Fighting Juvenile Crime One Volunteer at a Time

Kathleen Cinotti Passidomo ’75, a partner in a law firm in Naples, Fla., hadn’t given much thought to juvenile justice until she attended a community breakfast in the early 1990s. There she heard a compelling, heart-breaking story of a 5-year-old boy who had been beaten and sodomized by a 10-year-old neighbor because he didn’t have any lunch money that day. Though the 10-year-old was arrested and found to be delinquent, there was no juvenile facility in southwest Florida that could take him.

“He walked away from the crime without any consequences,” recalls Passidomo. “The system failed the 5-year-old, the 10-year-old and everyone involved.”

At about the same time of this incident, the state of Florida determined that juvenile crime was rampant and passed a law requiring each county to have a council to oversee policy related to juvenile crime and delinquency. Passidomo, who was campaign manager for the county sheriff’s re-election, became the founding chairman of the Collier County Juvenile Justice Council.

Working with more than 100 community volunteers, elected officials, business people, school employees and law enforcement professionals for 10 months, Passidomo drafted a comprehensive plan that was eventually adopted by the county as a guide for handling juvenile crime and delinquency. The plan that was born of this unprecedented community partnership is now a model for other programs around the country.

Described by Passidomo as a “soup-to-nuts approach,” the plan has four main elements: prevention and education; intervention; detention and commitment; and aftercare. Prevention and education, as well as aftercare monitoring, are the most important parts of the plan, according to Passidomo. As part of this plan, the county built and created a juvenile boot camp, called the DRILL Academy, which is a highly structured detention center that emphasizes education. After six months in the residential program, kids have six months of aftercare, in which deputies continue to monitor their activities, and an additional six months of extended aftercare.

According to Passidomo, Collier County has an impressive success rate for its DRILL Academy: 78 percent of its “graduates” do not go back to crime. Passidomo credits the aftercare component of the plan for the low recidivism rate. “One of the failures of programs around the country is the lack of aftercare,” she asserts. “Unless you have aftercare, they will go back to where they come from.”

The DRILL Academy now includes an assessment center, which helps juveniles and their families receive the help they need to cope with issues such as drug and alcohol abuse, and mental health concerns. The county also recently opened the Pace Center, a state-funded program that takes troubled girls and teaches them life skills and self-esteem. The center, similar to a school, includes lecturers and speakers from the community to mentor at-risk teenage girls.

Though the Juvenile Justice Council has encompassed a large part of Passidomo’s time, her volunteer activities have not stopped there. Currently, she’s involved in the Collier County Child Advocacy Council, the Boys and Girls Club Advisory Board, and the Collier County Healthcare Committee. Her dedication has earned her several awards, including the 2000 Naples Daily News Citizen of the Year award, which she shared with her husband, John, also an attorney. She was also honored in March at the Greater Naples Branch of American Association of University Women at a luncheon “Celebrating Women of Achievement.”

Though she recently stepped down from the Juvenile Justice Council to spend additional time with her husband and three daughters, Catarina (21), Francesca (15) and Gabriella (12), Passidomo has taken on a new cause, the Florida Commission on the Status of Women. Appointed by the state attorney general in February 2001, Passidomo is one of 22 commission members charged with studying and developing roles of women in American society.

Passidomo, a history major, credits her Trinity education in providing her a solid foundation on which to build career opportunities. “The wonderful thing about Trinity is that as a women’s college it left us to do everything. I didn’t have any constraints doing what I wanted to do. The professors and nuns were so positive about women and their potential,” she noted.

“When you graduate from Trinity, you have a tremendous background to create a career.”

– Julie Clancy Grady ’82