It’s time for POPAI Certified Probation Officer Members to consider serving POPAI in one of several positions available on our Board starting their two year terms on September 21, 2023.
The POPAI Elections Chair Mike Small is accepting Intent to Run forms for the Election at the Annual Meeting in French Lick on Thursday September 21. The following positions are available:
Additional responsibilities for Vice-President and Treasurer are listed on the Intent to Run page. Responsibilities for all Board Members are on the Intent to Run form itself, near the end of the document.
Las Vegas Sun on 5/25/2023 by Ray Brewer, Mike Grimala, Case Keefer, Danny Webster
During more than three decades at the Spring Mountain Youth Camp, Ed Cheltenham won 13 state championships in track and field and another two titles in basketball.
But his most notable contributions came as a probation officer at the facility. The Mount Charleston-based Spring Mountain Youth Camp is an alternative to prison for teenage boys requiring rehabilitation after committing delinquent acts.
A Clark Country juvenile court judge sends troubled youth to the camp, where probation officers like Cheltenham work 24-hour shifts, giving them a chance to develop a bond with the residents. Over the years, many of Cheltenham’s athletes were being coached for the first time in their lives by, if not having their first positive male influence.
“He is one of the best men I have ever met in my life,” said Mike Whelihan, who worked nearly two decades with Cheltenham at Spring Mountain. “He is probably the best probation officer I have met in my life, just a solid human being. I wish I could clone him.”
Workplace incivility describes the subtle and obvious behaviors that are generally rude, discourteous, and suggesting of a lack of respect for others. When unchecked, incivility erodes an organization’s culture and adversely impacts the well-being of those who are the targets of uncivil behavior.
Workplace incivility needs to be challenged and talked about openly. Knowing the causes of incivility, its consequences, and how to promote civility in the workplace can help correctional leaders and employees build psychologically safe environments where everyone grows and thrives.
Nobody argued that Jose Burgos shouldn’t pay for what he had done. The 16-year-old from southwest Detroit had killed another teen and critically wounded his twin brother in a bungled drug exchange.
But nobody argued over what Burgos’s sentence should be, either. In 1992, the law was clear. For children older than 14, any homicide-related offenses meant trial as an adult and an automatic punishment: life in prison, without the possibility of parole.
The Honorable Clarice Jobes did not have the discretion to consider Burgos’ circumstances — the fact that he’d never shot a gun before the night he tried to pass off a bunch of old rags as a bag of marijuana, or the self-destructive ways he was processing the grief of losing his mother to a bottle full of heart medication.
Jobes couldn’t weigh the fact that for many other matters, the state deemed Burgos too young to make important decisions: about buying cigarettes or alcohol or voting in an election. Her hands were tied.
“I find the limitations of this statute to be totally unfair to everyone concerned,” Jobes said to those gathered in the courtroom. “However, I have to live with them and deal with them. … I think I must sentence him as an adult, and I am going to impose a life sentence. … I have no choice.”
Burgos was led away to a grim future that stretched beyond what he could then fathom. But he had others to light the way — scores of juvenile lifers, mostly Black and brown youths whom Michigan had also decided were categorically irredeemable. Over the next decades, their ranks swelled into the hundreds.
The team that facilitates Family Recovery Court in Clark County. Photo credit Libby Cunningham
CLARK COUNTY — Hope filled the Clark County Magistrate Court on Wednesday afternoon.
It was standing-room-only for the celebration of National Treatment Court Month and people participating in Clark County’s Family Treatment Court listened to stories from people who’ve graduated the program.
Jenevieve Elliott was up first.
The New Albany mom stood alongside a longtime supporter in her recovery, Melissa Goforth Bale, as she encouraged people taking part in the rigorous program to not give up.
“In March 2022 I was one of the first people since COVID to celebrate my graduation in person and hug my judge,” Elliott said. “All those people just want what’s best for you and your babies. They’re not here to hurt you at all.”
Elliott told her story of her struggle with sobriety and the moment she took a chance on herself to get clean for good and entered into her last recovery center.
“While I was there, I was served with an eviction notice. I went through horrible withdrawals from suboxone, but ultimately I could feel God’s energy up there, hiking in the woods, watching sunsets,” she said. “…I always say God smacked me in the face that day. The founders were also co-founders of Northside Christian Church, which had been my church since 2000.”
Clark County Magistrate Lisa Garcia Reger commended the people taking part in the court for their hard work.
The Criminologist strives to promote and advance evidence-based practices in the arena of criminal justice and human services.
An expert in the Risk-Needs-Responsivity model of supervision, The Criminologist is also a desistance advocate and theorist.
The Criminologist has over 30 years experience in Corrections, in addition to 20+ years of university teaching experience at the graduate and undergraduate level. He is Executive Director of The Paragon Group, LLC
What’s micro-resilience and how can it help you minimize the impacts of daily stress?
Let’s think of micro-resilience this way: What’s the normal way you live your life?
Do you power through your emotions, fatigue and stress?
Do you end up collapsing at the end of the day?
Do you believe in pushing yourself to prove yourself and validate your self-worth?
The pushing through and feeling completely “spent” can lead to us feeling like it’s too big a hole to climb out of. We feel completely deflated and don’t know how to come back. Thus, we remain stuck in this vicious cycle.
Inevitably, our bodies start screaming for quick ways to feel better thus we reach for the glass of wine or comfort food despite not being truly hungry or thirsty. This is a very normal and natural response from the body. It wants to find the quickest way to feel better but these quick fixes don’t help our resilience, they’re just mental bandaids.
But what if we never reached this point and, instead, built in ways to micro-recover throughout our everyday lives?
