Juvenile court administrator retires

Spokane County Juvenile Court Administrator Rand Young retires this week with his glass half full.

“What a wonderful career I’ve had,” Young said. “It’s just been a dream career.”

Being a juvenile probation officer is not for everyone, though, Young conceded.

“If you look at a glass and it’s half empty, then this business is probably not for you,” he said.

Fortunately, he said, most of the people he’s worked with in 31 years in the Spokane County Juvenile Court system have shared his optimistic view.

“The people in this business really do see a higher calling, and they’re here for more than a paycheck,” he said. “That’s been wonderful.”

Young came to Spokane in 1965 to study for a master’s degree in guidance and counseling at Whitworth College, and never left. He and his wife, Erin, raised their daughter, now 33, here.

After a few years as a state child welfare worker, Young became a county juvenile probation counselor in 1973.

Since then, Young has spent 10 years as the department’s probation manager, five as its detention manager and the past five as the department administrator. He oversees 105 employees, 300 volunteers and a $7 million budget.

As head of the department in an era of budget cuts and downsizing, Young has gained a reputation as an innovator.

“This guy … has absolutely broken the mold,” Roy Harrington said at Young’s retirement party Tuesday. “I think you have to retire the jersey.”

Harrington is the local director of the federal Safe Start program, which works with children age 6 and younger who have been exposed to violence.

Young, 57, isn’t really retiring. He’s just widening his mission to implement “evidence-based” programs – those shown by evidence to be successful straightening kids out.

He’ll be working with juvenile court systems in Seattle, Tacoma, Yakima and Bellingham, as well as Spokane, as a member of Gov. Gary Locke’s Juvenile Justice Advisory Committee. His job will be to help the courts implement innovative programs as part of the national Juvenile Detention Alternatives Initiative.

“We’ve been doing that here in Spokane for over 10 years,” Young said.A decade ago, voters three times rejected a bond measure to expand the county juvenile detention center. “Looking back on it, it’s the best thing that ever happened to us,” Young said.

The county’s 65-bed detention capacity – including five beds in the regional Martin Hall center at Medical Lake – can’t handle all the offenders who traditionally would have been locked up. So Young and his staff have moved to alternatives such as electronic home monitoring and a program that requires kids to report daily while continuing to go to school.

“It’s kind of a no-brainer,” Young said. “Keeping kids in school is good for everyone. There is something bad that’s going to happen when a kid is not in school.”

Sometimes the bad things happen in juvenile detention, where first-time offenders may form friendships with more hardened delinquents, Young said.

Electronic home monitoring, often viewed skeptically by the public, has proved highly successful, he added. In the past 10 years, none of the 10,000 juvenile offenders has committed a serious crime while being monitored electronically, Young said.

While juvenile criminals sometimes have been more violent and emotionally or mentally disturbed in recent years, most turn their lives around, Young said.

“I don’t think the public realizes that,” he said.

For example, he said about half of roughly 5,000 cases each year go to “diversion,” and about 80 percent of those 2,500 juveniles don’t re-offend. They’re first-time offenders who respond to probation that requires them to follow curfews and other rules, perform public service work and get counseling.

“To my way of thinking, that’s pretty good success,” Young said.

So, when people tell him what a hard job he has, Young says, “Not at all.”

The hard part is matching the faces of juvenile offenders to the 30-something adults who often greet him on the street.

Often, Young said, they thank him for giving them guidance they didn’t think they needed. Mostly, they say thanks for caring about them.

“That’s what’s most important to them,” he said, noting many came from troubled or neglectful families, or had no homes at all.

“One thing they talk a lot about is that they want to be better parents,” Young said. “They want to help their kids avoid some of the problems that they went through.”

His advice: Spend more time with your children.

The county’s 12 Superior Court judges are expected to appoint Young’s successor later this week. The judges considered 15 candidates for the job, which pays $62,000 to $85,000 a year.