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Solution sought to lower minority youth crime

By Dan Galindo, Knoxville News Sentinel, July 14, 2004

The problem is acute: In 2002, 57 percent of juveniles in secure juvenile correctional facilities were black.

Two-thirds of those in secure detention centers were black, as were 62 percent of juveniles transferred to adult court.

Statewide, only 20 percent of the juvenile population - youths ages 12 to 17 - are black.

Federal juvenile justice grants now depend on a state's efforts to assess why young people of color are disproportionately in the justice system, and what can be done.

Today, Knox area activists are wrapping up a retreat near Nashville, where they have been brainstorming possible solutions.

The Knoxville Disproportionate Minority Confinement Task Force helped bring James Bell, a national expert on the issue, to Montgomery Bell State Park to meet with groups from other Tennessee cities.

On Monday, Bell explained to a crowd of 130 at Austin-East High School that the problem is a national one, but that the solutions can only be local.

Bell directs the W. Haywood Burns Institute, a San Francisco-based organization that partners with localities to reduce representation of people of color in the juvenile justice system.

One of first steps in the Burns model is to collect better data, to ask "why" at each step of the juvenile justice system.

"If you never ask, you'll never know" why the justice system is producing different outcomes for different groups, Bell said.

Once the problems have been assessed, data can be used to get past anecdotes, to find solutions and to measure progress.

Literally mapping out where crimes occur is crucial to this effort, Bell said. One community might need better transportation so that juveniles can make their first court date; another might need a mentoring program to address a type of crime prevalent among the community's youth.

Another common problem, said John Gill, special counsel to Knox County Attorney General Randy Nichols, is that of a juvenile being detained because police cannot reach a parent. When there is no safe place to release the child, officials are in a lose-lose situation, as detaining youths drives up costs and may lead to the perception of injustice.

If the city of Knoxville partners with the Burns Institute, it would hire a local coordinator to direct the program. Gill said that might save the city some money in the long run by way of reduced detention costs.

And it provides safe, community-involved alternatives to the current model, supporters say.

"There has to be a program other than (simply) locking the child up," said Dennie King, who co-chairs the local task force.

King believes there are underutilized resources out there because the extent of an area's problems are unknown.

"Just like we know what the temperature is, we need to know what numbers of kids are being locked up," King said.

For Knox County, only blacks are a large enough group to measure overrepresentation in the juvenile justice system.

The Tennessee Commission on Children and Youth's 2002 statistics for the county show cases involving blacks were nearly twice as likely to result in confinement in a secure juvenile correctional facility. The statistics measure only outcomes and, with only 77 total confinement cases in the county, experts said it may be difficult to draw conclusions from the small numbers.

But better numbers will come, Bill Murrah hopes.

For Murrah, co-chair of the Knoxville task force, the most important thing is that the ball is rolling on these issues.

"The real question in our mind was: Is there concern over this matter? And the answer is a resounding 'yes,' " Murrah said.