Let Them Not Die in Vain

 

Their photos on the front page of the Las Vegas Review-Journal told numerous stories as the tragedy along I-15 began to unfold. Six young teenagers were cleaning up trash along the median just northeast of Las Vegas as a form of restitution for minor offenses when a young woman lost control of a minivan, ran into the median and hit them.  

To me there are many lessons to be learned here and in the aftermath of this horrible event I often have difficulty writing about it.  I mourn for these kids and for their families.  But we must probe much deeper in order to understand what happened and why.  We must go beyond the understandable anger and sadness experienced by the families, along with the finger-pointing at Clark County Family and Youth Services, Silver State Disposal (who were paying for the trash pickup) and the driver of the car.  Not to mention charges that this was a Achain gang@ out there picking up trash. (I don=t particularly like the idea of them being out there picking up trash either, but we need to dig a little deeper that this. Besides, if you want to know about Achain gangs@ read up on their history during the first half of the 20th century.  Now those were chain gangs!) We must use this tragedy as a learning experience and see if it can help us prevent such tragedies in the future.  To focus on the perpetrator, the question of Achain gangs,@ etc. diverts us from more important questions. 

 

The Lessons to be Learned

 

The first lesson to be learned here comes directly from the Review-Journal photos themselves (four appeared in the March 21 issue and two more in the March 22 issue).  I want to urge the reader to recall these photos.  Did they fit the typical image of the "super-predator" or "gang-banger" we hear so much about?  To me they did not.  They looked like the children you see next door, across the street, riding in the school bus, playing ball in the park, doing the thousands of ordinary things kids do. 

After more than 30 years of research, writing and teaching about the subject of juvenile delinquency, I see these faces and they do in fact reflect the typical "delinquent" that is processed through the juvenile justice system every day of every year.  Most people do not realize this, as most probably have an image of the typical "delinquent" as some sort of a "monster" that people fear.  To the contrary, they look like those on the front pages of the Review-Journal.  I am looking at the faces now, as I write, and I see the look of innocence, immaturity, naiveté - just like our own children and like we were when we were that age.

A second lesson to be learned from this is the crimes they committed.  Things like curfew violation, truancy, petty larceny, violation of parole/probation and the like.  We have chosen, in this country, to respond to youthful indiscretions through a "juvenile court" (sometimes called "family court") that was created in 1899 in Chicago and Denver.  In recent years the juvenile justice system has been accused (wrongly) of being too lenient and so a "get tough" movement has taken over.  One result is that minor indiscretions (and this is what they are - "indiscretions" - a very normal adolescent form of behavior that all of us committed at least once when we were that age) that once were handled informally (e.g., police releasing with a warning, fights at school being handled within the school, family conflicts handled by the family and/or relatives, etc.) are now being formally processed, thus clogging the system so much that it barely has time to deal with the really serious crimes and truly problematic youth.  Upon the passage of various "get tough" laws, officials look in vain to find the "super-predators" and, finding few, end up targeting minor offenders.  I call it the Atrickle-down@ effect.  We want to formalize everything, we want to punish the most minor of offenses committed by kids - recall the headline-grabbing 9-year-old Afelon@ who wrote the initials of him and his friends on a sidewalk.

A third lesson concerns the general issue of "community service" and "restitution" as alternative approaches to responding to minor offenders.  It is unfortunate that, after 11 years and thousands of hours (30,352 to be exact) spent cleaning up trash and other forms of community service, such a tragedy occurs and casts a negative light toward this type of sentencing.  All over the country, literally millions of minor offenders can be seen participating in various forms of community service and restitution programs.  These consistently have a very high success rate. It is extremely rare when something goes wrong in such programs.  Until this tragedy, the most serious accident in this particular program has been getting stickers from cactus in the fingers, minor scratches from rocks, etc.   Currently we are experiencing a very predictable response by many members of the community concerning why they were out there in the first place. The Review-Journal, in their editorial of March 21, stated that such "chain gangs" are not the way to respond to youthful crimes.  It appears that this paper, along with many people in Las Vegas, never said anything about this before.  Why does it take such a tragedy to notice something? 

A fourth lesson is one which may not be very popular at this point in time.  There is another actor in this scenario: the young woman driving the car.  While she obviously should be held accountable, the easy way out (and we as a society often take this route) is to seek vengeance against and lock her up in a prison cell for the rest of her life.  The D.A. =s office is already pushing the limits, with a dubious charge of Adriving under the influence@ (to my knowledge there is no scientific evidence that 2 Ananograms@ of marijuana per milliliter of blood makes someone impaired). 

We need to look deeper and ask what led this young woman to this point in her life. Many people might want to know more about her, such as: What about her background, her family?  What was she doing working as a nude dancer, at the age of 20? (She just turned 21 a few days after the accident.)  What does this say about the opportunities for women in this society, where they can make so much more money dancing naked than most other jobs?  What led her to engage in this life style to begin with?  Several people have written letters on her behalf, telling about the kind of person she is and how she would never harm anyone intentionally.  And what will we accomplish by years of imprisonment?  Will it bring back these kids?  I don=t claim to have the answers to these questions and I don=t claim to have the perfect type of sentencing either.  But certainly we can come up with something a bit more creative than a long prison term.  Is there any other way she can make reparations to the families of these kids?

The fifth, and perhaps most important, lesson to be learned here is the very nature of Adelinquency@ and what we should be doing about it.  This deserves some special attention.

 

What is ADelinquency@?

 

Every time I teach a course on delinquency I begin with one very simple observation: the entire class consists of former Adelinquents@!  This is because there are so many different kinds of behaviors that are covered in local and state legal statutes that it would be almost impossible for someone not to violate them, especially while under the legal age of 18 (in some states it is 17).  Some of the most common offenses come under the general heading of Astatus offenses.@  These are offenses that apply only to those under the legal adult age.  Examples include running away from home, curfew violation, truancy, and the all-encompassing categories known variously as Abeyond control,@ Aunmanageable,@ Adefying parental authority,@ Aincorrigible,@ Aunruly@ and the like.  Some states have such acronyms as Chins (Children in Need of Supervision - used here in Nevada - which includes running away, truancy, curfew and unmanageable), MINS (minors in need of supervision) and even Fins (families in need of supervision). 

These status offenses typically constitute anywhere between 15-20 percent of all referrals to juvenile court during a given year.  In 1998 (the most recent year where offense data are available) these offenses accounted for 17% of all charges against juveniles in the Clark County Juvenile and Family Court Services. Note that I used the word Acharges@ here, and did so for a specific reason.  The reason is that during any given year, in one juvenile court after another, thousands of children are brought in simply because they were victims of some form of abuse or neglect.  In 1998, just over 8,000 such cases were referred to Court Services, up from about 6,500 in 1994.  Although about 60% are not substantiated upon further investigation, which still leaves a rather large number of kids who are abused and/or neglected each year.  The division of Child Protective Services handles more than 35,000 telephone calls each year concerning some form of abuse or neglect; an average of 96 per day!  In Child Haven (which provides temporary housing for abused and neglected kids) the average daily population was around 133 in 1999, a two-thirds increase over 1994.

It is important to underscore the issue of abuse and neglect for one very important reason: when it comes to the kind of youthful offender we fear the most - the chronic, violent offender - chances are extremely high that this person began their Acareer@ in crime with a few referrals to court because of abuse and/or neglect very early in life.  I recall being shown a print-out of one family, where the oldest was around 16 and the youngest around 6, with three in between.  The older children were now in court on serious charges - robberies, assaults, etc. - and each of them had abuse/neglect referrals when they were around 6 years old.  As for the 6-year-old?  You guessed it: he was in on an abuse charge.  You draw your own conclusions.

But perhaps the most important point to be made here is that the most serious juvenile offenders - the so-called Achronic violent predator@ or Asuper-predator@ - are rare.  All across the nation, we search in vain for these kinds of youths and discover that they usually constitute less than 3% of all juvenile offenders (but they dominate the headlines, making us think they are the norm).  Sometimes we are told that a certain percentage of youths referred to juvenile court are charged with Acrimes against the person@ or Aviolent crimes@ when in fact the majority of these Aviolent@ or Apersonal@ crimes are rather minor in nature - a fist fight, a fight between children and their parents, between siblings, a mere threat, etc.  In short, the kinds of personal confrontations that people of my generation used to get involved in all the time when we were young - and no police showed up, no referrals were made to court.  What happened?  The community itself handled it - the schools, neighbors, community groups, etc.  Even the police - like those where I grew up - handled these infractions through a stern lecture and a warning (chances are they knew you and/or your parents).

But nowadays we are driven by media images of the young Apredator@ or the rare killers on school campuses or the so-called Agang-bangers,@ and reacting as if this represents the typical youthful offender.  And so we want to Aget tough@ which means incarceration, including doing what is known as Acertification@ as an adult.  The results of this trend have been disastrous as the recidivism rates for those kids sent to the adult system is much higher than comparable youths who remain within the juvenile justice system.

Look at the faces of the children (and they were Achildren@ in every sense of the word) once again.  These are the kinds of faces I have seen all the times I’ve walked into a courtroom or wandered through detention, or roamed around Spring Mountain Youth Camp. And these are the faces that the probation officers work with every day - officers who handle a case-load of around 70 (in some jurisdictions the case loads are over 100).  These are the faces I have seen huddled together with the parents in the halls awaiting their court appearance.  And these are the faces of the kids who are there mostly because we as a society have decided to Aget tough@ and rely on juvenile courts to handle problems we should be handling within our own local institutions - our families, schools, churches, community groups, etc.  But we’ve gotten lazy and have said: Alet the court handle it@ or Await until you see the judge, he’ll straighten you out.@ 

 

What should be done?

 

First, I would like to remind the reader of what an agency like the Clark County Department of Family and Youth Services is all about and what they try to do - under incredible pressure and against overwhelming odds.  They have a system known as Agraduated sanctions.@  This means that with each appearance in the court, a youngster is provided with a range of possible dispositions and each time he/she comes into the court, the sanctions get a little more severe.  Fortunately, the majority of all those who come into the court system never return again.  (It should be noted that the majority of juveniles who commit a crime are never caught and they end up as normal adults without any interference by the authorities - we call this Amaturational reform@ - I see these people every day in my classes and I look at one every day in the mirror!)

One of the most common and popular types of dispositions/sanctions come under the general heading of restitution.  The rationale is simple: to the extent possible, the offender Amakes amends@ (a practice that goes back thousands of years by the way) by returning Ain kind@ what was taken away.  Like an automobile accident - you get your car repaired at the expense of the one who caused it (via insurance) - the offender repays the victim, either directly or indirectly (through various forms of work programs).  This is a practice that is becoming more and more popular all over the world, with a high success rate.

Through various forms of restitution programs, the amount of restitution paid to victims last year by juvenile offenders in Clark County came to $33,500 and since 1997 a total of $114,340 has been paid out.  Much of this was done through various 00 hours of community service.

One rationale for some forms of community service is that some programs consist of youthful offenders (who are often a little too self-centered) helping those less fortunate than themselves - senior citizens, the handicapped, the homeless, the sick.  In my opinion, this is not done nearly often enough.           

One type of program often overlooked is conducted through an agency called ANeighborhood Justice Center,@ a county operated program.  One example of what they do is known as Amediation.@  This is where the victim and the offender come face-to-face to work out their differences or for the offender to make direct amends.  Sometimes it merely involves two youths who have fought one another or one youth who has stolen something from another.  This type of program should be expanded.

An extremely successful type of program is known as the Detention Diversion Advocacy Program (DDAP), noted in some of the above essays.

 

Let Them Not Die in Vain

 

It is time we made some drastic changes in the way we handle crime and delinquency in this society. Space does not permit a more thorough examination of this problem than what I have already said here.  I am personally going to make an attempt to get a DDAP program going in Clark County soon.  But we need more.  We need to reach a point where no kids will be placed in harms way, where their problems will be handled within their own communities, and with the love and respect that they deserve. What if we have a thousand community volunteers (or five thousand or ten thousand) who would agree to be a sort of Acase worker@ for one of these kids referred to court? Let the trained probation officers and other court workers handle the most serious cases (how can they accomplish much with a case load of 70?).  We don=t need to Aget tough@ with these kids; we just need to Aget smart.@  

 

Las Vegas City Life, 4/6/2000            

                                               

Update: See the next essay about Jessica Williams called AThe Jessica Williams Case: Missing the Larger Picture.@  I attempted to get a DDAP program going in Clark County, going so far as writing a proposal.  Knowing a sponsoring agency outside of the juvenile justice system was needed, I turned it over to a non-profit youth service agency.  I regret to say that nothing ever came of my proposal.  I was never contacted about this.