MIDLAND, Texas — A fight at a fast food restaurant, a student bringing a gun to school and 18-year-old teens shooting and killing other people. Those are just a few real-life cases in Midland and Odessa where teens have been involved in criminal activity.
The question local leaders are trying to address is how to prevent juvenile or teen crimes. Karl Boroski, executive director of RopeYouth in Midland, believes that we need to have conversations with kids at a young age about the dangers of criminal activity and the resulting repercussions.
Local leaders are trying to address the issue while also recognizing that young people do need room to learn from their mistakes.
"Project Rope is basically redirecting behaviors," Boroski said. "So kids will come to us for a reason. It’s a program designed to let the kid have a second chance, basically for first time offenders, but kids will get a second chance."
While Project Rope is a program within RopeYouth that focuses on redirection, Boroski said that prevention is still a better option.
"It’s easier to prevent behavior than go to a kid that’s already in the junior high and kind of redirect things after he’s already had real life experiences," Boroski said. "When you’re dealing with a fourth grader, they might not, hopefully not, but in some cases they do, have had those experiences and they hear what you’re saying."
Now, Boroski hopes to get more people involved in assisting the community's youth by helping form the Midland Youth Coalition.
"We want to bring everybody that works with youth together," Boroski said. "There’s a bunch of different nonprofits and youth groups in the foster care system, all that working with kids, and we just need to get on one page so we can see how we can directly help people."
The Midland Youth Coalition's first meeting will take place at 11:30 a.m. on March 21 at Golf Course Road Church of Christ.