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A Powerful Idea on Youth Violence


A new approach would be to address the drug problems that plagues Chicago. Notice that "drugs" is not mentioned here. Councselors in the schools can't combat drugs on the streets. The mayor and the school chief look the other way, refusing to address this problem.

Editorial

As a former beat cop, Ron Huberman, the new chief of public schools in Chicago, learned long ago that violence among young urban people could not be solved simply by hauling ever larger numbers of children off to jail.

With the prompting and support of his boss, Mayor Richard M. Daley, Mr. Huberman is trying a new approach to the violence that has killed and maimed hundreds of young people and turned Chicago’s poorest neighborhoods into precincts of terror and despair.

The ambitious plan will offer mentoring, counseling and jobs to high-risk students. To determine who they are, Mr. Huberman analyzed the cases of more than 500 young people who were killed or wounded in gun violence over the last two years. The analysis suggests that nearly 10,000 of the city’s 113,000 high school students are at risk of becoming victims of gun violence and need help.

Their lives follow a clear pattern. They are absent from school more than 40 percent of the time, on average. They have fallen behind and are more likely to be enrolled in special education. And they generally attend 38 of the city’s nearly 140 public high schools.

None of the shooting incidents studied occurred inside the schools, and most happened well after school hours. But the chaotic schools attended by high-risk students tend to differ from better-run schools in measurable ways. They have fewer counselors and social workers. They have higher rates of suspension and expulsion. They more often involve the police in minor skirmishes, like shoving matches, that then go unresolved.

Mr. Huberman wants to remake the high-risk schools by beefing up the social work and counseling staff, by better training security guards and overhauling a disciplinary process that seems designed to throw out as many children as possible as quickly as possible. Most crucial, he hopes to improve involvement by guardians and parents.

Chicago has a significant gang turf problem. To deal with that, the city plans to do a better job of creating safe-passage lanes so that students will be able to come and go from school without being harmed. At-risk students will be offered paying jobs and paired with local advocates who will engage the young person’s family and be available around the clock. The point is to provide these young people with the constructive adult relationship that so many of them seem to lack.

The plan, which will be started with federal stimulus money, will cost $60 million for the first two years. But it will more than pay for itself if it reduces the number of shootings and deaths and puts more young people on the road to productive lives instead of the road to prison. It deserves full and enthusiastic support from the city, community groups and from the business community, which could play an essential role by providing the young participants with jobs.

— Editorial
New York Times
2009-11-05
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/05/opinion/05thu2.html?_r=1&emc=tnt&tntemail1=y

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