Forum; Juvenile Justice System; Part 1

This is Forum, I'm Michael Krasny. Welcome to the second hour of today's program. Juvenile crime, as quantified by numbers of arrests, peaked in the mid 1970s and went down through most of the 1980s, but has started to rise again. And in California, the growth in arrests of juveniles, especially for homicides, is a particular public concern. A Justice Department report released on November the 12th revealed that one in four arrests for weapons crimes are juveniles, prompting President Clinton to call juvenile violence this country's top crime problem. Teenage violence is not only on the rise, so are the numbers of 14 to seven year olds in the population. And in October, the Carnegie Council on Adolescent Development concluded that the nation is neglecting its 19 million young adolescents to such an extent that a half of them roughly may be irrevocably damaged with respect to their chances for productive and healthy futures in the Bay Area. The statistics are equally alarming. San Francisco's juvenile arrest rate for felonies is 50 percent above the state's average. Alameda has the third highest arrest rate of statewide counties. Other statistics, let me give them to you. California's juvenile arrest rate higher than the national average.

It has been estimated that approximately a quarter of California homicides are gang related. Teenage black males have the highest victimization rates for violent crimes, 20 percent higher than black females, which is the next highest group. And homicide death rates for all juveniles increased 92 percent between 1985 and 1990. And for all black male juveniles, the rates increased one hundred and eighty four percent over the same period. So what to do about this problem ongoing and burgeoning as it is? This morning, we're going to look at the scope of it and we're going to try to provide some solutions. With us in studio, Pedro Pedro Noguera, who is assistant professor in the Division of Social and Cultural Studies at the University of California, Berkeley and the School of Education. Welcome to join us. Professor Noguera. And we also welcome Dan McAleer, who is associate director of the Center on Juvenile Criminal Justice. Good morning down Makler. Morning. Let me also say good morning to Judy Griffin, who is director of the San Francisco Juvenile Hall. Thank you for being with us as well. Pedro Noguera, let me begin with you and let me say, because I've been kind of immersing myself in this whole subject of juvenile crime recently, that despite

the assumption by many that there are no ideologies, there are no causes that can be determined. Obviously, we know why juvenile crime is caused to a great extent. I mean, the risk factors are. Let me just take them off. Failure in school, dysfunctional family, behavioral problems, substance abuse, all of this. And yet this is not where the focus is. The focus is on incarceration and on and on greater punishment. Am I correct? Well, yes. And especially in the last few years, that's the generally in the direction of policy in both the state and national level, is to try to increase the number of juveniles incarcerated and without much focus on rehabilitation increasing. Let's focus on prevention and without and I think without much effect on the problem. There is supposed to be this division. I mean, as far as adults, they're supposed to be punished. Juveniles are supposed to be rehabilitated. We're just not doing it. That was the old approach. And I don't want to preempt my colleague here who can talk a little bit about what's happening in juvenile corrections, I think in

the 70s. And certainly the approach was to try and rehabilitate, to provide training. What happened in the 80s is that with public attitudes about crime changing and people becoming increasingly concerned about rising crime to adult crime, that that's also influenced the treatment of juveniles as well. And so you've had less interest, I think, from policymakers in finding ways to rehabilitate or to prevent crime. So even less support for deferral programs in some communities and more focus on punishment. And that's led to a major increase, substantial increase in the number of young people who are incarcerated. And it hasn't reduced the problem. No, and it hasn't even we don't we're not even paying attention to the conditions in those facilities where those kids are being kept and the fact that so many kids return after a fairly short period of time. Well, we'll find out what kind of alternatives, perhaps to get tough we might consider if get tough indeed is not working, as you suggest.

But I notice that according to a study of the Center for Social Policy, juvenile crime is linked to society and culture. They feel and they look at this generation of juveniles as lost, literally lost because of educational failure and welfare dependency largely. Right. I think the basic fact that we don't consider is that kids with jobs commit less crimes and kids without jobs. Kids in school commit less crimes of kids out of school. I mean, there's some basic kinds of support that kids need which do have an effect in reducing crime. But we also don't know enough about why and under what circumstances kids perceive violence, violence, and particularly that being a major problem as being legitimate or appropriate, and how to begin to influence the kinds of reasoning that kids engage in, which leads to violent behavior. But I think it's still the case, though, that the vast majority of kids in. In the corrections facilities in California, they're for nonviolent crimes to Mackler, it would seem logical then we should be putting more emphasis on things like teaching conflict resolution, intervening at an earlier age.

We're not, though, are we? We're not. The problem that that Pedro is talking about is the politicians have decided and they decided back in the in the mid 70s that the you know, at least in the mid 70s, probably earlier, that rehabilitation doesn't doesn't sell in the political arena. What sells is punishment. And the crack down get tough approach that we've heard for the last 15 years has resulted in a transfer of resources, a transfer of resources from interventions that offer the best hope and the best potential for addressing the problem of juvenile crime and adult crime. And we've taken those resources and poured them into warehousing kids, warehousing adults. We've done it at the adult level. We're doing at the juvenile level. In in 1982, the California Youth Authority had four thousand kids incarcerated and its 16 institutions in 19. In 1995, we have 10000.

The California Youth Authority is a throwback to the 19th century. It's two of its institutions. Out of other out of the 16 institutions, two of them were opened in the 90s. It's an old 19th century approach that cannot address 20th century problems. This has been essentially your argument that we've been relying on archaic institutions and institutions that don't make any sense in terms of the way we ought to be approaching this. We need to abandon this centralized approach. But what you got an idea, kind of a blueprint for something to put in instead? Well, what we need is we have to get away from the edifice complex. And the edifice complex says that it's the belief that unless there's a building attached to it and unless the problem can be solved by someone sitting behind a desk, then the problem can't be solved. Problems can be solved, at least with the kids that come into the juvenile justice system. The juvenile justice system cannot address the problem of juvenile crime. That's a larger societal issue. But what it can do is help ameliorate the issues and the problems that lead to delinquent behavior among the kids that come in contact with it. So what does that mean? That means creating a more flexible system

than one we have now. What we have now is an inflexible system and it's a static system. And it hasn't changed. As I said, it hasn't changed in one hundred years. So what we have to do is free up resources. And I don't mean necessarily inject more resources, though that would be nice. But I'd rather see the resources go to more other preventive things that go on out in the community, such as education, parks and rec, whatever it may be. But the current resources that we're investing in the juvenile justice system are substantial and to a degree there. And it's enough to do what we need to do to make the system work better. And that is we've got to provide a range of services and a range of interventions that are able to address the individualized needs of every kid. Until we do that, we will never be able to the juvenile justice system will never be able to achieve the goal which it was founded. But do you believe this kind of pessimism that posits that we have to write off a whole generation and we might have to begin with with this generation will write off the next generation as well? That's just that's the adult world.

It's the adult world failure to accept responsibility for its own failures. Judy Griffin, tell us about the offenders, which I read, for example. But there's a very small group of chronic recidivists that we're talking about. The most of the juvenile offenders really don't fall into that category at all. And therefore, one would hope and assume that those kids are kids that you can work with. Right. We get on the average of, say, 6000 referrals a year. Of those 6000 referrals, it's truly only a handful. Who are the youth who you're reading about in the paper, who we all kind of throw up our hands about what is working, what isn't working? I think those of us within the system get as frustrated as those without that, what is going to work? It's kind of like you need to try take any individual. You might try 10 different approaches, hoping that one of them will work with a particular child. But yes, there are a number of referrals we get.

We see once. That's it. That's the end of that person's contact within the system, about 95, 97 percent of them wind up working with probation officers. Is that the best kind of system, do you think, being supervised by a probation officer? Well, it's the system that the current state law has in place. Whether it's best or not, these kids need someone in their life. San Francisco is very lucky. When I talk to other counties, they're amazed by what we have in the way of community resources. As probation officers, we are able to do a lot of. Referrals to community groups to provide the kids in San Francisco with things that kids in other counties just don't even have resources for. So we're very lucky in San Francisco, notwithstanding all of our resources. I'm going to read something from the Bay Guardian just to compensate for all the reading that Tom Lantos did for The New York Times in the last segment.

He said he would rather read The New York Times in The Guardian. So in the interest of fairness here, let me just read a couple of sentences. This is from an editorial that appeared in The Guardian in October. The city has fewer teenagers that a San Francisco per 100000 residents than almost any other metropolitan area in the state, but has the single highest rate of juvenile arrests. We spend five dollars on incarceration and punishment for every one dollar we spend on recreation programs that would help kids stay out of trouble in the first place. First of all, I would need to take a look at the statistics. I don't think we have the highest level of arrests of other counties when I've done comparison on actual arrests. But be that as it may, part of it is if you compare urban areas and San Francisco is very unique, we do not have a very small county. It is only an urban area. A true comparison with other places would need to be to compare to other urban areas, not to other counties

there. When I look at and I've been in the field for I hate to admit it, 31 years, when I look at what I see now compared to what it used to be, we have much fewer in terms of numbers of arrests. What happened is that we used to get arrests on very lightweight crimes. Now we don't see those arrests within the juvenile probation department. The police department has a diversion program. The police themselves are overtaxed and just don't even respond to some of the things they used to 20 years ago. So the offenses that the probation department gets today are much more likely to be those that are mandated to go to the district attorney where things are inclined to happen. So notwithstanding, again, the fact that we have the highest incarceration rate in the country, here in California, twice the national average.

You're saying, for example, in San Francisco, looking at San Francisco as being representative, that a lot of these kids who are incarcerated deserve to be incarcerated. They've done things that really warrant. They have done serious crimes, that there's questions back and forth as to whether incarceration is appropriate, but certainly some sort of sanction is appropriate. Pedro Noguera, let's talk about whether incarceration is appropriate. I noticed, for example, that in North and South Dakota, you've got three times as many people going to jail in South Dakota as you do in North Dakota. But you have more crime in South Dakota than North Dakota. Does that does that kind of thing tell us that kind of statistic? Tell us something about the efficacy of incarceration? Well, I think that there are lots of, you know, inconsistencies when we look at the data about the ratio between incarceration rate and the crime rate. And it just doesn't seem to hold up that the more you incarcerate people that it starts to reduce the crime rate. That's the problem. And so with that strategy being the only strategy, I think you end up with a situation where we keep pumping more and more money into the prisons, building

up the numbers of kids and adults who are in there. But at the same time, the public continues to feel afraid and therefore demands more. And so it fuels the system in a way that leads to no solution. I think that that there clearly need to be sanctions for our kids and for adults who break the law. I think no one would disagree with that. The question is, what kinds of sanctions are we using and what are we doing to prevent problems to begin with right now? I think that if we were to spend much more time in supporting our schools, Bill Rogers, the superintendent here in San Francisco, has called for schools that are open just about 24 hours a day that that really serve communities in a very comprehensive kinds of ways. And I think that that kind of approach is exactly what we have. Schools right now not only serves the school, but throughout the Bay Area that closed at three o'clock when at the time when their needs are most critical, kids are going home to parents that are at work or to parents that aren't present at all.

And they need supervision. They need to be involved in more constructive activities. It would be far more cost effective to invest in those kinds of support activities, whether it be recreation, arts programs, adult education programs, job training programs, then it would be to keep building up the putting the ranks of the prison population or putting more and more money into the police that that that whole strategy is just a losing one. And we see it really being pursued. You also including like. Curfews and the whole thing, metal detectors and meritocracies, I mean, right now, the big fad in schools is to make schools safe by turning them more and more into prison like facilities. And you don't end up with safe schools in Richmond, California, had two kids shot at a school that had a metal detector last year. It creates the illusion of safety but doesn't really address the problem in the first place. Do we need to focus more of our resources in areas that are heavily populated by young people of color? When we see these alarming statistics, for example, about black youth and homicide?

And in asking that question, I'm really asking you in part, do we need to treat, for example, homicide as a public health issue? I think we do, because that gets us away from treating it only as a criminal issue. And so that's a step in the right direction. But I think the beyond the race issue and race is certainly a factor here. But it's a class issue. It's primarily we're talking about poor kids of all backgrounds who are particularly vulnerable to crime and to violence. And so, for example, you look at San Francisco, the housing projects in San Francisco generally have large numbers of kids that don't go to school and very little is done to get them in school. If you go to Bernell Housing, I heard a statistic not too long ago where only one high school age kid at an Bertel dwellings right here in the mission was attending high school. To me, that's totally unacceptable. We should be doing much more with, though, with the housing authority and the schools to address that problem because you're creating conditions that are right for crime. And yet even when there's a proposal of a study like the violence initiative, for example, which was going to study urban violence and the causes of urban violence, it was

thwarted piece by Cynthia Tucker about this. I believe she's an African-American writer, thwarted because it was it was argued, particularly by representatives in Congress, that it was a thinly veiled study to prove blacks genetically inferior and somehow more prone to violent crime, that sort of thing, the kind of study we're talking about might have been useful, might have been valuable. And yet, like like I said, there were there was all this racial contamination to it. I can't comment on this one second, but I do know that there is a renewed interest now in looking at the genetic link to crime. And I think there's good reason to be concerned about that given our history with eugenics in this society. I think instead of trying to I think we it's not as complicated as people make it out to be. Again, if you provide kids with lots of support early on, you're going to have much fewer problems later down. McKeller might forget the genetic studies. We know. We know where crime occurs. This is not a genetic study. Just for the record. I know to look at the causes of violence in the urban areas.

It was afraid. They were fearful it was going to be a genetic test. The criminal justice system is historically been practiced on the children of the poor. If you go back, go back and look at the names of the people who inhabited San Quentin prison from the day it was opened in 1850. You're going to if you look at just look at the names and the backgrounds, you're going to find that it represents those names represent whoever was on the bottom rung of the socioeconomic ladder at the time. And eventually those people move on to the onto the next rung of that ladder and they move out and they're no longer involved in the criminal justice system. And then they're replaced by the next generation usually of immigrants. And that's and that's been the history of criminal justice. And, you know, the history is that when that generation moves out, they usually move out into penitentiaries and into other or they become prison guards or police and then eventually become bankers and lawyers, you know, but they start off somewhere. And so that's where we are today. We're talking about a system that is largely against the lower classes in effect, which say, well, it's a practice and lower class. Yeah, Judy Griffin agreed.

Yes. So much as Pedro said, it's more of a monetary situation. It's the poor that cut across lines and in different communities, depending upon who the poor are. And that community, that is going to be the cluster of youth who we see in the juvenile justice system. And then that leads back to things that both of my colleagues have talked about, that, you know, what's happening is happening much earlier than what I see is the 15 year old. The true work on keeping these kids out of the system needs to be done at a much earlier age so that by age 15, this child has some other options, some other interests, some other hope other than selling drugs or robbing or maintaining self-esteem by who can get on top of someone else by use of a weapon.

You need to change the culture, though, don't you? I mean, our institutions are starting to really deteriorate the family, the school and so forth. And that's that crumbling edifice again is really what we're talking about, isn't it? Correct. So so what do you do in the way of intervening and making kids, for example, feel? More self-esteem for things that would enhance their lives or make them follow, for example, more agreeable kinds of ambitions as opposed to putting themselves into situations where they're going to get in trouble. Well, my personal opinion is this needs to go way back back to the stage of decent prenatal care, things like some support for families where children become an important aspect of our culture. That time, energy and truthfully, it doesn't take as much money as it takes time and energy for children that children are important and worthwhile.

Because if a child grows up feeling important and worthwhile, a lot of what then result in criminal activity is going to lessen value for our children, less neglect for our children primary and putting our money where our mouth is, where our children are concerned. The meantime, though, you'll hear people say, but it's a terrible situation out there. We need more police, we need more law enforcement. What say you about that? Police and law enforcement serve one purpose it doesn't solve. If we're talking about solving the problem, that needs to happen at a different level. Police and law enforcement may indeed stop. Someone who has been committing a series of offenses may lock that person up for the moment. We, if we're lucky while we have that child incarcerated, can turn the child on to some resources that there weren't before. But the basic solution needs to come much earlier.

Yeah, go ahead, Peter. You know, in any society, do you have to basically two approaches to dealing with crime. Either you rely on the police or you rely on moral sanctions in the society. If you come to only rely on the police, you'll never have enough police because they simply are too many people around to be policed. You have to find ways to build up the moral sanctions of society which deter the occurrence of crime. And that, you know, is easier said than done. Of course it is. And that's maybe in the long run. But there are people would say in the short run, maybe we need effective kinds of methods of dealing with the problem. I'll give you one example that maybe you're familiar with, and that's in Kansas City, where they assign police specifically to work with gun confiscation. Teenagers. They I mean, just zeroed in use personnel for that purpose solely and reduced. And then they did the same thing with alcohol, seeing that youth were not drinking as much and they, again, reduce crime. So, I mean, those are things that are that are effective kinds of police measures in the short run. And shouldn't they be also taken into the picture? There are clearly a need for the police department and a role for the police to play in working with communities to address this problem.

And I think if it were more collaborative role where we were working together rather than at odds that we could get a lot more accomplished. But my point is that if we only rely on the police to solve this, we're not going to get anywhere. Again, in the urban areas, the police are often viewed as the enemy to begin with. All right, Dan Meckler. Well, yeah, I just want to comment, you know why it's interesting what we're having this conversation about how bad things are. And and you hear people talking about writing off this generation of children. What changed? Why are we talking like that? Did the species change over the last 25 years? Are we producing worse human beings? What changed during the time is economics, parents and families finding it harder and harder to raise children. Adults are stressed beyond their resources and are not able to provide for their children in the same way that our parents were able to provide for us. So there's been a dramatic change in the economic system and it's had a dramatic effect. It's quite disastrous. And if disaster is all you're saying, if the key is investment in

our children, we live in a time when we're talking about, you know, every man and woman for himself, every kid for himself, I mean, free market and all that kind of stuff. Right. I mean, that seems to be the prevailing philosophy. Judy Griffin had some thoughts. Yeah, I agree with Dan that the change is and a type of materialism where people have an expectation that families need things. It's not just economic. There are plenty of societies without the standard of living that the United States currently has where they do not have these problems, where children are valued. There's been some sort of combination of factors where the material needs are such that people are stressed trying to attain these to attain a lifestyle that by wishing to attain this, has caused problems that overpower those whipping boy and scapegoat.

But doesn't television also play into this because kids see, you know, Robin Leach and Lifestyles of the Rich and I mean, they see all this stuff right in their home. And their expectations become inflated and balloon one would assume, right? Well, there are also a lot of stuff, not to mention all the naked mole societies that have comparable standards of living to what the United States enjoys, but dramatically lower rates of violence and criminality. What in fact, L.A. at the at the University of California, Berkeley, did a study back in the 80s that showed that the highest rates of violence in societies tend to be, tend to be, tend to exist in those societies that have very large disparities in income, very wide disparities in income, very poor and very wealthy, as in the United States, as in many third world countries. Let me invite those of you listening to join us in this conversation we're having about juvenile crime and juvenile justice and what to do about the growing exponentially, one might say, problems with respect to juvenile crime.

Pedro Noguera is our guest. He's an assistant professor at the UC Berkeley School of Education Division of Social and Cultural Studies. And we're also talking to Dan McClair, associate director of the Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice, and Judy Griffin, the director of San Francisco's Juvenile Hall. Our number is four one five eight six three to four seven six. We invite your calls at that number again in the four one five area code eight six three to four seven six. Our first caller is Annette. Good morning, Annette. You're on the air. Good morning. I wanted to call in and talk about what we're doing in San Mateo County. We have a concern about what's happening with you. So we are planning a youth summit that's going to take place later this week. And we've invited delegates from most of the high schools, public and private, throughout the county. And we're bringing them together to hear what they have to say about violence. It always seems to be adults that are talking and we want to hear what they have to say. You know, what do they see as the root causes? What they see a solution? You might find some surprises. We've done shows with young people on the subject and their views are not necessarily the same as we adults.

Right. Right. But I think, you know, we need to listen to what they have to say rather than us as adults trying to come up with what are the solutions when we're talking about them? Is this open to the public? It's not open to the public. It's been by invitation only. We're trying to just get used together and limit the number of adults. We have a diverse group of youth coming from all over the county. They're coming from part of my probation, from the the jails. We have youth that should be in school, that aren't attending school. We've got a real diversity of youth. Please let us know if you would be so kind, what kind of results you come up with. OK, much appreciate your call. All right. Thank you for that, Brad. In our next caller from the city. Brad, good morning. Good morning. I am so excited to hear the conversation has taken place in this show because I think it's finally reaching at the very roots of the problem. And just in retrospect to the last caller, I do listen to youth and I do listen to their problems. But I think it would be unfair to put on them the burden of recognizing where the

problems stem from, where they begin or originate at. And on that note, I if what the conversation has been going is true, that the problem stems from the economic system that is in place, which I also very strongly agree with, then it wouldn't logically the next step would be in order to maintain that system and not change it, but at least to alleviate the problems and incarcerate incarceration type system would be most cost effective. It would only not be less cost effective if you wanted to change the economic system in which the problems are based upon. And and my final note on that is that when you compare it to other countries, which is often often used, look at a country where it has a very low economic system, very what we consider to be a low standard of living, and yet the crime problems don't exist.

And such a high level, it's not it's not correlative because what it costs to to have shelter is what it cost to have shelter if you only make seventy five dollars a month, but it only costs you five dollars a month to have shelter. But here you make a thousand dollars a month, but it costs you 800 dollars a month to have shelter. They're not they don't respond. So those problems, those type of correlations shouldn't be used by Brad. I thank you for the call, Pedro Noguera. I think the economics of the problem are very important and can't be overstated at the same time, I think would be a mistake if we didn't acknowledge that there's also some cultural forces at work that is not only the media, but the fact that we live in a society that glorifies violence. We're kids at a very early age, are confronted with violence as a form of communication. Even they learn real early on that force does get you can get your way with force that that the best way to deal with the bully is to counter that bully with force and that and especially.

They're poor, that there's very little protection from adults, and so if we I think that on the one hand, we do need to address some of the economics of this. I mean, that's a long term. I was a big issue. But at the same time, that wouldn't solve it because of the fact that our culture within our culture, we have to. American culture cuts across race and class. Violence is so central to our identity as a people. And that's something I think we need to come to terms with. Actually, what Dan was saying before about the haves and the have nots, the huge gap between the rich and the poor in this country, you can find countries where the gap is much greater, but they don't have the exact problems. We don't have the same. So we are talking about cultural pathologies. And unfortunately, I would have to agree. Kitty, join us, please. Good morning. Yeah, hi. I have a question. Could you ask your guest to talk about the relationship between the kids who are in foster care and the kids who are then become part of the juvenile? Good question. Judy Griffin, thanks. Yeah, we see a surprisingly high percentage of our youth in the juvenile justice system who have also been in the abuse and neglect system.

Partially, this is due to the fact that when a child gets into trouble, if there is a family, the first time, the child's in trouble, if the offense is fairly lightweight, we're going to let the child return to the family with some support. If there is no family, the child is much more likely to get into the system. So it's not just because this child was abused.