State Loses Momentum in Curbing Delinquency

SACRAMENTO — California lost the momentum this year in its drive to keep kids from crime, as a host of promising prevention programs were bumped aside.

Already modest for the job at hand, support for an array of common sense efforts to turn children away from lives of crime lies in tatters, a casualty of common themes in Sacramento: money-shifting and partisan politics.

In September, toward the end of the legislative session, tens of millions of dollars proposed for juvenile crime prevention vanished when the state scrambled for money to repay a $1.3-billion debt to the Public Employees Retirement System.

Dueling juvenile crime programs by Republican Gov. Pete Wilson and Democratic legislators also took a toll. Tough Wilson-backed proposals died in Democratic-controlled committees; Wilson in turn vetoed a number of his rivals’ less punitive measures.

What does this mean in the real world of crime prevention?

In Los Angeles County, probation officers supervise more than 20,000 juvenile arrestees and wards of the court. But the county’s one state-assisted model prevention program, a pilot study begun last year, reaches a mere 35 or 36 families concentrated in the Long Beach area and now has little immediate hope of expanding its services beyond an experimental stage.

The program relies on state funds for 57% of its needs, which translated into a grant this year of $344,500, but that support could drop to $149,000 next year, said county probation budget analyst Thelma Harris. State budget analysts calculated similar totals over the two years.

Whatever the precise number, the amount represents a diminishing fraction of new money for outreach efforts that are widely acknowledged across political lines, and supported by research and public opinion polls, as crime fighting tools worth developing further.

A highly praised program based in Orange County under probation chief Mike Schumacher has found that certain characteristics recur in chronic juvenile offenders and that a substantial portion of those showing the danger signs can be diverted from crime.

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The characteristics apply to 8% of the county’s youths who get picked up by police for the first time and are turned over to probation authorities, studies show. They include a chaotic home life, patterns of failure in the classroom, frequent truancy, a tendency to steal and a predilection to run away from home, said Schumacher, who spoke at a legislative hearing in Van Nuys recently that explored solutions to youth crime.

Once identified, “8% solution” children can be surrounded with social and probation services--home counseling, special monitoring in school and even material help.

Results appear promising in the one comparison made of two groups of children in the 8% category, Orange County probation officials said. In one group, half the youngsters who received such services stayed out of crime. In the other group, which received no such services, 93% committed subsequent offenses and were rearrested.

The Los Angeles County project in Long Beach uses similar tools, although the crime-prone percentage rises to 16% and authorities are trying to find and divert possible offenders even before their first arrests, said probation consultant Roy Sakoda.

Early this year, state legislators proposed more than $200 million for county programs in California--four times as much as last year--that would offer close monitoring of troubled youths. But with the decision to repay the retirement fund debt, the $200 million shrank to $36 million, then bottomed out at $12 million in allocations, according to a bill analysis.

In the end, said Alan Clarke, who lobbies for county probation chiefs, “we got just a scratch” of what is needed to test and expand new techniques--family counseling, for example--for steering youths away from crime.

If prevention resources even remotely approached funds for detention, authorities say, results could be spectacular.

“Give me 1% of the [state prison] budget and I will give you a community corrections program in probation that will be the envy of the world,” said Los Angeles County probation chief Walter Kelly. California is spending $3.7 billion this year to run adult prisons.

As it is, Kelly said, his department’s prevention programs--consisting of the Long Beach pilot project and a locally funded anti-gang effort that reaches 3,000 youths--”touch only a portion of the target population.”

Another new state program aimed at diverting youths from crime--in which probation officers and schools team up to monitor behavior and keep children in class--could reach 5,000 to 6,000 youngsters in Los Angeles, analysts said. But first, the county must qualify for its share of $3.6 million being made available statewide.

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Overall--using old money and new--California last year spent about $140 million on programs with a component of juvenile crime prevention, most of it scattered across uncoordinated programs, according to David Steinhart. He is director of the Commonweal Juvenile Justice program based in Marin County, which advocates prevention and tracks related state legislation. This year, the total dropped to $100 million, he said.

Children who get into trouble in Los Angeles County tend to wind up in one of two government systems: detention for delinquent youths or, if they are abused or neglected, the county Department of Children and Family Services.

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Some delinquent children always slip through the cracks. Others, supposedly rescued from the streets or abusive homes, risk crossing over to criminal behavior while in county care, said Michael Nash, supervising judge of the Los Angeles Superior Court’s juvenile division.

“It’s a wonder anybody gets any attention, and that’s the biggest crime of all,” Nash said at the Van Nuys hearing.

Ideally, prevention programs would work to keep children out of both systems. But as a recent tour of some Los Angeles youth facilities made clear, they touch only fragments of the young population considered to be at risk of becoming criminal adults.

In Echo Park, the community organization El Centro del Pueblo dispatches caseworkers from its modest headquarters on LeMoyne Street directly to the homes of troubled families in which county officials have identified cases of abuse, neglect or abandonment.

The workers arrive with the message: Watch the children more closely, keep them clean, clothed and in school, cut the shouting and violence, and show some love.

Administrators take pride in the success stories: the children from families “full of anger and poverty” who turned out right.

Sometimes it takes material incentives to make a difference, said Luis Lopez, one of the center’s counselors. At one home where he went calling, “there was no sofa, no chairs to sit on,” he said. “We sat on the floor.”

The center was able to buy some used furniture for the family. It has also helped with cash in some instances, paying the deposit on better living quarters, for example.

Still, said Sandra L. Figueroa, executive director of El Centro del Pueblo, in the four years since it began family preservation services, the center has been able to afford only enough staff to contact 430 families among thousands in the community that it might have been able to help, she said.

At the L.A. Youth Network in Hollywood, program Director Mindi Levins-Pfeifer oversees a daytime drop-in center and a nighttime shelter for homeless youths that take in 35 to 40 youngsters a day.

Perhaps half a dozen such cases from street life operate on or near Hollywood Boulevard, many depending on state money. But by conservative estimates, 5,000 to 7,000 homeless youths wander Los Angeles streets, some becoming prostitutes or drug dealers as an entree to bigger trouble.

A walk through old, time-worn buildings of the Los Angeles County Central Juvenile Hall offers a real-life picture of what can await these and other youths when they are not diverted from the road to serious crime.

Equipped to house 430 arrestees mostly awaiting a date in Juvenile Court, Central beds down almost double that number every night, said Supt. Billy Burkert.

Youths are double-bunked in cramped single rooms, with some sleeping on mattresses on the floors.

At Central and two other county halls--the nation’s largest juvenile home network--2,100 are housed in facilities rated for only 1,290 youths, said Roy Sakoda, a probation department consultant. Others under probation supervision live at home, in county camps, foster care or licensed groups homes.

On one recent day, said spokesman Craig Levy, Central was holding 96 accused killers, 13 were in mental wards and 132 were headed for adult courts, which hear the most violent crimes.

Seven youths age 16 to 18 housed at Central recently talked with a reporter and a state legislative staff lawyer about their pasts. Names and specific cases were off limits.

“Yeah, we knew right from wrong,” said one. “But we took the step”--broke the law.

All seven appeared puzzled when asked whether some authority figure might have steered them away from delinquency.

“My pops would have kicked him out of the house,” said a strapping 18-year-old at the notion of a caseworker entering his home for a session of family counseling.

But another--a boy, 16, who missed his 9-month-old son--asked in a quiet voice: “Why couldn’t they have found a job for us instead of this?”

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Most agreed that if they had been forced to face their first victims, see the damage they had caused and make restitution, it might have deterred them from future offenses.

As it happened, a bill aimed at requiring that kind of payback from young delinquents was among the casualties of partisan warfare in Sacramento this year.

Wilson pursues “preventive government” policies that include one-on-one mentoring by citizens acting as role models for troubled youths. More than 62,000 youngsters are being contacted by mentors under a program that over the last two years has received $20 million in state funds, an administration official said.

But Wilson vetoed the restitution measure (SB 668) by state Sen. John Vasconcellos (D-Santa Clara), with whom the Wilson administration sparred frequently over crime control legislation.

In his veto message, the governor said he rejected the bill--one of two by Vasconcellos that he turned down--because it should have contained tougher provisions. “Gang murderers, rapists, carjackers,” the governor said, should be dealt with separately from other youths who commit lesser offenses and the Vasconcellos bill “does nothing to address this problem.”

But Democrats described that veto as revenge for the actions of Vasconcellos’ committee. Among other acts that angered the governor, the panel had killed a pair of bills supported by Wilson that would have required adult court jurisdiction for violent minor felons beginning at age 14.

For all the gloom and doom surrounding juvenile crime, mixing with youths in trouble can have its lighter moments.

At Central Juvenile Hall, one visitor said how good it would be to see them free again.

One slim youth said with a grin: “Lock your car.”

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

Juvenile Crime Legislation

Enacted into law:

* SB 1095 by state Senate leader Bill Lockyer: Appropriates $3.6 million for schools for tutoring, family counseling and monitoring of children at risk of falling into delinquency. Expected to reach about 600 youths. Lockyer initially sought about $25 million.

* SB 1050 by Sen. Dede Alpert (D-Coronado): Allows $2 million for a San Diego pilot project to help troubled children and families. Original proposal was for $20 million for statewide services.

* AB 963 by Assemblyman Fred Keeley (D-Boulder Creek): Makes $3 million available to community groups statewide for intervention programs related to gang activity and other crime. First proposal was for $12 million.

Held When Budget Pinch Became Apparent

* SB 822 by Lockyer: At $100 million, would have been largest single state appropriation for youth violence prevention; would have supported local programs identified as most effective with proven methods.

* SB 1108 by Lockyer: Would have funded second year of $50 million in grants to counties and partly matched funding; funds intended mainly for county probation departments to implement prevention programs.

Vetoed by Wilson

* SB 668 by Sen. John Vasconcellos (D-Santa Clara): Would have established restitution program and helped offenders with education and other tools. Wilson said the measure failed to recognize a need to move violent juvenile offenders into adult justice system.

* SB 669 by Vasconcellos: Would have required state and local juvenile authorities to offer parenting courses to high school students. Wilson said, among other things, wrong state agencies would have been involved. but that he did not oppose the bill’s aims.

* SB 980 by Sen. Tom Hayden (D-Los Angeles): Would have set up a task force to hold public hearings and recommend new gang-violence prevention methods. Wilson said “public negotiations between strangers” would net little other than “rhetoric and advocacy rather than ... trust and candor.”