[03/6/03]Warren County youngsters under orders from Youth Court can now expect monitoring to see if they are doing as instructed, Judge Johnny Price said.

Youth Court receptionist Kashan Haynes has been promoted to the new position of compliance officer, Price said Wednesday at the Vicksburg Lions Club.

Haynes, a six-year employee of the court, officially began her new duties on Monday, but is continuing to serve as receptionist until her replacement is hired, she said.

Her new job will involve what Price said would be the court’s first active follow-up.

“This will give us the ability to track the child” to make sure he is doing what is ordered, Price said. Such tracking will be aided by computers bought by the court since Price took office Jan. 1.

Also judge of Warren County Court, Price had been county prosecutor for 13 years. He defeated incumbent Gerald Hosemann and three others in November elections. Wednesday, Price told the civic club members about changes made in his first two months and others he plans to make.

The department’s budget for this fiscal year is $460,341. With this year’s youth detention-center budget of $660,990, the system was projected to run on $1,121,331, or 7.5 percent of the county’s total budget. It was not known by how much the addition of the new staff position, the sixth, would increase the department’s budget, County Administrator Rick Polk said.

Haynes said that, as compliance officer, she expects to spend about 70 percent of her time outside of the office. “I’ll be out at schools, verifying that (youngsters under order) are in schools and in the programs we’ve appointed them to.”

She added that currently such programs number about eight in Warren County, including tutoring, mentoring, parenting and family-development programs.

Price also outlined other programs that he plans to put in place, including a Boy Scout troop for children in the Youth Court system. Youth Court hears juvenile matters including delinquency, abuse and neglect of those under 18, and its proceedings are confidential.

Four local ministers, the Revs. Mincer Miner of Mount Calvary M.B. Church, 1350 East Ave.; Ryan Moore of Coolspring M.B. Church, U.S. 61 North; Eric Thomas of First Baptist Church, 1607 Cherry St.; and Reginald Walker of Word of Faith Christian Center, 1201 Grove St., have been named to a search committee for a scoutmaster and several assistants, Price said.

“They’re relatively young men,” Price said, adding that all four had volunteered to help with such efforts during his November campaign.

The Scout troop would take part in such a group’s traditional activities such as camping out, Price said.

The scouting idea is “one of seven or eight innovative ideas” that have received strong support from the public and county supervisors for moving Youth Court into many more preventive programs, Price said.

“When you see in the paper that a grand jury has indicted 86 people,” the people are mostly “18-to-25-year-old young men that have all been in the Youth Court system,” he said.

“We get a lot of 10-, 11- and 12-year-olds who have clearly been unattended,” Price said of the Scout program. “They need somebody to praise them when they’re right and scold them when they’re wrong.”

For older teens in the system, Price said he had talked with JROTC leaders at the local high schools about ordering many students to participate in that year-round, military-affiliated program. He said that when teens are faced with the alternative of being sent to reform school, they will choose to join JROTC.

“They said they will take as many as I can give them from the ninth grade up,” Price said of the JROTC leaders. “They’re young men, and they’re dedicated.”

Price said he or his staff has been visiting school leaders to offer advice on when to call for help from law enforcement.

“Some principals are easygoing and some will call the police” more readily, he said. He added that the schools’ crime problems are “not even close to as bad as people in the community would think.”