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MAKING CONTACT

Transcript: #06-00 Suspect Generation: The Criminalization of Youth
February 9, 2000

Program description, guest contact information and audio files at http://www.radioproject.org/archive/2000/0006.html

Lisa Rudman: This week on Making Contact:

Fernando Aveta: The crackdown's pretty bad. The harassment is constant. It's an everyday thing to get pulled over for the way you look or questioned about your tattoos.

Lateefah Simon: You need to pay your rent. You're getting evicted from your house, your fourteen, there's an underground street economy that's right there. And you can make money.

Lisa Rudman: In the wake of a series of school shootings that stunned the nation, many states initiated new, tough-on-youth legislation. But what is really happening with today's young people? On this program we take a look at the impact of the changing juvenile justice system on today's youth.

I'm Lisa Rudman, your host this week on Making Contact, an international radio program seeking to create connections between people, vital ideas and important information.

In July 1899, the first juvenile court in the world opened on Chicago's Westside. Up until that point, children as young as eight years old were jailed alongside adults. For the first time in history, children and adolescents were placed in a more lenient system whose ultimate goal was rehabilitation. This new system was a success. The majority of the children referred to the juvenile correction's process never returned and went on to live productive lives. Many nations across the world have since created their own juvenile justice systems.

During the last decade, however, the juvenile justice system in the United States has begun to dissolve. Between 1992 and 1995, forty-one states changed their laws to make it easier to try kids as adults. Children across the country are being tried in the adult system at younger and younger ages. Sensational reporting in the mass media has fueled perceptions that countless young people are violent, gun-toting drug users, even though the rate of juvenile crime is on the decline. But how has this affected America's youth?

Fernando Aveta is with Jovenes Unidos, the youth component of an Albuquerque-based organization called the Southwest Organizing Project. He speaks about his experience as a young person in the city of Albuquerque, New Mexico:

Fernando Aveta: It doesn't matter whether we're doing good or not because I know a lot of kids that, you know, have been straight-laced. They've been on the right track. And it's just so much at one point they say, "You know what, who cares? I've been trying all this time to be a productive member of society, but because I'm a young person of color, I get harassed anyway. Or because I look like a gang member, I get harassed anyway." So a lot of kids snap and say, "You know what? Screw the system. Screw any authority figure whatsoever! It's just me against the world. And it's going to be me, and I'm gonna do what I want when I want." And a lot of times, the cops and society as a whole plays a role in the way a young person turns. I mean, it's not too hard out here at one point say, you know, "Enough is enough. I've been trying too hard, and I'm getting no respect for it. I'm gonna do what I want now. Or I'm gonna do what they think I do. I mean what's the point. What's the point in trying, if you're gonna get blamed for it anyway?"

Lisa Rudman: Mike Males, author of the book Scapegoat Generation, says that this generation of youth is actually less violent and less prone to crime than most previous generations. The baby-boomer generation, says Males, was more violent than today's youth.

Mike Males: The fastest growing felon population, the population getting arrested for felonies, is not black and Latino teenagers. It's white adults thirty and older. And I'm talking about rates here. A felony arrest [has] tripled in this population. And here it is, California's most privileged population.we're talking large numbers of arrests, almost 100,000 white adults thirty and older were arrested for felonies in 1998 and 20,000 were sent to prison, which makes white adults thirty and older also our fastest growing prison population. It overturns a lot of assumptions that are racist and age-ist in the sense that particularly youth of color are blamed for the crime epidemic in this state, when their felony rates have been declining by 30 to 40% over the last twenty years, and especially during the 1990s. So we're seeing a declining youth crime rate and an increasing elder crime rate led by whites over the age of thirty.

Lisa Rudman: In the last few years, we've been bombarded by media images of youth crime and shocking stories of mass shootings at schools. Vincent Schiraldi is Director of The Justice Policy Institute, an organization that does research in public policy in both the juvenile and the adult fields. He points out that the media have greatly exaggerated a youth crime epidemic in this country.

Vincent Schiraldi: The fact that seven in ten Americans believe a school killing is likely in their school again means they're not just misinformed, they're profoundly, exponentially misinformed. And I think that we're getting to the point where we're so misinformed that we're becoming unable to set rational public policy.

Lisa Rudman: Patti Lee is the Deputy Public Defender of the Juvenile Division in San Francisco:

Patti Lee: The shootings that have occurred throughout the nation in schools have been white, male youth. And that is a phenomenon. And unfortunately that has impacted on the youth of color. The legislators have this knee-jerk reaction to the school shootings, and they've decided that, "Well we will punish all youth, and we will write tough legislation so that we will lock up all youth." The reality is there are very few white youth who come through this system, and that has to do with the way your local beat cop on the street will conduct their investigations and their stops. The reality is that the cop will stop any youth of color on the street, and if they're involved in a petty offense, they're likely to be brought in and brought to jail. If you have a white youth who's being stopped for a minor transgression, they get to go home with their mommy and daddy.

Lisa Rudman: Young people are not only being scrutinized in the courts, many of America's youth encounter police officers and metal detectors each time they enter their school. Fernando Aveta, a recent high school graduate, speaks about the Albuquerque police department's role at his school.

Fernando Aveta: In school there are cops. They usually have about one or two APD officers that stay at the school. That's their job. Now usually it's retired cops that are at the schools. Kids do get arrested. Now if you get in a fight at all.if you get in a fight on campus.they will arrest you for a day until your parents come down there and pick you up. They no longer deal with that in counseling sessions or mediation or anything like that. If you get into a fight, you get taken to the D-home. And a lot of times when there's a fight, just little scuffle or whatever, APD is called in, so I mean that can be like three cop cars at the school for one little fight.

Lisa Rudman: Many new laws make it difficult for youth to walk the streets or enter businesses. The Coronado Mall in Albuquerque, for example, prohibits youth under the age of twenty-one from being in groups of two or more. Aveta says that with anti-loitering laws in place, young people can rack up a criminal record simply for hanging out.

Fernando Aveta: I mean it doesn't matter if you're a straight-A student or if you've never been in trouble or even carried a gun in your entire life, you get busted on West Central for loitering, kicking back in the first parking lot with a group of friends, well you have to go to court for that. You go to court for that. That's a misdemeanor. It goes on your record, for loitering after hours. So you got that on your record, okay? Albuquerque is a small city. There's not a whole lot to do. I mean, chances are, you're going to be on West Central the next weekend, cruising Central again. You get busted in the parking lot one more time, that turns into criminal trespassing. Criminal trespassing is a bigger charge, it goes on your record. You get busted again, you do jail time or you pay a $600 fine or whatever. I mean it's a snowball effect. You get all these little tiny things on your record, and they add up. So, I mean, the next time you go in front of the judge, they say, "You already got busted twice. I guess you don't listen to me. I guess you don't learn your lesson. I think you need to do ninety days in jail." That's one of the things is that their priorities are messed up here. I mean, there's absolutely nothing preventative.they're taking no preventative measures or rehabilitative measures. It's completely punitive.

Lisa Rudman: Patti Lee, Deputy Public Defender of the Juvenile Division in San Francisco:

Patti Lee: People are afraid. I mean, people are afraid of kids. People are afraid of kids of color. If you have two or three kids of color, and they're walking down the street, they're more likely to be stopped by the cops than say three white kids. You can be stopped for loitering. And what's loitering: standing for the purpose of criminal activity? It's a very subjective standard for the police officers. And it's easier for the police officers to stop kids of color because they're allegedly involved in gang activity, allegedly involved in loitering for the purpose of criminal activity. So it's an unfortunate statement on our society that we cannot work with our youth. It's an unfortunate statement of our society that we have to criminalize kids for being kids, for hanging out with each other, for going to a park where it used to be innocent activity. Now, if you have kids of color going to a park, the cops will automatically suspect that they're going to the park to engage in criminal activity, in fighting or drug sales. And so, you have cops stopping kids for no reason at all, merely for being together, and conducting searches where they aren't even justified.

Lisa Rudman: The fear of young people of color is evidenced by the nationwide phenomenon of "gang profiling." Most cities and states across the country keep a list of alleged gang members and have harsher punishments for youth suspected of being in a gang. The criteria police departments use to identify alleged gang members vary greatly and are often quite loosely defined. Fernando Aveta of the Southwest Organizing Project:

Fernando Aveta: What we have here is.we have a citywide gang list. And if you get caught, and a cop is suspicious that you may be gang member, they'll put you on a gang list. And if they pull you over.I mean, I guess it gives them more of a right or whatever to search your car for guns or drugs or whatever. And so they use this gang list a lot of times. And a lot of the kids on that gang list aren't gang members. As a matter of fact, the gang unit, if you ask them what their definition of a gang and a gang member is, they don't have one. Basically, how they know is that the stereotypical gang member is wearing baggy pants, is a young person of color and has a lot of tattoos. I mean, that's all they know. And the crackdown's pretty bad. I mean the harassment is constant, It's an everyday thing to get pulled over for the way you look. Or questioned about your tattoos. Me, myself, I have a tattoo on my hand the Mi Vida Loca tattoo on my hand. And every time I get pulled over, I get questioned about what gang I'm from. And whether I'm being a hundred percent respectful or not, I'm usually asked to get out of my car and searched and having my car searched and stuff like that. Basically, it gives these police probable cause to do whatever they want.

Stephanie Welch: You're listening to Making Contact, a production of the National Radio Project. If you'd like to get in touch with us, we'll be giving out our toll free number at the end of this broadcast.

Lisa Rudman: According to some analysts, young women and girls are the fastest growing populations in juvenile halls. Shereen Marisol Meraji from the National Radio Project's Women's Desk has more.

Shereen Meraji: Twenty-two year old Lateefah Simon spent time on probation as a juvenile. She is now executive director of the Center for Young Women's Development. An organization run by and for young women in Juvenile Hall and on the streets of San Francisco. She says it's difficult to understand the situation of young women in the juvenile justice system without looking at the economic stresses they face.

Lateefah Simon: A lot of young women are trying to make money to feed their families and they're out there. And they're selling dope. They're trying to survive. There's a misconception that girls are just seen as sort of stealing clothes and getting locked up. No. We're finding that girls are being locked up for economical means. You know, being a young person, having a family, you're the only person who's going to make money for that family. You need to pay your rent. You're getting evicted from your house. You're fourteen. There's an underground street economy that's right there, and you can make money. And for the most part we're seeing that girls are being locked up for a very long time, for very, very, very small amounts of possession.

Shereen Meraji: Vincent Schiraldi, Director of the Justice Policy Institute, says that girls are serving time for different types of offenses than boys.

Vincent Schiraldi: Girls are tending to get locked up more for status offenses, which are acts which would not be considered crimes if they were adults, so like running away from home, truancy and curfew violations. In fact, being a runaway is the only category of arrest for which girls outnumber boys. Boys grossly outnumber girls in the violent crime category, But girls outnumber boys in the runaway category. So what's the profile going that's gong on there? Well very often, we have girls that are getting sexually molested either by a foster parent or in a group home or sometimes in their own natural homes. And they've asked for help. They haven't gotten help, so they runaway from home. So there tends to be this cycle of runaways. And then the judges get frustrated, and they lock the girls up. So girls are getting locked up for much less violent behavior. In addition to the status offenses, they tend to get locked up more for property offenses like petty theft and the like.

Shereen Meraji: Schiraldi adds that although stereotypical expectations of young women often play a role in court, actual gender specific experiences are not taken into consideration in juvenile justice system programs.

Vincent Schiraldi: There's much more of a chance that they'll be locked up for less violent behavior, sort of on the theory that "boys will be boys," but if a girl's misbehaving maybe it's a more serious activity. I think it's a sort of paternalistic theory in a lot of ways and really backward thinking. And so the girls tend to be locked up for less violent behavior than boys do. And, unfortunately, there are many less services that are girl-specific available to them.

Lateefah Simon: In San Francisco alone, I mean I think there's more than a 150 programs for young people in the juvenile justice system.

Shereen Meraji: Lateefah Simon:

Lateefah Simon: However, a very small amount of them are addressing the needs of young women and girls. And those needs are vast. From very early childhood sexual abuse to very, very long generations of just systemic poverty, lack of education, lack of self-worth. You know, we come out of our families feeling like nothing, and the juvenile justice system just does not address that, does not address like the limitations in the school systems, the juvenile justice system and our educational system. When I was doing all the things that I had to do, they had not idea why I had to work eight hours a day. So I got kicked out of high school. They had no idea that, you know what, I was paying the rent for my family.

Shereen Meraji: Youth advocates point out that teen pregnancy is often the result of sexual assault by older men from a girl's family or neighborhood. Eighty to ninety percent of girls in juvenile detention facilities are survivors of sexual assault. According to Lateefah Simon, trauma from sexual abuse often goes untreated.

Lateefah Simon: People aren't looking at the massive rates, as we said before, of sexual abuse. Many of the young women who go into juvenile hall, many of them have STDs. Many of them have been abused as early as three and four. And there's one psyche nurse in San Francisco's Juvenile Hall for about 450 kids. So if you can imagine that. If you are suicidal and you're a young women and the psyche nurse can't come up to see you, they strip you and they put on sort of a carbon outfit so can't strangle yourself. And they put you in a cold room no bra, no panties, no food for twenty-four hours. That's the kind of treatment girls and young women are going through. It's just like a tragic thing that our social structures aren't addressing. The fact that there is this sort of infinite imbalance of power in relationships between young women and their families all over this country. And what happens when that's ignored? What happens when any crisis is ignored? It blows up.

Shereen Meraji: For Making Contact and the Women's Desk, I'm Shereen Marisol Meraji.

Lisa Rudman: Production assistance on the Women's Desk segment was provided by Victoria Fernandez, Bessa Kautz, Rosie Reyes, Laura Rainville and Tsadae Neway.

Lisa Rudman: Although the original intent of the juvenile justice system was rehabilitation, the present system is not equipped to handle the emotional needs of its youth, says Vincent Schiraldi.

Vincent Schiraldi: The National Mental Health Association did a report this year that showed that a quarter to a third of kids in many juvenile institutions who are locked up have serious mental disorders and mental health issues. These facilities are completely unequipped to handle these kids. I mean a facility I toured recently in Maryland, the Cheltenham Youth Detention Center, you know they have a psychiatrist passes through every once in awhile, but that's about it. And the kids have to be sort of flamboyantly psychotic in order to get any kind of treatment. Kids who are coming down off of drug addictions, for example heroin addictions, are made to detox in general population. They don't take care of their needs. Kids who are diagnosably paranoid or manic depressive or depressed are just called whiners and left to the general population to be victimized by some of the more predatory kids. It's a nightmare for those kids.

Lisa Rudman: According to Patti Lee, Deputy Public Defender of the Juvenile Division in San Francisco, many youth have special mental health needs that are overlooked in their school. She says that youth often fail to receive the testing that would place them in a school setting that is right for their needs. When they act out in frustration to their situation, they receive sentences instead of support. As one example, Lee cites a young man who she describes as having ADHD (attention deficit hyperactive disorder).

Patti Lee: I have one young man that I'm working with now who was in a day treatment program. He is ADHD, he cannot go out alone at all. Basically cannot care for himself. And he's charged with pushing a teacher. And he is now in jail. He should not be in jail. He should be in a mental health treatment facility. And that's a prime example of what our educational process is not doing for our kids. They're saying, "We don't want to deal with 'em. Here, you deal with 'em. Lock 'em up." It's easier to forget about these kids.

Lisa Rudman: All across the United States, officials at the federal, state and municipal levels are making funding decisions that prioritize punishment over prevention, that cut back on education and mental health services while creating more avenues for locking kids up. Patti Lee:

Patti Lee: A number of our kids that come through that have mental health needs, and that's a large proportion of the youth that I work with, are being dumped into the juvenile justice system through the schools because they're acting up in school. They may be destroying property. They may be involved in fights. They may be self-medicating. And so the authorities, that being police, teachers, mental health professionals, are transferring the kids into the juvenile justice system. And I think that's more out of frustration with the lack of resources in their own system, with the educational system or mental health system. And they're looking at the juvenile justice system as an easy way to get rid of these kids.

Lisa Rudman: In 1980, Florida granted prosecutors the power to determine whether a youth will be tried as a juvenile or tried as an adult. Many states are following Florida's lead. California, for example, is considering a similar change in juvenile justice policy that would allow kids as young as fourteen to be tried as adults.

Vincent Schiraldi did an extensive study on the Florida system for the Justice Policy Institute. He says that this is not a system that we want to export to the rest of the country. He gives an example of how the Florida system failed one young man.

Vincent Schiraldi: During the process of doing this report, we came upon the case of a kid named Anthony Lastra. Anthony was borderline mentally retarded. He was in a special school for his learning disability. He was fifteen years old. His mom had died a few weeks before. His grandfather, who was the only male role model, had died that summer. His mom died in November. And then Anthony in December said he was hungry; asked another kid in the school for two dollars. When the other kid didn't give it to him, Anthony stuck his hand in the kid's pocket and stole the two dollars. No gun; no knife; didn't beat the kid up. And then the principal handed the case over to the police department, instead of handling it in the principal's office. The police handed it to the DA. The DA decides to try the kid as an adult under their zero tolerance policy. So he spends the next six weeks locked up. Four of those weeks, he was locked up in an adult jail, including Christmas. The first Christmas since his mom dies, he spends locked up in adult jail. He had no prior record. This was his first offense. It was just theft of two dollars out of another kids pocket. Again, I'm not saying that's okay, but that's not something you try a kid as an adult for. But in Florida, they have that power.

Lisa Rudman: Schiraldi adds that going to an adult prison has serious and lasting effects on a young person.

Vincent Schiraldi: And when you put these young people in these institutions, just horrible things happen to them. And if for one second your listeners can just put themselves in the place of a parent whose kid might be in an adult jail or in an adult prison, you don't have to hear me give statistics about where your fear would go. You know exactly what you would be afraid of if your son or daughter or nephew or brother were put in an adult jail or adult prison. You'd be horrified. You'd be paralyzed with fear and you would fight like heck to keep your kid out of there.

What's happened now is that when you put kids in these adult institutions, they are five times as likely to be sexually assaulted and eight times as likely to commit suicide as kids held in juvenile institutions. When you put a kid in a cell with an adult, he gets a role model. And the kids who're coming out very often, much more likely to re-offend than they are if they are kept in the juvenile system.

Lisa Rudman: Part of the reason that the juvenile justice system in the United States was originally deemed a success was its low recidivism rate. Most of its youth never returned and went on to become active members of society.

Lateefah Simon of the Center for Young Women's Development says that in order for there to be long lasting success, programs need to address the economic pressures that push kids towards crime.

Lateefah Simon: You know what saved me, what saved so many young women who've come through the doors of the Center was the fact that, you know what, each day we had a job--not just the Taco Bell job. But, you know what, we were getting paid because we were brilliant. Because we had street smarts, we got paid nine dollars an hour starting off. Fourteen year olds, thirteen year olds. That beats...you know, we'd compete with $300 a day selling crack, you know what I mean? And if programs are created and implemented, we've shown at the Center for Young Women's Development, we've reduced the recidivism rate of the young women that we work with by 100%. No one has went back to jail. No one has went back to jail in the past two years. And how have we done that, because whatever...if you give an opportunity for young women to organize their community, to get paid for it, to move boundaries, to call city hearings to confront the police commission. There's a sense of power in that and, you know, why would you want to go back? Because, you know what, you have a community of strong activists, strong sisters that are around you. We want to duplicate our model. We think that it works.

Lisa Rudman: Patti Lee believes that there needs to be a unified, community-based model.

Patti Lee: I think the only successful model that I have seen work in San Francisco, and this is probably true for the rest of the nation, is to have kids assimilated back into their community. And to have agencies, probation officers, the courts, community advocates work, not only with the families, with the kids in their own homes and in their communities, but to work collectively with the educational system, with the mental health systems, with the medical system so that there can be a uniform plan in the community. And until you address the problems and the needs of families within their own communities, we're not going to be able to keep the kids on the right track and to direct them in the right way.

Lisa Rudman: For more information on juvenile justice systems and youth activism, contact the Prison Activist Resource Center at 510-893-4648 or visit their website at www.prisonactivist.org.

That's it for this edition of Making Contact: A Look at Youth and the Juvenile Justice System. Thanks for listening. This show was produced by Laura Rainville and Bessa Kautz of the National Radio Project's Prison Desk. Phillip Babich is managing producer. Laura Livoti is our managing director. Stephanie Welch is associate producer. Peggy Law is executive director. Norman Solomon is senior advisor. Our national producer is David Barsamian. Eli Rosenblatt is Prison Desk coordinator. Shereen Marisol Meraji is production assistant. Din Abdullah is archivist. And I'm your host and Women's Desk coordinator, Lisa Rudman.

If you want more information about the subject of this week's program, call the National Radio Project at 800-529-5736. Call that same phone number for tapes and transcripts. That's 800-529-5736. Making Contactt is an independent production. We're committed to providing a forum voices and opinions not often heard in the mass media. If you have suggestions for future programs, we'd like to hear from you. Our theme music is by the Charlie Hunter Trio. Bye for now.