America's Crises; 16; Crime in the Streets

The following program is from NET, the National Educational Television Network. The kids have to be told that they have to understand that from now on should your commit a crime. You will not be treated with kid gloves. This is a policeman. He claims he likes kids, but thinks we should be stricter with them. That you won't go to court. That after a fair trial of your found guilty, you will receive the maximum punishment. So that then we'll have a one-two punch. These young punks and these young hoods wouldn't be getting away the way they think they can. I think very often the policeman comes to believe that a war is what he's engaged in and a war is it a win. This is an attorney.

He claims he likes policemen, but not their attitudes. And that war is not won by mockery of Queen's very rules. And that what he's concerned with is the end result and not the way it's obtained. As part of its continuing America's crisis series on cities, National Educational Television examines crime in the streets. Tonight we look at two aspects of the problem. The rehabilitation of boys who commit more than 50 percent of all street crime and the police whose job it is to protect us from them. This is America 1966 where only the brave walk alone in the parks and many homes have become garrisons and where business is booming generally and especially in fancy alarm devices.

Good morning madam, may I help you? Yes indeed. I need something that would attract a lot of attention. I think I have the very solution for you. This is one of the best it's called Inventual Alarm. It's one of our best. It's very, very loud, which are you will find out. It makes a very loud noise. It's just like a real very whistle. Are these cans replaced? Yes, those are replaced. It's $2.00. What is that tight clip for the gun? That's a real gun. It's all cut to do off. There's also a little pellet that you use. It also comes with... Is that shoes? Yes, it's shoes. Oh my. It comes with a little pellet that you show like this. Oh my. But crime is increasing and the danger is real. A result of growing population like of jobs and the changes taking place in our cities. Old neighborhoods are changing. For many people, the change is for the worse.

I've been around for many years. I don't think you're safe anymore. It seems to be that all the neighborhoods have been changing. So I'm going to move to Mill Basin now. Well, a problem I think is really... The business is slowing down because all the junkies are coming in. And they come in and they sell all kinds of junk. And the business just drops it. For example, this business right here, lost $1,500. People come in here and they sell them. The people just come around, sit and encounter. They don't buy anything. The other people see that. They just don't come in. They make a racket at coming in bathrooms. They sell them there. They have a business. A great business doing that. But they shouldn't do it. And they know they shouldn't do it. But they still do it. And the cops don't say anything. What do you mean, the cops don't say anything? Well, the cops just... Not that many cops around here that just don't come in here and don't check on it in the business usually like the way they're supposed to come in. Regularly, they don't come in.

They just stand on the corner and just watch. They should come in more to the business and find out what's going on. The police are always the first to be blamed when the crime rate goes up. Though they are attempting to combat the increase in crime, they have not been particularly successful. And in 1964, less arrests were made than in 1963. One to the station house. This decline in police efficiency can be attributed partly to a shortage of men. Most cities are below their quota and are finding recruiting increasingly difficult. It's hard to blame a man for not wanting to be a policeman. We give them very little respect and even less money. The head of New York's 27,000-man Patroman's Benevolent Association, Patroman John Cassess. There's no sense in being the policeman today for the wages that we get today and all the abuse that we have to take when I follow you going outside industry and do as well if not better, without all the breakpacks and without all the other ramifications

that go with being a policeman. Plus the fight that probably on his other job, he works all day work whereas as a policeman, he had to put in touch of his time at night on a midnight tour on a 4-12. Another problem is the misuse of the men we do recruit. We train them to catch criminals and then use them to direct traffic as clerks or switchboard operators. All jobs which could be performed equally well by police women or civilians, freeing them in for law enforcement. Yes, ma'am. Yes, ma'am. And most police departments are still using antiquated equipment. Yes, ma'am. What's the address? Yes, ma'am. We'll send you an ambulance right away. The heart of any law enforcement agency is the communications center. Yet in many departments, the time it takes a call to reach them, be written up, relayed to a dispatcher and broadcast to a car, can be costly and even fatal.

And we still rely too heavily on the foot patrolman. Chicago Superintendent of Police, O. W. Wilson. The most inefficient mode of transportation is walking. And we simply can't afford to have policemen walking and as we increase their salaries, the need for conserving their time, not wasting it in walking from the location of one police task to that of another, must clearly be avoided. About face. First right. Chicago is the only major city in the United States to show a significant decrease in crime over the past two years. This is due mostly to Wilson's modernization of the police force, making it more mobile and updating it technologically. Chicago also has a shortage of men, but Wilson counteracted this by taking all his men off the footbeats and placing them in brightly painted cars. They are conspicuous and seem to be everywhere.

The cars are linked to a $2 million communication center, the most modern in the world. It handles 5,000 calls a day. Chicago police officer, really? You're on a walk right now. Yeah, okay. That's, uh, that's a tough one. It's from a truck, right? Put your location down here. Using this map, a dispatcher can tell instantly which car is closest to the scene of a crime in progress and dispatch it within 30 seconds of receiving the call. It's perfect. Not too long ago, a Chicago and might wait two to three hours for a policeman to respond to an emergency call. Today, a car is usually on the scene within two to three minutes. Wilson thinks that if he were to use men on foot

to provide the service he's providing today, he would need a force of not just 13,000 men, but more than 100,000 men. The computer is another important factor in Chicago's declining crime rate. Daily, it is fed all crime data. It digested and predicts crime patterns. If, based on the data it receives, the computer decides some areas will have a higher crime rate than others. More cars are sent to that area. I'd like to check out an Illinois 65, Robert Nora, 8535, and a 65 Chevy for Hack and Fold. Henry Boy, 347. It is also being used to store other types of information and aid in arrests. The license number of the men's cars called into the communications center and fed into the computer through an electric typewriter. On the memory drum of this computer, our child, the names and records of 90,000 persons and vehicles. Within seconds, the machine checks the license number

and finds that the car has been reported to stolen and relays the information back to the police. Blancola. 23. We have a hot one. It's in 14 machines, hasn't it? Thank you very much, sir. That car is hot. But even if all police departments were as modern as Chicago's, it would not be enough. For the number one problem for police today is to get along with the non-white minorities in the city. We announce to the police that we will be here so that they can adequately protect the group. We think that it's important that the city of New York also be aware of the way the police handles the crowd in a white area and handle the crowd

in the yellow areas of Harlem or Bethel Stavison. And these things you feel unnecessary. This distrust of policemen has led Negroes to ask for civilian review boards. The police say such boards would lower police morale and efficiency. In the few cities in which they have been tried, the results are inconclusive. The cop on the beat is inclined to blame non-whites for the increase in crime. But criminologists note that the vast majority of Negroes like whites are law-abiding and only a small percentage of non-whites ever come into contact with the law. It is true, honor, that Negroes are responsible for a disproportionate share of crime in the cities. But a high crime rate has always been a product of the slums. Before the Negroes and other non-whites, it was the European immigrants who were responsible for street crime. However, they were able to work their way out. The Negro and Puerto Rican finds this increasingly difficult.

And too often, the police only add to their frustration. Harold Rothwax, counsel for New York's mobilization for youth. The policeman comes in and he is not, like some of the other social agencies concerned with change, with improving a lot of the poor. He's concerned with imposing order. He's not concerned with motive. He's concerned with peace. He becomes a symbol, I suppose, of society. It's in difference to the real problems of the people in the community. And they focus for those problems, because he's the one who administers the force. He's the one who blocks people up, who very often is brutal in a gratuitous way. I think very often the policeman comes to believe that a war is what he's engaged in, and the war is it a win, and that war is not won by mockery of Queen's very rules, is police commissioner Murphy said. And that what he's concerned with is the end result,

and not the way it's obtained. The riots in Harlem and Watts were touched off by incidents involving the police. Since the riots, some people say they see a change in police attitude toward the poor, not Mr. Rothwax. Still a war, I don't think those riots change anything but the rhetoric that accompanies that war. Change anything but the vocabulary in which we discuss it. Change is anything but the platitudes, which we surround our attitudes. I don't think anything has happened to change this war, and I think primarily that's because, to a large extent, there is a curtain over the facts. I think the facts are that, police indifference to the dignity and to the rights of people in poor neighborhoods, members of minority groups, inhabitants of ghetto areas, are quite extensive. I don't say they'd prevail. I don't say they are practiced by most of the people on the beat, but I say that a considerable percentage of policemen are engaged in gratuitous indignities

to these people. One of the problems is police training. Less than 25% of all departments require as much as 200 hours of training before giving a man a gun and placing him on the street, and most of the training that is given consists of dull lectures and routine police practice. Except for a handful of departments, there is no attempt made to give recruits any understanding of the city's problems. Session of defeat is good. Balance is tough. Balance. Your head is dropping. Plot on your head. Another problem is the attitude of the average policeman. We asked Mr. Kessess whether he thought policemen understood the problems of minority groups in the city today. Surely, no doubt about it. We've been educated in our own police department where we take several courses,

a little Spanish course, a public relations community relations course and how to treat these people. And I think we do very well. We are men of bias. And I am as biased as you are. This is a recruit training course at the New York City Police Academy. New York is one of the departments, which is attempting to make recruits aware of social problems. Yet only eight of the recruits, 400 hours of training, are spent listening to lectures on community relations. The speaker is community relations counselor, Joseph Maniscalco. It is my job to work with you and with the community. And to understand that your feelings are the feelings of any other citizen audience, apprehensive about the changes taken place in the city. Not understanding the reason for the vehement civil rights demonstration because we essentially are middle class, we're white. In this room, I believe we are all white. We do not have the kinds of problems

that non-white citizens have in the city. I'm affected, do you think these courses are? Pretty good. In what way? Well, I think that brings them out a better understanding at a population. And I'm going to put it to good use. Why do we invite the Negroes to come to the city? Why do we tell them to come up from Birmingham, Alabama, and live here and collect relief? I'm just speaking from what's moving up in Harlem. Now, you go into their house. I've had the pleasure, if you want to call it that, of walking in. But attitudes are hard to change. After the class, we selected ten recruits and asked them their opinions of the non-white minorities they would be serving. Everybody takes a certain amount of pride in their home. And now, excluding the slum lord, excluding the possibility that he is at fault, your own pride would dictate that your living conditions should be in accordance with your own pride. No. It's not your own pride, a personal pride, because they just don't know any better. I think they do.

I think they're probably talking about their exposed to all these conditions. They really see me outside the world. Don't be like these agents around Harlem. You know what other people live with? They know what other people live with. They're saying it's a lack of science. They know it's a lack of science. One half is going to serve through an Israel story. When a person does get into one of these slums through its projects, so the person goes into the project and has seven things to do with the slums. There's a clean upon it. It's given to a brand new fresh. Why should he destroy it? Beautiful hole. It's beautiful. It's hard to say. If you haven't experienced it, it's hard to say. You know, because I wouldn't look for it. But you can't say that. As a colored person, they might not find it. I've got high school education. I want you to be right here. You're not going to get around like crazy. And palace it down. It won't be the first time it's done. It won't be the last time it's done. We're not black. We don't experience it. And it's hard to say. I say give me a chance. I'll find out. I mean, I can get kicked in any piece.

How are you giving them a chance? You're giving them a chance here and you tell me everything you got against them. You're giving them a chance. When I was 18 years old, I was in the Marines. When I was 19, I was back from Okinawa, to Philippines. When I was 41, I was out. Three years in. And I come out and I see these guys don't even want to work. What are they? Kidding me. They're entitled to the same opportunities that we have. I don't say go give money or pocket what you want. No. But the same thing the way you want to be respected, the same way they actually have to be respected. Fine. What if I'm sitting in this room and I'm rejected by the crew? Right. I know enough to get up out of my chair and leave. Right, Hank. But the need will sit here and keep telling you, I am good. You've got to work, Sam. Dean of criminology at the University of California, Joseph Lohman. First of all, I think policemen have got to know that the term police community relations is not just some kind of public relations gimmick to make people feel that, well, they're good guys and they're thoughtful and concerned about us.

I think what we've got to make the police aware of with appropriate educational experiences is this new context to divorce them and dissociate themselves from their traditional notions, indicate that a man's private views are one thing, but as a police officer, he has the responsibility and obligation of addressing the community as a police officer, which is in terms of its intrinsic character and quality, irrespective of his own private notions and views. And this isn't easy to come to, but it's something that we have to address as an educational task. Many police chiefs would like to recruit better men by raising police standards. However, many departments don't even require a high school diploma. If we want better men, we're going to have to treat police work as a profession and pay them as such. However, professionalizing police work is only one of the things we're not doing that we should do to combat crime. In fact, we rely too heavily on the police. More of our time and money could be spent working with kids. Although most juvenile delinquents do not become criminals,

almost all criminals started as juvenile delinquents. And he says something to him, so he may have to hit the man, knock him off the truck, and the man turns him out in a street in the blue, shooting a lot of his nose, and you know, the guy that cut the wall, he pulled a knife out of the side of that big burrow and jumped off the truck and cut it. So I hit him. You know, I may have done hit it. Juvenile men say is really the most serious aspect of the crime problem. Kids under 18 are responsible for about half of the serious crime in the United States, so I called you Saul Pylnick explains part of the problem. We've created a problem for adolescents in that we've become a highly technical society. There was a time, maybe 50 years ago, when youngsters would grow up with their families and their fathers would teach them the trade, and maybe at the age of 15 or 16, they would become an adult. But the skill that's required for a youngster to become an adult now demands intensive education so that we have created an elastic period of adolescence

and expansion of this period. Consequently, we now have a pool of youngsters in our society who are waiting to become adults. Middle-class youngsters who have every opportunity to go to college, middle-class youngsters who can emulate their fathers and use them as models and their mothers as models have this chance of seeing that adulthood waits around the corner. However, the youngsters that comes from what we now call the socially disadvantaged group don't have that opportunity. They look to the future in a very hopeless fashion and they become young people who live for today and keep the promise of tomorrow pushed out of their minds. So I think the linkancy is very much related to this question of providing opportunities for youngsters. Those who don't have the opportunity to wait until tomorrow can train them to become young adults begin to look for pleasure immediately

and then you find the stealing of cars and drinking the use of barbitch who it's anything for kicks. The majority of kids Dr. Pillenick referred to as socially disadvantaged come from non-white minority groups. They have the highest dropout rate and an unemployment rate five times higher than whites their age. Not surprisingly, juvenile delinquency is often five times higher in slum neighborhoods than in the rest of the city. Though we should be working with these children at a very early age, it is not until I get in trouble that we attempt to do anything for them. The Executive Director of the Citizens Committee for Children Mrs. Trudellaesh explains what happens to a boy after he's arrested. Well, very often, of course, he goes to court and the church puts him on probation. I think that's the usual thing. If his case is not dismissed altogether and then he's on probation,

then the question is, what does he really need? What's really the trouble with him? Sometimes a good probation officer can really give a young person enough to keep him straight. Sometimes, however, probation officer has too many youngsters on his case load, and he can't see a young person enough so that it becomes another disappointment. Somebody who might have done something who couldn't not through his own fault because he didn't have the time. And then the young person gets angry and probably gets him to trouble again. And it comes to court again. And this time, of course, it's more serious. And quite often, then, the decision has to be made because of a lack of family of the youngsters that lack of support at home, the fact that he's also a true and in school, to commit him, that is to send him away from home. Then the big problem comes where. And no matter what the young person needs, in most cases,

the delinquent boy and girl end up at a training school. This is the Ferris School for Boys in Wilmington, Delaware, considered one of the nation's better training schools. 130 boys are here for offenses ranging from true and sea to robbery. It's director, Mr. Caleb Warrington. Sometimes just the initial shock of being committed to an institution is enough. And we feel that those boys, we evaluate them in our progress review and we send them home after four or five weeks. But then I say the average length of our stay here now is probably around six months. Now we do have some boys that go into nine months a year and some run over. I would say basically most of the boys that come here need love. I think really at delinquency, I think it comes from a lack of love.

A lack of love, a father or a parent or a mother. Maybe they don't love a boy and are growing up, maybe to spank them. But I think it all comes from a lack of love and that's why most of the kids are here and that's when they get involved with it all. We're having the first day, you know, they come. We teach them to keep their self clean, you know, the brush your teeth, to calm them high, you know, stay. And to stay straight, you know, to do the thing you're supposed to be doing, to help them. Most of these boys don't have a work, you know, and a lot of them don't know how to take care of themselves when they come here. We see to it that they brush your teeth, they get to be at the right time and they snap the other meals.

The most of them never done any work until they come here, you know, and this is not really work, it's something to keep busy, to train them that they are, it's just things is work. Most of them have the feeling, you know, they've done something for them. They think they don't have to work for them. I think that, I think that, Mr. Duck. Our nation is going to have to work. Our nation is going to have to work. Well, the boys that come here are academically retarded, two or three grade levels. But when they go back, we have usually raised their grade level by one or two grades, and they are able to compete in the same class so that they have in the public school system. After the battle played, things have been made. We have made the enemy and they are the Americans here. Look down, buddy.

About 10 seconds in the police station. I see how nice that is. Now you do your sleep here. Straight for that. Keep it smooth. We play on my salary, yes. How much do I get? Well, they get so much for an hour, or for shift rather. It's a 15 cents shift, yes. Well, some of these kids go in and do this kind of work after they get out, do they? Well, I'm hoping so. I have had two so far, and I'm going to start the work. You know what you're going to be doing when you get out? Yes, sir. Working on tug bait. Working on where? Tug bait. And tug bait. Yes, sir. Is this going to work on a healthy there? I don't know, sir. Don't bother me too much.

I'm used to hard work. So you want to snorkel with you, right? Yes, sir. How long have you been here today? Five weeks. How do you like it so far? I like it. All right? Yes, sir. Did you get your good food? Yes, sir. Good food. Well, son, have you talked to your case worker lately? Yes, sir. Who is your case worker? Terrell. Terrell? Well, listen, you could have slipped in to see him, and I want you to see him regularly. You try to see him every week now. All right? Yes, sir. Are you able to see your brother? Yes, sir. Are you able to see him? Yes, sir. You miss home? Yes, sir. Are you been home, sir? Yes, sir. Would you like to call your father? Yes, sir. What would you like to call him? What's afternoon? Yes, sir. Well, I ran you for your case worker. Call him this afternoon. He was up here this past week when he brought your brother back. And I talked with him.

And he explained to me about you being in the Murphy School at Dover, and said that you didn't want to stay there. You ran away and ran home to his house. Is that right? Yes, sir. Well, were you ever involved in anything else? No, I drove him to brother. You got in trouble with your brother? Yes, sir. What kind of trouble? That's my car. Are you still a car? Yes, sir. All right, son, sit in. Out for watching. All right? Are you certain he's? Yes, you have anything else you want to talk to me about? No, he is. You've got to stay in ball cottage. Stay in ball cottage? Yes, sir. Son, a time of comes, he wouldn't be crowded in ball cottage. And we have to move boys after their other cottage. See, you're just there for five weeks. But see, you'll be moving over to Grace Cotties. Don't you think you can get on Grace Cotties? Yes, sir. You'll be all right in Grace Cotties. All the boys are about your size.

So I feel you've got all right over there. If you don't, you come back to see me, all right? Yes, sir. Okay, son, sit in. Out for what? Sometimes we have to discipline boys, but never as far as punishment. We believe that they have to work it out. Of course, sometimes we do have occasions when boys are uncontrollable, and we have to use our detention unit in order to control these boys. But this is usually for a short period. All right, good morning. Copy that?

No. One minute. Y'all come on in. One minute. One minute. One minute. One minute. One minute. One minute. One minute. Okay, man, let me just follow you. One minute. One minute. One minute. Any complaints? Sometimes we're going to make you wait. Good afternoon. Everything all right? Yes, sir. Thank you, all right. Ha. Any complaints? One. You want it? We have a nurse who we feel that gives the boys the love as a mother. And Mr. Asshort or the administrative assistant. And I also try to give them the father they love that a boy needs. One. Let him. Let him. Let him.

Let him. We'll take him on a taken-girl that can have a headache. And mom and a little bit of other pills that can help her headache visualize. Did you feel a better rapport before you were taking the pain? Yes, me. I'm doing good all that time you're taking. What do you know about me, right? Stolen car. Is that right? Who would see the car, right? Bob Kajowski. Is that right? Yup. Something what are you doing here? Well, he sent me off with them at the east. Very nice, isn't it, sir? How you doing? All right. He said, put you to work, dude, on your 30 days. Is that right? That's right. You want to work? Listen. OK? Go ahead and back in, sir. Come on. Get in, sir. And I see quite a bit of a change in about three or four months. We have a lot of boys that are aggressive, hostile.

When they leave, they act like any ordinary boy. I thought a lot of boys would work. These are cement books, cement mattresses at nighttime wall. At daytime, we keep the mattresses off because they're boys. Sometimes they do get distracted and do terrible mattresses. So we keep them off at daytime. They just give them to them at nighttime. How you going to do it there? How you doing? What's up? You were doing a good yesterday. You never had a good man. Were you made it? That's up. Have you calmed down a little bit? That's up. You mean you ready to come out? You really don't know. You think you're ready to come out? I'll let you stay down here in the morning. Well, we'll let you stay down here talking more days. You see, when you're ready to come out here in the morning. OK?

OK. A training school does not really rehabilitate. A training school contains, a training school protects. And one superintendent of the training school once told me that the only thing we can do is that we can teach these young people that there are consequences for certain actions. But you don't have particularly good schools and training schools. They don't get prepared for jobs. It is simply an period of life. A child is removed from the community. If we see this child, this delinquent person who has broken the law, who may indeed be quite dangerous as someone who we are not going to put behind lock and key on his life, then we have to say, what can we do so he's less dangerous? What can we do so that he becomes more convinced that he can do something and that becomes useful to us?

So I think we have to train him very hard. If possible, give him a job. If possible, try him out in situations in the community where pressures are on him. The fact that he is not a delinquent in the training school doesn't prove a darn thing. Not to be a delinquent back here is what we have to be sure of. Back here for most of the boys we're talking about is the streets of the ghetto. Training schools don't work because they're understaffed, overcrowded, and because they send a boy back to the streets, no better prepared to cope with them than before he was sent away. And even if a boy was prepared to get along on the streets, very little opportunity awaits him when he does return. White middle class America has moved to the suburbs and left the cities to the very rich and the very poor. And the economic gap between the suburbs and the cities grows greater every year.

MUSIC In the suburbs, children are educated in the home and in the school. In the slums, do often education starts only when a boy cannot cope with school, drops out and begins life on the streets. Henry Hilton, an East Harlem youth worker, explains what it's like. A youngster who's been brought up from the south or from Puerto Rico, finds out that he's been set back in classes maybe a year or two years. When he enters the class, the teacher didn't realize that, actually, from the poor education he's received elsewhere, he might be four years behind.

He finds out then that he can't compete in the school. He gets into a lot of mischief, he gets put out, or he drops out. After he hits the street, like any other kid anywhere else, he wants to belong. Now, what can he belong to? The gang on the block. This is the only thing he has to belong to. If he goes to the center, this is in the evening. Maybe he might not be allowed in the center if he has a bad enough reputation, you see. So he builds on his reputation in the street. He wants to be the leader. Number banker, the number collector, the dopastler, pimps. These people show up at the big Cadillacs and the fancy clothes and what have you. The youngster figures that these people didn't finish school, so why do I have to finish school?

This is the way I will make it. I was one that very seldom went to school and that was mostly in the street. You learn how to handle yourself out there after a while, after you get beat up a couple of times, you just stop a couple of times, you get kicked around. You learn how to handle yourself. The street is rough, man. You got to make it out there. You can't be out there. You see and you don't see in other words. You can see somebody get killed out there and you better not open your mouth. For the simple fact is that you're going to be next on a list if you do. This is what I meant when I said you see and you don't see and you hear and you don't hear. As long as nobody bothers you, you might need business. For this boy like most slumkins, life on the streets begins at an early age. Yeah, I remember the first time I played looking.

I was in the sixth grade. I played and looked at that first day and I just ran it in the hole like that. Tap one and tap one. Couldn't go to school that one day without at least had a play hooky too. I just got to the point where I didn't dig school at all. They were going to do nothing for me. There's things I wanted, things I needed. I might see something in there. When they install, when they go home, I tell parts I see it. Tell them how much it costs. Like you might say, well, look son, I got to pay rent this week or a little brother need to pay. She was something like this, you got to wait. You get tired of that.

So you get out there and get it the best way you can. Well, I went down the, you know, Brooklyn Bridge subway station. All them tunnels and whatnot and that. And I stood around down there and some woman come about the subway scene. She walking, swinging her bag like she don't want it. She goes right up behind and take it. I stole, but I don't think I stole no more than the average kid, you know, really. I mean, the average kid that is out here in the street. Yes. Well, I think we should be a little standing with the children and let them know that you can't get away with this. You know, we got to treat you a little tougher and a little harsher. And if we did, maybe they think twice.

But they know before they begin that everything is going for them. As I said before, everybody treats them with kid gloves. And then they've got everything going for them. Whatever they got to lose. But they know that we'll get out the next month, the two months and six months, and we'll be doing the same thing. And this happens. You can look at the record to somebody's kids. Arrested for seven, eight, ten times for the same crime. That's something going on somewhere. We should be getting them when they violate the law and give them the punishment to be filling the crime. And let's keep them behind bars when they can do no harm to anybody else. But Dr. Pillnic thinks the problem is more complex than that. And if we ought to be doing more than just punishing them. Really not devoting the time, attention, and money to provide the necessary kinds of programs that youngsters need. The people who work with youngsters don't get the kinds of salaries that people in other areas in our society do. The programs that we establish for youngsters really don't do rehabilitation. Reformatory systems, for example, correctional programs,

tend to merely be custodial programs. Youngsters who go into reformatories, and this is a well-known fact that everybody bandies about, but very few of us do anything about. Youngsters who go into reformatory systems usually come out, far more sophisticated delinquents than when they went in. And part of the problem is that we create a social system or an institution with a group of youngsters who have only to learn from each other. We're not providing the dynamic, the hope, the new opportunities within reformatory systems. My own feeling and my own personal bias is that we need to build as many of the rehabilitation programs as we can outside in the community. Sending kids away from the community, putting them up into hills somewhere behind the walls just doesn't do the job of rehabilitation. Recently, we've begun to realize the programs, both preventive and rehabilitative, must be concentrated in the community itself. More important, the people of the community must run the programs.

This cadet car is one activity of Harlem's United Block Association. It was started by two men living in Harlem. Originally, they went to the kids in the street and organized them into athletic leagues. Today, they offer a media reading courses and try to help them find jobs. Today, they offer a media reading courses and try to help them find jobs. They are taking the kids and giving them, for the first time in their lives, a chance to belong to something besides the gang in the block. I know the problem is doing good in the Puerto Rican area. The hell of good. This is a secret. I know the problem is doing good in the Puerto Rican area, the hell of good. This is Chicago and a program which is working directly with the gang on the block.

This is Carlos Castro, a high school dropout. Just a few years ago, he was part of a fighting gang. Now, he's part of the program and is trying to get the gangs to stop fighting. These are the leaders of the gangs in his area. If you do, you're going to wind up like Chaguino Pepe. You know, 199 years and 188. You know, how long Pepe got? 188. State 7. Good deal. You know, they gave him a break. Pepe, Chaguino, he's got 199, you know? But now, these two guys were buddies, brother. They were friends. They came back together. They drank together. Chaguino ate a Pepe's house. They were tied, brother. They were real men, you know? For one day, they went out there and shot that boy. The program is run by the Chicago YMCA and other community organizations. The original workers were a handful of college educated outsiders. There are now 500 workers, all of them like Carlos, indigenous to the neighborhood in which they work.

Basically, the old attached worker program was to stop the gang fight. This was basic. A block. One of the leaders of the program. Hopefully hasten the split up of certain individuals in the group so that the people can function as individuals rather than a group norms. We found that what would happen is we'd work with the group, but have a tendency to cool off in a year or two. And they'd take the worker and they'd put him in another neighborhood. And he'd start with another girl. But what you find in another year, so you'd have to come back to the same neighborhood start all over again. So what we're trying to do now is capitalize on the leadership that has been developed in the group. And use this leadership in a legitimate sense. Today, the program has gone far beyond its original objective of pacifying the gangs. It's now helping the boys in many ways, with school, jobs, and recreation. It's successful because the workers are men like Carlos, who understand the boys' problems. I walked out. What do you think about going back to school? No, why?

Working. Oh, working, boy. I know you're good, sir. I really can be kicked to death by a grasshopper. They call it back to school. It's right. You're a boy. I don't like school. I was learning Indian, yeah, I'm saying. Yeah. Like what? No comments. Are the grounds at the 50th? No. No. No, I don't want to answer that question. You don't want to answer that question. You don't want to answer that question. You don't want to answer that question. You take a kid from an older group, and let's say the junior group in the neighborhood, and one of the younger guys comes up to him, and the older guy says, hey, which one is you go steal me a pack of cigarettes? And the young kid says, well, no, man, he says, if I get caught, I'm on probation. I'm going to go back to the St. Charles or something like that. And he slaps the kid across the side of the head, and he says, go steal me that pack of cigarettes. And the kid runs over and picks up the pack of cigarettes out of the store and runs back, gives him to the man, and he fawns at his feet, you know, because this is my hero. You know, this is my god and my little neighborhood. All right, now you take that same older guy, and although he may never have graduated from high school,

you sell him the story. You make it important to him to status and the recognition and the identification to something. And he sees the same kid, and he says, hey, butch, how come you're not in school today? And butch says, well, man, I didn't feel like going today. And he slaps the kid across the side of his, so you go to school. All of this is a change in norms, same kind of behavior. Okay, actually, yeah. The real answer lies in the indigenous people themselves, because it becomes policy of the neighborhood to finish school, and maybe you finish school. This is where it's at. Kids will listen to other kids who they respect, and who are sympathetic to their problems. Based on this idea, a handful of rehabilitation centers have been started right in some communities. One of them, the Jay Stanley Shepherd Home in New York City, has 30 boys in its program. This is one of them, Bobby Cullon. Boy, I used to hide all my hatred inside, you know? And anybody that I didn't like, I would see my father's face.

One time I got busted, my father hit me, so I went up to me Avenue, you know? I took some eggs, and went up to me Avenue and hit this Jewish man. And now he chased us for around five blocks, and then finally caught us. I went to court. And you know, I was scared, because he was coming after me. So I ripped off an area from a car and hit the Jewish man in his basic kind of economy, and he had glasses on. But that Jewish man didn't do nothing to me. But I saw my father's face, you know? The Shepherd Home differs from a training school in that the boys live in the community and are pretty much on their own. During the day, they work or go to school. At night, they attend group therapy sessions. The idea is that only kids with similar problems can make a boy face his own and help himself. Bobby attends these sessions twice a week.

The group knows he has a problem with his father. I just want to see how he would make up all the things he did to me. Tonight, he's told them he'd like to leave the program, and that he thinks he can now get along with his father. He came out of the house and we were hanging out in the truck, and he told you not to drink. Is that one of those? How do you think he's going to make it up to you? What do you want him to do? Say Bob, go ahead and drink as much as you want. The group thinks Bobby is kidding himself, and is pushing him to be realistic. What if he do make it up to you? We'll try it out. But what if he does? Then what? Then we just get along with him. Just get along? No, just just me. You're a temporary thing. I miss things I know my father, every Friday. He's drunk. So he doesn't get drunk one Friday, and you think he changed. No, but you know, he was acting different. You do? I'm just going to give it a try. So, let me ask you a question. I don't know. This is the same thing with you, but my mother's mentally disturbed.

She's been that way before I was born. I've always hoped that someday that she wouldn't be nuts. And someday my father will come back. But I never gave up hope until the last time I saw her. Well, isn't your mother going to change or your father's going to change or your home? No, it's you. Yeah, that's what you see. I was always hoping that my mother would change. That my father would change. My stepfather would change. I was hoping that someday I could go home and I could have a family. I could have someone that cared about me. But the only thing I got was 14 years in homes, you know what I mean? Both families. Yeah. It's fair to see the dream about something that it isn't going to come true. You just have to give up hope. I mean, are you hoping for the same thing? Yeah. And you're hoping that just because he didn't get drunk this weekend, that this means he's completely conformed. I mean, he probably isn't, but I'll take the chance. You won't be taking our chance.

I don't think there will be any doubt about it. You'll be putting yourself right into a loaded trouble. Right. And I would like to show her something. Even though I changed and I wanted to go back to my neighborhood, I felt that I had a better outlook on life. But you know what happened? You know, I went back there. I was a changed person. And then I felt that my friends rejected me. I mean, because you know, myself, you know, the way I've changed. And then, you know, and all in order for me to, you know, to be back in the crowd, I have to change again. Back to my whole environment to be, you know, I stepped in in a group. And that is the same thing that can happen to you, even though you don't leave because I didn't believe it myself. I didn't believe I could come back. I didn't go back into that old neighborhood to become the same person I was. I didn't believe at all. Are you afraid of that? It's going to be harder now. It's going to be harder for me to change to what I used to be. Yes.

So what? Because I know, I know the penalty now, you know? I know what it's like. And it's just going to be harder. So come on, why do you think that's hard though? I mean, you think that's hard though, isn't it? You'd be surprised how a nice slug of wine and a little more and a little more changes your whole thinking about that penalty. That's right. That's right. I mean, I don't usually think that I use it from the end. Is it really so much the penalty again? Is it only the penalty that keeps you the way you are now, Ernie? Only the penalty that keeps you the way you are, Kyle? Or is it maybe you found something else? Have you found something else? Are you any much more satisfied with yourself now? Yes. Then you're the new one? I know. A whole lot of things I never even think of thinking of. Thinking I could do, I was always afraid. I was afraid of people who rejected me. I was afraid of what would happen if I do change. I was always doing the same thing. Kyle, don't tell them what happened to you. Why you grew that beer? Yes, I grew that beer because I heard it's long beer because I was afraid that I was something terrible. I went to Ohio within myself.

And I wanted to go back. I was afraid to change. I was afraid of what if I do change? I know people who accept me, how would I look? I was just afraid. How would I be? But now it's a great relief. I know I can do things. I can't do things. I'm going to do things. How do people understand that? I just want to get out. Everybody else does. All right, sir. Well, you're having me so much luck, man. We have a guy. We have a guy going tonight. I think most of you know who. I think we can look back. And I think we can see a guy who's come a pretty long way in a pretty short period of time. Three weeks later, the group decided that Bobbi was ready to go home on a one-month trial basis.

If he gets along with his family, does well in school and stays out of trouble on the streets, he'll be allowed to remain at home. That he can't handle himself. There isn't any reason in the world why any guy here can't do with himself and for himself what Bobbi did. Not if anybody else, gentlemen, don't do it for me. It's for you that you're doing it. If you want it, it's your life. The other one it's going to be. The question is, what awaits him when he leaves? Only half the battle of rehabilitation is with the boy. The other half is with society. Bobbi must be accepted and he must be able to find meaningful work. There must be opportunities available to him. Hopefully when a boy leaves here, when Bobbi leaves here, he should be at the point where he can deal. This is decoration who runs the home for the New York State Division for you. I'm not trying to help a boy reach the point here

where when he goes out in the street, he's going to find things laid out for him on a silver plate. This is unrealistic and this isn't what we're interested in. This isn't the way the world is. We're trying to help him reach the point where he can go on the outside and deal with things effectively and realistically, but there still has to be opportunities. I think the type of opportunities that are realistic, I don't think we should offer these kids things that they're not either prepared for or motivated for or realistic about. And in many instances, a good many youngsters are not realistic. About the world of work, certainly. They're expectations. They're like a familiarity with it. They make it a very difficult thing for them. But I think we have to offer them the training, the vocational training, the opportunities in the world of work. The opportunity really to reach these goals towards which they aspire. If a boy realistically aspires towards a goal which we set forth as one towards which youngsters should aspire in our middle-class world,

it has to be available to him. The obstacles in his path should be no more or perhaps any less than they are with other youngsters who are not as disadvantaged. But jobs are scarce if you're young, non-white and from the slums, and those that are available usually have no future. Bobby's going home. But for every boy like him who's lucky enough to get some help, there are hundreds still out on the streets or marking time in training schools, and the situation is getting worse, not better. The dropout rate continues to grow, and jobs for these boys are getting harder to find. Our tendency in fighting the crime problem is to ask for better police protection. But that's only a temporary solution. In the long run, the answer to the crime problem is education, better community services, and meaningful job opportunities. It will be costly, but not nearly as costly as the price we now pay for crime in the streets. But there are more than over №?!

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