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Prevention Resource Officer Program
Juvenile Justice 
Prevention Resource Officer Program History and Goal for the Future
The Prevention
Resource Officer program was first implemented at
Hurricane High School. It originated with a Juvenile
Justice Changing Directions program then was expanded
into the school through Local Law Enforcement funding as
well as Juvenile Justice funding. We started with one
officer and one community that worked on and developed
the basic program. Captain Chuck Donovan and Corporal Ron Smith
attended training at Pacific Institute in Washington
State on the Increasing Your Causative Powers Program.
We then asked the West Virginia Board of Education to
sit down with DCJS and develop, based on the
organization program, guidelines and an agreement with
the County Board of Education. By this time, we had
funded 6 PRO Officers in four counties.
The City of Hurricane
hosted the first PRO training. Pacific Institute was
brought in to train and certify our officers in the
Increasing Your Causative Powers curriculum. Three of
our officers returned to Washington State the following
year and became certified instructors of the program.
In September of 1998,
the COPS Office announced a new drive to provide funds
for communities to hire officers to fight crime in
schools. We sent the announcement with our memo
summarizing our program and offered every Law
Enforcement Agencies in WV our program guidelines and
agreements to assist them in preparing COPS
applications.
In June of 1999, we
funded additional nine officers in 4 more counties
through JAIBG funding. Two officers through Byrne and
one officer through Safe and Drug Free Schools, bringing
the total of PRO’s in WV to 18. In July of 1998, the
GCCDC hosted the annual PRO Training Conference. It was
a forty-hour training on child advocacy, increasing your
causative powers, implementation of the program, and
juvenile crime and statistics. The training was followed
up by an additional sixteen hour Conflict Resolution
Training provided by the National Center on Conflict
Resolution Education.
As of 2005-2006 DCJS programs fund 42 offices in 41
schools in 20 counties in West Virginia.
We continue to critique, analyze, and improve the
program. The Division of Criminal Justice Services and
the Governor’s Committee on Crime, Delinquency and
Corrections goal is to train every officer in WV a
schools on this program. Officers know how to be WV
police officers. However, most need to learn how to also
be child advocates and to aid in the prevention of
juvenile crime. Our goal is to provide the training and
technical assistance they need to better serve the youth
of our communities.
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Please contact
Leslie Boggess, (304) 558-8814, extension 270 for more information.
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