A second chance... can you imagine:
-- what it must be like to expect to have NO adult life?
-- to expect NOT to live to see your 17th birthday?
-- to permanently lose contact with your parents before your 11th birthday?
-- never to be able to read a newspaper, a magazine, just a plain old good
book, or even the Bible?
-- never to have any children nor any hope of having a family or a steady job?
-- to get up in the morning to stand on a street corner and sell drugs?
-- to only ever know the touch of a "john" and expect to die of age at 25?
-- to have so little respect for others that even the slightest wrong look from a passerby
and you pull out a weapon and murder them because you were "DIS-ed"??
Quietly, during the past three years, ACSA has been testing the possibility: can
PC's and Multimedia software sufficiently brighten the horizons of young
juvenile delinquents early in the cycle of crime and poverty, that they might
be able to be convinced to return to the Educational System, while they are in
the Detention Center, before they enter the Juvenile Probation System, and not
to continue on to the DEAD END ROAD to criminal oblivion.
In our urban areas today and in our suburban areas, vast numbers of our teenagers
enter the Juvenile Justice system. They enter it the hard way. And, they often
never really leave. They live to have a BMW and a "stone crib" by age 17, to get it
all before they die at age 19.
They become entangled, when they are at a vulnerable age, with the greed and
peer pressure fulmented by drug dealers, the rackets and the promise of fast
cash, fast lifestyle and golden image.
They become the cannon fodder of the crime syndicates, who have little if any
regard for them other than as cannon fodder. The syndicates view them as "tools"
towards an end as they distribute opiates from mainland China and coca drugs from
Latin America. Life is very transitory - few last longer than a few months or years,
those who do become leaders who are murdered when the next stronger generation tries
to take the top of the hill.
In Gangsterland America - a city block is the pantheon of territoriality - living a life
between the bulls, the competing gangs, the police and societal demands - a rough and
unenjoyable lifesytle emerges which has very little respect for reality, fellow humanity
or human rights.
According to studies, the average youth gang member joins at age 7 and has a
life expectancy of around 7 years or less. For reasons of ignorance, ill health,
drug abuse and lack of parental guidance, the Youth of America have become
rampant with criminal behavior, because they are children, without either the wisdom
nor the experience neccessary to judge what they are getting involved in.
Most of them end up for lengthy periods in Juvenile Justice Centers. The problem is,
as soon as we take them in we are exposing them to a two party system - the guards and
the inmates. On one side of the wall, the guards (the bulls) rule. On the other, the
inmates. In such a world, given the choice, they choose the more immediate survival
by abiding the rules of the inmates. Upon leaving the "system" we throw them right back
out onto the street to car phone their drug orders in, pickup payments and we do nothing
to re-educate them, nothing to really restrict them except for threats of further
incarceration. In fact- the real thing they fear is being "offed" by the competing gangs,
time "in the slam" is merely an inconvenience to youth at risk.
We are all beneficiaries of the "System". We are also the taxpayers who pay
for the "System". It's a mess. It doesn't do what its supposed to. We have known for
some time that boot camps and inside education are a neccessity. Yet - we seem to pay only
lip service to the consequences of today's hamstringing and straight jacketing of the
juvenile justice system.
What have we done ?
The operators of our Detention Centers, when questioned by ACSA, are agonized by the
futility of the task before them. "These kids have more money than we do, they park
the BMW and leave their gold jewelry out in the parking deck, then we incarcerate them,
they leave their car phones at the front desk", said one Detention Center Chief in
Central New Jersey.
In order to deal with this situation, we cannot simply ask our Detention
Center operators to work miracles, if we don't give them the tools they need.
Among those tools are educational means by which to convince, even if
only a few, of the youth in detention to get themselves back into School
and out of the CFS (cannon fodder syndicate).
Today, multimedia computers are used in Schools at the High School Level,
and increasingly, the Internet is being used, to expand the contact between
students and the outside world. Remove these blinders and by widening the
experience and horizons of the child, you remove the first obstacle: being
blinded by the "substitute parent" and financial inducement offered by the
CFS. For the first time, the child sees an alternative life path that could
be theirs: respectability, education, family and rewards formerly not available.
This applies even more so to the youth at risk early in the cycle, as they are
teetering on the border of the decision: "Crime vs. School". Tip the balance
one way or the other and you stand a chance in redeeming the child from the CFS,
redirecting them away from the "Gangsta" life style, leading them forward into a
quality life, and showing them that the life of crime is the worst choice they
can make.
It really is a very simple, straight-forward formula. The real obstacle is
finding the proper leader/educator to inspire the kids to press the first few
keystrokes.
Boot camps may work for the more hardened criminal youth gang members,
but unless we provide these kids with an opportunity to, on their own,
realize the possibilities OTHER THAN gangstership for their lives, they
won't give up the CFS. They are hard core cynics - they know no one cares.
We have to demonstrate we do care to these kids - particularly when they
go out, come to our front door and hold us at gun point - taking our lives,
our property and our families' lives.
We blame them. They alone are not the only ones we should blame -
we must blame ourselves for not doing enough.
A multimedia computer today costs around $1200, a video monitor for it,
around $250. They can be installed, in workgroups at Detention Centers
in groups of 4 ($5,800), 8 ($11,600) and 16 ($23,200). An Internet Line can
be rented and a LAN installed for an additional thousand or two. This is
less money than it cost a single civilian who has been harmed by a gang member
in life, limb or property !
And classes can be held right in the Detention Centers.
There are hundreds of educational and enlightenment oriented multimedia CDs
around that can be used. On the Internet, Zoos, Colleges, Government, Museums,
Art Galleries and Reference Libraries can be visited in real time. We can
train an educator to do the job. We need to combine the computer with someone
who can do the job, someone with experience coping with the other problems
associated with dealing with early cycle and hard core youth gang members and
juvenile delinquents.
There are 1900+ Detention Centers we believe could make
a world of a difference in the USA if they can reach out and touch only even
a moderate percentage of the kids passing through the system.
This could be a remarkable tool for generating interest in living a real life,
for these kids.
We can teach remedial reading, math even science topics to show them some of
the possibilities of life they hadn't considered. Touch the right chord and
you never know what latent Faraday, Einstein or Louis Pasteur might be out
their. Kids are our greatest single resource.
Most kids in Detention don't know how to read, even though none would admit it.
They're not stupid - they just never learned. They dropped out too soon.
Most of these kids already know how to operate a video game. So why not
leverage that skill? There is a lot of peer pressure among kids today to be
proficient in computers, so why not leverage that pressure, particularly with
kids who would not normally have computers at home to use.
Our studies of indigent kids have determined that a breakthrough is possible
in only 20 hours of exposure.
We have had interns with juvenile deliquency backgrounds who have become
productive and excited members of society, who were taught how to take apart
and put a PC together, and given access to Multimedia and the Internet,
with no special education. They took to it like a fish to water.
We have concluded: Kids really want this. But because they live in underprivileged
and poverty stricken households, the only thing they learn is about gangstership
from Gangsta Rap on MTV and succomb to peer pressure, and recruitment from the
opportunistic CFS. Its time to intervene! They need our help.
Before its too late, lets give these kids A SECOND CHANCE.
Email? Send Email to Constable Kroboth at
ACSA's [click here]
address: 72662.133@compuserve.com