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As I See It: Effort, money should go to prevention, intervention activities for youth

Telegram & Gazette - 6/19/2020

Police suppression efforts and increased surveillance in Black and Brown communities cannot be part of a solution to reduce the racial and ethnic disparities rife within the legal system.

My career has been dedicated to working on juvenile legal system reforms, the foremost goal being the reduction of racial and ethnic disparities present at each decision-point. Crime rates and the prison population in Massachusetts have steadily decreased, but racial and ethnic disparities remain.

In 2016, the Sentencing Project found Massachusetts to have the largest disparity ratio in the nation between imprisonment of Hispanics and whites. Further, Black individuals are 9% of the 7-17 age range in Massachusetts, but make up 20% of youth arrested, and 30% of youth detained pre-trial.

For close to 15 years, the Commonwealth has awarded Charles E. Shannon Community Safety Initiative funding to Massachusetts cities, mostly Black and Brown communities, to address youth and gang violence through a weave of prevention, intervention and suppression activities. These same communities lead the state in prison admissions.

Even with an established decline statewide in youth assaults and robbery, disparities within the juvenile legal system remain. The stated problem of youth and gang violence is in fact a challenge for these communities. However, the language immediately and insidiously labels the young people and their communities as dangerous, without structural context for how crime has manifested in these particular spaces.

When the violence is named as an isolated problem, and the magnifying glass is on communities of color, it feeds the disproportionate jailing of Black and Brown people. This is the Commonwealth's problem to solve, and we cannot agree to offering up state funding for police suppression and surveillance in these communities as part of the solution.

The same Charles E. Shannon communities have been funded in largely the same way for years, and we have not addressed our biggest challenge. The racial and ethnic disparities emanating from the communities subject to both local and state-funded police suppression and landing in the legal system remain. Something needs to change, and it is not increased suppression efforts through state-funded programs.

There is a concrete step we can take right now. Divesting from state-funded suppression efforts, and re-allocating it to support the Charles E. Shannon prevention and intervention activities for youth, with an added goal of reducing racial and ethnic disparities, is one small but necessary modification.

The prevention and intervention efforts Shannon supports, like case management, street outreach, employment and education opportunities, recreation and positive youth development activities should receive the previously allocated suppression funding. If the police are funded through this grant, let it be for community conversations with law enforcement about police reform.

Data should be disaggregated by race and ethnicity to track the program's impact on youth of color. Youth desisting from crime, and the Commonwealth achieving a reduction in racial and ethnic disparities within the legal system does not happen through deterrence nor surveillance, it happens through equitable opportunities, community investment and believing in youth, at the least.

Along with cities and towns examining police budgets, the Legislative and Executive branches have a role in examining funding streams and shifting funds to support, not suppress, Black and Brown youth and their communities. A call to action to the Massachusetts' public officials who oversee budgets and public safety strategies through a phone call, email, or letter is a good place to start. This is not radical. If we are not addressing our biggest challenge, we have to be bold enough to change the strategy.

Katie Byrne, M.A., a graduate of Clark University, is the Juvenile Detention Alternatives Initiative detention reform specialist with the Massachusetts Department of Youth Services

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