Ashley Provencal, 17, of Skowhegan is staying clear of trouble.

She is part of a growing percentage of teens who are leaving the state’s two detention facilities for young people after completing a new initiative designed to help them deal with their problems instead of causing more.

Provencal graduated June 11 from an alternative high school, walking away with a diploma and a college scholarship.

Since 2002, return rates at Mountain View Youth Development Center in Charleston and Long Creek Youth Development Center in South Portland have been remarkably reduced, according to Department of Corrections officials.

Before 2002, the rate of return for young people committing crimes had been 50 percent in South Portland and 30 percent in Charleston. Now, those rates have dropped to 10-15 percent at both facilities. The rate of return is measured by the number of youths released from the center who do not return within a year.

What has changed?

“In a nutshell, we’ve changed everything,” said Bartlett Stoodley, associate commissioner of juvenile services for the state Department of Corrections.

Rather than a reward-punishment system, the two Maine youth centers are using an innovative approach called “collaborative problem solving.”

In the old system, “all we did was hold them for court,” Mountain View Superintendent Eric Hansen said.

The latest tool is talking with these young people, he said, trying to get to the root of their problems.

Collaborative problem solving, or CPS, was developed by psychologist Ross Greene, who is affiliated with Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard University and author of “The Explosive Child.”

The CPS model is based on the assumption that challenging behavior should be understood and handled in the same manner as other recognized learning disabilities, according to the Center for Collaborative Problem Solving.

“In other words, difficult children and adolescents lack important cognitive skills essential to handling frustration and mastering situations requiring flexibility and adaptability,” according to the center’s Web site. “The CPS model helps adults teach these skills and teaches caregivers and children to work toward mutually satisfactory solutions to the problems causing conflict.”

Hansen, during an interview at the Charleston facility, said the process involves talking about consequences. “It’s all about choices.”

Four years ago, Provencal was on a losing streak. Now she’s on the winning end.

In 2002, she spent time at Mountain View when she got into trouble with the law.

“[I] stole a bunch of vehicles and I broke into a lot of places,” she said. “I just didn’t care.”

Provencal does not blame her troubles on the pack of teens she was with when she went on a tear.

“They were running with me pretty much,” she said in a recent interview at her home.

“She went on a rampage for a week,” her mother, Carlene Provencal, said, describing her daughter as uncontrollable at the time. “Nobody could handle her.”

Initially, Ashley spent 30 days at Mountain View, but soon returned for seven months after breaking the terms of her probation. “I didn’t do anything criminal,” she said explaining her probation violation was for reasons such as not attending school.

“It wasn’t awesome,” she said of her Mountain View stay. “It’s like a boot camp.”

Provencal isn’t one to sit still. She likes to be on the go, getting something accomplished, she said, adding, “it was kind of pointless to be there. I didn’t get anything done.”

Just when things seemed to be going smoothly with school and work, Provencal got slowed down fast.

It was Sept. 30, 2005, when she was hit by a car in front of a fast food restaurant in Skowhegan after getting off work there. She was thrown 88 feet by the force. After three weeks at Eastern Maine Medical Center in Bangor, she left there with metal plates in her jaw, leg and shoulder.

She has recovered, and now her focus is back on school.

Provencal graduated a year ahead of time from Marti Stevens School, an alternative education program. She has been accepted at Southern Maine Community College in South Portland, where she plans to study criminal justice. She also wants to continue her studies at the University of Maine in Orono and to become a veterinary technician.

“I want to do both of them,” she said. “I get bored with things really quick.”

Provencal won a college scholarship from the local Elks Club for an essay she wrote on the problems she has overcome, her mother said.

When the state built two new youth development centers in 2002, replacing the old Maine Youth Center in South Portland and the Northern Maine Juvenile Detention Facility in Charleston, it made a major investment in its youths, Hansen said.

Today, Maine’s youth centers have “no bars, no weapons, no chemical sprays,” he said. “How we control kids behavior is by working with them, talking with them. Some of the things we’re doing are cutting edge, leading the nation.”

Mountain View’s 178,000-square-foot facility has a capacity to house and educate 140 residents, with a population that is predominantly male. One in every 10 residents is female. The facility has a fully accredited school, complete with culinary arts and woodworking shops.

Of the overall youth population, “85 percent have at least one legitimate mental health issue,” Hansen said, “many multiple.”

Also, 85 percent suffer from substance abuse, 65 percent are diagnosed for special education needs and more than 25 percent have significant learning disabilities. Only 18 percent of Mountain View’s residents come from families with two biological parents, who are both living at home.

Approximately, 90 percent of female residents have been abused physically or sexually or subjected to trauma, compared with 25 percent of boys who were sexually abused and 50 percent who experienced some other form of abuse.

People ages 11 to 18 who commit crimes warranting incarceration are sent to either one of the state’s youth centers. They can stay at the facility until they turn 21. Some youths are sent to youth centers while awaiting adjudication. Others are committed, following conviction.

“Most youths on average spend one year or less in the institution,” he said. “The true barometer of how successful we are is how well they do back in the community.”

Teens are committed to the youth centers for indefinite periods, Hansen said, and must show they are ready for community integration before they are released. It is important they have the right skills so “they don’t fall backwards.”

Besides regular school classes, the youths must participate in the collaborative problem solving program, which involves a “pathways checklist” for assessing thinking skills, language processing, social skills, emotion regulation and more.

“The school is really at the heart of our institution,” Hansen said. “We have to turn that [learning] switch back on. We’ve had 140 kids get their GED since 2002. Some have gone directly to college.”

The 180 staff and contracted service providers also must meet youths’ food, medical, psychological, recreational and spiritual needs.

“Placing emphasis and resources on the juvenile system is an investment in kids so they don’t migrate into the adult system,” he said. “We’re about lifting kids up, not putting them down. That is what our whole focus is about.”

Offenders learn to “understand what the victim went through,” Hansen said.

In shifting gears, the system has gone from restraint chairs to denying privileges, he said.

Responsive or restorative justice is the method of getting young people to think about why they did something wrong and realizing the harm they have done to others.

Mountain View has three full-time psychologists, a half-time psychiatrist, five full-time psychological-social workers and four full-time substance abuse counselors.

Provencal said her stay at Mountain View “made me realize there are a lot more better things to do than get in trouble and spend my life in jail.”