by J. Brooks Terry
Staff Writer
With the City Council’s approval, the Teen Court program, in a collaborative effort with the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office and the Police Athletic League of Jacksonville, plans to install a new intensive program aimed at juveniles who are at-risk of becoming a part of the criminal justice system.
The program, Camp X-RAYD — an acronym for Examining Reality About Your Decisions — is currently under review in the Council’s Finance Committee.
According to Kim Walsh, a representative from Teen Court, Camp X-RAYD will be funded through money already available in a Teen Court trust fund.
“The money is there,” said Walsh. “We just need to get the permission to tap into it.”
The program begins with a 12-hour “tour of reality,” whereby the teen participants — they’ll be drug tested and led through physical training — dressed in trademark orange jumpsuits, are bused to jail and treated as inmates.
Council vice president Elaine Brown, who supports the program, said it has the potential to be “very effective.”
“The best part of what Camp X-RAYD does is put these at-risk kids in very realistic situations,” said Brown. “They will actually know what it feels like to be incarcerated and be around convicted inmates who never got on the right path. I believe this to be another step in getting these kids out of the system before it’s too late.”
Following the stop at the jail, the juveniles will take a tour of a hospital emergency room where they will be exposed to the reality of medical trauma and death . . . what would happen if they were brought to the emergency room resulting from a drug overdose?
“We want these kids to understand the consequences of their decisions,” said Walsh. “If they do, they’ll be more likely to get on the right path through some serious self-examination.”
Camp X-RAYD has already proven successful in Sarasota, where it has been operating for less than a year.
“They’re seeing fantastic results after only eight months,” said Walsh, who learned about the program through the Florida Association of Teen Courts. “The kids they’re targeting aren’t coming back again and again and that’s what we want to see happen here.”
For now, Camp X-RAYD will be an automatic consequence for any juvenile convicted of drug or alcohol possession — they have the highest probability of becoming repeat offenders — though the scope may be expanded in the future.
“Our first group of 10 kids is set to leave on Oct. 18,” said Walsh, who added that the program will run for nine months out of the year. “We think it’s going to work, but our ultimate goal is that it will be so successful that we won’t even have to have it anymore.”