The recent tragedy involving the shooting death of an infant is the culmination of a summer where we have seen an increase in youth violence. That really shook me and I had a few sleepless nights thinking of all the carnage. Some of my Northside African American friends have been very close to the violence. One friend, a wonderful woman, saw her son murdered by a gang and then saw her other son convicted of killing the gang member who killed his brother. At a family meeting, with several dozen in attendance, after the killing of her son, she brought me up to the front to sit with her and her mother. What could I say to my close friend who lost a son to such senseless violence? Another long time Northside family friend saw their close friend, Ms Beeks, killed recently while doing absolutely nothing to provoke anyone. These long time Northside families who have seen the effects on their children of incarcerating people for drugs, thank me for leading the effort to try to provide services to help youth get out of the beginnings of a life of crime. I am often with African American families for holidays, and we discuss the causes of their relatives getting into crime and how we need to change the system to avoid it.
All direct law enforcement and prosecution on youth violence is under the jurisdiction of the city and county. We don't have a police force that we could move onto the North Minneapolis streets. The only real law enforcement we have on a regular basis is the State Highway Patrol and even if we could find some way of freeing up a few of them, we would not want them as police on the Northside because they have no training whatsoever about inner city policing tactics. A few years ago, we experimented with loaning some State Patrol Troopers to the city, but both types of law enforcement said it didn't really work very well.
On the other hand, I have been the leader on indirect efforts to help solve the youth violence problems. As always, I have spent a huge amount of time on discovering all the facts, looking at what does and doesn't work elsewhere and then create innovative ideas to combat the problem. One new idea I had gained some traction. At a meeting at the Supreme Court building with juvenile justice judges, I suggested that we should combine files from Juvenile criminal court with files from Children in Need of Protection court because often a dysfunctional family was the cause of the juvenile getting into trouble. I said we should then bring in social services to work with the family. Mental health and chemical dependency treatment should be included since 70% of juveniles in the system have these issues. I also wanted to bring the schools into working out the plan for each juvenile since so much time is spent in school. The juvenile judges were against my idea, but a few years later one of those judges came back from a conference at Georgetown Law School and spoke positively about a new idea called the "crossover court,” which was actually was my idea from a few years before. It is now being used regularly.
We not only have to provide youth with helpful services when they first start to get into trouble, we should be providing them with activities and jobs so they aren't standing around with nothing to do but get brought into a gang which then, in essence, becomes their family. We have failed our inner city youth by not providing the extensive activities and jobs to occupy their time, and refusing to pay the small amount such services would cost, we have society paying an enormous price, both economically and in the loss of quality of life we endure. For many years, I have been the author of legislation to fund youth employment in Minneapolis, and to fund afterschool activities.
I've been active with national groups on juvenile justice reform and have even been the guest speaker at an annual conference of such a juvenile justice reform group. I continue to seek support in the legislature for the type of in depth services as are needed in the inner city. If we don't put the necessary money for needed services when they can be effective before a juvenile becomes a hardened criminal, it becomes the old adage, "pay me now or pay a lot more later to clean up the mess you caused by not nipping it in the bud".
This year, we did take a small step in the right direction by passing a law which greatly reduced the sentences for small time criminals and at the same time got really tough on the few "kingpins.” But, while that was good, they didn’t invest the savings from the cost of prison beds, to put those savings into services to help those "starter criminals".
We also need to quit sending everyone who violates an unimportant probation requirement to prison for the violation. That is just part of why the court system needs to change to taking a "wraparound services" effort to straighten out the youth. We also have to identify families where there appear to be problems and try to help them improve through services.
In the long run, the most effective way to stop juvenile crime is to focus on brain development. Many inner city youth have great stress and other factors in their lives at an early age, and their brains do not develop properly. Often, they are left with lower levels of brain development. This lack of development is often why they are in gangs and why they don’t find success in jobs. This is why I fight so hard to get a lot more funding into early brain development for inner city at-risk kids.
The reform methods I'm fighting for at our Capitol are the same ones which have worked at reducing crime in every jurisdiction that has used them. They don't end crime, but even cutting out a big chunk of it would cost vastly less than the costs to society from not following my recommendations. Our Department of Corrections is starting to make some moves in the right direction and I believe the Commissioner wants to go further, but the Republican leadership in the legislature blocked even a small movement in the right direction last year.
I promise to continue this fight to provide the necessary means to stem the violence.