An Artistic Avenue For Juvenile Offenders
By Stacy St. Clair, Daily Herald Staff Writer
Originally published in The Daily Herald, July 29, 2002
It used to be that juvenile offenders sentenced to probation spent their afternoons picking up roadside litter or cleaning nursing homes.
DuPage County, however, now offers something a little more colorful.
For the past year, offenders have been allowed to fulfill their community service hours with art classes.
While not as punitive as picking up trash or scrubbing toilets, the new punishment lets participants learn invaluable skills such as how to express themselves and complete a project, proponents say.
"When a kid thinks society is already against him, you don't need something more punitive," said Donna Pawlowski, who supervises the community service unit for the county probation department.
The initiative began last year under the guidance of Sally Newton Fairbank, a DuPage public defender and executive director of Community Art Partners. Using grant money from the Illinois Criminal Justice Authority, she pairs young offenders with the organization's network of local artists.
In a little more than 15 months, the program has grown into a major undertaking with roughly 100 participants at four art studios across the county. Fairbank, an unpaid volunteer, is now looking to hire someone to run the program full time.
The art courses are offered to any juvenile placed on probation. Most work in groups with other young offenders and a professional artist. Those who are considered more dangerous work one-on-one with DuPage probation officer Rebekah Reid, who has a master's degree in art therapy.
No one has been turned away.
"If we want people to change, let's give them the tools to change," DuPage probation officer Jodie Dewey said. "Let's make them feel like they are worth something."
The projects vary depending on the artists' availability. Some weeks they dabble in watercolors, other times it's pottery or found objects.
The program is up for a state grant of $15,000 to purchase graphic arts technology. Proponents envision the computer equipment will provide participants with a job skill, as well as a creative outlet.
Regardless of medium, the art usually offers the participants a chance to explore their creative—and troubled—sides.
Self-discovery awaits
One teen, for example, bragged about his marijuana use at a recent class and complained about the government's refusal to legalize the drug. When probation officers urged him to quit talking and begin working, he decided to do a self-portrait.
By the session's end, he had a colorful abstract sketch of himself with magazine pictures pasted in key locations. In the middle of his face, he glued a photo of a young man curled in a fetal position.
A picture of a boy clinging to his mother was pasted above his head. The words "living dangerously" were scrawled in the upper left-hand corner.
Suddenly, the teen with excessive bravado and a penchant for marijuana became a vulnerable boy looking for help.
"You can see he feels totally different about things than what he was saying," Reid said.
Self-discovery is a common theme among the projects. A collage hanging on the Glen Ellyn studio's wall best depicts the masked emotions and buried fears that often reveal themselves during the weekly two-hour sessions.
The piece was done by a teenage girl who was arrested last year at the "Take Back the Streets" rally, an annual event in which anarchists converge in Naperville to protest consumerism. The pictures she chose have dark and cynical themes.
She covered the entire project in a net-like ribbon, obstructing parts of the collage. She told people it represented how closed off she felt from society.
By the end of her community service, the glue she used lost its adhesion and some of the strips fell off the piece. People were able to see more, but not all, of the teen's collage.
The girl liked her project's erosion. She told her probation officer she felt as if her guard was coming down, too.
That's significant, proponents of the program say: The teenage anarchist would not have dropped her defenses while picking up discarded beer cans along Route 53.
"A lot of kids who can't talk about their problems can express themselves through art," Fairbank said.
County benefits, too
The participants aren't the only ones helped by the artistic process; the DuPage community benefits as well. The finished pieces often are used to decorate and brighten nursing homes and public buildings such as the courthouse.
The Glen Ellyn studio has an oversized basket filled with handmade dolls. The smiling dolls soon will be given to children brought to the DuPage Children's Center, a subsection of the state's attorney's office that investigates and prosecutes allegations of child physical and sexual abuse.
Other participants are working on a sculpture reflecting restorative justice, a judicial philosophy that encourages healing of the victim, community and offender.
The piece, made from sections of the old courthouse portico, has a section dedicated to each of the three groups. The sculpture will be displayed at the courthouse.
"We want these kids to feel part of something," Fairbank said. "We feel that art makes them feel like part of the community."
DuPage probation officers currently are analyzing the program's impact. Though completion and recidivism rates are not available yet, the department believes the program has been successful.
"I've been thrilled with the response to it," said the probation department's Donna Pawlowski. "I've seen some amazing things happen here."
