Forum; Juvenile Justice System; Part 2

So it's not just because this child was abused and neglected that they're likely to have problems, it's additional to the fact that when the child has a problem, there's no family for support. So it becomes this kind of double edged whammy that this child gets and is much more likely to become a part of our system. More of your calls on forum. Let's go to E.K. from East Palo Alto. Good morning. You're on the air. Yes. I try to think of an analogy I was going to say is like trying to talk to people in the cigaret industry about trying to deal with the smoking problem, as trying to talk to people who are in the juvenile justice system about trying to solve the juvenile crime problem. I worked in the system for seven years and last year I worked with in 84 in San Mateo. And I can tell you my experience is that some of the people in the system that is that work for the system were worse than the kids that I dealt

with. In addition, as one of your guests mentioned, it is a cultural situation that's involved in in helping children think the way to solve problems is through violence. And it is an economic problem. But in addition, there's also the racial component, in my opinion. People view children who are of a different racial background, blacks, Hispanics, Asians in a different way than they do. They view whites and they're very much quicker to discard those children and even to approach those children as though they have no potential. And my experience has been and is that the solution to these problems? There's no simple one. But as the Million Man March and others have Omega Boys Club and others have said, this solution is going to come from the people from which the who are impacted by the crime. They're going to have to decide for themselves that they find in these children that

some one of your guests, some of your guests have said that there is a potential within these children that they don't have to be discarded. They may not as if someone is not on your program. It's not what they can achieve. That is the determining factor as to what their value is. It's the effort that they put into whatever it is they do. They may not produce doctors and lawyers or businessmen of one sort or another, but they may be the fathers and mothers of doctors, or they may not be they may just be people who produce children who have a positive view on life and who can contribute in some sort of way. Okay, let me jump in here, because implicit in your remarks has been this kind of indictment of the system and those who represent the system. Dan Meckler, I'd like to hear your thoughts on that. I think I agree with the caller. I think that it's always easier to write off people who don't look like you, who don't act like you, who don't come from the same background as you. And I think that the problem, those problems exist within the

system. It's an attitude held by many people who work within the system. And it's one of the tragedies of the system, one of the things that the system going and going back to some of the structural deficiencies that I was trying to address earlier is the fact that we don't have the capacity right now to deal with kids from a whole range of backgrounds. When I talk about a static bureaucracy, I talk about a bureaucracy that's pretty much run by people from similar backgrounds or the same backgrounds who don't share a lot of the cultural sensitivity that somebody from the communities from where these kids come might have. So it's a real problem within the system. More of your calls. Let me go to where are we going to line one? I guess that's and Dominic both. Good morning. Good morning. Thank you for taking our call. My name Van Cochran and the director of the San Francisco Conservation Corps. And one of the things I wanted to address was this notion of our society being willing to write off a certain segment or a certain generation.

And the Conservation Corps runs two separate programs, one for 18 to 23 year olds. And the reason Dominic's on the line with me is he's one of our adult corps members. And I'd like him to talk after I finish. And then the other program we run is called Youth in Action, and it's for 12 to 14 year olds. And it's exactly the kind of preventive program that I think has shown tremendous results after school and on Saturdays. It's a program that helps kids stay in school, develops environmental awareness and a whole community service approach that allows young people a very early age to see themselves as resources and assets rather than problems. And we've seen remarkable results in. Kid's grades going up and staying in school, then going on to academic high schools, and we've also seen in our adult program young people at 23 who are really willing, they just need the opportunity to learn job skills, get back into school. Many of our core members have dropped out of high school.

And once they're given that opportunity and allowed to be useful and allowed to make a contribution and allowed to set goals and meet them, there's no stopping them. And at this point, I'd like to turn it over to Dominic to talk about his experience. Yeah. Good morning, everybody. My name is Dominic, and I basically want to talk about the problem that happened. I see what the youth is, that they took away a lot of programs before they SPL and other school programs. But now after school kids get out and have nothing to do, they go to the corners. And what they need to do is bring back the programs and stuff like youth and action is good. It keeps a lot of people out of school, you know, going to a program. That's what happened. They've cut down a lot of programs and made things harder for kids and stuff. And now they ain't got nowhere to turn except the streets. But if they keep up what I think happened, they took the money, put it all to prison. They're pushing it more negative ways when they should put it in a positive like programs. That's what needs to happen and stuff. Dominic, well said. I thank you and for your call.

Pedro Noguera. Yeah, I think there are lots of good programs in the Conservation Corps in certain areas. Is one of them Omega Boys Club, as the previous caller mentioned, is another good one. There are several. When I start to see, though, is I'm increasingly skeptical of the ability of large institutions like the corrections system or even the public schools to address this problem. And the reason why is because it goes back to the race issue and really the class issue where you have middle class white people running programs for poor minority kids, black and Latino kids. You end up with a situation very often where the the adults are unable to identify with their kids, unable to understand them and and therefore unable to work with them effectively. We need to support community based programs. If it's if it's out in visitation, Barry, we need to support programs that are based there that employ the adults there to work with the kids instead of creating another bureaucracy that employs Middle-Class People to take care of kids that they're afraid of.

And which is what we have right now in our schools, in our schools, we have large numbers of adults who are unable to to educate and to work with those kids, largely because they're afraid of them. They don't understand them and they really don't want to be there. Dan Mackler. Yeah, I just want to comment. I think it's important to point out that what we've created here in California is almost a system of apartheid. The correctional system that we've set up here, most of the prisons are built in the Central Valley. I think there's there's a reason for that. I think there's a political reason for that. It's a job creation program and it's a job creation program for a lot of these small towns that have no industry in those towns. And the product that drives those industries are usually poor, urban, nonwhite people. And it's who are sent out to these places. And that is what's right. That's what's driving that industry. And people in the corrections industry will tell you that this is this is a important source of income and employment for people out in the Central Valley who are predominantly white.

Let me get another call on from Nicasio. Shelly, welcome. Hi. I just wanted to say that I think the general overall problem here is an abandonment of our of our responsibilities to children in general, and that a lot of these issues that are coming up are just kind of falling under the umbrella of that. And I mean, there's obviously two really separate kind of issues in Marin County. I see, like, you know, you have a lot of people that are working, both parents working and just flat out don't have time for their kids and don't really want to address the problems that they're facing with these kids that, you know, are very maybe affluent, but have little respect for authority. And a lot of those kinds of problems come up or I've seen them anyway. That's very different from what's happening in the inner cities. But in general, I just think that it's an emotional abandonment and abandonment of responsibility and and the

adults not willing to step forward and give these kids the time and the moral fiber that they need. That's a good point. We thank you for the call, Judy Griffin. You've only got about a minute left with us. I know you have a Board of Supervisors meeting, and I thank you for the time you spent. But what would you say sort of information about what needs to be done to keep back the flow of young people coming into juvenile hall and your world of punishment, as it were? Well, I want to make one comment that I believe it is necessary for certain youth. I mean. When you have someone who's committing a murder, when you have someone who's severely injured someone, the type of sanction that is needed at the beginning is probably a removal from society, at least long enough to assess the problem and determine appropriate resources. I think there is a need for it. The longer term solution is, as we've all

talked about before, at a level way before they walk in my door at juvenile hall. Judy Griffin, thank you for the time you spent with us. Judy Griffin is director of San Francisco Juvenile Hall. We're also talking with Dan McAleer, associate director of the Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice, and Pedro Noguera, who is assistant professor at UC Berkeley and the Division of Social and Cultural Studies in the School of Education. Steve, join us. Good morning. You're on the air. I'd like to add to the argument what I believe to be the bottom line here. I think we're consistently dealing with symptoms rather than trying to get to the root cause. In my view, the problem that we're having with our youth is not unlike the problem we're having with crowding in our prisons and in our national parks or wherever you look in California. And our attitude tends to generally be when we don't have enough water to go around, for instance, that we have water shortages, when actually what we have is languages of demand.

I think our youth sense instinctively that we are coming up against the boundaries of overpopulation and that the more of us are crowded into the same area that our fathers and mothers were crowded into the less value there is to human life in a sense. And this comes out in violence and in a lack of respect for human life. And I think really, until we start addressing the bottom line, rather than dealing consistently with symptoms, we are going to be witnessing worse, worser and worsening symptoms. Well, you know, Dan McKeller, you mentioned before the growing industry that's involved in incarceration. Certainly the caller points out and I think points out appropriately how comparable this is with respect to juvenile justice. I mean, these are both burgeoning industries. Absolutely. It's it's it's the largest growth industry in the state. In fact, the growth in corrections over the last 10 years has exceeded the growth in every other branch of government in California.

But the irony is, again, that there was always this distinction. Whenever we talk about jails, we come back to the fact that California made a turn and decided to go toward punitive rather than toward rehabilitation. They just decided, in effect, that that's what jails and prisons ought to be for, but not with respect to youth. That's the important distinction that we keep seeming to forget in all of this, that youth are supposedly rehabilitatable to coin a word that probably doesn't exist. Well, you know, that's always been a concept that's been thrown around the juvenile justice system. I mean, the juvenile justice system was based on the concept of rehabilitation. The reality is it's never been practiced because the juvenile justice system instituted a penitentiary system back in the 19th century and we've never deviated from it. We simply here here in San Francisco over the last 75 years have built three detention centers, each one larger than than than the than its predecessor. And we've built them for the specific purpose that these were intended as the panacea for all for a whole plethora of child welfare and delinquency

issues. It's never it's never worked. Its failures have been documented down through the centuries, bound down through the decade in the last two centuries. And we still have not changed from that inflexible, static, bureaucratic centralized system. Institutionalization, really, as opposed to putting more emphasis on community and a whole range of programs. When Judy talks when Judy talks about addressing the needs of those of those high risk hardcore delinquents and those kids needing comprehensive services that are probably going to be require more long term care, we need to do that. But we need to invest more in those kids than we do for the first time. Carthy for the first time. Petty, petty thief. But we didn't we can't do that right now. We treat everybody the same. There's another irony in all this, though. As long as we're talking about class and the way these kids are treated, and that has to do with, you know, the kid who goes along the straight and narrow, who doesn't violate the law, who may need these same kinds of services, may need them desperately, in fact, and yet doesn't get them, because to get them, you have to violate the law.

I mean, it's a strange kind of catch 22 for society and all that, which is why prevention programs would benefit all kids. And I think the previous caller brought out that this is not a problem. It's confined to poor middle class kids that are getting into trouble and where you see an increase in violence in those communities as well. So there's just generally a greater need to address this at a comprehensive level early on. But I think it'd be a mistake. There are some deferral programs out there that are good that the courts have sponsored that exist. They're just very isolated. They just are not. That's not the general trend of what we're doing, we're warehousing kids. And when you consider the fact that the majority of kids are in there for nonviolent crimes and the amount of violence that they are exposed to while they're in there, many kids are forced to affiliate with a gang while they're in corrections. You end up with a situation where we're producing criminals. Yeah, the School of Crime Schools for Crime in effect. And I mean, the kids are coming to the juvenile justice system. These are the kids that have been beaten, abused, starved, kicked, punched, isolated, abandoned. The notion that we're going to take these kids warehoused them for an average

of 85 percent of the kids that go into the youth center here in San Francisco are released within three weeks, the average length of stay in the California youth authorities, two years. The notion that warehousing these kids for a short period of time and throwing them back on the street without ever addressing the problems that got them there in the first place is going to create is going to create better citizens who are ready to go out and assume a responsible role in society is ludicrous. And yet that is what we do and that is what the system practices on a daily basis. Some of them, however, as Judy Griffin was implying, are pretty cold and vicious and need to be separated from society. Left the lest we forget. Let me get some more callers on here, though, Kyra, from Santa Rosa. Good morning. Hi. I'm a single welfare mother who receives no child support or else I wouldn't be on welfare. And I'm also a court reporting student. And I'm really appalled that Newt Gingrich said that people on welfare are responsible for criminal activity. And to me, it's almost an asset to be poor so I can devote more time and energy to my two boys.

And when I graduate and start work, I still don't want to put money first because I really believe you don't need money to teach values to your children. Well said. Thank you. Care for the call? Steve from Sacramento, our next caller. Good morning. Good morning. I really wanted to take really agree with substantially what your panel is saying, but one take issue with the point raised about the Central Valley versus the Central Valley, substantially white, which I think is demonstrably untrue, the substantial Latino and Asian populations here. And the second that all the prisons are being built, the Central Valley, let's the earthquake change something. I think Pelican Bay is not in the Central Valley. Just as an example, I should have said rural California. All right. So so no, not the Central Valley. Not all right. I agree with that. Thank you for defending the Central Valley. Richard from Niceville, good morning. You're on the air. Good morning. Well, my my only comment is about the way the system allows so much unemployment to be tolerated in order to prop up the economic system. And I think that that says a lot about what what the youth can do in this in

a society that if you don't have a lot of jobs or a lot of opportunity for the young people, that they're going to they're going to be desperate sometimes and they're going to do desperate things. So I just think that there's a lot to be said about what we could do about creating more employment for everybody, which may be a change in the way the society is run, because it's usually for the the rich want to stay rich and they use a lot of unemployment to maintain that, I believe. All right. We thank you, Richard. The whole problem of gun accessibility and the fact that kids often need guns just for security, just for protection as they see it, then they can get into trouble because they have a gun. I mean, this has become a problem that's really clearly out of control. You go to certain schools and what, 13, 20 percent of the kids are packing heat, as we used to say. That's pretty alarming. We've got somebody, in fact, from a group called San Francisco Brothers Against Guns. Sean, join us here. Good morning. How are you doing? How are you? And Richard, an organization called Brothers Against Guns. The main issue that I hear everybody speaking on is youth issues that would have to happen is the youth, the younger generation and the

older generation have to come together, but they have to have some kind of trust, some kind of stability to come and work with them. Because a lot of older adults are scared to deal with the youth issues and scared to deal with the youth, period. And if you don't have this type of, you know, say, bonding with each other, it's not going to never work, is not going to never change. I know, because I started a young organization called you Brothers Against Guns. We are young organization. We work with youth. We go into the juveniles, the high schools or whatever it takes for us to get these girls out, these kids backpacks, these hands, their pockets or whatever. So you have to feel some they have to feel some kind of security if they don't have no security than they're going to keep doing what they do. The second thing is there's no jobs out there for young kids. So young kids turn to drastic things, selling drugs, gang banging, you know, saying packing to go. My little brother was killed this Easter Sunday of 19, 1995, by one of his so-called friends with a handgun. So that's that's the whole thing. They they they fight each other over unnecessary things, over stupid things, such as the number one thing, money.

You know, people say money is the root of all evil. It is. That's the whole thing, because everybody's out there trying to make that mighty dollar and they're not taking the time off to deal with these issues on developing jobs, developing programs such as. You know, the Peace Conservation Corps I work with a few years back, and she she did a terrific job, you know, but we have to come together more actively in the community to deal with these youth that make these youth understand. Hey, I understand what you're going through, but you can fight this for years. Not it's not being put. It's being pushed off on a hole deep enough of a conversation. Well, nobody's dealing with the group that we have to come inside these these areas and deal with these issues as as a whole. Sharon, let me first of all, express my condolences to you for the loss of your brother. But what you seem to be saying is you need you need mentoring. You need Big Brother ship. Really? Exactly. I mean, they got a big brother of some 100 Big Brother program I called. I I'm trying to give up the Woodley's about five of them.

You know, you have to deal with these kids. I mean, I'm still a youth myself. I'm only 27 years old, but I know what these kids are going through. I was in my shoes at one point, so they can't they can't say, well, you don't understand what I'm talking about. So, yes, I do understand what you're talking about. I was in your position. I was into gang banging. I was into the street like I was into all that. So I know what they're going through. I know what they want. They want jobs. They can't get jobs. They get out there and they sell drugs to drugs. It's not happening. And so they start robbing people. They start shooting people, then they start killing each other. That's what it's all consist of. But until we make a stand and come together and bond with these kids and let these kids know that they have our trust, we're not going to go back and fill you out behind the back room. We got to work with you in the front row. You'll get a lot of talk around. All right, Sean, let me thank you very much for the call. Thank you. Good to hear from you. And I appreciate your calling. Let me get Rachel on air. Well, we have a few moments. Hi. Thanks for taking my call, Sandra. I Don I really agree with Sean, and that was kind of a comment I was going to follow up on. But I want to specify young women.

I'm the executive director of the St. Survival Project and we're an employment training program for young women. The point is not to make clients, but to make leaders. OK, so eventually young women will take over this organization and we'll run this organization and have all the skills they need. In the meantime, they're using their street smarts to do outreach and health, education and other kinds of peer education counseling to other young women on the street. And they love it and they stay here and they don't need to get involved in a whole bunch of other stuff. And this is an organization where they're considered competent individuals. And this is what adults need to start doing, is to start seeing young people not as the demonized young women, especially women, when we can go back centuries to that about how young women are on their own, have been demonized, but see them as competent individuals, even if they're in a gang or whatever they're doing, they're making a competent decision until we take the responsibility of creating alternatives for them to make competent decisions in different environments. Rachel, thank you for that. We've certainly heard from a number of groups here this

morning, which ought to give us a good deal of hope. And I think both of you gentlemen, for being with us. I think that, you know, we've done what I what I consider really yeoman work here, not only in defining the scope of the problem, but also talking about some solutions and what the roots of the problem are. And my appreciation to both of you for being here and also to Judy Griffin, who was with us earlier. Judy Griffin's director of San Francisco Juvenile Hall, are our guests are Dan McAleer, who is associate director of the Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice, and Pedro Noguera, who is assistant professor in the Division of Social and Cultural Studies that is in the School of Education at UC Berkeley. When we come back tomorrow, let me tell you what's on tap for you on forum. We're going to actually spend our first hour, as I indicated, when Congressman Lantos was with us, talking in some broad terms about American foreign policy and taking a look at geopolitics as it stacks up with respect to what America ought to be involved in and what America ought to get its nose out of that sort of thing. This will be coming off, of course, of President Clinton's speech, which you'll hear later tonight. And in our second hour, we're going to talk with Sylvia Boorstein, who is a local meditation and Buddhist writer, has done a book about

Buddhism where she kind of makes it easy for everybody to understand. Buddhism is a delightful book and will enjoy talking to her. And I'm sure you'll enjoy listening. We'll also talk about the whole concept of the fool in tomorrow's program that is not necessarily, you know, foolish in the sense that we all are foolish. But the fool going back to Renaissance Times and something called immuno neural therapy, which is something we want to hear you on tomorrow night's program. So I hope you'll be with us. Our program producers, our rubinson autosomal David Minko and Holly Kernen. And you're listening to KQED FM in San Francisco. I'm Michael Krasny from National Public Radio in Washington. I'm Ray Suarez and this is Talk of the Nation. It comes at you from every newspaper, every TV and radio station. Every time you buy something from a retailer, you find it's already Christmas. Johnny Mathis, Rosemary Clooney, the Vienna Boys Choir and Luciano Pavarotti have been

crooning at us. Well, it feels like since Columbus Day, why is the devil such a necessary member of the cast deep in the subconscious? Michael Krasny. From National Public Radio in Washington, I'm Neal Conan and this is Talk of the Nation. And one great evil with all of the lesser evil from in this country, and that is the suicidal Kremlin directed foreign policy, the extent to which is controlled by communists in our government, in the anti-communist fervor of the early 1950s, the wild charges and irresponsible tactics of the junior senator from Wisconsin made McCarthyism a synonym for opportunistic access. Senator McCarthy's later disgraced tended to discredit allegations of a communist conspiracy in the United States. But previously secret documents from the files of the former Soviet Union show that the Communist Party of the United States really was

a tool of Soviet espionage and subversion. The secret world of American communism after the news. From National Public Radio News in Washington, I'm Corver Coleman. Former Pennsylvania Governor Robert Casey says he won't seek the Democratic nomination for president. Robbie Harris of member station W.H y y reports Robert Casey says he decided not to seek the Democratic presidential nomination Monday night after seeing his doctors about an upper respiratory infection. Casey underwent a rare heart liver transplant near the end of his second term as Pennsylvania governor since.