WGBH Journal; Access To Beaches

The population numbers per mile of beach in Massachusetts are among the highest in the country. Beaches close to the urban center of Boston generally have forty thousand people per mile beaches like Revere. They literally cannot take another body. The overcrowding of Massachusetts beaches is a reality which many of us will face this summer. The reason for this overcrowding is due partially to the limited public access to the coastline. The problem which is the focus of the first piece on today's show. Good afternoon this is GBH Journal and I'm Bill ?Cavnas?. We'll also hear reports on two kinds of programs to aid kids in need. One helps juvenile offenders to earn money to pay their fines. The other is an education program serving economically disadvantaged preschool aged kids. And to close today show Louis Lyons will have a look at the news. As the summer months approach the weather gets hotter and hotter, the beaches in Massachusetts grow

more and more crowded. Unless Massachusetts is a commonwealth which has a considerable amount of shoreline--twelve hundred miles with over a thousand miles of usable beach. The problem which exists is that out of the thousand miles only 200 miles are open to the public. The rest is privately owned and off-bounds to most citizens. The issue of the ownership of the coastline has been around for over three hundred years, but becomes a critical problem during the hot summer months. Here with more on the question is reporter Robert Farago. [Reporter Farago]: In 1647 King George of England granted the colonists the right to own the shoreline all the way down to the sea at low tide. During the hot summer months of the last 5 to 10 years, Bay Staters have suffered bumper to bumper traffic jams to reach overcrowded beaches. These two events are indeed related. When King George gave the new world settlers the land between a low and high tides he, in effect, made it illegal for a citizen to be on a private beach at high tide today. Because of this, out of the 12 hundred mile

mile coastline only 175 miles of beach is accessible to the Commonwealth's public. The responsibility for the state's limited public shore falls to the Coastal Zone Management program with recreational demand outstripping resources by some estimates of 4 to 1. The CZM program is ambitious. Spokesperson Mark Kaufman details how the sheer weight of numbers indicates the enormity of the problem. [Spokesperson Kaufman]: In Massachusetts we have a shoreline that is 1200 miles long. 935 of those miles are privately owned. That makes a fundamental difference between any other state the majority of our land is not, is not open to the public. Of the remaining land, 90 miles is owned by the federal government and175 miles miles is open and available to the public. One of the major parts of the coastal zone program was to look at how we could increase both the quality and the quantity of recreation to Massachusetts residents and also to people who come to the Massachusetts shoreline from other states.

[Reporter Farago]: The CZM must also handle the needs and desires of seaside communities. These communities are understandably anxious to receive federal monies to buy or maintain their beaches but they don't want to be inundated by out of towners. Places like Marblehead discourage visitors to their locally owned beaches by inflating parking and admission fees for non-residents. Kaufman explains the state's position on such exclusionary practices. [Spokesperson Kaufman]: If a community wishes to buy a beach and open it up for 10 residents that is certainly an important first step in making sure that people's needs are being met. I think the position of the Coastal Zone Management Program is that if state monies or federal monies go into the acquiring or the maintenance of any beach facility then in fact that facility should be open to any resident of the Commonwealth because it's general Commonwealth monies that are helping to support and maintain the facility. [Reporter Farago]: One possible solution to the overcrowded coast is for the state to simply purchase more land for its citizenry. The federal funded CZM is in charge of an acquisition

program that is now in effect. But the financial constraints are prohibitive. [Sokesperson Kaufman]: The monies are not there for acquisition. The cost of land along the coast is terrifically high. You know in some areas it's a quarter of a million dollars per acre. And you talk about a fairly large piece of beach you're talking about an investment from government of many millions of dollars and the need is to take a look at how do you meet the short term demands of a population for recreation. And then how do you meet the long term and certainly acquisition is a part of that. There is a section of the federal Coastal Zone Management Act that allows for states to acquire more beach land. That section of the act has never been funded by Congress. [Reporter Farago]: Another answer to the waterfront access problem would be a revision by the state legislature of King George's 1647 mandate. In 1972, State senator William Bulger of Boston proposed a bill that would guarantee the public the right of lateral passage between low and high tides. A special commission was formed to study the

legislation's possible impact. And as the issue concerned wealthy landowners on the coast and millions of people inland, the bill was controversial. After two years of public hearings throughout the state, the commission released its report. That report strongly recommended repeal of the ancient ownership law and proposed the abolishment of discriminatory fees for inlanders. Senator Bulger's original bill was then sent to the Supreme Judicial Court where an advisory opinion labeling the measure unconstitutional silenced all debate. In Beverly, the waterfront access problem came to a head when two fences were erected by landowners that prevented people from getting from one public beach to another public beach. Alice and John Burns responded by forming the shoreline rights association. Although they lost that particular battle in the court, the fight goes on. Alice Burns-- [Alice]: most of the time the public gets hurt because the public becomes apathetic if it doesn't touch them personally. It touches the people with homes on the shore, but the thousands, literally millions of people who

don't live on the shore must be remembered and it's sort of a seasonal thing with them because they're not particularly touched by it. [Reporter Farago]: The opinion of the Supreme Judicial Court was not a ruling and therefore leaves the door open for judicial reform. There is no legislation before the Massachusetts government this session. So the question of what action can be taken arises. Alice Burns offers this advice for those interested in improving beach access. [Alice Burns]: The best way that I think a private citizen could do it is by speaking to the selectmen or the alderman in that area and, uh, when they read in the paper that something is happening or somebody is building something or a street has been blocked off--Marblehead I know has a lot of little streets that look very private. They're actually public. Ah, you know, urge your towns to make those, those places well-known and open to the public and, and, the public should demand their rights too. The, um, the people along the shore. You know, uh, are

privileged, there's no question about it. But I do think that there is room for all. [Reporter Farago]: As it stands there is not enough Massachusetts coastline for the recreational demands that are made upon it. The two major options are to purchase more land or free existing waterfront legislatively. The first would force the state to compete in an inflated real estate market. And the second would invite a deluge of court cases from angry landowners. Although there is no easy solution the problem must be faced as it only will tend to get worse in the future. For GBH Journal this is Robert Farago. [Music] [Announcer]: Juveniles who have broken the law are sometimes placed under the supervision of a court, are sometimes sent to detention centers and are sometimes fined. Those who are

fined often don't have the money to pay. A method of helping juvenile and young first offenders has been instituted in Quincy district court. A program called Earn It places these kids in jobs in South Shore businesses in order that they may pay the fines imposed. More serious offenders have been placed in jobs created by the city to work on Boston's harbor islands. The program is a new and innovative one. David Teller profiles Earn It in this report. [Frank]: Two years ago when I was living in a foster home down in the Houghs Neck and I was with a couple friends one day. Well, one of them dared me to...one of them was carrying a fake rifle, and they dared me to take and stick the rifle through the mail box. There's a piece of wood covering it. He dared me to knock it out. So, I, I just go what the heck? Smack. I knock it out. And we started to walk away and next thing I know he turned around the opened the door. So we

went in and we're walking around. So, we got busted for it. [Teller}: Frank is a participant [Teller]: Frank is a participant in an innovative program developed by the Quincy district court. Charged with breaking and entering, he was ordered to pay restitution to his victim through the court. Unable to find a job on his own, the court found him one through its Earn It program. The program provides juveniles and youthful offenders under 25 with the opportunity to work to or to pay fines and court costs. Earn It was instituted 3 years ago by Judge instituted 3 years ago by Judge Albert Kramer. It is an alternative to other forms of punishment with crimes like stealing cars, breaking and entering, petty larceny, and drunken driving. and drunken driving. The Quincy district court with the support of the South Shore Chamber of Commerce finds temporary jobs for offenders with private employers in a wide variety of businesses. The offenders are paid the same wages as other employees and are allowed to keep 1/3rd of what they earn for themselves. They turn the rest over to the court until they have repaid what they owe. Participation in the program is voluntary. However, if an offender cabnnot make restitution payments because

because he refuses to work, the court can take stricter measures against him. Andrew Cline is the chief probation officer of the Quincy district court. He explains why a program like Earn It It is necessary.[Cline]: Basically, it's a way [Cline]: Basically it's a way of ensuring that people who owe money have the means to What we found before Earn It, is that many defendants ordered to pay money three things happened. pay money three things happened. One, the parents paid for them. So in effect instead of punishing the you were punishing the parent. Well they weren't the ones who committed the offense. Or second, second, uh, the defendant ripped off somebody else to pay back the first fine or restitution. So instead of helping to solve the problem you were making the problem worse by, uh, in a way encouraging somebody commit another crime to make up for the first crime. Or third, the person just didn't pay. In the old days you could send that somebody to jail for nonpayment to jail for nonpayment, it was a dollar a day. Then in the 72 the Supreme Court said that was people for paying, being poor. Well there's a very high correlation between unemployment

correlation between unemployment and crime. So if somebody doesn't have a job and they don't pay, it's hard to prove that's willful nonpayment because they have no employment anyways. So now there's no excuse for nonpayment 'cause we can get the person that job to be able to afford to pay back the victim of, um, his or her crime. [Teller]: Was there some concern among, uh, business people in the beginning about what, you know, what would these kids be doing and what would they be like? [Cline]: Oh yeah I think everybody watches a lot of [Cline]: Oh yeah I think everybody watches a lot of television they have sort of a stereotype of what the offender is and they have a feeling of somebody that they saw on Kojak last night. [Keating]: I was very surprised that the kids were, they were just like all the other young people that I've hired over the years. There was no difference they weren't, uh, violent, uh, they had, uh, no habits that were, uh, offensive to me and, uh, it was just the same as it had always been. Bob Keating hires offenders through the Earn It Bob Keating hires offenders through the Earn It program for general landscaping work at the Blue Hill Cemetery in Braintree.

Although he was a bit concerned at first, he cooperated with the court because he believed in the program. He says he has been pleased with the cooperative attitude of the kids he has hired. The only problem has been an occasional case of absenteeism. [Keating]: I think it was because of a lack of discipline in their lives. Many of the kids had come from homes where there wasn't too much discipline and they weren't used to working a 40 hour week, uh, and where they were getting into something like this, it was imperative that they be there every day and when I explained this to them and they, uh, understood the system, uh it worked out pretty well. [Teller]: According to Andrew Klein one of the main goals of the Earn It program is to force the offenders to be actively aware of the cost of what they have done. It is also a way to ensure that they stay off the streets and out of trouble at least for the duration of the job. Klein points out that for many of the offenders this is their first constructive job experience. He says that although some offenders just want to get the court off their backs, others are genuinely grateful for the opportunity to gain a foothold in the employment market. Frank and

Jonathan, who requested that their real names not be used, are two juvenile offenders who feel that the program has been helpful to them. [Frank]: It gave me job experience. While I was working there I was punching a clock and I know what it's like to be docked an hour and have to make up time, stuff like that. [Jonathan]: Having this job and everything, having money, and this I've had a lot better times doing this than being arrested and going to jail and all that stuff. What do you think if you hadn't been in this program, you would have been up to by now and where do you think you'd be? Probably be in jail by now, I don't know. It's an awful thought to think of, but you know. Well, I won't be there, I know that. I've learned that, uh, you just don't need to be in trouble. [Teller]: According to Andrew Klein the Earn It program has had a large measure of success. The court is now able to collect restitution payments 90 percent of the time. Over 100 South Shore businesses now participate in the program and they are frequently willing to hire the offenders full time

after they have repaid what they owe. Klein points out that the program is being viewed as a model by other court systems. It works, he says, because everyone benefits: the offenders, the victims, and the community at large. For GBH Journal. This is David Teller. [music] [Announcer]: Another type of program designed to help children in need is Head Start. The federally funded program is geared toward giving economically disadvantaged children of preschool age a head start in an education. Approximately 1500 children in Boston attend 68 Head Start classrooms which are located in the neighborhoods where they live and which have a strong community orientation. The program itself is 12 years old and is fast growing.

With more on the Head Start program, in Boston, here is reporter Allison Edy. [Reporter Edy]: Head Start, a federal program for preschool children from disadvantaged backgrounds, is expanding its horizons in Boston. It is launching an assessment survey to find out which city neighborhoods are in the greatest need of its services. It is intended primarily for children of low income families. Federal guidelines define low income as $7000 yearly for a family of four, adding 1200 dollars for each additional family member. With extra funding from the federal Department of Health, Education and Welfare, Head Start will soon serve more children and their parents. Public participation in the survey is being encouraged by ABCD, Action for Boston Community Development, the agency that administers Head Start in Boston because Head Start is a two-way process. Robert Cord, director of ABCD stresses the involvement of recipients of Head Start services in the program. [Cord]: Headstart is not merely an educational program. It is, uh, it makes an

effort to get maximum parental involvement in the future of the children and to get them involved in the schooling of their kids. But also we do health tests for all children and their, and the siblings because we find that disadvantaged families tend to postpone, uh, dealing with health problems, dental problems, emotional problems. And we also give other social services to these families, um, which of course deals with other kids. So it's a way of intervening in the lives of families at a disadvantage in our society and give them a real headstart. So the Headstart is not only for the young kid but it's also for that kid's siblings and for the family as a whole in a comprehensive way as much as we have the resources to deal with it. [Reporter Edy]: Head Start focuses primarily on three to five year olds from economically underprivileged backgrounds. But it provides other services too. It caters to linguistically disadvantaged children and runs programs for Chinese, French Creole,

Portuguese, and Spanish speaking minorities. It has a center on Columbus Avenue for physically handicapped 3 to 5 year olds and it organizes a parent child center in Dorchester for children up to the age of 3. Robert Cord explains what Head Start tries to give the approximately 1500 children in the program. [Cord]: Our effort primarily is to not to force feed the child so to speak. But, ah, a major aspect of course is socialization. The introduction of the child into society and to stimulate the child, uh, to ask questions and again I mentioned we stimulate the parents to do the same and, ah, we try to make the learning experience in Headstart one in which it can continue when the child goes home, in the homes of the parents and we try to stimulate the motivation, energy aspirations of the parents and the children, ah, and to

go as fast as the child wants to go in the learning process, given the age of the child. [Reporter Edy] Head Start children according to the director, have done appreciably better than the control group, sometimes too well. Cord admits that Head Starters go into a school system which is often unable to meet the heightened expectations. The first grade can be a traumatic experience for the motivated. Head Start in Boston, as part of a nationwide program, is subject to changes made in Washington. Robert Cord is concerned that President Carter's proposal to create a separate education department and to make Head Start a part of it. He believes Head Start's community spirit will be crushed if it is subjected to the rule of educational bureaucrats. He's also worried that Head Start is being used as a political pawn and that laid-off teachers are being promised Head Start jobs. [Cord]: We understood understood nationally that Shanker, the head of the teachers' union nationally, campaigned on the basis that he would like to find new jobs for teachers. Some folks feel he may have

gotten such a promise and, uh, we really don't feel that headstart should be used to pay that promise if that in fact was the case, because it's just too important for the kids themselves and for families of poor, uh, poor families to be used in a way which would pay back any political debts if this is the case, and hopefully it's not. But we're very suspicious this, that this is the main reason why there is a movement to shift Head Start into the education secretary in Washington. And of course right after that would come shifting it to the Boston school departments and other school departments throughout the country which of course would mean it would get smothered in the same kind of failure that we've had in many of our big city school departments. If this program shifted as the Boston school department, what will happen is that it merely would be become part of the responsibility of the same teachers that you have there now, who for the most part do not reflect the cultural and ethnic backgrounds of the kids we serve for the most part and, um, who have traditional educational. um

certification, um, which again has not been, um, functional for making a successful Headstart program and so headstart as we know it would disappear. [Reporter Edy]: The distinction between a purely educational and a community program is something that Cord stressed repeatedly. Head Start has community workers, not just teachers. ABCD has its own community college and gives associate in education degrees to people who would not otherwise go through the educational system. Cord believes Head Start, with its budget of 680 million dollars, would be swamped by an education department with its budget of billions. He describes President Carter's idea of headstart's influence rubbing off on the rest of the educational system as quote, "the tail wagging the dog." For GBH Journal. I'm Alison Edy. [saxophone music] [Announcer]: In today's commentary, Louis Lyons takes a look at recent decisions of the Supreme Court.

[Lyons]: As the Supreme Court nears the end of its term, Warren Weaver, who covers the court for the New York Times, adds up the score of their rulings on criminal cases. He finds it definitely a law and order court, its majority determined by the four Nixon-appointed judges who have held together in 76 percent of its decisions. These decisions have gone for the prosecution almost 2/3rds of the time, for the defendants only 1/3rd. This of course is in contrast to the tendency of the previous Warren court to emphasize protection of the rights of accused. These tougher decisions result from the Nixon judges tendency to waive the technicalities, as they used to be called, that the Warren court discovered in convictions that it overturned. In the high crime climate of the times, justices Stewart and White have often shifted from the positions they took on the old court to make the new majority. The newest member, Justice Stevens, appointed by President Ford, is more often than not joined the majority leaving Brennan and

Marshall in the familiar descent of 72. Since Weaver published his report Sunday, the court has rendered two decisions important enough to land on the front page today. One of them a curious approach to a closer definition of obscenity, but more on that in a moment. Weaver finds that in criminal cases the Burger court tends to support the convictions of the original trial courts when these have been reversed by appeals courts. The Supreme Court then reverses the appeals court to restore the conviction. The changed viewpoint of the Burger court was most vividly illustrated in its restoring of the death penalty. The court of 1972 had ruled the death penalty unconstitutional as cruel and unusual punishment. This on a 5 to 4 decision. The 4 Nixon appointees outnumbered by White, Stewart, Marshall, and Brennan, then reinforced by Justice William Douglas--the old Warren court majority. But in 1976 the court voted

7 to 2 that the death penalty could be constitutional. Douglas was gone, White and Stewart shifted sides leaving only Brennan and Marshall in dissent. The process is that it moved the Burger court toward the prosecution, Weaver finds, come from there being less insistent on such refinements of law as the Warren Court perceived to jeopardize the rights of the accused. They've tended to allow confessions in evidence even if the accused had not been informed of his right to remain silent, or before he had a lawyer. To admit the damnification of an accused without a line up. To allow convictions to stand despite the claim that the defendant had been entrapped as by a government agent, or to waive the requirement of a warrant before search of a defendant's car or person, if the police acted on well-grounded suspicion. But when the warrant was searched was over business by a safety law inspectors, the court found the spot check violated the Fourth Amendment prohibition of unreasonable

searches and seizures. By 5 to 3 the court so ruled yesterday that a plumbing contractor in Idaho was within his rights in refusing admission to his shop to an inspector of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration carrying out unannounced spot checks under the safety law passed by Congress in 1971. The Labor Department has inspected more than 400,000 factories for safe working conditions. But Ferrell G. Barlow of Pocatello, Idaho, member of the John Birch Society with a copy of the Bill of Rights on his wall, barred the inspector with a claim that his right of privacy was violated and the court upheld him. In Justice White's decision, quote, "If the government intrudes on a person's property, the privacy interest suffers whether the courts, government's motive is to investigate violations of criminal laws or breaches, or, of other statutory or regulatory standards," end quote. The majority said it

was, quote, "unconvinced that requiring warrants to inspect will impose serious burdens on the inspection system, or the courts," end quote. For the three dissenters Judge Justice Stevens questioned what he called essentially a formality which merely places an additional strain on already overtaxed federal resources. But the conservative organizations are backing Mr. Barlow rejoiced in the court's support of a stickler for the letter of the law. In the other decision that reached the front page this morning, the Court reversed a California obscenity conviction because the trial judge had instructed the jury to consider men, women, and children in deciding what was offensive. The court had before left obscenity to community standards but the standards must be of adults, not to include children, in our rule. Justice Burger conceded in the 8 to 1 decision, that the courts and public are entitled to greater clarity than their earlier ruling. Quote, "We elect to take this

occasion," he said, "to make clear that children are not to be included for these purposes as part of the community. It may well be that a jury conscientiously striving to define the average person by whose standard of obscenity is to be judged, would reach a much lower average, when children are part of the equation then if they restricted their consideration to the effect of allegedly obscene materials on adults and quote the The one dissenter, Justice Powell, thought the judges chart to the jury was harmless beyond a reasonable doubt. To complete we have a score sheet. He finds a Burger court has made courts more accessible to prison inmates. It's made abortions legal for two thirds of pregnancy. He observes that the Burger court decisions on crime have raised the morale of police. But that the FBI crime index continues to rise every year. [Announcer]: For Wednesday the 24th of May 1978 that's GBH Journal, a regional news

magazine aired Monday through Friday at 4:30. Journal producer and editor is Marsha Hertz. Today's engineer Miles Siegel, and I'm Bill Cadmus. Winnow from the Willow wands a wonderful Wednesday. [saxophone music]

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