New Program To Fight Mobile Juvenile Crime

Alabama Mobile The aim is to employ youth advocates.

by Steve Alexander

Published: Wed, May 27, 2009 - 7:48 pm CST

A major new program is getting ready to begin in Mobile to fight juvenile crime.
One of the first big steps toward getting it started happened Wednesday.
Mobile County Juvenile Court Judge Edmond Naman said he wants to start a program called "YAP," standing for Youth Advocate Program.
Naman said, "It gives a child someone involved in the child's life that can help them and help us accomplish what we're trying to do: keep that kid out of trouble and get him on the right path."
Judge Naman and more than a dozen other people travelled to New Orleans Wednesday to see how the program works there.
The program employs a paid advocate, Naman said, "not a law enforcement officer, not a probation officer, but a person who's really pushing for the child."
The advocate would work with only a small number of young people from his community, perhaps four.
He or she would be hired and trained by the program to deal with kids at risk.
Naman said, "All he would do was spend his day that he is working with the YAP program keeping up with that child, making sure that they've made the meetings that we've asked him to do, making sure that everything is going okay in the family, making sure that that child is on track and giving us real time information of how that kid is doing."
Naman said he hopes to start a pilot program in the fall.
He said, "A kid can walk around trouble if he has somewhere to walk to and someone to walk with. And its incumbent on us as a community to give them both."
Judge Naman said he's targeting the Mobile Police Departnent's First Precinct and the Dauphin Island Parkway area.

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