Community forum focuses on solutions to youth violence

Yawu Miller

Chatting with a group of friends, Derrick Patterson said the extracurricular activities at East Boston High School leave students with few choices — there’s JROTC, football and basketball, but little else.

“There’s no arts program, no drama,” he said. “We need bands. We need something different.”

Like many teens, Patterson and his friends often have little to do in the hours after school, between 2 p.m. and 6 p.m., when much of the city’s violent crimes occur.

Speaking during a forum on community crime prevention efforts, Patterson and other teens spoke of a need for more extracurricular options.

The meeting, organized by black elected officials, gave a broad range of community members a chance to articulate their perspectives on the growing problem of violent crime in the city.

After the elected officials gave brief opening remarks, teenagers, youth workers, recovering addicts, ex-offenders and criminal justice professionals working in the community split into break-out sessions to discuss the problems they face in their work and talk about possible solutions.

Most of the discussion revolved around youth issues.

“The greatest burden of this violence is being placed on young people,” said Julio Henriquez. It’s not the police who are going to change this. It’s not the mayor. It’s neighbors meeting neighbors.”

In Henriquez’s break-out session, City Councilor Chuck Turner facilitated while Dunk the Vote Executive Director Ron Bell took notes. The teens, many of whom came with the organization Teen Empowerment, did much of the speaking.

“This year, as I was applying to college, I noticed that a lot of the things colleges prefer are things our school doesn’t even offer,” said Jonette Glass, a senior at Boston Community Learning Academy.

Often, getting help with difficult coursework is not even an option, according to Glass.

“The teachers don’t stay after school,” she said. “They tell you they’re not getting paid to stay late.”

Latoya Bowman, who grew up in the Lenox Street housing project and now works for the Department of Youth Services, noted that many community centers in public housing developments are now closed.

Carl, an enrolee in First Academy — a re-entry program for ex-offenders — said there are few resources for teens who find themselves on the wrong side of the law.

“You see more and more people caught up in the system every day,” he said. “We need more positive activities for the kids to get involved in.”

Darelle Prescott, who attends First Women’s Circle, a re-entry program for women, echoed the idea that teens in the juvenile justice system are given few avenues to escape.

“I’m 36 years old,” she said. “I’ve been using since I was 14 years old. I’ve never had treatment. Putting a kid in DYS is not treatment. Putting a CHINS [Child in Need of Services designation] on a kid is not treatment.”

While many pointed out what is not working in the juvenile justice system, others presented suggestions for new programs.

“We should have a crisis hotline,” said Stanley Greene, who administers a re-entry program at the Suffolk County Jail. “There are a lot of people in gangs who want to get out.”

Greene and others emphasized the importance of community members keeping open lines of communication between ex-offenders, gang-involved youths and others in the community.

The facilitators of the break-out sessions collected dozens of pages of notes including community suggestions for anti-crime initiatives. The organizers of the meetings hope to cull from the suggestions concrete policy initiatives, according to City Councilor Charles Yancey.

“What we want to do is set an agenda for public safety in Boston,” he said. “City government — and that includes me — hasn’t been doing a good job of solving crimes or preventing them.”

Yancey said the ultimate aim of the meeting is to foster a collaborative approach to anti-crime efforts with a focus on providing more services to youth.

“There’s a strong commitment to work together and work in unity to make a safer city and a city that offers more hope to young people,” he said.