the first things we intentionally wanted to do was change the attire of the offender.

If you dress someone out in what we call sometimes industry or prison garment, they may act out in that method.

They see no hope, they see no future.

And so we wanted to, as we traveled around the country and looked at other facilities, we saw that that was not the case in most of the facilities we visited.

And so we chose the polo shirts, we chose the khaki pants so they could resemble the uniforms that are worn out in the community, those individuals that are going to school.

And then something else that we did, we listened to our community stakeholders, the concerns that they had.

We asked them what did they wanna see different in the Youth Justice and Education Center.

And so that's when we introduced pajamas.

The child does not have to sleep in the same attire that they have to attend school in or to attend court in.

Something we did in the adult facility that's worked well, we wanted to do in the youth center, was personal hygiene items.

In my industry, we often give residents a small toothbrush about the size of my finger.

It's hard to brush your teeth that way.

And so we started giving full-sized toothbrushes, full-sized deodorant, soap.

There's nothing more degrading than to go up to a staff member and have to ask for those items.

In our female housing, we've put sanitary hygiene dispensers in those units so they can go and dispense those items themselves.

You don't have to ask an officer or a counsel for those items.

You can freely go, you don't have to have the hoarding, you just go and dispense those items whenever you need it.

- Let's back up a little for people I realize that maybe aren't as close to this.

Until this was taken over, who ran, young people were housed where?

Downtown at the facility?

- They were downtown on the third floor of 616 Adams.

- Okay.

- That's correct.

- And so this was a build out facility, where is this, the new youth justice center that we're talking about?

- Winchester and Getwell.

- Okay.

- It's the old Shelby training facility.

- Okay, what is going on then in that old space?

What is it used for, I should say.

- Well, we have a portion of it, and the director can speak to this a little better than I can, that's held for youth when they're transported there to keep them in a secure environment while they're at the court.

But then they go back to-- - When they wait to go- - Right, the court.

- Whatever process is going on.

- That's correct.

- And before, the sheriff's office was in charge of oversight- - That's correct.

- Of those folks.

So you took that over.

Okay, that's the lay of the land I probably should've done more at the top of this.

For people who say, and Shelby County Mayor Lee Harris, who appointed you, was on the show in, I think, November and October talking about this, I think he visited.

He was extremely happy that these changes had happened, and the treatment of young people.

There are people listening maybe, and certainly people who observe these kinds of things, they're saying, "Why are we treating these people, "these people, I don't care how old they are, "they've done terrible things.

Why are we doing these nice things for them?"

Your response, for each of you.

- So I don't consider it nice things.

I think it's things that, decent humanity, we should do for anyone.

I often tell my staff at graduations and work for us, "It's not our job to punish, the courts will punish.

"It's our jobs to rehabilitate "and to make sure that we are treating them with dignity and care."

This could be our brother, sister, mother, father, son or child.

And so we wanna make sure that they have the basic needs met, and it is our responsibility when they're entrusted inside of our care.

And so we will do that.

- You, yeah.

- As Juvenile Court, our statutory responsibility is to rehabilitate.

You can't expect to do the same, have the same processes, and primarily punishment, and expect to change a person's trajectory.

That hasn't worked, and we know that empirically.

The data shows that rehabilitation, especially at the ages of the youth that we deal with, is the best prescription.

And getting them on a track where they either can continue their schooling and go on to college or on a track where they can take up a trade.

- For you, judge, what are roughly the ages of the people in general that we're talking about?

- Twelve up to eighteen.

Eighteen is where our jurisdiction ends.

We rarely have 11 or 12-year olds, but we've had, you know, a few.

- And about how many are in the facility?

- In terms of total numbers?

- Yeah, total numbers.

- The day before yesterday it was, what, about 30?

Was it 37?

- I can remember it being quite a bit higher.

I mean, when you came in, didn't it reach- - Yeah, at one point- - A hundred or something.

- When we moved into the new facility, at one point, I think it reached about 110.

And we've been working on getting our numbers down.

One of the things we weren't doing before, and I say we, the court system, we were not putting services in place pre-adjudication.

That is before they had their case handled and adjudicated.

We're putting services now when they contact the system so that that youth development specialist, these are what people consider counselors, are working with that youth before the case is handled.

And then after adjudication, depending on what the outcome is, they will continue to work with that child in community.

- And the folks that you are overseeing are primarily waiting for trial or convicted, or both?

- Waiting trial.

- Waiting trial, okay.

- Yes.

- I should've done some of those basics- - Now some- - Yeah.

- Is, after the adjudication, if they're sent to DCS, Department of Corrections, there's some short period of time until they're transferred.

- I got you.

Got you.

- It's usually pre-adjudication.

- Let's talk one more thing that was big.

When you were running, and you were running at the same time that Steve Mulroy was running, the prior DA, Amy Weirich, was criticized for, you know, treating young people as adults and putting them in the adult court.

How has that changed over the three plus years that you've been in office?

I mean, I assume it's, I'm sure in that three-year time you have transferred young people to- - We still do transfer, that's correct.

- But how has it changed and how is your approach different?

- Well, one, I have to mention this, there's a statutory change that actually requires transfer if a youth is of a certain age.

If they're 16 or 17 years old and they've committed a murder first, murder second, or criminal attempt murder first, murder second, once we find probable cause, if the youth is not committable to an institution of developmentally disabled or mentally ill, it's automatic transfer of the adult system.

We lose the ability to consider other factors like prior contact with the court, prior rehabilitative services, whether they responded there too, whether the offense was against a person or a property.

All of those are off the table given that age group.

Now, in terms of how we handle transfers, one of the things that I really appreciated, you have a youth that comes in, it is a nonviolent offense but it's still a felony and one where they could seek transfer, if that youth has had no prior contact with the court, we do what's called a pre-screening.

In other words, we look at a case, rather than have the youth waiting on the attorney to get discovery, waiting on the state reports, which often take a long period of time, we go and have a pre-screening to determine whether or not this was one that would probably be transferred or not.

And if not, we go ahead and put them in services then rather than waiting and have them sitting around to have their case adjudicated.

- Yeah, and those were changes, the change about the transfers was a state law that was passed- - That's correct.

- Yeah.

Let me bring Bill back in.

- I saw an item the other night on the news about a juvenile in Tipton County who's in trouble for threatening to shoot up a school there, across the county line.

And what caught my ear was the item said that that juvenile is being housed at the detention center here.

Are we taking cases from Tipton County-- - Yes, in West Tennessee, some of the juvenile jurisdiction don't have a detention facility.

- Mm.

- And so the state has a contract so that Shelby County can take any of those youth that need to be detained but can't be detained in the locale where they are.

- Okay.

The other point to talk about is we have talked a lot on this show about blended sentencing.

Are you seeing that yet?

- We haven't had any that have yet reached 19.

If they're determined to be a serious repeat offender, then we can impose an additional sentence.

If that offense was one where, for instance, a Class A felony, they get an additional four years, Class B felony, additional three years, if they have not complied with the conditions of their release.

Now, we have to have a hearing before they turn 19, which is four months before, and that's gonna be somewhat problematic because they can have a jury trial in Criminal Court, if they choose to, they have to go to Criminal Court, they can have one in Juvenile Court.

If it goes to Criminal Court, they have to have it within one year.

And, you know, with the backlogs some of the criminal courts have, we haven't had one yet to go to Criminal Court requesting a jury trial.

And so we're working through that process.

But if we have the hearing before their 19th birthday, which we're required to do statutorily, and we find they have not been in compliance with the conditions, then we could add on that additional time.

We haven't had one yet, though, that has.

- All right, so it's a second step- - It is.

- In terms of it to say, as a juvenile, this hasn't worked, so, yeah.

- It extends the jurisdiction up to 24 years old.

The other thing is we can impose a sentence but then we can also suspend some of that time and place 'em on probation and continue the services that they need.

And as long as in compliance, they would not go into the state correctional department.

- All right, we also talked about the balance between juvenile infractions and child welfare- - Right.

- Cases.

Have you seen any child welfare cases as a result of adults being taken into custody and immigration cases as part of the task force?

- No, not yet.

None that we've identified specifically that were connected with the immigration issue.

But I wanna speak on the child welfare matter.

That is the largest bulk, the bulk of our business, 79%.

Only 21% is in delinquencies.

But of the caseload that we handle, the largest number is actually child support.

And in that regard, that is a resource that families need in order to raise healthy children.

The state has a new vendor.

And in the 18 months they've had this contract, it's a $77 million contract for 5 years, they've only filed about a thousand cases in that 18-month period.

We have non-custodial parents that work with the fathers, or mothers if they're not the ones in custody, to help file their petition so they get child support.

They filed a thousand in the same time period, four attorneys.

Now, the problem that we have is if the current vendor is not filing petitions, we can't collect child support.

We're now $1.6 billion behind in child support collections because this vendor's not filing the petitions in a timely manner.

- And that's a vendor, just to clarify, a vendor that was hired by the state.

- By the state.

- Yeah.

- And they're in Shelby County, Davidson County, Knox County, and Hamilton.

And that vendor is responsible for filing and all those dues.

- Have you talked with state officials about this?

- We were in Nashville, when I saw you up there, addressing that concern.

Because the previous vendor was filing 1,500 a month.

This vendor, in 18 months, has only filed 1,000 in Shelby County.

- We were both at the legislature, I was there with the Tennessee Press Association when I ran into you.

What is the excuse given?

- Well, that's why we're at the legislature.

Because we want oversight, we want the state to enforce oversight with this vendor because it's not just happening in Shelby County.

We are the largest jurisdiction, though.

Our largest dockets are in child support.

And then second largest would be in areas of things like, excuse me, dependency neglect, which is our second largest area.

- Yeah, and is that situation where you're taking, maybe potentially taking a kid out of a home, child abuse, those really kinda horrible situations?

- That's correct.

That's correct.

- About five minutes left here.

I wanna come back to you and maybe in your long career in corrections, you know, when you look back on that spike in crime that, again, I think the whole country experienced, we experienced it in our own particular way, and the juvenile stuff, there was sort of a sense of, the car break-ins, let's go with that, and stay away from the very violent stuff.

The car break-ins, it felt like everybody knew someone like one-degree of separation from getting their window broken.

It happened to my girlfriend, it happened twice to her.

I mean, it happened to a lot of people.

And a lot of it, it seemed to be, young people.

Do you have a sense, I mean, what leads people to do those kinds of crime?

Is it boredom?

Is it the not being in school?

Is it anger?

I mean, what are those things that you hear from people that you're overseeing about why those, I don't wanna call 'em petty crimes, but those lesser crimes happen?

- I would say, it's an effect of all of that.

Not attending school, not enough activities after school, or programs in the community to attract and to redirect that attention of that youth.

And so that's something that we do need to focus on, and that's why we have to have proper mentorship as well.

There's a lot of organizations out there trying to do the job now.

And we're inviting them inside so when that youth is released, they can redirect them and they don't have to return to, you know, the communities and try to recommit some of those crimes.

But it's a bit of all of it is what we're seeing and hearing from them.

- The degree to which, and we've had people talk about this, and I don't wanna make excuses for someone who's done, you know, a horrendous act or broken into a car or anything.

But the degree of childhood trauma that many of these folks have gone through, the kinds of stuff that the court is working on, that Judge Sugarmon is working on, you know, abuse and all that, a lot of the kids, I assume, that are coming through and that you are overseeing have had some pretty horrific experiences and been the victims of some pretty horrific experiences.

- And so that's one of the reasons why we intentionally hired counseling staff, have cognitive-based programming instilled now.

We've hired two new mental health practitioners for the facility as well.

And so that's one of the things we want to try to do, address the mental health needs, address the cognitive behavioral needs.

It's just not simply placing someone in a room and leaving them idle for 24 hours a day.

We are trying to get them involved in activities from the time they get out of bed to the time they attend school and then after school.

And so to address those type of needs and the childhood trauma.

- A couple minutes left here, Bill.

- Judge, talk about the side of this that you see on a daily basis.

- Well, in terms of the car break-ins, mine was broken into two years ago over in Overton Square.

But it's economic crimes.

Youth know that when they see people reacting to crime, keeping weapons in their vehicles, they know they're carrying weapons in their vehicles, they break in to get 'em.

And you have to, again, address the economic component of this through schooling, through opportunities for jobs.

When I talked to young folk during my campaign, so many of these children did not see themselves growing in Memphis.

They saw Memphis growing, but they were not a part of that.

And so we have to make sure these youth understand there's a future here for you, and it can be a good future, and get them those opportunities.

- With just a minute left, one thing that comes up a lot is when you talk about probation or, you know, releasing to the home, what number of kids show up to their appointments that continue to check in?

I mean, is that a big challenge for you all?

You can't house everyone.

Some people would like you to, other people wouldn't.

But what about that?

Kids out on probation or out on their own recognizance- - We've seen very high numbers of positive responses, even from the parents.

But one thing that we've seen an increase in, not large, but hopefully, it's just a trend that we'll be able to get a handle of, is domestic assaults.

Now, if a child is charged with a domestic assault We would not wanna detain that child, we wanna get them in some kind of a respite stay.

And that's something that we actually are lacking in Shelby County, is respite opportunity.

- Respite, real quickly.

- To keep a child, for instance, you have a child that has committed a domestic assault in the home.

They can't put the parents out, you may have other children there.

You have to have some place for that child to go, a cooling off period.

- That's safe.

- That's safe, right.

- That has treatment, okay.

- And have service and treatment.

- Thank you both.

Thank you both for being here.

We really appreciate it.

Thank you, Bill.

That is all the time we have tonight.

If you missed any of the show, you can get the full episode online at wkno.org, YouTube, or The Daily Memphian.

You can also download the full podcast to the show wherever you get your podcasts.

We've got coming up soon, Mayor Paul Young in the next week or two, and other shows coming up.

We'll see you then.

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