Grant received to help juvenile delinquents and save taxpayers money

MARQUETTE — The Honorable Cheryl Hill announced that she has secured a grant for more than $250,000 from the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services.

The money will go towards providing in–home family services to improve Marquette County’s juvenile probation services. Professionals from the University of Cincinnati and Pennsylvania will be coming in to teach local probation officers state of the art evidence based techniques.

“We want to be able to keep our juveniles here in our own community and not have to send them downstate and institutionalized,” said Hon. Cheryl Hill, “with this program we should be able to do that.”

Programming will include Aggressive Replacement Training (ART), Moral Recognition Therapy (MRT), and Effective Practices in Community Supervision (EPICS).

“It is to provide services to juveniles so that they can, if you will use 360 turn around,” added Hill, “make a complete change in their life but still be in the same place, and still at home. But correct those behaviors that got them brought into juvenile court.”

This grant will also save the taxpayers a significant amount of money. The cost per youth will be less than $40 per day as opposed to the average cost of $175 from placing delinquent youth out of their home.