Community leaders call for more investment in prevention as prison costs rise | Local News

Racine lacks appropriate services, such as mental health services, pediatric mental health services, youth development services, youth prevention services, youth intervention services or drug abuse treatment programs among adolescents.

“We fail children and furnish them, but we don’t forget to prepare a place for them,” she said.

The right people for the job

Effective delivery of services to vulnerable neighborhoods requires not only financial resources, but the right people as well.

Horton knows from experience and understands the people, the services needed, and how to recruit the right people to work with populations in underserved communities.

He said that in order to keep young people away from gangs and drugs it was important to get in touch with them, but the people in some existing programs were not the right people for the job.

“They say they are going to hire a contact, but it can’t be just any person,” Horton said. “You need a special kind of person for that.”

Some of the people in the diversion program had records, but that allowed them to interact with the young people on an honest level, he said.

Many programs, especially in schools, no longer allow ex-offenders to work with young people, Horton said. He thinks this is a mistake because it eliminates a lot of people who understand gangs, drugs, and neighborhood culture.