Can you change how criminals think? Chicago hopes behavioral therapy can cut gun violence

Aamer Madhani | USA TODAY

Show Caption Hide Caption Chicago's homicides fell in 2017, but gang violence remains high Chicago ended 2017 with fewer homicides than the year before, but gang violence in the city’s most dangerous neighborhoods kept the total number of killings above the 600 mark for only the second time in more than a decade.

CHICAGO – The day's group therapy session for the young detainees at the county jail started with their behavioral health specialist testing them with a hypothetical scenario: They’ve cheated on a girlfriend and the other woman is pregnant.

The participants – all facing serious charges and picked for the jail's intensive therapy program because they're deemed a high risk of getting caught in Chicago’s intractable gun violence once they leave custody – bristled at a push for honest talk.

“Am I ready to take this journey?” asked Timothy Moore, the counselor, who told the detainees the question was as relevant to addressing their lives on Chicago’s streets as it was to navigating their relationships. “Am I ready to listen? Am I ready to be honest? That’s what counts. That’s the first step.”

And the Cook County Sheriff’s Office initiative dubbed S.A.V.E. – an anti-violence program built around trying to change how incarcerated men from some of Chicago's most volatile neighborhoods think – was off and running.

Programs like S.A.V.E. (the Sheriff's Anti-Violence Effort) that use cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), a psychological treatment that focuses on helping young men recognize their instinctual responses and slow down their thinking in high-stake situations, have gained popularity in several cities around the U.S. in recent years.

The sheriff's office, which runs one of the nation’s biggest jails, is betting that the therapy can help some of Chicago's incarcerated population get a better handle on their impulses – and in the process, reduce the city’s persistent gun violence.

Many participants will likely find themselves jailed again: 43 percent of Illinois offenders are charged within three years of being released from incarceration, according to the state's sentencing policy advisory council.

But sheriff's officials say if they can help the young men – who come from one of Chicago's 15 most-violent ZIP codes – even slightly shift their decision-making capabilities, the impact for the individuals and their communities will be significant. Participants attend therapy and life skills classes five days a week.

Tom Dart, the Cook County sheriff, said he told his staff that the program's objective is met if a participant after his release “didn’t shoot anybody and wasn’t shot by anybody.”

“Those were my two bars for success,” Dart said.

Therapy gains in popularity

The 2-year-old program at Cook County Jail in Chicago was launched as the nation’s third-largest city saw gun violence skyrocket in 2016 and 2017 with more than 1,400 murders and 6,200 shootings as the national murder rate hovered near all-time lows.

Murders are down 20 percent in 2018 compared with the same time last year, but the city is once again on track to lead the nation in homicides.

Experts say cognitive behavioral therapy has proved to be an effective tool in fighting the plague of gun violence in several different settings.

In Boston and Baltimore, the anti-violence group ROCA Inc. has used CBT in its work with ex-offenders, a program that pushes the riskiest of at-risk to "think different to act different." In the group's work in the Boston area, 84 percent of its participants have no new arrests, and two out of three stay employed after finishing the program.

Researchers at the University of Chicago Crime Lab found that participants in the urban youth mentoring program Becoming a Man, which focuses on Chicago’s at-risk teenagers and utilizes CBT, tallied a 50 percent lower violent crime rate than their peers.

And last year, the anti-poverty group Heartland Alliance launched a two-year, $32 million program called READI Chicago that provides CBT and transitional jobs to ex-offenders convicted of violent crimes.

The participants, who are recruited from three of Chicago’s most violent neighborhoods, attend group therapy sessions or life-skills coaching each weekday morning before heading to hourly-paid jobs.

Eddie Bocanegra, READI Chicago’s senior director, said about half of participants were hostile to outreach workers’ initial efforts to recruit them. About 68 percent of 328 participants READI Chicago has placed in jobs are still working and attending the group therapy and coaching sessions, according to the group.

“They are disconnected for a certain reason, they’re involved in violence and victimization for a certain reason ... so it’s important for this population we recognize their challenges and that we recognize what it’s going to take to engage this population," he said.

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Desman Donaldson, 23, who joined READI Chicago last year while on probation for aggravated battery of a police officer, said pairing therapy with work has been crucial to helping him change.

He’s now charting out a plan to get a commercial driver's license so he can work as a trucker. Eventually, Donaldson wants to pursue a career in real estate.

The $12-per-hour READI job provides him a fraction of what he said he made dealing drugs. Still, the income helps keep him out of trouble.

“I’m definitely thinking about the long term," said Donaldson, who has been arrested 13 times since he turned 11. "The way I was going — all my people were getting federal indictments.”

Throw out the rule books

The Cook County Jail’s S.A.V.E. program is unique to other programs using therapy as a violence prevention tool in that it works with offenders while they are still incarcerated.

The jail program enrolls about 40 young male detainees at a time and houses them together at a division of the sprawling jail as they wait for their cases to wind through the county court or until they can be released on bond. The sheriff's office, which has two jail staffers who work full time on S.A.V.E. and six others who work part time, said it costs about $285,000 annually to operate.

The participants all volunteer for the program and must express a desire to make sweeping changes in their lives.

Many come from rival gangs but agree to set aside differences they might have on the street to take part in the program. Typically, administrators at the jail try to segregate gang rivals.

“You throw a little bit of the rule book out the window,” Dart said. “If you go on our S.A.V.E. tier, there are people, who if they’re on the outside right now, are shooting at each other.”

Only a fraction of detainees who started the program stick with it long term.

The sheriff's office said it is still working with or in touch with 98 of the 679 participants who opted into S.A.V.E. since its launch. The participants include several who were in S.A.V.E. for a matter of days.

More than 200 of the participants were expelled for fighting, repeated disrespect of S.A.V.E. officials or other unspecified infractions, according to sheriff's office data. Eighty-four participants opted out while they were still jailed and were returned to the general population.

After S.A.V.E participants leave jail, the sheriff’s department steers them to anti-violence groups on the outside that offer services such as job training and continued therapy. It ultimately is up to participants to follow through.

The participants are facing a gamut of serious charges but are likely to spend all or most of their incarcerated time in the county jail. About 81 percent of Cook County detainees are returned directly to their communities without entering the state prison system.

Success and failure

In the early going for S.A.V.E., there have been hits and misses.

Randy Leflore, 21, spent about seven months in S.A.V.E. before a judge agreed to release him on electronic monitoring in June 2017 while he awaits trial.

Leflore, a former gang member, ended up in jail after allegedly carrying out three armed robberies of laundromats. He was also in possession of a replica firearm when he was arrested, according to prosecutors.

Leflore pleaded not guilty to the charges but acknowledges he was in a bad place when he was arrested. He credits S.A.V.E. with helping him restart his life.

“The important thing I got out of S.A.V.E. was to change the way I think,” said Leflore, who has been working part-time jobs at McDonald's and Corner Bakery restaurants since his release from jail. “Basically, it was like I had a criminal mindset. I thought there ain’t no way I could change.”

Leflore said he recently used what he learned in therapy after one of his gang buddies was fatally shot by a rival in their neighborhood, Englewood, an enclave on the city’s South Side hard hit by gun violence.

“When someone dies in Englewood … the first thing that comes to mind is retaliation,” Leflore said. “When things like that happen now I just sit."

Not all S.A.V.E. participants have managed to avoid gun violence after getting out.

Courtney Lewis, 20, spent fewer than 40 days in S.A.V.E. in late 2016 and early 2017 after being charged with unlawful use of a weapon and felony possession of a firearm after police officers found a gun on him following a traffic stop. Lewis was prohibited from possessing a firearm because of a previous gun-related conviction.

In January 2017, a relative posted the $7,500 Lewis needed to bond out of jail. He returned home while his case plodded along in the county court system, court records show.

Less than three months after his release, Lewis was shot and another man was wounded when a gunman opened fire on the vehicle they were riding in, police said. In addition to those killed, seven former participants – including four who were expelled from S.A.V.E. – ended up back in jail on charges related to discharging a firearm, according to the Sheriff’s Office.

Lewis died from his wounds several days after the incident and became one of three S.A.V.E. participants killed in gun violence after leaving the program.

Lewis spoke regularly with S.A.V.E. officials at least for part of the time he was out on bail, but he eventually fell out of touch and was listed as inactive in the program three days before he was gunned down, according to sheriff's records.

“That was big on the whole S.A.V.E. program," said Leflore, who knew Lewis before they spent time in S.A.V.E. together. "I think a lot of participants learned a lesson from Courtney Lewis … to stay out of the streets.”

Hitting bottom

Other S.A.V.E. participants say their efforts to reform are similar to a drug addict or alcoholic trying to get sober in that relapse is often a pitfall in the path toward recovery.

Romell Young, 23, who is back in jail after being arrested on an unlawful use of weapon charge, started his third stint in the S.A.V.E. program in late May. His two earlier stints were after arrests for drug possession charges.

For the first weeks of his current jail stay, Young needed to use a cane to walk. He was seriously wounded the month before he was arrested after he said he beat up a man in a fistfight near his home.

Weeks after being shot, police said they received a call from a concerned resident about an armed man on the street fitting Young’s description.

When police arrived, Young allegedly tried to flee and during a brief pursuit threw his jacket, according to court records. The responding officer discovered a firearm in the area near where Young allegedly threw the coat.

Through S.A.V.E.'s individual counseling, he said he’s come to realize that he’s never fully dealt with parental abandonment issues from his childhood. The therapy sessions, he said, have also taught him coping techniques to deal with adversity, and he has a better grip on his anger.

So why does he keep putting himself in dangerous situations?

“I need someone to stand on me,” Young said. “If this program could be outside in the world, it would be better for us.”

Recently, he felt like he hit bottom. On Father’s Day, his mother brought his 9-month-old son to the jail to visit him. His child wanted to touch him, but a glass divider in the jail’s visiting room made it impossible.

“He started busting out crying,” Young recalled. “That was the moment I realized, and I prayed about it. Only thing I can do now is beat the path to righteousness.”