Jonell Casada, a San Benito County Probation Department supervisor at Juvenile Hall, is one of five people statewide who will be honored for their outstanding performance and significant contributions to the field of probation on Dec. 8 and 9 at the annual 2022 Chief Probation Officers of California Awards Ceremony in Santa Cruz.
“Jonell is a difference maker,” said Joe Frontella, the chief probation officer of San Benito County. “She is very unselfish and will work night shifts, holidays and weekends because she enjoys making sure the youths have as enjoyable an experience as possible. She’s very dedicated to their betterment within our community.”
The nominees for the award are drawn from the Probation Business Managers Association, the Chief Probation Officers of California, the California Association of Probation Institution Administrators and the Probation Information Technology Managers Association.
“I’m pretty humbled by the honor and was a little taken aback,” Casada said. “I am pretty passionate about this work. I don’t brag about the things I do—I just do them.”
Casada, 48, has spent 20 years in service in San Benito County, starting as a dispatcher with the Sheriff’s Department before moving on to the Probation Department.
“When I started in 2015, there were not many programs for the youths,” Frontella said. “Jonell has implemented eight different programs as an opportunity to get kids back on track.”
Frontella highlighted the Sacred Rok program, which allows some Juvenile Hall youths to go to the Pinnacles and Yosemite National parks to work with world-renowned rock climber Ron Kauk.
“The program is for kids who met the incentive goals and were doing well in the program,” he said. “They would be given a day of hiking, exploring, and learning about the outdoors, the environment, and the wilderness. Some of these kids had never been to the Pinnacles before, much less Yosemite.”
Some of the other programs instituted by Casada include bringing the youths into contact with the San Benito Arts Council, providing mentors, instruction in journaling and working to maintain the Juvenile Hall garden.
“We had this open space in the facility,” she said. “And this is such a huge agricultural area. So I thought, ‘Hey, let’s make a garden.’ They would pick a fruit or vegetable, and we would try to grow it and then make some type of recipe with it. If we could, we would have local agricultural people come in and talk to the youth about what each part of growing food takes.”
Casada also implemented programs to teach life skills that prepare the youths to be released into the community.
“These kids are definitely in Juvenile Hall for punishment,” she said. “But that’s not all there is. We need to figure out how to get them ready for life after being in a facility. They’re going to be that next generation and with everything going on around them, we need to teach them about life skills and mental health.”
One of the ways Casada does this is to work with the youths on practical matters they will need to know once released.
“We try to teach them things like how to get a job,” she said. “We will do mock interviews and record them so they can watch them back and see how they did and get comfortable with the process. We teach them budgeting: how much they need to get an apartment or a car, how much they need for food, and how much they need to save for vacations as well as planning where they would want to go.”
For Casada, preparing the youths to go back into the community is the most important thing.
“I believe in probation,” she said. “I believe in helping youth make a change. I believe in what we do, and I believe in who they are and what they’re going to become. Given a chance, they do great things—I see it all the time.”
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