News/Updates
Youth Violent Crime On The Rise
February 16, 2007 - Newschannel 5
Juvenile crime continues to rise in Nashville. Metro Police released the first statistics for 2007 Friday, and they showed the juvenile crime rate is not improving. It's getting worse.
The juvenile crime rate soared in Nashville in January. Numbers comparing this year to last year showed the number of juvenile arrests increased 320 percent.
"The trends we saw in '05, the trends we saw in '06 are continuing and early in this year they're accelerating," Metro Police Chief Ronal Serpas said.
Metro Police said the increase in the number of juveniles arrested for violent crime is up 144 percent.
"It's difficult as a parent to think that my child could be one of those or his best friend or I don't know. I think as parents we have to take the lead," local parent Deborah Vance said.
Some people think the solution is better police protection, while others said the source of the problem is at home.
"I don't know what the solution is. I know where the problem is. It's in the home and the parents are not looking after them. They're out here on their own and they're left to do whatever it is they want to do," Nashville Resident Pete Bryant said.
Nashville's Youth Violence Coalition is working on other solutions.
Last weekend teachers, religious leaders and teens held the first of many planned meetings. The coalition is working on projects like giving teens job shadowing opportunities and offering youth mentors.
"We want there to be impact. So, we are structuring ourselves such that impact will be evident," Neely Williams with the Nashville Youth Violence Coalition said.
Most violent crimes by juveniles were not committed at night. Last year the most crimes committed by juveniles happened between 10:00 a.m. and 1:00 p.m. during the week.
The police department asked why the children weren't in school and where their parents were.
The young criminals end up in one of two places, jail or in the custody of the Department of Children Services. Critics of DCS said some of those kids are no better when they come out than went they first went in.
NewsChannel 5 will present an exclusive special report Monday night from inside a secure DCS facility. See if you'll feel safe when the kids are released.
DCS Sends Most Dangerous To Woodland Hills, Pt. 1
February 19, 2007 - Newschannel 5
|
|
|
|
|
|
Criminal kids who don't end up in prison, or dead, end up in the custody of the Department of Children Services. Critics said those kids are no better when they come out, than when they went in.
In a NewsChannel 5 exclusive, Nick Beres went inside Woodland Hills Youth Development Center, a place reserved for the worst teenagers, to see if it has changed since kids led a riot three years ago.
In the riot, kids ran wild. Armed with broom handles and bricks, they tried to escape before the staff restored order. Since the incident, much has changed. DCS has remained a target for criticism, though.
"Since April of this year we think there's been at least 286 kids who've escaped from DCS custody. I mean it's like the drive thru at Burger King," Police Chief Ronald Serpas said.
In the most recent example, a 13-year-old in DCS custody at a group home was accused of starting an apartment fire.
Critics wonder if even the most secure DCS facility, Woodland Hills, can rehabilitate teenagers.
Woodland Hills Superintendent Albert Dawson is charged with reforming 120 boys, aged 13 to 19.
Woodland Hills gets the state's hardest cases. A juvenile must commit three felonies to land in Woodland Hills.
When each teen arrives, counselors map out a specific program for reform.
"A lot of people say they're criminals. Do they commit things adults commit, yeah, but to a point they can still be rehabilitated," security guard Staci Cathey said.
The center's focus is education. Most of the teens have fallen behind their peers, so they usually work toward a GED. They can take job courses like cooking and woodworking
Woodland Hills resembles a high school, but with prison-like security.
All the doors are locked and controlled at one central location. No one carries a weapon, but all staffers carry a radio.
The teens, of course, don't go home. They stay in rooms that are more like cells. They are not much bigger than those on death row.
"This is an environment where kids are held accountable," Dawson said.
The kids, on average, stay seven and half months. Then a panel of staffers help parents and counselors decide if kids have met their goals.
"If they accomplish these goals we'll send them back out to the community," case worker Jason Walker said.
Does it work? According to the teens themselves, many said they could not be changed, but many do.
Tuesday, NewsChannel 5 at 6:00 will introduce you to three teens about to be released from Woodland Hills. Hear their stories and decide if you would feel safe with these kids on the street.
DCS Sends Most Dangerous To Woodland Hills, Pt. 2
February 20, 2007 – Newschannel 5
Woodland Hills, one of five DCS facilities for the state's hardest teen cases gets the worst of the worst of teen offenders. No adult convicts live behind the security gates and razor wire, only teen offenders with three felonies on their records.
"It'll range anywhere from property offenses to aggravated assault and robbery," Woodland Hills Superintendent Albert Dawson said.
The 13 to 19-year-old boys face a focus on education and job training instead of punishment and hard time.
"We run this school just like every other public school. [If there's a kid wandering around] we're going to stop them. We're going to want to know where they are, and ask for a pass," Security Guard Staci Cathey said.
They live a life of structure, not punishment, unless they cause problems.
"If they misbehave or don't follow the rules or what have you, our sanctions range anywhere from a strong warning to actual confinement," Dawson said.
It's secure. The doors are locked while cameras watch every move.
State law requires privacy for the kids inside, but DCS agreed to let NewsChannel 5 in to answer critics who say rehabilitation of troubled teens doesn't work.
"Unfortunately we're in a business where the book is judged by its cover," Dawson said.
Dawson knows some of his teens recommit crimes, leading to blame directed at the state. It's his job to make sure most of the kids in his care don't return to trouble.
The teens sleep in cells, eat together, go to class and keep the place clean. There's little down time, but when there is they play board games or watch TV.
NewsChannel 5 interviewed three teens who arrived at the center and spent seven months, the average stay. Because they are minors, their faces can not be seen, nor their names released.
One teen who was in the facility for aggravated robbery times two, carjacking and driving without a license said he wanted to get out of the facility and be his old self. He was angry at first, but admitted the facility provides opportunities.
"To me Woodland Hills is a second chance. People come here, they have a chance to straighten out their lives...make better choices become a better person," the same teen said.
Another teen who was caught breaking into a church, then ran from the cops after they attempted to put him in DCS custody, said he went into the facility with the attitude that "ain't nobody going to change me. I am who I am."
The third teen who was arrested for six felonies (four aggravated robbery, one especially aggravated robbery and one count of aggravated assault) said "They asked them what they thought of me and said I reminded them of a monster."
That young man admitted it would be hard to turn around offenders such as him.
"It's hard to teach hard headed people to do the right thing," he said.
All three said they will stay out of trouble when they leave Woodland Hills. Time will tell if they accomplish their goal.
A total of 157 teens graduated from Woodland Hills last year. When they leave, most return home or are placed in group homes and then return to school or go to work.
By
SHEILA BURKE
Staff Writer, The Tennessean
The state's troubled DCS can't
keep track of those in its custody. Youths convicted of crimes escaped 4,400
times in the past five years — a rate more than twice the national average.
Critics say DCS can't protect the kids it serves or the public. DCS says it's
making changes.
Children convicted of crimes
escaped from state custody more than 4,400 times during the past five years,
often by simply walking away from foster homes or other unsecured facilities
where they had been placed by the Department of Children's Services, agency
figures show.
In almost 920 other cases, unruly
kids who had not been convicted of crimes ran away from their DCS placements.
Some of those children went on to
commit more serious crimes — including murder.
Tennessee's rate of escapes and
runaways is roughly twice the national average, state figures show.
In many cases, DCS officials made
no effort to find the missing children or even file paperwork that would have
alerted police or other authorities that the children had fled from state care,
juvenile justice experts said.
Critics say the escape statistics
point to a breakdown in Tennessee's beleaguered child welfare department, which
has worked to stave off recent attempts to wrest the juvenile justice system
from its control.
''The runway problem is a symptom
of the overall illness of the Department of Children's Services,'' said Jim
Todd, a former Metro prosecutor and longtime critic of the agency.
Todd said the agency, already
reeling from criticism of its foster-care and child-protection divisions, is
ill-equipped to handle the daunting task of housing and rehabilitating the
state's juvenile offenders.
That sentiment was echoed by the
state's juvenile judges, who unanimously passed a resolution in February seeking
to sever the juvenile justice system from DCS, citing among other things the
rampant rate of escapes and runaways.
DCS officials have argued that
Commissioner Viola Miller, who was hired in January 2004 to reform the agency,
should be given more time to try to fix the problems.
''There's got to be some systemic
reason, and I'm not sure we know it all yet,'' Miller said in an interview last
week. ''Some of them I think are policy based. Some of them are a lack of
partnership with local law enforcement and other community agencies; and how
that all grew up, I don't know.''
''I'm not sure it really matters
at this point,'' she said. ''What we've got to do is get to the bottom of it.''
Juvenile justice experts agree
that tackling the state's escape and runaway problem will be difficult.
The Tennessean's analysis of DCS
custody records from 1999 to 2004 found:
• Of 2,580 different kids who
escaped or ran away, 644 fled more than three times. Twenty-two children fled 10
times or more.
• Seventeen DCS-sponsored
facilities or programs tallied more than 50 escapes each. Five facilities had
more than 100 escapes each.
• By far, the state's most
escapes and runaways occurred from the DCS central office on Second Avenue North
in Nashville, where 461 kids fled.
DCS has come under fire in recent
years for mishandling numerous cases involving foster children or abused and
neglected kids in the care of its child protective services division.
Juvenile justice experts said the
number of escapes and runaways shows that DCS employees had long given up trying
to stop or reduce the frequency of escapes and runaways, leaving already
troubled children without the crucial help they need.
''You can't treat and
rehabilitate kids that you can't find,'' said Metro Juvenile Court Judge Betty
Adams Green.
To protect the community, Green
said, she finds herself ordering more kids to be tried as adults because she
does not trust DCS to keep them in custody. Instead of helping young offenders,
she said, the state has been promoting them into the adult criminal system.
Escaped
kids find trouble
Relatives of Quintez Russell, 15,
say the Nashville boy would still be alive if DCS had done more to keep custody
of juvenile offenders.
Authorities think Russell was
shot and killed March 24 by Carlos Shaw, 16, who had been on the run for four
months after escaping from a DCS treatment program to which he had been sent. It
was his eighth DCS program in two years.
Shaw was captured four days after
the slaying. The victim's family said they can't understand why no one tried to
find him before the killing.
''Why you gotta wait till a
murder before you find him?'' Russell's aunt, Sonya Tyus asked in a recent
interview.
Tyus said she blamed the agency
more than the suspect for her nephew's death.
''Shaw to me is also a victim,
because if he was properly placed and put in some programs, he might have been a
different person,'' she said.
In August, Cyntoia Brown, 17, was
arrested after police said the Clarksville girl fatally shot Nashville real
estate agent Johnny Allen during a robbery.
Brown was on the run from DCS
custody at the time of the killing, working as a prostitute for drugs and money,
authorities have said. She had fled from DCS facilities several times before.
''If the system didn't fail her
over the years, then Johnny would still be here,'' said Anna Whaley, a close
friend of the victim.
Last month, two East Tennessee
teenagers pled guilty in the stabbing death of a 17-year-old Clinton, Tenn., boy
and the attempted murder of the victim's 14-year-old friend, the Knoxville News
Sentinel reported.
Two weeks before the attack,
Shawn L. Hackler, 16, of Clinton, and Donald ''Donnie'' Kimbrough, 17, had run
away from the Haslam Center, a now-closed minimum-security group home in Knox
County.
A 17-year-old Kingsport boy is
facing charges after he escaped from DCS custody, stole a car and crashed it,
killing his teenage passenger, in August, authorities said.
Christopher Hutson had fled from
eight different treatment facilities in two years despite pleas from his
relatives that he be kept in a more secure place, his family said.
''I feel like the state is
responsible for him because if they'd have kept the boy and done what was right
by him and put him in drug rehab, the wreck never would have happened,'' his
grandmother, Phyllis Morelock said.
In many cases, kids that escaped
or ran away were themselves hurt, murdered or fell victim to other crimes while
on the streets. For every publicized case of a Tennessee child offender who
escapes to commit more crimes, countless others go unnoticed, experts said.
''There are more cases, maybe not
murders, but there have been foster parents beaten up by delinquents who
shouldn't have been there and many more instances,'' said state Sen. Curtis
Person, R-Memphis.
Person was one of two lawmakers
who introduced legislation this year to separate the juvenile justice system
from DCS. Both bills were withdrawn last month after DCS officials appointed a
new director for the juvenile justice division and vowed to make changes.
Many
reasons for escapes
After sentencing, juvenile judges
have no control over where DCS places a convicted child.
Judges can order a kid into
custody and recommend a secure placement, but where a child goes is up to the
judgment of DCS workers.
Some observers of Tennessee's
juvenile justice system said the state lacks enough secure lockdown facilities
to house the offenders in its care.
DCS officials dispute that,
arguing that their mission is to find appropriate settings to treat and
rehabilitate troubled children, not merely to punish and house prisoners as do
adult jails and prisons.
''Remember, these are young
people trying to grow up to a successful adulthood,'' DCS Commissioner Miller
said. ''Our job is to try to facilitate that.''
That has meant that some juvenile
offenders who commit felonies, even violent ones, don't end up in locked
facilities.
''You want to use those kinds of
facilities with great care,'' Miller said. ''You don't want to overuse those
facilities.''
Judges have complained that many
of the kids they sentence for crimes are being placed directly into foster homes
where they can easily flee or victimize other foster children who have been
placed in the same home after being abused or neglected.
Others are placed in unsecured
group homes or unlocked treatment centers.
In keeping with their
rehabilitation strategy, DCS officials said they try to avoid shackling or
handcuffing children. Many are transported unsecured to various DCS facilities.
While virtually every DCS or
contract facility in the state has had some escapes, the vast majority of
children have simply walked out of DCS offices where they are often taken before
being moved to other parts of the juvenile detention system.
Once a child flees, DCS workers
are supposed to file runaway petitions with local police departments. That
information is entered into law enforcement databases to advise officers in the
field that a particular child is wanted by DCS.
But in numerous cases,
prosecutors and judges said, the runaway petitions have not been filed. Police
might come into contact repeatedly with an escapee or runaway without knowing
the child should be picked up.
DCS officials said they have no
arrest powers themselves, but it is department policy to notify police. Judges
say DCS officials often have not contacted police to search for kids who leave.
Relatives of Christopher Hutson,
the Kingsport teen accused of driving in the fatal crash, said they often would
notify DCS when the boy fled state custody and came home.
''Even if we'd told them places
where he was at and what he was doing, it was just like, 'Oh, well, we'll find
him when we've got time,' '' said Morelock, his grandmother.
Final
chance to fix problem
In March, Commissioner Miller
named former Hardeman County, Tenn., juvenile court Judge Steve Hornsby to head
a new juvenile justice division within DCS, while a bill was pending in the
legislature to remove the division from the agency's control.
During his first weeks on the
job, Hornsby has begun to address the concerns raised by judges and lawmakers.
For starters, child felons who
are sentenced to DCS custody will no longer be placed in foster homes
immediately after their convictions. Instead, they will be placed in treatment
facilities first, before moving on to foster homes.
Hornsby also plans to end the
practice of bringing kids to DCS offices after a judge orders them into state
custody.
''I don't like that idea,'' he
said in a recent interview. ''There's something wrong with the idea of bringing
kids who are potentially dangerous back to the office.''
The department also wants to
communicate better with local police and prosecutors in an effort to track down
kids who flee.
Last month, DCS officials and law
enforcement officers conducted their first-ever sweep to recover some of the
most violent DCS runaways in Davidson County.
Of the 13 children targeted,
authorities recovered four. Two of the kids were already in the Metro Jail after
other crimes. Two other were found in their families' homes.
''I think we've addressed some of
the judges' concerns as well as my concerns,'' Hornsby said.
His early changes have been
enough to slow the recent frenzy to break up DCS. The two bills that would have
separated the juvenile justice system were pulled by their sponsors and have
been shelved for the time being.
''I think Hornsby is well
acquainted with the judges' concerns and probably understands what needs to be
done,'' Sullivan County Juvenile Judge Steven Jones said. ''But will he have the
ammunition he needs? That's the issue. Will he have the autonomy that he needs?
I don't know the answers to those questions. But I think he knows the issues.''
Others worry that none of the
changes will ultimately be effective without a major change in the philosophy of
DCS, as it relates to treating young offenders.
As long as children convicted of
crimes are kept in unlocked facilities, free to walk away on a whim, they will,
critics say.
''I want to give them every
chance to succeed, but I'm not very optimistic that it's going to matter,'' said
state Rep. Jerome Cochran, R-Elizabethton, who last month withdrew his bill to
break up the agency.
He plans to keep a close eye on
the problem and insisted he's ready to act to protect the public if DCS fails.
''The bill,'' he said, ''it's
still alive for next session and we can start moving immediately when we get
back next year if we need to.''
One
DCS runaway has been persistent
Of more than 2,580 children who
escaped or ran away from state custody during a recent five- year period, one
delinquent child fled 23 times — more than any other.
Citing confidentiality laws,
officials at the Department of Children's Services refused to discuss the
child's case or what crimes he or she had committed to land in state custody.
DCS officials also would not
comment on how the child was able to flee so often.
But the case illustrates the ease
with which kids have been able to slip from the agency's custody and the state's
inability — or lack of will — to stop them.
The child first ran away in June
2001 from a Claiborne County DCS office in East Tennessee. During the next two
years, the same child escaped from DCS offices in seven counties, including
seven times from the DCS central office in Davidson County.
The child also fled numerous
other treatment centers, group homes and juvenile detention centers.
Three of the escapes were from
the Scott County Juvenile Detention Center, a locked facility in northeast
Tennessee.
On three different dates, the
child ran away, was recovered then ran away again on the same day.
Sheila Burke can be reached at 664-2144 or sburke@tennessean.com.
