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Safe Neighborhoods & Juvenile Justice Indicator Maps & Tables
Critical Issues, Key Leaders, & Community Action Among the outcomes that can be anticipated from high poverty rates and failing to provide for the fundamental life needs of children are elevated levels of risky behavior, drug use, gang involvement, and crime, as well as large numbers of young people becoming involved with the juvenile justice system. Children must be safe in their communities, as in their homes, if they are to survive and prosper. Too many children in the St. Louis metropolitan area live in neighborhoods where there are imminent threats to their safety in the form of crime, gangs, lead, dilapidated and abandoned housing, dangerous streets, and unsafe playgrounds. Children living in these circumstances are disproportionately poor and minorities. These same children are represented disproportionately in the juvenile justice system. We know how to address the issues of risky behavior, crime, drugs, and gang involvement. We know what works to deter young people from engaging in the activities that are detrimental to their well-being and that of the community. For the vast majority of children, the need is for prevention programs to channel their talents and energies into constructive, skill-building activities. For the smaller number of youth who become involved in serious problem behaviors, intervention and treatment services are required. We do not provide enough services of either type to have a community level impact on the well-being of our children and the safety of our neighborhoods. Critical issues related to maintaining safe neighborhoods and providing juvenile justice include the following:
The police and courts deal with the complex issues related to problem behavior and crime on a daily basis. Almost always, they do so with insufficient staff and financial resources. Periodically there are large infusions of federal funds to address juvenile justice problems ranging from drugs to gang involvement to juvenile crime, but these programs almost always encounter difficulty in effecting change among the agencies and systems already dealing with these often intractable problems. The St. Louis Family Court is conducting an initiative titled “Alternatives to Minority Representation in the Juvenile Justice System.” Initiatives such as the Regional Response Coalition have focused their efforts on developing models based in local communities that can then be replicated across the region. In virtually every instance, however, initiatives addressing issues of safety and crime find themselves overwhelmed by the scope of the problems, lack of resources, resistance to system change, inability to take interventions to scale, and the challenge of sustaining even those programs that have proven successful. |
