Due to a family emergency, Evan went to the hospital a few days ago, where he found people from his past. “They told me they were there because they had stabbed someone,” the gang member told this newspaper, who now looks back with relief that he had stabbed someone. … I gave up on that world. After staying in several juvenile centers in the area, where he was cared for by the Agency for the Re-education and Integration of Minor Offenders (ARRMI), he got a job and realized that true freedom lay in leaving this criminal spiral. Now that he’s actually running his own renovation company, he’s the one trying to turn those young people who need it off the wrong path.
His story, he points out, begins like the story of many minors who end up getting involved in gangs or committing crimes: “a lack of interest.” “When we got here, my mother got involved with a rather undesirable man. “I didn’t like staying at home, so I took to the streets and hung out with gang members,” he continues. At the age of 15, he started hanging out with the Latin Kings. They supported him, as if he were family, and congratulated him when he did what they asked of him. However, the outcome was not what he was looking for at the time: “I ended up in a juvenile center until I was 18.”
A second chance
He has been through many trials and it was not easy for Ivan to stay away from his family and friends. However, it was this euphoria for these regional resources that ultimately changed his life. “They helped me with all the means at their disposal, psychiatrists and teachers… They guided me on the right path and enrolled me in workshops, and they saw my abilities. It was very helpful, and I saw that I could do more than commit crimes,” the person who was one of the first people helped by ARRMI, which this December celebrates its 20th anniversary with the aim of giving these young people a second chance, tells this newspaper.
Since that moment, the Madrid Community Agency has provided its services to more than 11,200 juvenile offenders and has been able to conclude more than 4,500 employment contracts in the field of logistics and warehouse services, the hospitality industry, shops, and in the cleaning sector.
Thanks to this support, Ivan realized that he was a great worker. This 36-year-old father says: “Before entering the center, I studied electricity and mechanics, but there they really told me that I could work and from that they advised me to stay away from what did not suit me.”
Even after being monitored, the workers continued to be monitored. “They’re on top of you all day long, which is what I missed at home,” he says. He was hired in restaurants and supermarkets, but he knew that this was not his calling. “I went to Galicia to renovate the summer house of a man who called me and there I decided that I never wanted to work for anyone and started my own business,” he recalls.
“I come from a family that lacks attention. Now I’m looking for the opposite for me »
Ivan
Former petty offender of the program
Today he works all over Madrid renovating houses and private apartments, without forgetting where he came from and burning the lessons he learned during the three years he spent in the region’s juvenile centers. “When I joined, my documents said that I belong to a broken family,” she admits, a phrase that I know she will never forget, and for which today she makes all her efforts to achieve the opposite and give all the necessary attention to her daughters.
Evan is just one of the success stories of the agency she created to reintegrate juvenile offenders. According to the group’s data, 90% of young people who serve judicial measures in their facilities do not commit crimes again when they leave. Since 2005, ARRMI has assisted 11,248 minors, facilitating the formalization of 4,612 employment contracts for these young people during these years of activity.
Career orientation
Among the tasks carried out by this resource, functional re-integration is essential. For this reason, there is a specific program aimed at guiding them to find work. During 2024, a total of 575 minors were assisted, of which 393, 68.3%, joined the Agency’s Social and Work Integration Program during this year and 182 minors, 31.7%, were already part of the program since 2023.
Regarding the results obtained, 460 employment contracts were formulated, which reflects the positive impact of the program on the social and practical inclusion of young participants.
“We provide them with the necessary tools so that they can integrate back into society when they leave.”
Pilar Lopez
Director of the Agency for the Re-Education and Reintegration of Juvenile Offenders
However, they also work in the educational and training field. The Sacred Heart of Jesus Regional Center for Integrated Education (CREI), created in 2006, constitutes an essential resource within the framework of the implementation of judicial measures of confinement, as a training response adapted to the needs of inmates in the Centers for the implementation of judicial measures of confinement (CEMJ) in the Community of Madrid. This regional resource contains 17 core training modules and 7 vocational preparatory workshops for these minors.
In the case of custodial measures, which involve admission to one of the six centers for the implementation of judicial measures, you are cared for by a psychosocial team consisting of social educators (one of whom will be your guardian), psychologists and social workers, who guide your stay in the center to achieve your full reintegration into society.
“The work reintegration program is the program that we are trying to give the most momentum to because in the end, when they leave, they have to return to their lives and we have to give them the tools that allow them to reintegrate into society,” explains Pilar López, Administrative Director of the Madrid Community Agency for the Re-education and Reintegration of Juvenile Offenders. But the focus is also on training in social skills that allow them to “understand the respect, empathy, tolerance or punctuality they will have in their work.”
In order to improve the effectiveness of educational and judicial responses and interventions applied to minors served, ARRMI has developed various specialized intervention programs. It attempts to adapt to the characteristics of each minor and the specificity of the crime committed. Individualization of treatment favors higher reintegration rates. According to the Community of Madrid, 90 percent of those who pass through our centers do not commit crimes again. Specialized programs are of the general type – common for minors who commit serious crimes – and the specific type – which address specific crimes, behaviors or needs.
Last year, this agency assisted 3,043 minors who were subject to court proceedings, which is 10 percent less than the previous year. Of these, 81 percent were men and 19 percent were women, with people over the age of 17 making up the vast majority of prisoners, 64.2 percent.
Ivan now looks back grateful for the work that the professionals in the Community of Madrid did for him and tries to repay it with small actions. “I offer work to young people I know who are on the wrong path, I tell them my experience and try to instill good values in them,” the former member tells ABC, while also remembering all the people who surrounded him in his youth and who now either cannot return to Spain because they were expelled or because, unfortunately, they were victims of gangs.