JustAdvice

As I walked through the Pro­ba­tion Depart­ment recep­tion area one day, I saw a teenage girl wait­ing to see her pro­ba­tion offi­cer.  She was prob­a­bly fif­teen years old and was an absolute doll.  Her face still glowed with youth­ful, dewy inno­cence and she had that mirac­u­lous appear­ance of a child on the brink of unlim­ited possibilities.

I don’t know the per­cent­age, but a cer­tain num­ber of juve­niles remain on pro­ba­tion for sev­eral years. We have super­vised offend­ers as young as 11 years old and­kept them into adult­hood because their con­tin­ued mis­be­hav­ior demanded that they remain on our case­loads.  At some point many sim­ply grad­u­ate to the adult crim­i­nal sys­tem, as if they believe that’s the way things are meant to be, and by then their faces and bod­ies mir­ror the sad, down­ward spi­ral of their lives.When these good-looking teenagers per­sist in their crim­i­nal lifestyles, not many grow up to be the beau­ties they were intended to be.  Instead of bloom­ing, they shrivel on the vine, like frag­ile buds struck down by a hot Spring drought.  It doesn’t take long for their drug use, poor nutri­tion, inad­e­quate hygiene and gen­eral defi­ance, to show.  They end up look­ing worn out, older than they are and – well – beat up.  All of that youth­ful poten­tial is sti­fled as they break the law, use drugs, get drunk, behave promis­cu­ously and refuse to bet­ter themselves.

This is some­thing I’d like to explain to juve­niles who are in trou­ble, but it’s not the sort of thing one can really do.  I can’t exactly walk through the wait­ing room, spot an attrac­tive teenager and say to him or her, “Hey, you’re really cute now, but if you keep this up, in a few years you may wind look­ing like the sole of a ten­nis shoe!”  Not only would they not believe me, they would think I was the one with the problem.

Trou­bled teenagers have no idea how quickly they can change the course of their lives and how per­ma­nent some of the effects can be.  Apart from the beat­ing their bod­ies take, all of the anger and hope­less­ness they even­tu­ally feel will float to the sur­face, set­tle in their faces, and form an unsightly por­trait of defeat. 

Come to think of it, maybe that’s exactly what we should tell them.