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Minority youth detentions examined
6 counties offered funding to try to reduce high rates at which blacks are held

By Jamaal Abdul-Alim, Journal Sentinel, June 10, 2002

Every day in Branch 93 at Milwaukee County Children's Court, a parade of children marches to the defense table, where the children anxiously await their fates.

There is "Charlie Brown," a slight 11-year-old so short he has to scoot to the edge of the chair so his feet can touch the floor, and Nique, a 14-year-old girl in foster care who was picked up on a warrant after she missed a court appearance for a retail theft.

This is where children being held at the juvenile detention center come to learn whether the system believes they are too dangerous or too much of a flight risk to be set free while their cases are pending.

In Milwaukee County, black children find themselves in this situation about nine times more often than white children - a startling figure that has captured the attention of the state.

On Monday, Gov. Scott McCallum's Juvenile Justice Commission decided that six Wisconsin counties most affected by "disproportionate minority confinement" will be eligible to apply for the nearly $600,000 in federal funds the state has set aside to reduce the problem. They are Milwaukee, Racine, Dane, Rock, Brown and Kenosha counties.

In Milwaukee County, that could mean a better shot at freedom for some of the children who end up being held in the detention center. The money also may be used to reduce juvenile crime in neighborhoods in which many young offenders live so fewer children become defendants in the first place.

"If juvenile crime is happening among youth of color more than other demographics, then we need to put money toward those youths in those communities in order to reduce it," says Kerrie Kaner-Bischoff, an official with the state Office of Justice Assistance.

Determining why

Why are so many more minority children detained?

Some blame societal ills, such as poverty and family criminality. Others believe urban police departments are more aggressive and harsher than their suburban counterparts. Still others suspect racial bias within the juvenile justice system.

Mark Wehrly, senior policy analyst for the Wisconsin Council on Children and Families, says racial bias is less of a factor than many believe.

Rather, Wehrly says, factors such as where officers are dispatched to and the high visibility of the drug trade in the city vs. the suburbs lie behind the problem.

So do various long-standing policies that require parents to pick up their children from detention centers. That can have a greater effect on black children, who more often come from single-parent homes, Wehrly says.

Other factors also come into play.

When Nique appeared before Court Commissioner Dennis Cimpl - who conducts most of the detention hearings at Children's Court - she came armed with a passionate letter in which she begged for another chance to remain free.

"I'm only 14, and I've been locked up ever since I was 11 or 12," Nique wrote. "I don't want to spend the rest of my life in and out of DT. . . . All I want is to go home. Just one more chance, please."

Cimpl told the girl that he'd like to give her another chance but that she had violated his trust by failing to appear in court.

"You've got all the power," Cimpl told the girl. "You tell me what to do by your actions."

The words did little to console Nique, who used her pink county-issued DT shirt to wipe away tears as a bailiff escorted her to the door leading back to detention center pods.

A week later, a judge ordered the girl released, but her foster care caseworker first must find a place for her to stay.

That could be problematic. Records show Nique has a history of running away from foster homes.

The boy nicknamed Charlie Brown nearly wound up in detention, too. He was accused of a crime that does not seem to match his size: strong-arm robbery on suspicion of punching a classmate in the face and taking his bike.

Melody Mack, a family friend who has raised the boy almost since birth, looked shocked when the intake specialist recommended that the boy stay in secure detention because of the nature of his alleged offense.

Cimpl almost refused to let the boy go home because no court had approved the boy's placement in Mack's home. Tears streamed down the faces of Mack and Charlie Brown as Cimpl contemplated the boy's fate. Fortunately for the boy, the law allows the court to release children from detention to non-relatives for as long as 30 days.

That's what Cimpl did, placing the boy on a 24-hour curfew and ordering Mack to have the boy's placement in her home approved by a court.

McCallum's commission and others are beginning to look at what is being done to combat disproportionate minority confinement in other states. They've been listening a lot lately to a man named James Bell, a veteran attorney at the Youth Law Center and director of the W. Haywood Burns Institute for Juvenile Justice Fairness and Equity, both of San Francisco.

Bell advocates "community mapping," a process in which youths - including those who have had prior contact with the courts - identify the recreational and social centers in their communities and assess the quality of and access to the facilities.

Mapping also involves having youths identify places such as liquor stores, vacant lots and other "hot spots" for heavy drug and other criminal activities, which contribute to juvenile crime.

The idea is to see whether an adequate number of youth centers and programs exist and to evaluate whether they are attractive and effective enough to counterbalance the negative influences in the community.

"If you don't want them (young people) to be bad, what do you want them to do to be good?" Bell said during a recent presentation in Madison. "This is not rocket science."

Bell acknowledges that the time may never come when racial disparities in detention disappear. "But what I want to make sure is the kids that are in the system are in there for the right reason, and not because they are of color."