Department of Juvenile Justice helps open teen reporting center

Courtesy: Southwest Key Programs

(VALDOSTA, GA) – Lowndes County has a new facility aimed towards helping keep at risk teens from ending up in serious trouble.

The Juvenile Evening Reporting center is a collaborative effort between the Georgia Department of Juvenile Justice and Southwest Key Programs.

“So it’s going to allow for DJJ who are referred to the program by the courts to allow them somewhere positive to go, receive that positive reinforcement and engage in positive activity,” says DJJ Commissioner, Tyrone Oliver

The center will operate well into evenings as a means of providing guidance to at-risk teens.

Southwest Key Programs who are providing the on site assistance are trying to help provide additional skills so that teens can learn to make better choices as they continue to mature.

Key Programs Director of Communication, Kasey El-Chayeb says, “The type of services that are offered in the program, are educational support and tutoring, skill-based training, work readiness programming, health and recreation. It’s a whole host of services designed to support these youth.”

In addition to helping put teens on the right path to better their lives, the department of juvenile justice says that helping keep them out of the detention system will help towards funding in other aspects of georgia.

Oliver tells us, “It costs the state of Georgia approximately $90 thousand per child, per year to keep them housed in our secure detention. So if we can keep these youth from coming into our systems or our secure detention centers, it’ll save the state of georgia and the taxpayers of valdosta roughly $900 thousand…”

Due to the ongoing pandemic, help will be limited to 10 teens at any given time.