Shayna Miller’s goal every day is to help the kids she works with do something in which they can take pride. That can include volunteer work, gardening, schoolwork, art and more. She hopes that way they’ll realize they can be more than the crime they committed.
Miller is the executive director of Alternative Homes for Youth in Greeley, a nonprofit agency that works to teach, support and model healthy life skills to youth and families. About 60 percent of the boys in the program have committed a sexual offense, Miller said. The others usually have issues with substance abuse.
Alternative Homes for Youth, 1110 M St., provides housing, therapy and rehabilitation to help reshape the lives of juveniles who commit those crimes.
“Ideally they won’t commit other offenses,” Miller said. “We work to instill empathy so they realize their actions affect others.”
Alternative Homes for Youth works with boys ages 13-20 from Greeley, Fort Collins, Sterling and Nebraska. The facility has room for 26 residents. Residents usually stay for about 10 months, Miller said.
While its great someone is trying to do something, I find it comical these people are so concerned for these kids and say they can be reformed, but once they turn 18 no reform is possible and they should be punished for the rest of their life. The truth is being on the registry IS a life sentence for many people.
Sooo….our brains don’t stop developing until we are 25 or so, yet there is no hope of redemption for someone over 18?
You’d think they’d simply place a first time offender on probation for 10 years and then make a more accurate assumption of someone’s willingness or lack there of to be an upstanding citizen and turn their life around.
Instead of just rounding human beings up and de-humanizing them for nothing more than political gain.