Juvenile Justice in California: Facts & Issues
In 1994, the Little Hoover Commission
examined juvenile crime, its roots and its regulation in California,
in a seven-month study and issued a report emphasizing the importance
of the prevention of delinquency. The Commission noted that:
When the lives of troubled youths
are examined the triggers for their actions are multiple: Parents
have failed, schools have failed. The concept that there are consequences
linked to decisions and actions is not passed down to children.
Reinvigorating these elements of society so that they may provide
children with solid values and good decision-making skills requires
multiple strategies that can be put into place according to specific
needs of families, neighborhoods and communities.
Unfortunately the universal agreement that prevention is vital has been systematically undercut by a gradual but accelerating shift in spending patterns over the last two decades. That shift has seen the near elimination of early intervention and prevention programs and the mushrooming of "back-end" incarceration expenses....While tight fiscal constraints make it difficult to put prevention first, such a shift in priorities is crucial to halting the increasing amounts of violent juvenile crime. <11>
Many of the studies on intervention and prevention referred to in this report indicate that effective intervention/prevention must be multi-faceted and coordinated. Programs should be community based, culturally aware and designed for/by the community. Many models exist that can be adapted to a local community. Head Start and Healthy Start are two examples of effective, governmentally funded programs.
Dr. Peter Greenwood and others researchers at RAND found that one of the most cost effective and least punitive early interventions is parenting education and support for all new parents. There are many models: (Healthy Start in Hawaii, Parents as Teachers in Missouri, and Syracuse Family Development Research Project in New York) which, when linked with other programs, can be very cost effective.
Structured Educational Daycare or Preschool Programs
Three major controlled studies of early childhood education and
home visitation have tracked participants well into adolescence
and have shown that these interventions predict lower rates of
violence and crime.
The students of the Perry Preschool in Ypsilanti are probably
the most studied group of children in history. The project began
in 1962 when a classroom of three and four year old children in
Ypsilanti, Michigan were taught using the High/Scope Cognitively
Oriented curriculum. This program targeted children with below
average Intelligence Quotient (IQ) scores from low income African-American
families in a poor neighborhood.
The teacher met once a week with parent and child and encouraged the mother to do activities at home consistent with the curriculum. The study tracked the participants well into young adulthood. The group did better in school, were more likely to complete school, and had higher employment rates and half the arrest rate of a control group. Other results were fewer teen pregnancies and fewer participants on public assistance. Only 31 percent had been arrested or charged with a crime by age 19, as compared with 51 percent of the control group.
The Syracuse University Family Development Research Project recruited 108 deprived families to participate and tracked the participants for 15 years. All had incomes of less than $20,000 (in 1996 dollars), they were predominately African-American, the average age of the mothers was 18, and 85 percent were single heads of households. <12>
The program provided home visits, parenting education, child cognitive development activities along with center-based child care and a book and toy library. Only 6 percent of those enrolled in the project had juvenile records compared with 22 percent of the control group. Only one of those enrolled had a serious delinquent record compared to five in the control group. <13>
There is general agreement that a quality preschool program is good for all children, either full day if child care is required, or part day, if child care is not needed. <14>
Substance Abuse Treatment Programs for Parents
There is a need for good, free substance abuse programs for parents. <15>
Teenage Pregnancy
Many teenage mothers face a multitude of difficulties that interfere with their ability to be good parents - lack of maturity or family support, inadequate housing, finance, transportation and access to support services. These can lead to lack of appropriate medical care (both prenatal and for the child), failure to bond with the child, (which may lead to abuse or neglect), and poor performance in school so that the cycle starts again. <16>
Peter Greenwood and his associates and the U.S. Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP) both recommend interventions for school age children. As children enter elementary school they become more members of the community, and the entire community needs to be involved. Schools play a major role here.
OJJDP recently looked at written evaluations of 101 different programs, mostly school based, that make a difference. For the youngest children, classroom organization and management, recognition of learning styles, and integration of a social competence curriculum make a difference. PATHS (Providing Alternative Thinking Strategies) starts in kindergarten and attempts to reduce early antisocial behavior by integrating emotional, cognitive and behavior skill development. <17> It is important during the primary grades for the school and parents to work together to help the child succeed. <18>
Dr. Greenwood indicates that intervention is needed if the child is not reading at/near grade level by the end of third grade. This, coupled with anti-social playground behaviors and a sense of failure are signs of possible trouble to come. His recommendations concentrate more on developing parenting skills than on what happens in the classroom. <19>
Programs such as School Age Parenting and Infant Development (SAPID) can intervene and provide the support for these young mothers to stay in school, learn good parenting skills and provide stable homes for their children. A study of this program in Santa Monica program shows that 79 percent of the teen mothers who completed their high school requirements in the SAPID program continued on to higher education. Only 18 percent of these students had a second pregnancy within two years while the national average for repeat pregnancies is 31 percent. In addition, the mothers reported that their participating children were more outgoing, learned and matured faster, and were calmer and more secure than they might have been without the program, or than subsequent non-participating children have been. <20>
Incentives: Quantum Opportunity Program
The Ford Foundation for the past four years has sponsored a program to help disadvantaged youths stay in school and go on to college. The Quantum Opportunity Program offered learning, development and service opportunities to these young people during four years of high school and provided modest cash and scholarship incentives to provide short-run motivation. Graduation incentives significantly increased high-school graduation and enrollment in college among the participants. Arrests for participating students were only three-tenths that of students in a control group. <21>
Drug Programs
Students who seriously abuse drugs or alcohol need early intervention, treatment, and follow-up services after treatment.Most effective treatment programs include the family in the program.
Gang Prevention
"Gangs fill a cultural void where there is an absence of other rites of passage moving to adulthood and an absence of adults modeling another way." <22> Gang prevention programs vary in content and approach. Three general strategies for preventing gang delinquency and violence have been attempted: discouraging youth from joining gangs, efforts to transform existing gangs into benign neighborhood clubs, and mediating and intervening in crisis conflict situations between existing gangs. Many include socially acceptable alternatives based on sports, music, drama or other interests, which are available, affordable, accessible and culturally appropriate. <23>
Other Strategies aimed at Teens at-risk of Delinquency
These include:
While these programs are divided into separate domains, the Little Hoover Commission Report indicates that a system should be devised for all to work together to lower risk factors and increase the protective factors. Efforts should be made at the state level to encourage multi-disciplinary prevention programs that are shaped by the needs of the community and not the funding stream, as so often happens now. <25>
Sharing of Information Between Agencies
One major problem recognized by the Little Hoover Commission report and many others is that regulations need to be revised to let agencies share information, while protecting the privacy of the child and family. <26> Current privacy regulations, while well intentioned to protect innocent children, often tie the hands of those who are trying to help. A child may currently be seen in dependency court as abused, her older brother may be supervised by a probation officer, a sister may be in a program for teen mothers, and none of their service providers are allowed to talk to each other, if they even know the other problems are happening. None of the service providers can talk to the schools and the schools cannot release some records without a court order and/or family permission. What many recommend is "wrap around" services with one lead agency coordinating all services, including such simple things as transportation to needed services, as is recommended in Family Preservation programs. When the efforts are aimed at providing services to the family and are not punitive in nature, stigmatization of the child can be avoided. <27>
Pedro Noguera, in his Wellness Foundation Lecture described the work of the public health reaserchers, in particular
epidemiologists, who have searched for the causes of youth violence.
They have been able to identify the types of people who are most
at risk, but also the locations and even the time at which violence
is most likely to occur. This analysis should help focus interventions
at specific populations and groups. The researchers found that
poverty, familial dysfunction, child abuse, community disorder,
racial discrimination, and the availability of guns greatly contribute
to the persistence of the youth violence.
Noguera states that, violence among young people must be understood
as more than just an expression of aggressive individual behavior.
It must be seen a part of a larger cultural phenomenon. Our society
glorifies and is entertained by violence. We should concentrate
research on, and develop interventions for, those segments of
the population that are most likely to be involved in violence
or become victims themselves. We need to analyze how violent behavior
may be produced in particular contexts through the interaction
of individuals and groups and the social environment.
Noguera studied young people at four San Francisco Bay Area middle
schools, two of which served primarily middle-class suburban students
and two of which served low-income urban students. He asked the
students how they experienced violence in their everyday lives
and how they might respond to violent situations.
For nearly all the students in the low-income urban school, violence
was seen as an unavoidable part of their social reality. When
confronted with situations in which violence was a strong possibility,
these students were less likely to consider calling upon an adult
for protection or help in resolving the dispute. Instead, they
were more likely to consider calling on friends or family for
backup, with some indicating that they would even consider arming
themselves for protection. These students felt that, eventually,
they must confront a challenger and that reporting the individual
to school authorities might only worsen the consequences. In contrast,
nearly all of the middle-class students at both suburban schools
felt that they could rely upon an adult to intervene and prevent
a violent confrontation.
Noguera stated that urban school environments need to change.
Conflict resolution and anger-control techniques are generally
not effective in situations where others are operating by a different
set of rules and expectations.
<28>
He described an urban middle school
in Oakland, California, that successfully changed the environment
to provide the students with a sense of security and stability.
All students were offered three free meals a day. Coats and shoes
were available for those who needed them. The school day was extended
with tutoring, photography and recreational programs.
Campus security was provided by a member of the community, who was respected by the students and knew their life experiences. Alternatives to suspensions were used. The teachers taught ethical and moral issues within their classroom. In the evenings and on weekends, the site was used by community organizations that provide services to children and the community. In the 1992-93 school year, this school was the only one in Oakland at which no weapons had been confiscated from students. <29>
Noguera concluded his lecture by saying:
Finally, if we acknowledge that youth violence is really a symptom of a larger societal preoccupation with violence, then we must stop allowing kids, particularly minority youth, to be scapegoated for this problem. Young people living in our nation's ghettos have no control over the availability of guns or the flow of drugs into their communities. They cannot influence film-makers and producers who exploit our national obsession with violence through their movies and television programs. And young people certainly have no control over the availability of jobs and educational opportunities or the continued deterioration of urban areas. We must hold young people responsible for their actions and apply clear consequences for misdeeds and violent behavior, but we must also recognize that these youth did not create the conditions in which violence flourishes. We can do a much better job of preventing youth violence, but to do so we must begin by acknowledging our collective responsibility for challenging the cultural influences and social and economic conditions that foster and promote it. <30>
Status Offenders are juveniles who commit an offence only by virtue
of their status as minors. These offenses are truancy from school,
running away, breaking curfew, being out of control of parents
or guardians or incorrigible (in danger of becoming delinquent).
In 1974, the Federal Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act mandated that status offenders should not be held in locked facilities, and should not be housed in the same institutions as delinquents. This was "deinstitutionalization of status offenders." The intent was to:
1. decrease the probability that status offenders would become criminal offenders,
2. make existing ways of handling troubled youth more humane,
3. give status offenders some level of due process, and
4. promote the development of community-based rehabilitation services
for them.
The Act created the Office of Juvenile Justice Programs and Delinquency
Prevention, within the Department of Justice. This office conducts
research and provides grants to agencies and organizations in
those states that passed laws to deinstitutionalize status offenders.
There was no requirement that states do so or that community-based
services be set up.
Runaways
Some of these children return to their homes and the problems
can be resolved with a minimum of counseling, but for others returning
home is not an option. Short term shelters provide for those who
can return home, but longer term arrangements need to be provided
for those who cannot. Some of these young people have special
needs: those who have been sexually abused and need to re-establish
their sense of self worth, those who are not welcome back in their
home because they have "come out" as gay or lesbian,
and those that are simply not wanted.
Kate Fogel of the California Child Youth and Family Coalition estimates that 20,000 to 25,000 youth are homeless, in California on any given night. <31> These are young people with no means of support, no place to stay. They are often victims as well as perpetrators of crime. Truancy, another status offence, is discussed under the Role of California Schools.
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