October 4, 1994

The Honorable Pete Wilson Governor of California

The Honorable Bill Lockyer President Pro Tempore of the Senate     and Members of the Senate

The Honorable Kenneth L. Maddy Senate Minority Floor Leader

The Honorable Willie L. Brown Jr. Speaker of the Assembly     and Members of the Assembly

The Honorable James Brulte Assembly Minority Floor Leader

Dear Governor and Members of the Legislature:

When police arrest 14- and 15-year-olds who shrug off cold-blooded, unprovoked murder as a rite of passage, the rational public response is fear and anger: How can we protect ourselves? How can we make them pay for what they have done? And then at the policy-making level, the secondary but more productive response of perplexity sets in: How did these children become settled in lives of unthinkingly vicious, violent crime? What can we do to prevent coming generations from repeating the pattern?

The Little Hoover Commission has examined juvenile crime, its roots and its regulation in a seven-month study and has come to several key conclusions:

• The critical element for combatting juvenile crime in the long run is leadership. The State must establish a high-profile, powerful organization that can provide the leadership needed to put prevention at the top of the list of crime-fighting strategies.

• Because of the many roots of crime, no single preventive program is the "silver bullet" that will halt juvenile crime. When the lives of troubled youths are examined the triggers for their actions are multiple: Parents have failed, schools have failed, public organizations have failed and communities have failed. The concept that there are consequences linked to decisions and actions is not passed down to children. Reinvigorating these elements of society so that they may provide children with solid values and good decision-making skills requires multiple strategies that can be put into place according to specific needs of families, neighborhoods and communities.

• Unfortunately, the universal agreement that prevention is vital has been systematically undercut by a gradual but accelerating shift in spending patterns over the last two decades. That shift has seen the near elimination of early intervention and prevention programs and the mushrooming of "back-end" incarceration expenses. The pivotal player that is well positioned to make a difference in the life of juvenile delinquents is the probation officer -- but probation budgets have been compressed and outreach efforts stripped to the point where many probation officers can do little more than keep track of overwhelming caseloads on paper. While tight fiscal constraints make it difficult to put prevention first, such a shift in priorities is crucial to halting the increasing amounts of violent juvenile crime.

Executive Summary

Introduction

Background

Issues and Recommendations

The State's Role

Issue 1: State must provide meaningful leadership
Issue 2: Goals of juvenile system unclear
Issue 3: Prevention hard hit by budget cuts

Issue 4: Accountability and consequences not reinforced
Issue 5: Imbalance between public's right to know and shielding juveniles

Issue 6: CYA is last resort, intensive-treatment option

Appendices

Endnotes

Introduction

		C alifornia's prisons, jails and youth institutions are overflowing, violent crime has risen alarmingly and citizens feel increasingly vulnerable in their homes, schools and job sites. The academic commentators who study the convergence of statistics, trends and policies see no relief in the future despite tough-on-crime rhetoric and reality. Crime will continue to be a major concern as the State's population growth persists, the economy remains stagnant and a swelling, alienated underclass rejects societal standards of behavior. A significant, disproportionate and increasing share of California's crime problem is made up of juveniles. In addition, many of the adults in prison today began their criminal careers as youths and teenagers. Thus, any systematic attempt to reduce crime and the societal costs associated with it needs to place a high priority on addressing juveniles. Having completed a prison-focused review of the adult criminal justice system, the Little Hoover Commission early in 1994 turned its attention to the juvenile justice system. The Commission's investigations led to several overriding conclusions that form the foundation for the Commission's approach to the juvenile justice system. Those conclusions include: The root causes of crime are many and diverse. Any hope of addressing those causes successfully requires multi-faceted strategies, bits and pieces of which can be implemented by neighborhoods, communities and various levels of government. There is no silver bullet -- no simple, expedient answer that can be imposed from above. Any solution to juvenile crime must be bipartisan and involve all sectors of society: individuals, families, schools, churches, community groups, governments and businesses. While the scope of effort involved should be as broad as all of society, the Commission believes its report also must serve as a wake-up call to individuals. Individual initiative at the most local level and personal acceptance of responsibility for bringing about change is the key to reform. As one popular maxim puts it, "Think globally, act locally." The State has no particular "ownership" of the juvenile crime problem. The inclination toward crime often arises from factors at home; the impact of crime is felt in neighborhoods; the arrests, prosecutions and, in most cases, dispositions are city and county operations. Only 2 percent of juveniles arrested eventually are placed in state institutions. While the State is a bit player in the day-to-day staging of the juvenile justice system, it has the ability and responsibility to carve out a powerful role as a policy leader and facilitator for local solutions. Prevention works better and is cheaper than treatment. The sobering reality is that improving to the optimum extent how juvenile criminals are treated once they are apprehended will only reduce recidivism by at most 10 percent, experts agree.1 While keeping that 10 percent from continually recycling through the juvenile justice system -- and ultimately, the adult system -- would free significant resources, the fact is that prevention and early intervention hold far more promise than good rehabilitation programs for actually reducing crime. Children are much harder to "fix" once they have become criminals than they are when they first show signs of deviant or anti-social behavior. Personal accountability for actions and decisions is the cornerstone of a civilized society. Children should be taught -- both at home and in schools -- informed decision­making processes. And they should learn that, in theory and in practice, there are swift consequences for poor decisions and both tangible and intangible rewards for good decisions. To reinforce these lessons, all of the actors within the juvenile justice system, from the policeman on the beat to the judge in juvenile court, must strive to make the system work more effectively in providing consequences at all levels of criminal severity. The state, local governments and communities should approach juvenile crime from the perspective of outcome­based goals, chief of which should be deterring first­time offenses and reducing recidivism. The collection of reliable data and its systematic, validated analysis is crucial for good decision­making about policy and programs. Private enterprise involvement at many levels and in multiple modes is critical to successfully addressing root causes of crime. This ranges from partnerships with schools to improve education and mentoring roles with at­risk children to providing opportunities through programs such as the Free Venture enterprises in California Youth Authority facilities and creating targeted hiring practices. Based on these concepts, the Commission developed a report to reform and improve the juvenile justice system that 1) does not rely on a single solution; 2) focuses on the appropriate role for the State while recognizing that responsibility -- and the best chance for success -- lies at the local level; and 3) places a priority on prevention. In conducting its study, the Commission convened an advisory group of more than 70 experts (please see Appendix A for a listing of participants) drawn from a cross-section of perspectives that included law enforcement representatives, probation and parole interests, prosecuting and defense attorneys, judges, victims, juvenile advocates, members of the Legislature, state officials, community-based service organizations, academia and others. More than two dozen of the members participated in 36 hours of working-group sessions to develop key concepts and potential recommendations for the Commission to consider (please see Appendix B for a summary of the working groups' efforts). The Commission also conducted two public hearings, one in Sacramento in March 1994 and one in Los Angeles in May 1994, that were designed to explore issues spanning the entire spectrum of juvenile justice, from the roots of crime, early intervention concepts and crime prevention methods to the role of probation, the juvenile court system and the California Youth Authority (please see Appendix C for an agenda of witnesses). In addition, the Commission's study involved an extensive review of juvenile crime literature, interviews with acknowledged experts in the field of juvenile justice and the tracking of current legislative reform proposals. The result is the Commission's report, which begins with a transmittal letter, an Executive Summary and this Introduction, followed by a Background section. Six issues and 18 recommendations are presented in three chapters: The State's Role, System Reforms and the California Youth Authority. The report ends with a Conclusion, Appendices and Endnotes.

Background

		T he juvenile justice system is a complex web of people and agencies that processes about a quarter of a million youths annually at a cost exceeding $1 billion. To understand the system requires a baseline knowledge of the statistical trends during the past decade that have shaped the system's ability to function and the roles played by the various components of the system. Academic experts have long recognized that crime is a young man's game. The typical criminal is a male who begins his career at 14 or 15, continues through his mid-20s and then tapers off into retirement. Three statistics demonstrate the disproportionate impact of those under the age of 18 on criminal activity: While comprising roughly one-sixth of the nation's population, they make up a full one-quarter of all people arrested and account for nearly one-third of the arrests for the seven crimes in the Uniform Crime Index (homicide, forcible rape, robbery, aggravated assault, burglary, vehicle theft and larceny).2 This perspective is echoed by RAND's leading juvenile justice expert, Dr. Peter W. Greenwood:

Somewhere between 30 and 40 percent of all boys growing up in an urbanized area in the United States will be arrested before their 18th birthday....Although juveniles account for only a small proportion of the total population, older juveniles have the highest arrest rates of any age group. Furthermore, studies of criminal careers have demonstrated that one of the best predictors of sustained and serious adult criminality is the age of initiation and seriousness of the delinquent career.3

		G reenwood also notes that 16 and 17 are the peak years for crime in all countries and all states, regardless of culture and geography. He says the fact that a disproportionate share of crime is committed by 10- through 17-year-olds remains true as the population fluctuates: Nationally in 1981, that age group made up 16 percent of the total population and were involved in 34 percent of the arrests, while in 1991 the age group was 13 percent of the population and 28 percent of the arrests. There is no reliable measurement of how many of California's 3.5 million 10- through 17-year-old youths are involved in criminal activities. Arrest statistics tend to rise as law enforcement ranks increase, decline when minor crime arrests are perceived as a low priority or a futile effort, and fluctuate according to shifts in population age groups. In addition, arrests fall far short of reported crimes (let alone crimes that victims choose not to report). For instance, in 1993 the California Department of Justice recorded a total of 564,307 arrests of adults and juveniles for felonies compared to the more than 2 million felony crimes that were reported as occurring. Nonetheless, arrest statistics are usually cited to document trends in juvenile criminal activity. The graph on the next page reflects juvenile arrests for misdemeanors and felonies for the past 11 years (please see Appendix D for detailed raw data from the California Department of Justice).

		A s the charts indicate, the number of juvenile arrests for assault and homicide have climbed steeply over the past decade, although the 1990s have been faily flat. In 10 years, arrests for both types of crime more than doubled -- assaults from 5,902 to 12,005 and homicides from 286 to 645. Linking the homicide figure to national statistics indicates that one out of four juveniles arrested for homicide was in California at a time when the state had only 11 percent of the nation'd juvenile population.5 Driven by the climbing assault and homicide rates, the violent crime arrests have risen sharply in the past decade. The total juvenile arrests for all violent crimes (homicide, forcible rape, robbery, assault and kidnapping) and the arrest rate per 100,000 for violent crimes is shown in the table below:/FONT>

The

State's Role

Crime is local in nature and impact; the State's most important role is to provide leadership. The goals of the separate juvenile justice system are not clear. Funding cutbacks have all but eliminated the preventive, early-intervention programs that hold the most promise for halting crime. Recommendations: Consolidate state efforts in a single, accountable agency. Vigorously enforce existing alcohol and gun laws. Make early intervention and prevention a top priority.

The State's Role

		F ighting crime is not within the purview of any single program or any one level of government. As a recent report entitled "Confronting Violence in California" concluded:

The prevention of violence and crime can never be effectively built upon only one strategy because violence is the product of many factors. A comprehensive approach is needed that addresses prevention, intervention and detention.

		S uch a comprehensive approach to crime will cross turf and jurisdictional lines, pay little attention to artificial budgetary barriers and shift the focus from "it's not our responsibility" and "who will pay for it?" to "what will work?" and "how can we get it done?" There are signs that many communities already are moving in that direction, creating coalitions, providing specialized services and targeting localized factors that contribute to crime. But results are erratic and success is sometimes difficult to replicate. Any credible examination of the juvenile justice system must acknowledge the multi-level and multi-disciplinary nature of the system, of the causes of juvenile crime and of potential solutions. The mandate of the Little Hoover Commission, however, is to examine state programs, policies and procedures and make recommendations to improve their effectiveness and efficiency. The Commission's approach, therefore, was to scrutinize the juvenile justice system, discern its flaws and then look for the appropriate state role in addressing those concerns. The result is this chapter, which in three issue areas addresses the need for the State to provide coordinated leadership, the fraying consensus for a separate juvenile justice system and the consequences of budget priorities that have shifted spending away from prevention and towards detention.

Issue 1: While crime is local in nature and impact, the State must provide meaningful leadership in shaping juvenile anti­violence and crime prevention efforts.

They include alcoholism, drug use or mental health problems among parents, poor prenatal health care, inadequate or inconsistent parenting, abuse and neglect, criminogenic neighborhoods, problems in school, inadequate bonding with pro-social community institutions, involvement with delinquent peers and poverty....An increasing involvement in street-level drug selling, the increased availability and firepower of firearms and the glorification of violence in movies, videos and rap music are all factors that are consistent with increasing violent crimes, but not property crimes, among the young. Add to these the increasing animosity and tensions caused by recent immigrant groups displacing or competing with impoverished African-American and other groups residing in urban areas; the decline of the public schools and diminishing blue-collar employment opportunities in inner cities and the recipe is clear. Recent increases in youth violence appear to be caused by demographic, economic and social trends over which individual families and youth have little influence.16

		T he California Task Force to Promote Self-Esteem and Personal and Social Responsibility addressed the causes of juvenile crime in its final report, noting that they are so varied that a single explanation or single response will not work:

Deviant behavior is too often the result of an unstable and unloving home life; alienation from social groups such as school, church and the community; economic inequities; and cultural and racial discrimination -- all crucial to building self-esteem....[Research over the past 20 years into the effects of child abuse indicates a causal relationship between abuse, neglect and emotional deprivation and juvenile delinquency. In such people, crime and violence may become ways to compensate for feeling shameful, powerless and worthless; these may be desperate attempts to gain power and esteem. In addition, children treated violently by their caregivers learn that violence is an acceptable reaction to conflict and frustration, and they adopt this behavior as adults.17

		T he Little Hoover Commission's advisory group identified five factors that cause, contribute to or enable violence by juveniles, including: The glamorization of violence by media and the acceptance of violence by society. Substance abuse, particularly alcohol. The availability of guns. Domestic violence, affecting both children who observe it in their homes and neighborhoods and children who are the target of it. Gangs and their attraction for those who can find acceptance and belonging nowhere else. The Senate Office of Research says the cost of violence in California, including medical care and lost job productivity, totals $72 billion a year. Factors contributing to violence that were identified by the office include: Biological factors Early childhood experiences Dysfunctional families Cultural diversity Economic inequity Low self-esteem Substance abuse Incarceration Easy access to weapons Lack of opportunities Media influences18 The Commission on the Future of the California Courts, writing in its final report about juvenile justice said:

Today's family dysfunction is a harbinger of tomorrow's court dockets. Absent a concerted effort to mend the social fabric, the consequences of family disintegration will continue to be a burden to the courts, the public schools and society itself....[J]uvenile delinquency is closely associated with unsatisfactory family relationships, education, neighborhoods, peer groups, socioeconomic status, and lack of verbal and problem-solving skills.19

		T he U.S. Department of Justice identifies five categories of causes and correlates of juvenile crime: Individual characteristics, including alienation, rebellion and lack of bonding with society. Family influences, such as parental conflict, child abuse and a family history of problem behavior including drug use and crime. School experiences, including early failure and lack of commitment to attending. Peer group influences, such as gangs and friends who engage in anti-social behavior. Neighborhood and community factors, including economic deprivation, high rates of substance abuse and crime, and low neighborhood attachment.20 The Children's Advocacy Institute addressed juvenile delinquency in its California Children's Budget 1994-95, concluding that the problem is driven by a mix of factors including the breakdown of families, a degeneration of values and civility, cultural preoccupation with physical conflict, poverty, gangs and peer pressure, and drug abuse. The Violence Research Foundation looks to diet and body chemistry as a major cause of violence. The Foundation believes that its research demonstrates that violent offenders display substandard levels of essential nutrients and high levels of substances such as zinc, cadmium, manganese and lead. The California Youth Authority identifies poor family attachment and poor parenting behavior, a history of child abuse and maltreatment, and low commitment to school as the primary correlates of delinquent behavior. Biological factors that contribute to crime include acute psychotic states, brain injury, tumors, infections or degenerative diseases, chronic neurotoxic brain conditions (including substance abuse) and birth defects (including fetal alcohol syndrome). The CYA says recent studies indicate that delinquency occurs in an orderly fashion over time, with three major pathways: One begins with stubborn behavior, progressing to defiance and culminating in authority avoidance. Another begins with minor anti-social behavior such as lying or shoplifting, moving to property damage before evolving into more serious forms of theft. The third begins with minor aggression, progresses to physical fighting and then moves to more violent acts.21
Root causes: cyclical family problems, lack of community effort		T he lists by these expert sources share in common a litany of failure by families and other institutions that have historically established social values and set standards of behavior. The reasons are many. Parenting is a learned skill, traditionally passed on through modeling, observation and experience. In a mobile society where families are often isolated from older generations, poor parenting practices and abusive situations become cyclical problems, passing from one generation to the next. Schools, another traditional source of societal stability, have sidestepped teaching right from wrong and the Golden Rule, providing little in the way of a moral compass for their students. Churches and organized religion are not part of the daily lives of many people. And litigation and large jury verdicts have made it prohibitively expensive for many community organizations to offer the types of services and programs they did in the past. In a paper prepared for a family policy seminar, officials observed:

What once were primarily family functions -- teaching children, growing food, making clothing, building housing, instilling moral values in the young, caring for elders -- have been gradually reallocated to schools, businesses, churches and other formal institutions. Ironically, many of these same formal institutions now lament that their workers, students and parishioners are deficient in motivation, discipline, cooperativeness and other traits because of the decline of families.22

		I n addition to the failure of the family structure and social institutions, the experts cited above and others tend to focus on three major factors that they believe drive crime and violence: the easy availability of guns, the strong link between alcohol abuse and violence, and the desensitizing influence of the glamorous portrayal of violence in a wide array of media. Guns: The growing use of guns has increased the likelihood that crime will be violent and deadly. The U.S. Justice Department has reported that in 1992 the use of guns in crime soared dramatically over averages for the previous five years. Handgun homicides increased 24 percent over the five-year average and the use of guns in crimes increased almost 50 percent.23 Other research indicates that, despite laws against ownership by minors, guns are often in the hands of juveniles. A National Institute of Justice survey of 835 incarcerated juveniles and 758 male students in 10 inner-city high schools found that 83 percent of the inmates and 22 percent of the students possess guns. Fifty-five percent of the inmates said they carried guns all or most of the time before being incarcerated and 12 percent of the students did so. Two-thirds of the students said it would be easy to acquire a gun. The main reason cited for carrying guns was self-protection.24 The National Council on Crime and Delinquency has stated that its analysis of juvenile crime trends shows that the single most important factor is the increasing availability of guns.25 The Pacific Center for Violence Prevention, noting that guns accelerate the severity of any incident they are used in, found that youths use guns in 59 percent of the homicides they commit and 32 percent of the suicides. In 1992, more Californians died from gun-shot wounds than from car crashes, about a third of them young people. The Center's 1990 estimate of the cost of firearm injuries and deaths put California's share at about $2.5 billion.26
State has aggressive anti-gun laws; rigorous enforcement s needed		C alifornia has been comparatively aggressive about limiting juvenile access to guns through statutes. State law forbids the sale of handguns to those under 21. While the law enforcement response to crimes that are committed with guns comes from local police and sheriff departments, oversight of laws that limit access to guns falls under the jurisdiction of the state Department of Justice. The Department's responsibilities have increased greatly, according to a manager with the Department's Firearms Program, with the passage of laws on certifying firearms dealers, tear gas and pepper spray owners, assault rifle owners and those who have completed firearms safety courses. While the program's staff has grown, lack of resources has hindered the immediate implementation of all the audit and processing functions needed to rigorously enforce laws that restrict gun access, the manager says. For instance, while the Department has had the authority for some time to investigate firearms dealers, there have been insufficient resources to do so routinely and on a regular basis. The manager said by shifting priorities the Department now expects to institute an on­going inspection effort within the next six months that focuses on who firearms dealers are selling guns to and how they are documenting required information.27 While improving enforcement of existing laws is touted by many as a major step toward decreasing access to guns, others believe it is just a beginning. An instructor at the Johns Hopkins School of Hygiene and Public Health summed up the gun factor:
The recent epidemic in youth homicide is almost entirely an epidemic of gun violence. Significant reductions in the most lethal forms of youth violence cannot be expected to occur if the availability of guns to youth is not curtailed. This requires greater restrictions on handgun sales, more controls on those licensed to sell guns, more intensive efforts to combat illegal gun trafficking by law enforcement with the cooperation of communities, and parents removing guns from the home. 28
		A lcohol: Just as guns accelerate the violence of crimes, alcohol is often directly linked to violent criminal behavior, studies have found. Although other drugs are often the focus of public policy and law enforcement efforts, their use tends to be linked to property crimes (such as burglaries to gain money to buy drugs), according to the Pacific Center for Violence Prevention, while alcohol use has a strong link to violent crime. A U.S. Department of Justice study showed that 54 percent of people in state prisons on convictions of violent crimes had used alcohol just before the offense. A variety of studies have linked alcohol use to 50 to 66 percent of all homicides, 20 to 36 percent of all suicides and 37 percent of trauma cases. 29 Also similar to guns, alcohol is not merely an adult problem despite age restrictions on its use. A national survey of students showed that 14 percent of eighth graders, 23 percent of 10th graders and 28 percent of 12th graders had consumed five or more drinks in a row on at least one occasion in the past year. It is estimated that 10 percent of youths convicted of homicide used alcohol at the time of the offense, 31 percent convicted of robbery, 25 percent convicted of assault and 9 percent convicted of sexual assault. 30
Lack of Resources stymied tough oversight of alcohol sales to minors		While crimes involving alcohol are handled by local law enforcement agencies, the primary regulatory body that oversees the sale of liquor is the state Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control (ABC). The chief deputy director says that while the department pursues a balance of prevention and enforcement activities, it has always believed a more rigorous enforcement effort would provide a greater deterrence and keep alcohol out of the hands of minors. Such an effort is difficult in an era when the ratio of inspectors to licensees has dropped to one to 500 outlets. Twenty years ago, the department had 209 investigators to cover 51,565 licensed outlets. By 1993-94, the number had dropped to 142 covering 72,064. 31 The ABC chief deputy director says that repeated academic studies have reached the same conclusion that the department has: that lack of resources is the primary stumbling block to more aggressive enforcement. The State could also provide more effective leadership for local law enforcement efforts if there were more resources earmarked to battle illegal alcohol consumption, the ABC official says. He notes that a "use it, lose it" law that ties juvenile alcohol possession and consumption to the ability to have a driver's license has not been very effective because courts do not uniformly apply the sanction and the Department of Motor Vehicles often is not notified of the violation so they can block licensing. In addition, decoy programs that would detect unlawful sales of alcohol to minors are often not a priority for local law enforcement, a situation that could improve with better state support.32 Glamorization of violence: A contentious issue that draws less wholehearted agreement than gun and alcohol use by juveniles is the depiction in a wide variety of media of violence as glamorous and exciting. Dr. Carole Lieberman, a nationally active critic of the media, believes that studies document that media violence is the number one cause of crime and acting out by juveniles. Calling media violence a drug and an addiction, she said that the psychological and biological reactions to viewing violence show that a person's tolerance builds up and that the result is the creation of more and more violent generations.33
Media violence contributes to problem when propensity exists		O thers, however, including Dr. Ed Donnerstein of the American Psychological Association's Commission on Violence and Youth, see the constant barrage of violence in the media as adding to a predisposition toward violence rather than causing it.34 Study after study has shown that youths convicted of violent crimes often have had a steady diet of violent television, movies and video games -- but many children partaking of this same diet do not commit crimes. Experts believe a critical difference is the context within which children are exposed to media violence. Those with solid family lives and healthy perspectives on the future based on their experiences in the present seem to be little influenced by viewing violence.
Multiple causes makes prevention a 'kid-by-kid' undertaking		T he factors driving juvenile crime are many, as indicated by all of the elements identified by experts above, and for any single child who becomes delinquent the specific combination of family breakdown, school experience or negative societal influences may be quite different. Paraphrasing one state official, prevention is a kid by kid thing. Fixing any single aspect of the factors driving crime -- even if possible -- holds little promise of success. But providing a life context where the resiliency of children will be strengthened rather than battered has become the goal of many who are involved with juveniles.35 The U.S. Department of Justice says that community mobilization can be an effective weapon in combatting gangs and lowering delinquency rates:
[I]nnovative and committed individuals, groups and community organizations [working] together can improve the quality of life in their communities and, if necessary, reclaim the communities from gangs and other criminal elements. Such groups include youth development organizations, churches, tenant organizations and civic groups. 36
		T he Department quotes a Carnegie Council study that concluded that community-based youth programs can provide the critical community support necessary, in conjunction with family- and school-focused efforts, to prevent delinquency. "The Council found that many adolescents are adrift during non-school hours and can be actively involved in community-based programs that provide opportunities to develop a sense of importance, well-being, belonging and active community participation. Through such programs, risks can be transformed into opportunities." In that mold, many communities and organizations in California have begun to find creative ways to reach troubled youth who are not learning solid values or achieving a sense of belonging and responsibility elsewhere. The City of Sacramento and others, for instance, are using school facilities late at night to attract teenagers with time on their hands for shared activities. The National Clearinghouse for Alcohol and Drug Information lists no fewer than two dozen community programs in California working with juveniles and substance abuse problems. 37 The California Park and Recreation Society's Youth-at-Risk Task Force publishes a resource manual of more than 125 community programs focusing on youth at risk and urges all park and recreation programs to aggressively collaborate with other agencies to provide services to and positive experiences for children. 38 In addition, the League of California Cities is sponsoring an "Investing in Our Youth Task Force" to focus on crime prevention strategies for juveniles and to stockpile examples of city ordinances, programs, collaborations and other mechanisms that work as a inspiring reference source for all cities. Many local government and community programs target gangs, including Los Angeles' Gang Alternative and Prevention Program, Hayward's Community Access Team, San Diego's Triple Crown program and Los Angeles' Gang Resistance Education and Training. In many locations, schools, district attorneys and city police are focusing on truancy and cracking down on curfew violations as ways of reducing the opportunity for crime. Solutions are being tackled by foundations and charitable organizations as well. The California Wellness Foundation has a five-year, $30 million program to raise the visibility of violence and treat it as a public health issue. Guns, alcohol and the lack of prevention programs are the Foundation's chief focus. The Legal Community Against Violence Fund is gathering resources to support legislation to curb the use of assault weapons. The Carnegie Corporation has spent $1.5 million on violence prevention since 1990, including $675,000 on a project to modify media portrayals of violence. As reported by The Chronicle of Philanthropy:
Says David M. Nee, executive director of the Graustein Memorial Fund in New Haven, Conn., "I think we are seeing the beginning of a national mobilization of grant makers against violence. Everybody is in a `mad as hell, can't stand it anymore' state." Grant makers have been using a wide range of strategies....[F]oundations are beginning to award sizable amounts of money to control guns and gangs, to conduct public opinion polls and public education campaigns, to make schools safe and train student mediators, to support community policing and ease racial tensions, and to prevent violence against children, women, the elderly and homosexuals. 39
Scattered efforts allow tailoring for local conditions but leave gaps		T he advantage of the scattered efforts that are bubbling up in various communities is that they offer the multi-disciplinary, multiple strategy approach that is widely acknowledged as necessary to address the many roots of crime. The disadvantage, however, is that there are huge gaps in services, with programs reaching youths on only a hit-or-miss basis depending on where they happen to live and the energy expended by local organizations and volunteers. A traditional role of state government has been to ensure statewide standardization of programming so that those at one end of the State can find the same services to meet needs as those at the other end. Even those who are frustrated by the uneven nature of community programs, however, are not suggesting that the State should target juvenile crime by mandating a specific array of services and programs. Top-down enforcement of solutions that would meet the diversity of needs throughout the State strike many as a concept that is impossible, too authoritarian and destined to fail. Writing about the delicacy required to use the clout of state government to empower families and communities, experts at Pennsylvania State University urged that states strive for policies that are family-centered, preventive and "decategorized," meaning that regulations, eligibility criteria and other rules should be more flexible to allow combined funding streams and services. Among the principles outlined at a Pennsylvania Family Policy Seminar was that the "first presumption of policies and programs should be to support and supplement family functioning, rather than substituting for family functioning." 40 Testifying to the Little Hoover Commission about the proper state role, the California Youth Authority said that while history shows that the juvenile justice system has been a shared state-local responsibility, prevention activities have been primarily local activities: The state role is limited to advising, evaluating, coordinating and providing technical assistance and information. Indeed, the juvenile justice system in its entirety is somewhat limited in its ability to fundamentally alter the causes and correlates of juvenile crime. Rather, the Youth Authority believes that the most effective approaches to prevention of youth crime and delinquency are those which address the fundamental transfers of societal values to our young. The values of personal self-worth, sense of community and responsibility are most frequently transmitted by families, by schools, by religious communities and by the society as a whole. When these instruments of society, these conduits of values communication, cease to function effectively, we find ourselves forced to develop corrective -- not preventive -- strategies to issues such as juvenile crime. 41
Several State bodies share role of fighting juvenile crime		A s the most visible state component of the juvenile justice system, the California Youth Authority has a statutory obligation to promote prevention activities. But the CYA is not alone in being entrusted with this mission at the state level. A brief description of mandates and programmatic efforts follows: The Delinquency Prevention Act of 1974 charged the California Youth Authority with the responsibility of "assisting the development, establishment and operation of comprehensive public and private community-based programs for crime and delinquency prevention...[including exercising] leadership on behalf of the State....All state agencies shall cooperate with the Department of the Youth Authority to bring about a statewide program for the reduction and prevention of crime and delinquency. 42 While CYA provided delinquency prevention training and technical assistance to local governments both before and after the act was adopted, budget cuts and the realignment of state funds into block grants to counties for these and other purposes in the past three years sharply reduced the CYA's involvement in prevention activities. CYA continues low-budget-impact efforts, such as having wards speak to schoolchildren and teaching wards good parenting skills. The State's central planning mechanism for delinquency prevention, however, is not the CYA but the Office of Criminal Justice Planning (OCJP) acting with the advice and approval of the California Council on Criminal Justice. State law provides for a 37-member council to annually review and approve "the comprehensive state plan for the improvement of criminal justice and delinquency prevention activities throughout the State." As staff to the council, the Office of Criminal Justice Planning is directed to prepare the plan, to "define, develop and correlate programs and projects for the state criminal justice agencies," and to "cooperate with and render technical assistance to the Legislature, state agencies, units of general local government, combinations of such units, or other public or private agencies, organizations or institutions in matters relating to criminal justice and delinquency prevention." Currently, OCJP's primary activity in the juvenile crime arena is to funnel federal and state grants to programs that target or include youths, an amount totaling about $46 million a year. (The Commission notes that how this money is spent and the effectiveness of the underwritten programs, while beyond the scope of the Commission's current efforts, may be deserving of attention in a future study. OCJP oversees $120.2 million in funding for a broad range of programs, with $55.3 million coming from the federal government.) 43 The Department of Justice, under the Attorney General, also claims a share of crime prevention activities. It recently created a task force on violence. The Department's Crime Prevention Office offers community cadre training, among other programs, and in conjunction with the Department of Education has developed a program called School/Community Violence Prevention: Focus on Gangs. In addition, the attorney general has urged video game businesses to restrict violence and label their products for better consumer information. The Department of Education, in addition to the anti-gang program, is home to the $20 million Healthy Start plan, which provides early intervention services for at-risk children. The Governor's 25-member State Advisory Group on Juvenile Delinquency Prevention develops policy and priorities for funding, with OCJP providing staffing. The State Commission on Juvenile Justice, Crime and Delinquency Prevention, with 16 members, inspects CYA facilities, provides advice to CYA about delinquency prevention funding and acts as a liaison between the CYA and the public. According to its chairman, "Many other entities are responsible for providing mandated services to the Youth Authority, including those related to building safety and health codes. This Commission is the sole mandated body representing the public interest on statewide juvenile justice matters."44 The Governor recently created the California Commission on Improving Life Through Service to "unite individuals in service to their communities, promote responsible citizenship and achieve demonstrable results in addressing California's persistent unmet human, educational, public safety and environmental needs." The Executive Order creating the commission set reducing juvenile crime as the number one priority for the commission's efforts.
'Comprehensive state plan' driven by funding streams rather than needs		T he list above makes it impossible to accuse the State of ignoring juvenile crime and the need for prevention activities. But observers of the juvenile justice system have criticized the many state components as too scattered to be effective. For instance, OCJP's "comprehensive state plan" is not compiled in one document but instead is fragmented into several pieces that can be found in applications for federal block grant funds: the Children's Justice Act grant, the Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention grant and the Anti-Drug Abuse Statewide Strategy Drug Control and System improvement grant. Regardless of the value of each individual plan, they apparently are driven, not by a comprehensive review of California's crime problem and an assessment of the best strategies to address that problem, but by the existence of specific categories of federal funding. In addressing the issue of effective state leadership, the Legislative Analyst's Office told the Little Hoover Commission that both the CYA and OCJP produce research and results from pilot projects that are never used because there is no mechanism to transmit the information to local communities and governments. What is needed, the analyst argued, is a central point of leadership, not as a directory body but as an advisory one that could facilitate an exchange of useful information.45
Expertise is neither pooled nor shared, hampering efforts		T he Commission also heard from a community activist who wanted to focus on juvenile crime and who reported making between 40 and 50 phone calls trying to find information about programs that work. A county official said a successful program in his area grew out of a televised report from another state rather than from any sharing of successful efforts by other California communities. And a state official with OCJP acknowledged that it would be difficult for community groups or lay people not familiar with the juvenile justice system to access the State's expertise since there is no single point of accountability. The California Youth Authority also recognizes the problem, not just with state entities but also with the quality of information available to work with:

Most crime and delinquency prevention efforts are piecemeal with no clear definition or scope of understanding of the problem they target. Little information is available that allows people who want to tackle problems to see where the problems are and how best to deal with them. For example, the California Department of Justice stopped collecting juvenile probation referral and disposition data in 1989. Also, schools are no longer able to collect and forward the necessary type and quality of data that would contribute to delinquency prevention planning. In addition, information is lacking about current programs that show promise for replication in other areas. Adequate programming can't succeed without planning. Adequate planning rests on information that describes the scope of the problem.46

		T he general consensus, then, is that while the State is doing many things about juvenile crime prevention, the efforts are neither well coordinated, accessible or effective. Critics of the present structure believe the State's role in crime prevention could be enhanced in three areas: The creation of a single, powerful state body that can provide the leadership and accountability needed to effectively combat crime. This would include the development of a multipurpose clearinghouse to gather information and disseminate examples of best practices. Whether local government officials are trying to discern how their experience compares with statewide statistical trends or citizens are interested in starting grass-roots anti-crime efforts, those looking for information and assistance should be able to look to a single state entity. In addition, such an institutionalized source of research should provide policy makers with solid information about cause and effect, impact and results. The adoption of strong anti-violence primary education strategies. While local communities will be most effective in creating suitable programs to meet specific needs, crime prevention can also be assisted by general education that strengthens common societal values. The State's role can include: Promoting effective school-based curricula that give children guidance for living in today's world. Because schools already have multiple mandates for teaching specific programs, a more effective approach, experts believe, would be to provide schools with information about programs that encourage non-violent conflict resolution, responsible decision-making and awareness of consequences. While some analyses have reported that such programs are successful in giving youths good coping skills, other rigorous examinations indicate that many of the programs are not well-designed for targeted age groups, do not begin early enough and may have little long-lasting effect.48 Public informational campaigns that heighten general awareness of societal problems and that urge specific individual responsibility and action. An example is the State's anti-smoking campaign that used increased cigarette taxes to fund advertising to focus on the link between smoking and death. The campaign resulted in a 28 percent decline in smoking over five years, a rate three times greater than the national decline.49 Similar advertising campaigns against drug use and domestic violence have also been used to heighten public awareness and shift societal attitudes from indifference and/or impotence to knowledgeable intolerance and disdain. A renewed emphasis on enforcing existing laws that have the potential of reducing violence, such as those relating to guns and alcohol. California had tough anti-assault gun laws and waiting periods for handgun purchases before federal legislation was created -- and it is beyond the scope of this report to assess whether further laws are needed. But existing laws that should keep guns and alcohol out of the hands of minors require vigorous enforcement if they are to be effective.
State's pivotal role: inspirational leader and program facilitator		W hile the State can correctly take the stance that juvenile crime prevention is a job most effectively tackled locally, the State has a pivotal role to play as a leader and facilitator of community inspiration and action. Despite this, no single state entity is taking the lead in promoting prevention strategies in a way that is accessible to communities hungry for such help. The result is that many communities remain locked in hopelessness or waste time and resources reinventing the wheel to form programs that will work.

Recommendation 1: The Governor and the Legislature should consolidate juvenile anti-crime efforts in a single agency to provide strong leadership and accountability for results.

While the State has several bodies that are mandated to focus on a statewide approach to juvenile crime prevention, there is little coordination and many of the most important duties that could be performed by the State are not. While being careful to avoid placing another layer of bureaucracy on top of existing state programs, the Governor and the Legislature should create a consolidated body at the highest level of state government that can better focus existing juvenile anti-crime efforts and expand into productive areas, including providing information and identifying successful strategies that can and should be emulated by communities. The specific mandated duties should include: Leadership to highlight issues and concerns for the public, to set standards for local anti-crime activities, and to propose and promote legislation to further delinquency prevention. A clearinghouse function that would provide centralized assessment and evaluation of programs, promotion of models that work, and technical assistance for local governments and communities. A data gathering and assessment function that would provide reliable statistics on a statewide basis about trends in crime, results of programs and funds expended. The current lack of data on costs across jurisdictional levels, case outcomes and comprehensive recidivism tracking makes it difficult to make informed and rational policy decisions. Standardization of training for those connected with juvenile justice, including judges, district attorneys, probation officers, parole officials and public defenders. The identification of and dissemination of information about available sources of federal, state and private funding. When appropriate, the point of control for funding flow to local agencies and communities and the central point for accountability for the successful use of funding. Targeted information campaigns to bring about behavioral changes, on the part of both individuals at risk and businesses that unwittingly glorify violence and crime.

Recommendation 2: The Governor and the Legislature should adopt legislation directing the Board of Education in conjunction with the Department of Education to evaluate and promote the use of effective and conflict resolution curricula in public schools.

Many public and private schools already incorporate programs in their curricula that deal with conflict resolution, personal responsibility and decision-making processes because of the potential for reducing misbehavior, violence and crime at schools. But little credible information is available about programs that are effective and criteria that could be used to select appropriate programs based on a school's population and needs. As noted earlier, schools already face many mandates that restrict their flexibility in providing students with daily lessons. Providing an outcome-based assessment of various programs would give schools the option of including conflict resolution materials in their curricula that would be suited to their specific needs.

Recommendation 3: Law enforcement officials at all levels of government should increase their emphasis on enforcing existing laws regarding firearms and alcohol.

Continuing fiscal crises at all levels of government make it impossible to fully fund all programs at desirable levels. But because of the huge long-range cost of juvenile crime and the clear links between guns, alcohol and juvenile violence, policy makers should place a priority on enforcing existing laws that keep guns out of the hands of juveniles and existing laws that prohibit alcoholic consumption by juveniles.