St. Louis CofCC Blog

St. Louis Post-Dispatch:

Missouri’s network of lock-down homes and camps is a national model of a gentler justice system for youths.

Visitors from around the country have stopped at facilities from Hillsboro to St. Louis, hoping to learn how to better handle kids who have done wrong.

The theory is simple: Don’t warehouse teens like prisoners. Treat them with respect. Teach them to work together. Break long-standing bad habits.

Then, Saturday, nine teens broke out of an all-boys home, called the Hogan Street Regional Youth Center, just north of downtown. They pushed a staff member into a stairwell, grabbed her keys, jumped a 12-foot-tall fence and ran. Five hadn’t been found by Monday night.

Indeed. Nine of them worked together, plotting their escape long in advance while the home’s authorities were treating them with respect.

“The more secure the facility is, the bigger the fences and razor wire, the more kids try to get out,” he said. “When you tell kids, ‘We’ve gotta do everything in our power to keep you here,’ what’s the response from an adolescent? ‘We’ve got to try to get out of here.’”

(snip)

Hogan Street, like all of the division’s seven highest-security youth facilities, organizes its teens in teams of 10 to 12. Hogan Street has three such groups.

The teams do everything together — phone calls, bathroom breaks, sleep. When problems arise, they all sit in a circle and don’t leave until the problem’s cleared up. If a team member gets violent or tries to run, counselors call the other teens to stop and restrain their associates.

(snip)

Still, the buildings are secured. Doors are all locked, windows barred, groups separated. But leaders know that 10 teen boys can overthrow their counselors, if they want to.

That’s contradictory. If there’s a direct relationship between how secure a facility is and the how likely it is that youthful offenders will try to escape, then why have “locked doors” and “barred windows” at all? If “groups” will create a synergetic environment that will force wayward youths to behave, then why “separate” them at all? In one instance, this “team” did everything together, including overrunning a woman guard, stealing her keys, and escaping.

He pointed to Missouri’s statistics: State Youth Services leaders say fewer than 10 percent of the 1,300 youths discharged from the system yearly end up back in custody within three years. Less than a quarter end up on probation.

Maybe the state juvenile corrections system is a success in some places and instances, but it’s not so everywhere. I would like to know how this juvenile recidivism rate breaks down by geography and race.

KSDK-NBC-5:

Police Chiefs Team Up To Address Gang Violence

Police chiefs in north St. Louis County are banding together to address the growing threat of gang violence.

But what about police chiefs in West County, or St. Charles County?  Why no concern about the “threat of gang violence” there?

“We’re putting (gangs) on notice, right now. It’s not going to happen here,” Hazelwood Police Chief Carl Wolf said. “If you operated in the past, you better leave, because we’re going to come after you.”

In other words, they don’t want to solve the problem, just dump it in someone else’s lap.

Wolf said a new strategy will include working with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms to trace gun purchases in the area. He said combining resources will help track down gangs.

This might help if the gang members legally purchased the guns they use.

And this was the only substantial solution proposed in this whole story.  The world might collapse if any of them ever mentioned race, and when they do talk about guns, they tilt at windmills.