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

Forum Index » Metropolitan DC Local Politics

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

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]The parents/foster parents begging for accountability for their children was quite telling. [/quote]

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.[/quote]

“free cars”  ????  [/quote]

That is car jackings teen slang for stealing cars. It’s literally the language they use in reference to car jacking.[/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics