Cayden Barnes hopes to start seventh grade off on a better foot.
The 12-year-old has displayed behavioral issues since kindergarten, according to his family. Last school year, he was suspended for dozens of days for fighting, cursing, and talking back to teachers.
“I got in trouble because I got overstimulated,” Cayden said.
Cayden was among 36 children ages 8 to 15 who graduated in July from the new F.O.C.U.S. program through the Robeson County Sheriff’s Office. Throughout the three-day program, participants learned about decision-making and accountability. They listened to guest speakers, toured the local jail, and watched demonstrations of police work.
The sheriff’s office developed F.O.C.U.S., which stands for Focusing on Choices, Understanding Success, over the last year. It serves as a prevention and intervention program aiming to address factors like lack of positive relationships and poor behavior control that can lead to youth violence and crime.
“The program provides youth with structure, positive interaction with law enforcement and community professionals, access to trusted adults, coping and conflict-resolution skills, accountability, and an opportunity to think seriously about where their choices may lead them,” said Rudy Locklear, a sergeant with the special victims unit of the sheriff’s office who led the program.
Last year, about 33 of every 1,000 children ages 8 to 17 in Robeson County were charged with a criminal complaint, according to data from the N.C. Department of Public Safety. That was higher than the statewide average of about 25 of every 1,000 kids.
The local numbers marked an improvement. All complaints to the county’s juvenile court, including those for crimes like assault and possessing a handgun, have dropped 32% since a peak in 2023, going from 842 to 571, data shows.
While Robeson County ranked 27th among the state’s 100 counties for all juvenile criminal complaints, it was ninth for violent offense complaints, including robbery and attempted murder. Robeson County Sheriff Burnis Wilkins says the county has seen a recent uptick in the number of juveniles accused of violent crimes.
In March, investigators charged four Red Springs teens in the shooting death of 16-year-old Keedon Lewis. The same month, three local teens were charged with assaulting two students near St. Pauls Middle School.
“As we have seen all too often in recent weeks, poor decisions by teens, coupled with a lack of supervision and accountability, can lead to tragedy, incarceration, or both,” Wilkins wrote in a Facebook post in July.
Now Wilkins wants county commissioners to set a curfew for youth in hopes of curbing crime and increasing public safety.
“We’re trying to reach young people before a bad choice becomes a pattern,” Locklear said, “and before that pattern becomes a permanent consequence.”
‘A New Perspective’
The F.O.C.U.S. program received so much interest that the sheriff’s office closed its application portal two weeks after its launch. Employees selected the applicants they thought might benefit the most.
The program brought together sheriff’s deputies, including school resource officers, N.C. Bureau of Investigations Director Chip Hawley, Robeson County Chief District Court Judge Angelica Chavis McIntyre, and staff from the county’s Juvenile Court.
Cayden, who has never been charged with a crime, said hearing from people who were previously incarcerated was the most impactful part of the program.
“It helped us get a new perspective on what would happen if we don’t do stuff the right way,” he said, “if we don’t make good choices.”
Cayden said he now understands how to think ahead to the consequences of his actions. When his peers act out at school, he said, he hopes to ignore them.
During a tour of the Robeson County Detention Center, participants spent 30 minutes alone in cells. Locklear said F.O.C.U.S. “was not designed or presented as a ‘Scared Straight’ program,” referring to the documentary and subsequent reality TV show that placed troubled youth in prisons.
“The detention-center portion was intended to provide participants with an age-appropriate educational understanding of consequences, personal responsibility, and the loss of freedom that can result from poor choices, while reinforcing the importance of making better decisions,” Locklear said.
Cayden’s grandmother, Samantha Barnes, said she has noticed a change since her grandson completed F.O.C.U.S. He’s been calmer and more helpful around the house, she said, and he “doesn’t have an attitude as bad.”
Paul Smokowski, executive director of the North Carolina Youth Violence Prevention Center, said it’s especially tough to curb youth violence in places like Robeson County, which is plagued by poverty, drugs, and racism.
Robeson is the poorest county in the state and had the fourth-highest unemployment rate in June. The county, home to the Lumbee Tribe of North Carolina, is among the most racially diverse in the state: About 39% are Native American, 25% are white, and 23% are Black.
In 2024, Robeson County had the second-highest violent crime rate in the state, according to the State Bureau of Investigation.
While the county’s overdose death rate has fallen from its peak in 2021, it remains among the highest in North Carolina, according to the N.C. Department of Health and Human Services.
For years, the North Carolina Youth Violence Prevention Center has paired parenting and school-based programs with a peer-led justice system called Teen Court to reduce rates of school suspensions and juvenile arrests in Robeson County. Community members operating as “violence interrupters,” as Smokowski called them, help de-escalate conflicts and mentor kids.
“What I found is that it isn’t one particular program,” Smokowski said. “It’s packages of programs, and the programs have to work together.”
Juvenile Court’s intake counselors work to determine what factors contributed to a child walking through their doors, said Keith Bullard, the chief juvenile court counselor for Robeson, Hoke, and Scotland counties. The court works to divert as many kids out of the juvenile justice system as possible, Bullard said, connecting them and their families with the food, housing, and mental health resources that may have prevented a crime in the first place.
“We’ve got to build the home up,” Bullard said, “not just the kid.”
More intervention programs are needed to further reduce crime in the county, Smokowski and Bullard said. Some are already in the works: The Lumberton-based nonprofit Stop the Violence is developing a youth center that it hopes will provide after-school activities and mentorship to local kids.
“It’s going to take a community stakeholder approach,” Barnes said. “In rural Robeson County, it takes a village and then some.”
Tough On Crime
Last year, the state Department of Public Safety gave Robeson County a little over $515,000 for local crime intervention programs. It’s the same amount the county received in 2020.
Funding is increasingly hard to come by, Smokowski said. In April 2025, the U.S. Department of Justice ended over 370 grants from its Office of Justice Programs, according to the nonpartisan think tank Council on Criminal Justice. Most of the cancelled funds, which the council valued at roughly $169 million, were dedicated to community safety and violence intervention programs.
The North Carolina Youth Violence Prevention Center was among them, losing $700,000 in unspent money from a $2 million grant the organization received in October 2022.
Wilkins paid about $2,800 out of his own pocket, not including staff time, to host the F.O.C.U.S. program, according to Locklear. Most of the money went to the participants’ T-shirts and food.
Wilkins hopes F.O.C.U.S. can move under the umbrella of the nonprofit Robeson Sheriff’s Charitable Foundation, Locklear said. The goal is to use as few tax dollars as possible for the program.
A curfew for kids 18 could further curb youth crime, Wilkins wrote in a letter to Robeson County Attorney Rob Davis.
“A carefully drafted juvenile curfew ordinance could provide another tool to reduce unsupervised late-night activity involving juveniles, assist law enforcement in preventing youth-related violence and criminal activity, promote parental responsibility and accountability, and enhance the safety of minors during hours when they are statistically more vulnerable to becoming victims of crime or engaging in unlawful conduct,” Wilkins wrote.
Evidence on the effectiveness of youth curfews is mixed, according to a literature review from the U.S. Department of Justice’s Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention. While some studies found curfews decreased crime rates, others found they increased kids’ involvement with the justice system.
Smokowski said curfews punish everyone. He said it’s better to target kids causing trouble through programming.
“It sounds strong, ‘Oh, we’re gonna come out tough,’” he said, “but then everybody is paying the price.”
Cayden said he is depending on his peers to avoid fights this school year. “If the other kids can behave,” he said, “then I will too.”
Samantha Barnes is hoping for a good school year.
“If I don’t get a phone call in the first two weeks [of school],” she said, “we’re doing good.”