Jasper County Juvenile Services Center
Providing all juvenile services under one roof
Jasper County’s new Juvenile Services Center replaces its previous outdated, insufficient facility while taking advantage of the opportunity to consolidate all of the County’s juvenile services. It consolidates four separate functions: detention, alternative education, courts and administration, all with the purpose to provide a therapeutic setting, supporting youth’s return to society. Jasper County approached this project with the vision of providing a progressive design around new County policies and aspirational goals to ultimately divert juveniles out of detention.
Supporting key urban intervention within the community
This state-of-the-art juvenile facility transformed Jasper County’s Juvenile Division service delivery from traditional juvenile justice practices into more proactive, preventative, and collaborative approaches. By combining all juvenile justice-related services into one facility, families now don’t have to traverse through complicated and often inflexible service systems. The “one-stop-shop” delivery model allows for a rapid response to incidents involving a juvenile or their family.
This youth-focused facility is a key urban intervention, open and available to the community. With an approach that prioritizes alternative education, the center provides treatment and diversionary programs whenever possible and accommodates detention needs when necessary, with both elements linked by the core services offered by the judiciary and administration.
What impressed me was [Treanor’s] knowledge of correctional practices and current criminal justice trends involving youth.
Erik T. Theis, Circuit Court Administrator at the Jasper County Circuit Clerk
Programming various juvenile services within one facility
To aid the County’s efforts in diverting juveniles from detention, this facility was programmed for the County’s needs and planned to benefit the youth it serves. A centrally located, two-story juvenile court space is where the process begins, separating the alternative education spaces from the detention spaces both programmatically and visually. The one-story alternative education and detention program extends from the two-story courts program, each around a large courtyard that passively illuminates the spaces and accentuates the colors, materials, and order that support trauma-informed design. While the detention program is designed for eight juveniles, and there is space for an additional eight in the future, the alternative education can serve more than 40 juveniles at once.
Supporting juveniles with trauma-informed design
The facility’s trauma-informed design enables Jasper County’s youth to engage in treatment and build trusting relationships. The program spaces are flexible, allowing schools to provide educational services during the day while resource providers deliver in-house treatment, counseling, and other therapeutic interventions in the evening. By providing therapeutic spaces, youth develop positive coping and life skills, increasing their desire for achievement, deterring unwanted behaviors, and providing an opportunity for success.
This paradigm has resonated within the Jasper County community, and citizens now regularly volunteer to help troubled youth by facilitating some of the youth programs.
Providing a safe space where futures can take shape
A strong vision for the future of the community’s youth combined with thoughtful programming and trauma-informed design enables the Juvenile Services Center to succeed. Allowing troubled youth to engage in treatment and build trusting relationships within appropriate, therapeutic spaces fuels their desire for achievement and allows them to improve social skills. These skills and motivation are crucial to diverting young people from detention and providing them with opportunities for success in the future.
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