Northam makes house visit to Bon Air to support juvenile justice reforms

Gov. Ralph Northam played both politician and doctor on his first visit to the Bon Air Juvenile Correctional Center on Wednesday.

Most of all, the governor chose to spend his morning listening to the stories of some of the 200 youths who are the last remaining maximum-security prisoners in Virginia’s juvenile justice system.

“We want to open a pipeline from school to the workforce ... rather than the pipeline of school to prison,” Northam told five student government leaders at Bon Air, including one of five girls held at the sprawling correctional center in the Chesterfield County suburbs.

The new governor wasted no time in addressing an issue left by his predecessor, Gov. Terry McAuliffe, who proposed to reshape the juvenile justice system to house fewer youth offenders in smaller prisons closer to their homes, while changing the way the state treats them in incarceration.

“You are the only governor who ever came out here in his first month in office,” Andy Block, director of the Department of Juvenile Justice, told Northam as he prepared to depart after a nearly 90-minute tour with top members of his staff and Cabinet.

The future of Bon Air remains in doubt as the General Assembly considers a proposed budget that would allow the agency to build a 60-bed juvenile correctional center in eastern Virginia, nearer the communities that generate about half of the kids in the system, and a 96-bed modern facility to replace the aged facility in Chesterfield that was built to hold up to 284 youths.

The state plan has critics on the left and the right, as advocates argue against incarcerating youths in a facility larger than 30 beds, if at all, and the legislature’s money committees consider whether to save money by relying instead on one large facility, either at Bon Air or the Powhatan County site of the Beaumont Juvenile Correctional Center that Virginia closed last summer.

“The building can be a bit of a barrier to doing good work,” Block told the governor as they toured one of the 18 residential units that have been refashioned to house no more than 14 youths and provide a cramped area for treatment in a former dorm room.

Northam came on his fact-finding mission with some veterans of the McAuliffe administration, including Secretary of Public Safety Brian Moran and deputy chief of staff Suzette Denslow, as well his newly appointed chief of staff Clark Mercer and Secretary of Finance Aubrey Layne, the former secretary of transportation. The governor’s office invited the Richmond Times-Dispatch to attend.

“He’s interested, and he wants to get up to speed,” Block said after the tour. “As a pediatric neurologist, he understands that kids are different from adults, and we still have a chance to influence them the right way.”

The governor’s first stop was a lively meeting with members of the Student Government Association, formed more than a year ago with help from McAuliffe. The youths come from around the state, including the Hampton Roads region where Northam lived and practiced as a pediatric physician.

“I’m from the 757!” he said in a joking reference to the Hampton Roads area code that drew laughter from the youths at the conference room table.

The association’s president is Sage Williams, 18, a Staunton native who said he recently visited the Virginia Commonwealth University School of Business because he had heard “consulting is lucrative.”

“Role model residents are the most effective tools in trying to get young people back onto the right path,” Williams told the governor.

“The SGA is a big component of the transformation,” he said.

“That is wonderful!” the governor responded.

Northam also talked to a Richmond youth recently elected vice president in the association’s first contested campaign that included a debate and three days of politicking and ended with a 40-vote victory.

“That’s a good spread!” the governor exclaimed to the young man, who asked not to be identified.

But the joking did not mask the challenges facing the youths, including one who said he wants to find a way to help people like him.

“I came from an abusive household,” said the youth, who also could not be identified. “I want to help people who’ve been abused.”

He also heard signs of hope from Rubi Herrera, a Newport News girl whose family has moved to Chesterfield.

“It’s going to be a new start for me,” Herrera said.

Northam told them the purpose of criminal justice reform is to give people another chance at success in life.

“We’re all human,” the governor told them. “We all make mistakes. We don’t want to ruin someone’s life by putting them in a position they can never recover from.”

From his meeting with student leaders, Northam visited a classroom where students were talking about the stock market during a break. Juvenile justice officials touted the correctional center’s revamped education program, which Block said is graduating more kids with high school diplomas and increasing pass rates on Standards of Learning tests.

Last fall, for example, 88 percent of Bon Air students passed their reading tests, compared with 59 percent a year earlier. They did not fare well in geometry, but showed significant increases in pass rates for algebra, world history, U.S. and Virginia history, and Earth science.

Northam also glimpsed the heart of the community treatment model put in place under Block. Instead of locking kids down in their units, the state turned the housing pods into communities, with counselors and therapists, as well as lowered barriers between the incarcerated youths and the people who oversee them.

“We’ve built healthy relationships on both sides,” said Patricia Abel, a 22-year veteran of the juvenile justice system who serves as community coordinator on Unit 62, which the governor visited.

Given a chance on his tight schedule to visit another classroom or the Bon Air infirmary, Northam did not hesitate.

“I’m a bit biased,” he said. “How about we go to the infirmary?”

There, he talked with Dr. Chris Moon, a family practitioner who runs the infirmary, about his current cases, including two torn anterior cruciate ligaments and a broken hand.

“You have a lot of moving parts here,” Northam said as he toured the infirmary.

“And a lot of them get injured, too!” said Kathleen Tauer, a pediatric nurse practitioner.

Everywhere he went, Northam asked young people what they hoped to do with their lives. The answers included becoming a travel agent, working as an auto mechanic, running a cosmetology business, and joining the Army.

“It’s a great honor to serve your country,” the former Army doctor told the young man. “If there’s anything I can do to help, let me know.”