Understanding Juvenile Carjacking: A Panel Discussion Moderated by Ward 6 Councilmember Charles Allen

[Anonymous]

https://www.facebook.com/hillcenter/videos/306322875304635

Stunning piece of public forum.

The grand takeaway is that Politicians are Politicians but "so what"? Where are the services and Case Managers that our appointed reps are always talking about.

If a "young person" is "no papered" we can be made to understand that non emotionally. However, why are there now no services available for that person UNTIL an actual crime is charged and the youth goes to jail. Why is the current system set up by our City Council ONLY address the problem once it hits the news or the person is convicted and released.

My take away, stop complaining about the Attorney General. Stop complaining about the US Attorney. Stop complaining about the crime lab.

The DC youth crime problem rests SOLELY on our ELECTED CITY COUNCIL and their inability to actually create wrap around city services and HIRE case managers at a FRACTION of the cost of post crime hand wringing and "what about'isms"

[Anonymous]

What is a wrap around service? I hear about them quite a bit.

[Anonymous]

A "wrap around service" is supposed to include a case manager that approaches the youth which just allegedly committed the crime and sitting down with them and their guardian and communicating with them. Looking at their school attendance report. Offering alternative counseling, training, experiential programs, mentorship, anger management, problem solving.

These are ALL programs that DC pays for, however, there is NO mechanism to input a potential young offender into the wrap around services and then track them and ensure that they are being given the motivation and skill to avoid repeat offending.

[Anonymous]

Can we just use one of the islands off the coasts of DE/MD/VA and airdrop all of the delinquents and other criminals. The Japanese movie Battle Royale had it right. Just let the lone survivor leave.

Society would be so much better off.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:A "wrap around service" is supposed to include a case manager that approaches the youth which just allegedly committed the crime and sitting down with them and their guardian and communicating with them. Looking at their school attendance report. Offering alternative counseling, training, experiential programs, mentorship, anger management, problem solving.

These are ALL programs that DC pays for, however, there is NO mechanism to input a potential young offender into the wrap around services and then track them and ensure that they are being given the motivation and skill to avoid repeat offending.

So you created jobs that depend on lots of criminals needing repeat services and there's no accountability about who uses them? Brilliant, innovative solution.

[Anonymous]

Yes, this was something mentioned in one of the two recent articles on youth car jacking (there was one in Hill Rag and one in East of the River Magazine, I can't remember which but I'll try to post both in a minute -- they are worth reading).

A lot of the obstacles to intervention are legal challenges due to a system that does not make sense together. Like we know kids who have a large number of unexcused school absences are both more likely to commit crimes AND more likely to victims of crimes (including child abuse and neglect). But CPS is not actually allowed to pull a student's attendance record without a court order, which means as a practical matter, CPS can rarely pull in that piece of the puzzle.

Like these are kids who have often already been abandoned by their families by the time they enter the system. But then the system fails them just as badly, through incompetence and tripping over their own feet.

I do think Allen and other Council Members should have their feet held to the fire on this, because while they advocate for leniency on youth offenders, they do nothing to create the support services that would provide an alternative path to incarceration. And then of course they don't allocate money to detention facilities anyway, so those are always full and often in poor condition -- you cannot detain a juvenile offender if there are no beds available in a juvenile facility.

I am SO tired of the argument that Allen and others on the council have no power over any of this. Of course they do! They can propose and pass legislation, they can hold hearings and investigate problems, they can work with the mayor (who yes, has a lot of culpability here as well) to actually solve this problem.

I'm so tired of it. These are not serious people.

Oh, and just so more people can yell at me: school closures are partially at fault here too, that's a major reason we have so many kids in the city who, left to their own devices for over a year during an extremely high stress time, developed the criminal habits we are now seeing come to fruition. We should have opened schools about 8 months before we did because yes Covid sucks but turns out it's not as bad for kids or communities as just providing them with no structure or accountability for key years of their adolescence.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:A "wrap around service" is supposed to include a case manager that approaches the youth which just allegedly committed the crime and sitting down with them and their guardian and communicating with them. Looking at their school attendance report. Offering alternative counseling, training, experiential programs, mentorship, anger management, problem solving.

These are ALL programs that DC pays for, however, there is NO mechanism to input a potential young offender into the wrap around services and then track them and ensure that they are being given the motivation and skill to avoid repeat offending.

So what do we need? Create a department to track juvenile offenders, identify at-risk youth, and hire case counselors?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:What is a wrap around service? I hear about them quite a bit.

Parents

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Can we just use one of the islands off the coasts of DE/MD/VA and airdrop all of the delinquents and other criminals. The Japanese movie Battle Royale had it right. Just let the lone survivor leave.

Society would be so much better off.

The islands off of MD/VA don't want your criminals.

[Anonymous]

Report on the panel: https://www.fox5dc.com/news/community-demands-accountability-for-juvenile-crimes-at-carjacking-panel-in-southeast

[Anonymous]

I watched this whole forum, and there was some interesting education but no discernable, clear solution put forth. Except for the gentleman who hijacked at the end and said the probably was the case manager to juvenile ratio and that case managers didn't have enough time and resources to closely follow and support these kids.

My thing is, let's assume that's true. How SCALABLE is a case worker fixing each broken kid one by one? It doesn't sound like it is. And what's the realistic odds of us getting to that 5:1 ratio and at what expense?

So what OTHER solutions, besides what amounts to intensive 1:1 therapy and babysitting? Cause that's going to be very human and capital resource intensive, and it's doubtful we'll muster up the buy-in to pull that kind of intervention off.

[Anonymous]

The parents/foster parents begging for accountability for their children was quite telling.

[Anonymous]

Welp, no wonder parents were begging for accountability. Reality check

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The parents/foster parents begging for accountability for their children was quite telling.

Yes, it's also reflected in this piece in Hill Rag recently: https://www.hillrag.com/2023/12/06/carjacking-is-no-big-deal/. Very worth a read, as it does a great job of clearly explaining how the system is breaking down (and how it's not really a "system" at all).

Several points from the story of the foster kid in the Hill Rag article:
- His foster dad has mixed feelings about the child's arrest but also thought to himself that some kind of consequences for this behavior was needed to change the behavior
- After the kid is released without charges on the carjacking, he started influencing other kids in the foster home, including ones as young as 13, about carjacking, which the kids refer to as "free cars"
- A year after the carjacking, the same kid was arrested for a domestic assault and wound up in a group home that his foster dad thinks might have been worse because it just placed him in a facility with other juvenile offenders where they just reinforce and encourage the idea that criminality is necessary or inevitable
- The kid now lives in another state and according to his foster dad, is on track to finish high school and considering enlisting in the military. This seems like a happier ending for that kid.

While you can't extrapolate policy critique from one story, I do think the comments from the foster dad, in particular, are valuable, because this is someone who works with a lot of kids who are "in the system" and is pretty clearly outlining the key issues at play: kids NEED accountability, we do have consider their age, detention/incarceration may not fix much and may actually increase recidivism, and there's an argument that getting kids out of the communities/families/friendships where these patterns emerge might be a path forward.

I don't know what the policy that works to remove kids from dysfunctional communities looks like, but it really looks like we're looking at dysfunction that goes beyond the family unit to the surrounding community. We need to address that dysfunction, but in the meantime, I do think we should be doing more to simply remove kids from the community (send to family out of state, out of the city, if possible) if we want to help these specific kids.

[Anonymous]

You do not need to live in Ward 6 to donate. The campaign is a powerful way to get the attention of the Council NOW, without waiting for multiple election cycles. Win or lose, a strong effort can benefit the whole city if a course change is achieved.