I have been handing people a scepter (invisible) and making them emperor for a day. Telling them they’ve got some money and power and asking: So what are you gonna do about Illinois’s juvenile justice system?
My latest emperor — or victim, depending on your perspective –is Richard Hutt, an attorney supervisor with the Law Office of the Cook County Public Defender’s Office.
Hutt, it turns out, is a decisive emperor.
Here’s what he decrees: Shut down the Cook County Juvenile Temporary Detention Center.
That’s the juvenile jail where the county houses hundreds of young people waiting for trial, or in some kind of trouble with authorities.
Why does Hutt want it closed? Because it’s become the default, he says — the quick fix dump spot, used when we don’t know what else to do with a troubled kid. And that’s a problem, he says. Because locking a kid up is the surest way to ensure that the kid comes back to get locked up again some day. That’s what research says.
You mouthed off to WHO ?? Hey, KWA (Kids With Attitude): Better watch it.
“I’m gonna kick your butt ” said in a threatening enough way, in the wrong place to the wrong person can land you in a heap o’ trouble young man. Or – young lady.
You brush off the arm of a teacher or security guard who has detained you — and you can be arrested and charged with assault. You make a threatening enough remark to someone– and you can be arrested and charged with an assault. Teachers and administrators are in a protected class. So if you verbally threaten them – it’s an aggravated assault. You’re in even deeper trouble.
And that may be a good thing. We absolutely must protect teachers, principals, security guards and other students – everybody. But where do you draw the line? When is it youthful bravado and mouthing off ? And when is it serious enough that it warrants an arrest?
An arrest that can become a gateway to the juvenile justice system.
I’m part of the team on the Inside Out series about kids who intersect with the juvenile justice system.
When you visit a neighborhood, you really don’t expect to find a “wall of death.” Especially not in a breezeway, next to the only grocery store and fast food restaurant in the whole neighborhood.
But that’s how it goes in Altgeld Gardens, the CHA housing development where Barack Obama did his early community organizing. Back when he was Barack, who??
Photo by Rich Cahan
Last Thursday, photographer Richard Cahan and I spent the day at Altgeld.
You have to walk through this breezeway to get from one place to the next, and so most times Altgeld folks don’t much notice the names on this wall. But when outsiders come and ask about the place, you don’t have to dig deep to catch the reverence for it.
Some residents call it the ‘Memorial Wall.’ It carries the names of people from the ‘Garden’ who’ve died — going back decades. Some people here say it started as a memorial to cancer victims who got sick from the toxic surroundings. (Altgeld is surrounded on all sides by landfills, a sewage treatment plant and the highly polluted Calumet River. )
It’s a tradition at the Gardens to write the names at the wall, so the person’s name will be “set on stone” and never forgotten.
At least that’s what Steven Diggs says. He’s a 20 year old who we just happened to meet at the wall. He also told us what he’s heard about the latest wall entry, dated 8-24-09.
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DIGGS: These are my family.
LP: Some of the people on this wall died a natural death and some died of violence?
DIGGS: MOST of these people died of violence. Like most of ‘em up there. They mostly died just a regular death. Most of the people down here died of like guns, beat to death, and the last one down there, the big one, he died cuz he was locked up. He had a seizure while he was in jail and he was beating on the door. That was the last death right there. To tell the officers… and the officer didn’t come to the door… and he died in his cell.
24 year old Courtney Bardney is the one who brought us over to see the wall in the first place. He says this wall is in danger of being obliterated. Decades of precious history, ground into dust …
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BARDNEY: I don’t look at it as just some wall. I look at it as something more than that. This is where my family at. This what we used to remember them. Think lotta people would feel same way, but if nobody fight for it — it’s gonna be gone. The only thing we gonna have is those pictures he’s taking . It’s gonna be over with for this wall, and the history from it.
So here’s my question—when the CHA hatched the ‘Plan for Transformation’ did that include plans to save this wall? Anybody over there think to save parts of the CHA that are historic and precious?
Here’s the audio slideshow that Linda and Rich put together:
A hot meeting in Roseland last night. It was a youth- led ‘Town Hall’ put on by the Roseland Safety Networks Coalition to address community tension that has followed the beating death of Fenger Academy honor student Derrion Albert.
One Bowen senior had harsh words for Chicago’s finest, taunting: “If y’all was out there, why didn’t you do nothing? Was y’all scared?”
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22nd district police commander Michael Kuemmoth gave a calm response, and also reiterated that there is an internal investigation looking into the response of the officer at the scene.
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Adults had a chance to ask questions of the youth and some wanted to know — why the code of silence? Why won’t you step up and reveal the perpetrators of crime? Nineteen-year-old Aisha Latiker, who moderated the Town Hall, spells out some of the pros and cons of “being a snitch.”
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Latiker has a brilliant idea on how kids can step up. They can TEXT a tip to police saying for instance where a fight is going on, but not say who’s to be involved. “That’s not snitchin’”she says.
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Alderman Carrie Austin offered her office as a safe haven to kids who want to convey information to police and others. “Let me be the snitch,” she offered.
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And police commander Kuemmoth gave kids his cell phone number plus a text tip number so they can contact police anonymously, 24/7.
At the vigil for slain honor student Derrion Albert on Monday, I talked to Derrick Jones, who had a day off from work and came to pay his respects. Jones graduated from Fenger High (the same school Derrion attended) eight years ago. Back then, everyone knew that the Gangster Disciples were at the school. But when school officials brought kids from the Altgeld Housing development to Fenger, Jones says, that introduced TWO gangs at the school…
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Tiffany Reed, who lives near the school, is also upset. She says you have kids going from 130th street (Altgeld) to 111th (Fenger High) and that makes for a dangerous mix of gangs….
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But Derrion Albert’s cousin, Nicollette Johnson says it’s not about gangs. It’s about territory:
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One community group at the vigil stormed the front door of the school, trying to push past police & school personnel, to join a meeting inside of ministers and local politicians.
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A lot of people were dismayed to see all this commotion at what they thought was supposed to be a peaceful vigil to honor the life of Derrion Albert. Here’s Michelle Strong:
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