|
CENTER ON JUVENILE AND CRIMINAL JUSTICE PRESS ROOM | |
| http://www.cjcj.org/index.php |
| Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice, 54 Dore Street, San Francisco, CA 94103 | Tel: (415) 621-5661 | Fax: (415) 621-5466 |
A roomful of teens played games, blared music and watched dance videos off the Internet at the Boys & Girls Club in Tracy on Thursday afternoon.
Taking a break from his own dancing, Tommy Anderson, 17, said he comes to the club because he likes the teens and the staff members he sees there.
If it weren't for the club, he and the other teens said they'd probably be sitting around at home, bored and watching television.
But boredom can lead some kids to fill the time in inappropriate ways - everything from hanging out with the wrong crowd to using drugs.
"This is where you can come in summer," said Kayla Parsons, 17, who has been coming to the club for six years. "And doing drugs is not on your mind."
That's one of the reasons it's important to turn after-school programs into summer programs, said adults who work with young people in San Joaquin County. The fact that teenagers can get into mischief when away from adult supervision probably doesn't come as a surprise. But California teens themselves said they were more likely to engage in criminal activity when not under adult supervision, according to a recent statewide poll.
Children who are not supervised after school are more likely to commit crimes, be victims of crimes, do drugs or hang out with gang members, according to a poll of California children ages 12-17 released last month by Fight Crime: Invest in Kids California, an anti-crime nonprofit organization of law enforcement officials and survivors of violent crime.
Over the past 12 years, juvenile crime has been on the decline across the state, said Tom Kando, a professor of sociology specializing in criminology at California State University, Sacramento. But the research doesn't support claims that programs to engage youth in activities play a role in reducing juvenile delinquency, he said. Still, the programs have value because they provide children with positive and productive activities - one needs only to talk to children in the programs to discover that, he said.
The number of young people who commit crimes actually dips during the summer months, according to a rundown of misdemeanor and felony juvenile arrests compiled by the California Department of Justice in 2001, 2002 and 2004, the most recent statistics available.
Summer crime drops because kids are more likely to stay in and around their homes, said Daniel Macallain, executive director of Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice, a nonprofit research organization based in San Francisco. During the school year, they come in contact with people and places away from home and are more likely to engage in criminal activity, he said. The peak time for juvenile crime is after school during the school year, he said.
Summer programs provide havens because they are usually small operations, central to smaller geographical areas, he said.
During the summer months, it's harder to provide youth with services when it counts, because juvenile crime is spread across many hours in the day, said Michael Kharfen, communications director for Fight Crime's national office in Washington, D.C. Kharfen said he gets his information from FBI figures.
Youths start committing crimes around noon during the summer, instead of 3 p.m., he said. And juveniles tend to get caught committing drug crimes later in the evening during the summer, apparently because the children are out later when they don't have to wake up early to go to school, he said.
"It certainly seems during the summertime, the period of time to concentrate (positive activities) is broader than in the school year," he said.
In response, programs across the county extend their hours of operation during the summer, and they also offer a different range of activities.
The Boys & Girls Club of Stockton opens its facilities longer during the summer and sometimes arranges getaways for teens in the mountains, said Anthony Silva, president of Boys & Girls Club of Stockton. Silva is also a member of the Stockton Unified school board.
Without places such as the club, children are more likely be at home watching television or being exposed to bad influences, such as people committing vandalism or in gangs, he said.
"Basically they're unsupervised, and they should be supervised," he said.
During the summer, Manteca police see more of the types of crimes typically committed by juveniles, said Rex Osborn, a police spokesman. Just this week, officers arrested a 14-year-old and a 15-year-old for marking up a public bench with graffiti, he said.
Police officers work with groups that give children something to do. They range from sports leagues to programs put on by local agencies, such as Manteca's Parks and Recreation Department, the nonprofit Give Every Child A Chance and Boys & Girls Club centers, Osborn said.
Kids and their parents aren't as creative in coming up with ways to amuse themselves as they used to be, he said, so programs that give them something to do are "absolutely" necessary.
"We always tell parents to take their kids to the Boys & Girls Clubs - when in doubt, that's the place to go."
The city of Manteca offers a daylong camp for kids as old as eighth-graders that provides activities such as swimming from 6:30 a.m. until 6 p.m. It also has an open gym on weekend evenings for all ages.
The city of Tracy runs day camps for children up through the sixth grade. For older kids, it has its teen center, called The Mix, which is free and opens at noon during the summer.
Surveys of children conducted by Boys & Girls Clubs show that young people who join gangs do so to feel like they are a part of something, said Kelly Wilson, chief professional officer of Boys & Girls Club in Tracy. The clubs can fill that need, she said.
"That's one of the things we want to do here is provide that sense of belonging," she said. "It doesn't matter if it's school time or summer time - we've provided that."
| This site and its contents © 2002 Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice |