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Intensive educational, counseling and mentoring programs can divert thousands of young people from lives of crime, experts say.
On that issue, state budget advisers, law enforcement officials and community leaders are speaking with one voice: A greater emphasis must be placed on prevention and not just on punishment.
“To focus on the back end alone -- the punishment-only approach -- is to resign ourselves to running on a treadmill, running faster and faster while more kids become criminals as fast as we lock them up,” said Sandy Newman, president of Fight Crime: Invest in Kids, a national organization.
That reality is spawning the development of some coalitions between get-tough-on-crime advocates and leaders of community-based organizations, said Mark Ward of the Los Angeles County Probation Department.
“Traditionally our role has been sanctions and lockup; we send the kids and adults to the institutions to do the hard time,” Ward said. “But now we have taken a lot of our resources and focused them on a particular segment of society that has not offended anyone. They haven't actually done anything to warrant this treatment, but there are indicators that show a likelihood that these people will probably offend.”
Those at-risk indicators include poor grades, school truancy, classroom misbehavior, gang affiliation, alcohol or drug use and incorrigibility.
In Long Beach, children between the ages of 8 and 14 who fit that profile and live in the 90802, 90805, 90806 and 90813 ZIP code areas are matched up with organizations such as the YMCA, the Boy and Girl Scouts and other community organizations for tutoring, family counseling and other services.
“The indicators say this person has a 13-times-greater chance of offending,” Ward said. “We want to get them identified so the problems don't escalate.”
Rewarding good behavior
Long Beach police and area businesses have launched a prevention program to reward children for good behavior, said Cpl. Harry Erickson.
“You know how we normally give out tickets for bad behavior -- we are now giving kids who wear their bicycle helmets this notice to appear for a free ice cream cone or a free slice of pizza,” Erickson said. “In North and East Long Beach, officers are giving out these tickets when they see kids exhibiting good behavior and following the safety laws.”
He said the Bixby Knolls Business Improvement Association agreed to donate the free meals.
The switch to community policing has helped police officials across the state accept the necessity of change, said Billie Weiss, director of the Injury and Violence Prevention Program for the Los Angeles County Health Department.
“There is a greater focus and understanding coming out of law enforcement that they must begin to address the prevention side,” Weiss said. “They come to it kicking and screaming, but the fact of the matter is they come to understand they need a comprehensive approach. They know they can't possibly lock everybody up forever.”
Weiss said a partnership of law enforcement and community organizations has decreased youth violence in parts of Los Angeles County, Contra Costa County in Northern California, Boston, Brooklyn and Philadelphia.
In Los Angeles, for example, “the community came together – including police, probation officers, school officials, churches and some mental health professionals -- and offered after-school programs in the arts and computers in a successful effort to reduce crime. People actually went door to door, it was a communitywide effort.”
Other efforts
But many believe early intervention programs alone cannot solve the juvenile crime problem. Several initiatives -- lowering the age at which juveniles can be tried as adults, passage of the three-strikes law and the push for public access to juvenile criminal records -- will decrease the number of criminals on the street, said Mike Carrington, deputy director of Gov. Pete Wilson's Criminal Justice Planning Office. But laws that increase prison time for hardened criminals have gone about as far as they can go, he said.
“We need to ensure that there's not another generation or two of offenders coming along,” Carrington said. “You will see an eventual shifting of resources to address the needs in the prevention and intervention areas.”
He couldn't say how much money Wilson will earmark for juvenile crime prevention programs in the 1997-1998 budget because no one yet knows how much money the state will get in federal block grant funding. But the 1995 budget contained $22 million for child abuse prevention and $58 million for juvenile crime prevention programs, while adult prisons ate up $3.4 billion of the budget. More than $400 million was spent on juvenile facilities and courts.
Long Beach spends almost $17 million on youth programs. Much of that money -- 68.3 percent -- was for public safety, which includes police services for juvenile investigations, gang violence suppression and prevention programs such as the Police Athletic League and the DARE anti-drug campaign.
Universities, hospitals, probation officers, schools, youth organizations, churches, police departments and nonprofit organizations have formed local and national coalitions to prevent youth violence. The common thread is the belief that children at risk of juvenile delinquency can be identified as early as first or second grade. Intensive educational, counseling and personal contact with such children by caring, resourceful adults can help those young people make the right choices.
Such outreach is going on in a variety of local programs including:
First Offender Program: Children ages 8 to 18 and their parents participate in counseling and parenting sessions with the intent of keeping the child in school. Every Friday, the children talk about taking responsibility for their actions, and they also participate in recreational activities. A probation officer visits the child's school once a week to ensure school attendance and helps find tutors and mentors. The program is operated by a consortium of local groups and agencies, including the YMCA, the Los Angeles County Probation Department and the Cambodian Association of America.
Mural Program: Offered by the city of Long Beach, this antigraffiti program allows young people age 14 to 22 to work with a professional muralist to paint murals on buildings or walls that have serious graffiti problems.
There are about 60 such murals in the city, making the mural program the most prolific in the state.
Family Intervention Team: Children identified at risk of delinquency receive regular school and home visits. A behavior contract is negotiated with the child who agrees to attend school regularly. The program is operated by the Norwalk Public Safety Department, the Los Angeles County Probation Department and the Norwalk Sheriff's Department.
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