TOPEKA, Kan. — Shawnee County’s corrections department in July tested a food service strategy targeted at making confinement for its juvenile inmates more palatable.
The department doubled the portion size of the food it serves those youths at meals and replaced the sugary snack they received each evening with fresh fruit.
“We wanted to see if that would make a difference,” said county corrections department spokesman Maj. Tim Phelps.
It did.
Phelps recalled this week that staff members saw a noticeable improvement in the behavior and educational program performance of youths detained at the Shawnee County Juvenile Detention Center, which has decided to keep those changes in place.
Phelps said the moves are among steps the corrections department is implementing to try to “take some of the bite” out of confinement through its involvement in the Juvenile Detention Alternatives Initiative.
The JDAI is a project of the Annie E. Casey Foundation, a private charitable organization dedicated to helping build better futures for disadvantaged children in the United States. The initiative is targeted at reducing the negative effects of detention on youths and helping them avoid becoming hardened criminals.