Author: Meredith Hemphill
April is Second Chance Month. This will be Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention’s fourth year celebrating the federally recognized observance.
April is Second Chance Month, a federally recognized observance that highlights the services and support provided to formerly incarcerated people. Facilitating their reentry into society reduces recidivism, for both adult and juvenile offenders. This year marks the fourth year that NC Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention celebrated Second Chance Month.
In 2023, JJDP hosted Liz Ryan, director of the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, and other federal and state officials at its Second Chance Month activities at Chatham Youth Development Center. This included the student debate team staging a debate on the pros and cons of the Raise the Age law. Last year’s focus was on educating JJDP staff and colleagues about the challenges the youth face when trying to access resources upon community reentry. This year, it’s all about the children.
Second Chance Month 2025 is extra-special for JJDP because North Carolina has joined the Reentry 2030 movement. Reentry 2030 aims to help communities create a network of care to address barriers to employment, education, housing and more that the formerly incarcerated face upon reentry. JJDP is participating in both initiatives by hosting a series of reentry simulations throughout the state.
Reentry simulations are generally used in school districts to help prepare disabled students for independent living, but in this case, they have been repurposed to prepare justice-involved youth for reentry.
“As our population is getting older, many of our students will be released into the community on their own as their parents may not be legally required or emotionally willing to accept these young people back into their homes,” said Dr. Michael Williams, student transition counselor for Juvenile Justice Education Services.
Dr. Williams works with JJDP’s transition coordinators at each facility to link the residents with post-secondary or vocational education and employment resources. The reentry simulations are just one of the transition team’s initiatives.
A reentry simulation has three stages:
- Getting a Job: Youth complete applications, participate in mock interviews and are hired for a job for the purposes of the simulation.
- The Game of Life: Youth must use earnings from their job (minus taxes) to pay their bills and secure the resources they need. This includes not only the basics like housing but also things like insurance and child support that teens may not have at top of mind.
- Review: The transition coordinators and participants discuss what they learned from the simulation, assess their feelings, and brainstorm ideas to address the challenges they uncovered.
The first reentry simulation for the year was held April 9 at Chatham YDC. Chatham YDC is the only YDC in the state that houses female youth, and they currently have three female units and one male unit. All four units participated in the event. The youth ranged in age from 13 to 18 years old.
“The education department puts this on. All but one of the staff members here today are teachers,” said math teacher Lauren Salyer. She was running the life cards table, a sort of random life event part of the simulation where the participants picked three cards that would cause them to either gain or lose a small amount of money. Cards included things like an unexpected trip to the doctor or winning $50 on a lottery ticket.
The other stations were housing and car, utilities, education, groceries, bank, insurance and health and beauty. The bank station was staffed by Cedric Lee, a representative from State Employees’ Credit Union. Dr. Williams explained that they always try to involve community partners when possible.
Before the activity started that day, the students had already completed an application to be production technicians at the nearby Wolfspeed semiconductor plant and had been given a starting salary with taxes, health insurance and a 401K contribution removed. When they arrived for the simulation, phase two, they picked up a budget sheet and a wallet with a checkbook, $100 fake cash and debit and credit cards. Then they each spent six minutes at each station trying to balance their expenses for the month.
“I think it’s important that we’re teaching the kids life skills because many of them don’t have parents or don’t have both parents to teach them,” said Chaka Bridges, data manager and now head of the housing and car station. “We have to get them prepared to go out into society and be productive citizens.”
More simulations were held throughout April at Lenoir, Edgecombe, Rockingham and Cabarrus Youth Development Centers. For its event, Cabarrus YDC partnered with Communities in Schools Reentry to Resilience, a community program that provides case management, community-based activities and counseling to formerly incarcerated youth in several NC counties.
“The events have been pretty sobering and enlightening for our students,” Dr. Williams said. “During one of our simulations, we had students in shock because they were informed that they would have to pay child support for each child they produced, and they could be jailed for failure to pay…So, then we had a conversation about birth control.”
Social studies teacher Bryan Moore, who oversaw the utilities station at the Chatham YDC reentry simulation, said that many of the students were surprised to learn that cable comes at a cost. Building a grocery list that met their needs within their budget was a challenge, too, and quite a few fell for science teacher Leanna Sartwell’s pushy tactics at the health and beauty “salon.” One student spent $750 at that station and was bankrupt by the end of the activity.
“They’re struggling with the choices that we all have to make,” Moore said.
The reentry simulation gives the participants a chance to make those mistakes in a safe place and learn those lessons before they are out on their own. The staff also sneaked in lessons like how to write a check and the difference between debit and credit cards. One of the most important takeaways they hope to leave the youth with, however, is that there are people who want to help them succeed and resources they can utilize in the community.
“We want them to know, you’re not out here by yourself,” Dr. Williams said.