For six months, hulking Mark Johnson and tiny Ryan Terry kept constant company.

Hardly best buddies, the two were bonded by court order after Ryan, then 11, and three friends beat up another student on a school bus.

	John Beale, Post-Gazette
	Mark Johnson, an in-school juvenile probation officer at Arsenal Middle School, talks with a student before the start of classes. "The more they see me," Johnson said, "the less likely they are to violate their probation. The less they see me, the more they think they are home free."

Ryan got six months' probation and 40 hours of community service. Johnson was Ryan's probation officer. But his office is not at some far-off location Downtown but right in Ryan's school -- Arsenal Middle School in Lawrenceville. Ryan couldn't escape him. Every day, he'd see Johnson in the halls, in the lunchroom, at the basketball game or wrestling match.

There was no cutting up because Johnson was always bearing down. At the end of six months, Ryan was off probation. And he's stayed out of trouble. His father, Frank Terry, of Stanton Heights, says it was just the right mix of scared straight in court and stay straight in school.

The winning combination is a result of Pennsylvania's decision to promote placing probation officers in schools. After a decade of state funding, probation officers now work the hallways of schools in 40 Pennsylvania counties. More than security guards, they're also social workers, employing a combination of coercion and cajoling to help delinquents succeed.

It began as an experiment 14 years ago in eastern Pennsylvania at two middle schools in Allentown. At year's end, the results were promising, with decreases in dropouts (29 percent), absenteeism (15 percent), lateness (9.5 percent), detentions and suspensions (4 percent) and a 4.1 percent increase in grades.

Those statistics prompted rapid expansion. Today, the state sponsors the largest school-based probation officer program in the country. "Pennsylvania has led the way," said Jim Anderson, executive director of the Juvenile Court Judges Commission, which provided funding to promote the program.

Allegheny County has more school-based probation officers than any other -- including Philadelphia. Jim Rieland built the team of 41 officers in 20 county school districts. He's director of juvenile court services and chief probation officer now, but when he started out 29 years ago, he was a novice in what was then a bold new experiment -- community probation offices.

'Put you in boot camp'
From his office in Mount Oliver, one of two outposts that would eventually expand to nine, Rieland visited the homes, schools and neighborhoods of his probationers, checking in on each at least a couple of times a month. This seemed better than what Rieland calls "fortress probation," in which juvenile probation officers sit in the county courthouse and order youngsters to show up there.

That's safer for the probation officers. And many counties still do it that way. But that sterile setting, Rieland says, is hardly a youngster's natural habitat. The community outposts got the officers closer to their charges' real life, but it made even more sense to Rieland to place them in schools where youngsters spend most of their time and where a probation officer could see them every day.

Allegheny County began doing that a decade ago. Mark Johnson was one of those first. With a week's training, the 23-year-old went to Arsenal in 1994, as drug use and gang violence were on the rise.

In those early days, when no one knew what to expect, the janitor moved brooms out of a closet, painted the floor and dragged a desk in for him.

The 6-foot-4 former All-City football player and Marine reservist held his own. Now he's got a former principal's office, symbolic of the administration's regard. Johnson, 32, requires each delinquent to appear in that office every morning.

"The more they see me," Johnson explains, "the less likely they are to violate their probation. The less they see me, the more they think they are home free."

So, he makes them sign in, pick up a teacher evaluation sheet and endure a few words of advice. It can be encouragement for the youngster whose teachers reported that he'd done his homework and participated in class.

It can be a lecture, as it was for a 13-year-old who'd gotten into a lunchroom fight, which he claimed was not his fault, then fled school. He was "AWOL," as Johnson put it, from home and classes, for four days.

"I could violate your probation and put you in boot camp," Johnson told the boy. "So next time, make some better decisions. Do what you are supposed to do, and stop doing goofy stuff."

The school had suspended the boy for fighting. Johnson could have punished him further because, under the terms of his probation contract, the youth may not fight at school and must obey rules. Johnson decided to cut him a break this time.

Hold delinquents accountable
Johnson is acutely conscious of every decision because the stakes are so high. Two of his former probationers face murder charges. Two others are on college scholarships.

When he decides not to cut a delinquent a break, Johnson may choose from a larger arsenal of punishments than those available to the school. Those youths who don't sign in Johnson will track down, pull out of class and give an earful. That's about as light as it gets.

From there, he can ask a judge to place youths on home detention monitored by an electronic ankle bracelet, send them to Shuman Juvenile Detention Center for a weekend or dispatch them to boot camp.

For probationers who clearly need help, Johnson arranges testing for learning disabilities or mental problems. He intervenes to speed transfer to schools that can deal better with their special needs. He sets up teens in summer school, with jobs and in activities to keep them out of trouble.

Arsenal's principal, Debra Rucki, backs him all the way. She has a sign posted in her office that makes the point Johnson tries to drive home: "Present choices determine future consequences."

For an adult, the sign might be enough but not for teens. "Kids this age need constant reminders," she said. But she believes that her 6-foot-4 mobile sign is effective: "Mr. Johnson helps the child not make the same mistake."

In a school of fewer than 500 students, everyone knows exactly who Johnson is and what he does. So everyone knows what's happening when a probationer stops him, waving the teacher evaluation sheet and bragging, "Look what I got!"

That is cited by some as a flaw in school-based probation. Traditionally, virtually everything about delinquency was kept secret. The idea was that if the youngster's crimes were hidden, he could be more easily reformed because no one would think the less of him or have negative expectations.

When school-based probation began, privacy was a concern, Anderson of the judges commission acknowledges. "But when we talked to school personnel, they said, 'Who are you kidding? The kids brag about who is on probation. Everybody knows who is on probation.' "

Since the probationers weren't keeping it a secret, it seemed silly for others to try to do so. In addition, secrecy is regarded by some in juvenile justice as outmoded. The get-tough-on-juvenile-crime advocates decided in 1995 to hold delinquents accountable, in part, by exposing them to public scrutiny. Legislators opened many delinquency records and hearings to the public.

Tradition of secrecy
Though there was trepidation at first, many juvenile justice experts now support it. To Rieland, when more people know about delinquency, more step forward and pressure delinquents to behave. In addition, it's easier for the probation department to reach out for community help in giving a youngster needed skills.

The end of secrecy also means, however, that in addition to school-based officers, teachers and administrators will be watching probationers all the time, making it more likely that they'll be nabbed for a minor offense that might otherwise have escaped attention.

There's some evidence that that occurs. A 1997 University of Pennsylvania study of 75 youngsters supervised by school-based probation officers matched for age, race and crime with 75 delinquents supervised by traditional probation officers. It found that the school-based youths got sanctioned more frequently for violating their probation terms with minor infractions.

On the other hand, the 75 youngsters supervised by traditional officers were more likely to be charged with new serious crimes and spend time in detention centers and reform schools. The average extra cost of that time in placement for each youth supervised in the traditional way was $6,665.

The simple explanation for this, Rieland says, is that the school-based officers catch and punish minor offenses, preventing bad behavior from escalating to crime.

So, maybe it's true they sanction probationers more often for skipping a day of school or yelling at teachers or wrestling in the lunchroom, Rieland says, but the effect is to prevent youngsters from being truant for weeks at a time and getting involved in criminal behavior out of boredom.

The link between school disaffection and delinquency is as clear, he says, as that between school attendance and success.

Still, some critics contend that probation officers shouldn't be in the schools because the delinquents shouldn't be there in the first place. They don't want the bad kids mixed with those who behave. What many don't know, possibly because of the tradition of secrecy, is that it has always been that way. Only those youngsters who commit the most serious crimes and repeat minor offenders go to reform schools. A 12-year-old who shoplifts a few CDs isn't sent away to a $100-a-day reform school.

Rieland's budget is $50 million, with between 400 and 500 youngsters in reform schools at any given time and another 2,200 supervised by probation officers.

To put the other 2,200 in institutions, he estimates, would cost an additional $100 million. And there's no guarantee it would be as successful as school-based probation.

A 2001 evaluation of the program in five Pennsylvania counties by the National Center for Juvenile Justice found both probation officers and school officials reporting it was effective in meeting every objective, particularly decreasing absenteeism, suspensions and referrals for school discipline.

Rieland recalls that in the early days some school board members regarded a school-based officer as a stigma.

Now, he gets far more requests than he can fill.

They're sold, and now Rieland is selling others. He met with skepticism last year when he described the program at a conference in St. Joseph, Mo. Now there are eight officers in the district's schools.