DYS vocational program gives youths job skills, mentors

Skill Up is the first standardized vocational program across all five regions in the DYS system, which serves 12-to 21-year-olds for offenses ranging from trespassing to manslaughter. Previously, young people could get silk-screening, culinary, and carpentry training in a few DYS facilities, but no formal training available to everyone. Now there is a $5.2 million budget and 23 programs across the state, including music production, bicycle repair, and horticulture. Participants earn $15 an hour for up to nine hours of skills training a week – money that’s released when they are.

The job skills and money are important, but the less tangible benefits they gain from the instructors, who also serve as mentors, are just as essential, DYS officials and participants said.

“It wasn’t just haircuts,” said Jamari, 18. “It was getting to know me, wanting to know what I wanted to do with myself, even after.”

“It makes me forget that I’m doing time,” he added. “It makes me feel like I’m just at a barbershop and I’m chopping it up with my friends and my family members.”

The Globe is not fully identifying the youths in state custody, whose criminal records are not public, to avoid having a negative influence on their future prospects.

A number of Skill Up instructors statewide were committed to juvenile treatment facilities in the past, sometimes in the same facilities where they teach, and this shared experience helps build relationships with the young men in the program. The providers also live in the cities where these youths will be released, helping create community bonds that many of them lacked before, said Cecely Reardon, the DYS commissioner, a former public defender.

Bikes not Bombs, the Boston nonprofit that runs the bicycle repair program, lets participants keep the bikes they fix and gives them the chance to apprentice for the nonprofit when they get out. Those in the silk-screening program designed and produced T-shirts for the Big E fair in Springfield last year.

Until recently, youth rehabilitation was focused mainly on education, Reardon said, but it was missing those who weren’t on an academic path.

“They leave here with something no one can ever take away from them,” Reardon said. “If we can help a young person be successful, that’s in the name of public safety.”

Completing vocational, educational, and other risk-reduction programs can reduce recidivism rates by more than half in some cases, according to a recent report by the Massachusetts Department of Correction.

Statewide, approximately 500 young people are in the DYS system, including those awaiting trial and those in treatment units such as the Connelly Center. Some have been released but voluntarily continue to receive services. In all, Skill Up has provided vocational training to more than 430 youths.

Adrian Major, who runs the DreamCutz barbershop with his wife, Alexis, as part of their Dreamcatcher Initiative nonprofit in Dorchester, said barbershops are an ideal training ground because of the therapeutic aspects to getting a hair cut or shave.

The hot towel on your face, the smell of aftershave, the conversation with a barber – all of this can turn a bad day into a good one, Major said.

“It can change a whole dynamic,” he said. “Anything that helps enhance your image makes you really feel better.”

And learning how to provide this service makes students feel good, too.

Major has seen young men progress, from something as small as admitting “my fault” when something goes wrong to opening up about their hopes and dreams. Even just improving their mood over the course of a few hours is a win, he said.

In addition to vocational skills, trainees learn about financial literacy, entrepreneurship, public speaking, and different aspects of employment such as performance reviews. Using proper language is a must in the barbershop: If they swear, they’re expected to do 15 push-ups — and often do so without being asked.

If they act out on the unit, they may stop getting temporarily but are still allowed to participate in the program. And the money has been a great motivator.

One trainee was recently involved in a misunderstanding with another resident, which in the past might have turned violent, according to DYS. But the Skill Up participant walked away, and later said he did so because he didn’t want to lose his program privileges.

Overall, morale has improved since the vocational program began, staffers said.

When people are about to leave DYS custody, career navigators help them open bank accounts and find jobs. Over the past few years, roughly 200 former Skill Up participants now out in the community have found full-time employment, officials said. One who learned carpentry skills and got his OSHA certification in treatment now works at Home Depot. Another who learned to silk-screen bought a $600 Cricut machine with his Skill Up earnings and opened an online Etsy business.

For Dante, who grew up in East Boston and was in juvenile treatment facilities from age 16 to 21, the instructors were like big brothers. Dante was released almost a year ago and still has a call with a Dreamcatchers mentor every Friday.

“We could talk to them about whatever, like therapy,” he said. “You see that they come from the same place as you and they’re doing well.”

Reentry “beats down on you,” Dante said, but things have been looking up lately. He recently landed a job as a delivery driver and does dog grooming on the side, with help from the starter kit of clippers, scissors, and combs he got from the program. In fact, it was Adrian Major who first noticed the haircut Dante gave his standard poodle and encouraged him to branch out.

“We create pathways,” said Alexis Major. “It’s about confidence, dignity that they build and they gain.”

Jaaco, 19, has done several Skill Up programs and is currently part of the barbershop crew in Roslindale. Demonstrating his skills on a recent day, he donned a black apron and placed a mannequin head on a tripod. In a matter of seconds, he removed all its hair – called “balding” – with a pair of clippers, using confident back-to-front strokes.

Jaaco has learned patience, respect, and unity through the vocational programs, he said, and his time in the Connelly Center has been instrumental: “This unit has formed me into becoming a better person.”

This story was produced by the Globe’s Money, Power, Inequality team, which covers the racial wealth gap in Greater Boston. You can sign up for the newsletter here.

Katie Johnston can be reached at katie.johnston@globe.com. Follow her @ktkjohnston.