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Kids and Crime: Inside Juvenile
Justice
It may sound grim, but Katelyn Holick wrote her own eulogy this year - and liked it. Holick, 16, was participating in a crime-diversion program called SHORTSTOP at the Long Beach Courthouse, a two-night course targeting first-time juvenile offenders. Referred there after fighting with a girl at Lakewood High School, Holick said she didn't know what to expect of the course - which uses so-called "scared-straight" tactics in conjunction with homework assignments, all designed to point out the dangers of criminal life, bring children closer to their families and instill them with a sense of self-esteem. Writing her own eulogy was one of Holick's assignments, and she remembers it as being one of the most helpful aspects of the program. "I didn't really think of myself in a positive way," she said. "And when I had to, I thought, 'Wow, I'm not that bad."' She said her father, a single parent, also wrote a eulogy for her as part of his own homework. "It made me cry," she added. Holick said the program, which is funded by the nonprofit Long Beach Bar Foundation, wasn't easy but that it was worth it. "Last year I was getting into a lot of trouble," she said. "This year, I'm doing a lot better." More than 4,000 children have attended SHORTSTOP since its inception 14 years ago, Executive Director Carolyn Bell said. About 80 percent of attendants successfully complete the program, she said, and have their records cleared as a result. Of those, 90 percent do not reoffend within the first year, according to SHORTSTOP's own tracking data. Bradford Andrews, a retired supervising judge for the Long Beach Courthouse, said SHORTSTOP is among the city's most valuable anti-crime programs, particularly because it targets children after their first run-ins with the law. "Any time you can take a kid and just turn them around when they start down that path," Andrews said, "that's good for everybody." Run by volunteer attorneys, SHORTSTOP begins by putting all participating youth in orange jumpsuits, assigning them numbers and sticking them in a jury box in a real courtroom. The attorneys then single out the minors, one by one, forcing them to talk about how they'd broken the law. The attorneys are direct, sometimes harsh, in their interrogations. They skillfully cut through lies, identify excuses and insist that each child think about the consequences of his or her actions. |
One recent night, two Long Beach attorneys - Barbara McDaniel and Susan Laskoff - stood before 11 children, seven boys and four girls between the ages of 13 and 15. Most had been cited for fighting or vandalism. One girl, a 13-year-old dubbed "No. 33," had been caught buying marijuana on campus and tried to claim she didn't smoke it. "Yeah you smoke it!" McDaniel asserted. "You can lie to your mom, but you can't lie to us. We know better." McDaniel then turned to others in the group. "Raise your hand if you believe her," she told them. No one did. "If they don't believe you," McDaniel continued, "how do you expect anyone else to believe you?" Following the interrogations, the kids were paraded into a courthouse holding cell, where former inmates of the California Youth Authority, now called the Division of Juvenile Justice, attempted to give them a taste of life inside a juvenile prison. As the kids and their parents crammed into the cell, the young men yelled at the kids, their barrage of insults laced with profanity. They talked of regular violence at the prison and a "food chain" in which the most ruthless, hardened criminals are at the top. It was both an intense and depressing look at the worst possible sentence in the juvenile justice system. At the end, attorneys sent the kids home with a thick packet of homework. They were told to write essays on what they did and why; list their short-term and long-term goals; assume they had died and write eulogies for their own funerals; interview business professionals about what it took to achieve their levels of success; eat six sit-down meals with their families; pen letters of apology; and plan how they would pay back their parents for the program - whose cost, $100, is subsidized based on need. "We never turn any family away," Bell said, adding that although SHORTSTOP participants are referred by the courts and schools, the program may be accessed directly by parents. The kids return two weeks later for the second night of the program - which offers a stark contrast to the first. Out of the 11 kids who attended the class run by McDaniel and Laskoff, seven attended the second night. Participants wore their own clothes and were called by their first names. They sat on one side of the courtroom, while their parents sat on the other. McDaniel and Laskoff smiled and joked, offered praise and encouragement. Some of the homework assignments were pulled out and read. The biggest difference was how many children, who denied their culpability on the first night, later made heartfelt confessions in their essays. One boy, a tagger who uses the moniker "Sneezy," wrote about how he sometimes felt he had an angel on one shoulder and a devil on the other. "I listened to the devil," he wrote. He also articulated his willingness to change, his belief that he had let down his mother and his hope that she wouldn't blame herself for his mistake. "I'm sorry, Mom," he wrote. "Can you forgive me, Mom?" After reading the boy's essay aloud, Laskoff turned to the parents in the courtroom and asked for his mother to identify herself. A woman in the back row raised her hand, but she needn't have. Everyone knew who she was by the tears welled in her eyes. |
