DAVENPORT, Iowa — The Scott County Juvenile Detention Center could soon adopt a rebranding that better displays the goals and purpose of the facility.
According to Director Jeremy Kaiser, rebranding is in the works for the youth behavioral center, and it's all about reflecting how the facility has changed over the years.
"Over the last, I would say, six to eight years, we've evolved in the services that we're providing," said Kaiser. "...In the past, when juvenile detention was just a building designed for purely detainment; we're doing much more than that now."
As Scott County prepares to begin construction on its new building, he's proposing a rebranding and new name for the facility: the "Youth Justice and Rehabilitation Center."
"We felt a name change was important for the new building, for the community to understand that we're not just about detaining children, we are about providing services in rehabilitating."
The new name would reflect changes at the center shifting toward positive behavior intervention and rehab, rather than punitive behavioral management and detainment.
"This program is designed to teach youth about social skills and to reward them for positive behavior. And it provides more incentives, as opposed to in the past, in which we use more deficit-based consequence systems."
It's all in an effort to focus on rehabilitating young offenders with community involvement and restorative justice.
"I don't want people to think the wrong thing. So I think more facilities should be trending in this direction in the future. So that's really what I'm trying to communicate with the community," Kaiser said.
The Scott County Board of Supervisors is set to vote on the proposed name change.
The current Detention Center houses 18 beds, and is scheduled to be replaced in January 2024 after construction on the new building is complete. Work is set to begin this fall.