Controversy in Oxnard : Youth Program Targets ‘the Baddest of the Bad’

Sally Burboa harbors no illusions about her 16-year-old son. He has been convicted of three misdemeanors and has been stopped by police numerous times for curfew violations, paint sniffing and petty theft.

But Mark is not beyond hope, she argues, not a “serious habitual offender,” certainly not the “baddest of the bad.”

The Oxnard Police Department disagrees. Mark is one of 28 youths targeted by the department as “Serious Habitual Offenders--Drug Involved” under a controversial, federally financed program being tried out here and in four other cities across the United States.

The goal of the SHODI program, which is financed by a U.S. Justice Department grant, is to identify the most serious youthful offenders, ensure that they receive stiff sentences and keep them off the streets for the longest period of time, according to Police Chief Robert Owens. These are the youths, a Justice Department official said, who are “the baddest of the bad.”

Police and the Ventura County district attorney’s office call the program, which is aimed at youths from age 13 to 17, an effective crime-fighting tool, and attribute a dramatic drop in crime in one neighborhood to the success of the program there.

But some parents, judges and civil libertarians contend that the criteria for labeling a youth a habitual offender are too broad and that the program mislabels some who are not yet beyond rehabilitation. They point as an example to Mark Burboa, who has been convicted of giving the wrong name to a police officer after a curfew violation, paint sniffing and battery during a family fight. Critics also say that too many young offenders are being treated as if they were adult career criminals and that the program discriminates against minorities.

In some ways, the debate here over the SHODI program reflects a national conflict over how best to deal with juvenile crime.

Supporters of the program, like Owens, say it reflects public demands for a change of focus from rehabilitation of the criminal to protection of potential victims.

‘That Didn’t Work’

“For years there was the attitude: ‘There’s no such thing as a bad boy,’ ” Owens said. “Well, there is. For years we were blaiming society and apologizing for the behavior (of delinquents). That didn’t work. . . . I’m simply saying get them off the streets. If they want to rehabilitate them in an institution, OK. But on the streets they’re a hazard to the public.”

But Peggy Johnson, president of the American Civil Liberties Union, Ventura County chapter, said the program is a short-term solution to a long-term problem.

“You can label these kids and throw them away for a few years” she said. “You ensure that the serious offenders won’t change and the borderline kids turn hard-core. But you can’t keep them there forever. What’s going to happen when they get out?”

Probably the most controversial aspect of the program is that a young person in Oxnard who never has been convicted of a crime could be classified a serious habitual offender because the criteria for labeling a youth are based on arrests, not convictions. So far that has not happened in Oxnard, but critics say the potential remains.

“The use of arrests to label someone is, let’s face it, un-American,” said Ventura County Public Defender Kenneth Clayman. “What separates this country from some others is that we don’t persecute people simply because they’ve been arrested.”

Florida Program

In Jacksonville, Fla., one of the other cities with a SHODI program, 22% of all youths classified as serious habitual offenders never have appeared in court, according to a program official.

Clayman also asserts that the SHODI label on a defendant could influence some judges and prevent a youth from receiving a fair trial. Juvenile offenders are tried before a judge, he added, and are not entitled to a jury trial.

James McNally, who was the presiding judge of the Ventura County Juvenile Court during the first year of the SHODI program, said he treated the information as “simply the opinion of the Oxnard police.” But, he said, there always is the potential for abusing the SHODI label.

“If a judge is lazy and not willing to sift through all the evidence, or easily intimidated, he could substitute the label for factual material,” he said. “You have to be deaf, dumb and blind not to realize that possibility.”

Most Are Minorities

Eighty-three percent of the SHODI youths are Latino or black, and Johnson of the ACLU attributes that to basing the program on arrests, not convictions. Minority youths--who often live in higher-crime neighborhoods than whites and are more likely to have contact with police--have a greater chance of being classified as SHODI, she believes.

Until he was advised of the rule by a reporter, Michael Bradbury, the Ventura County district attorney, was unaware that a youth could be classified as a SHODI without having been convicted of a crime. But after examining the program guidelines he defended the criteria. The juvenile justice system, he said, is designed so that the first few offenses by a youth usually are ignored by prosecutors.

“The system is set up to deal with young people informally,” he said. “It doesn’t deal with them until they’ve built up a real record. The initial contacts are as relative as if they’d gone through a hearing.”

The SHODI program was founded about two years ago after a spate of criminal justice research indicated that the majority of serious juvenile crime was committed by a very small group of habitual offenders, Owens said. Five test sites were picked, partially based on the local police departments’ crime analysis capabilities.

Each city set up its own criteria, selected the serious habitual offenders from its records and compiled a thorough file on the youths that included all arrests, convictions, police contacts of any kind and problems at school. Most serious juvenile offenders are involved with drugs, according to research, Owens said--hence the name--but drug use is not an official criteria for the Oxnard program.

A youth is classified as a SHODI in Oxnard if he meets criteria such as three arrests in the last year and two previous arrests (three of the five arrests must be for felonies); or three arrests in the last year and seven previous arrests (eight of the 10 arrests must be for petty theft, misdemeanor assault, narcotics violations or weapons violations).

Debate Over Age

“I don’t buy the argument that these kids are too young for a program like this,” Owens said. “Crime victims don’t care how old these kids are when they burglarize their homes or rob their stores. One of our SHODIS shot and killed a woman working at a doughnut shop. Her husband doesn’t care how old he is. Another SHODI raped eight women. They don’t care how old he is.”

The program is a great help to officers in the field, Owens said. When an officer stops a suspect, the dispatcher can immediately let him know whether the youth is a SHODI by referring to a computerized record.

The officer then makes more inquiries and conducts a more thorough investigation, Owens said. If the youth is arrested, the intake officer at juvenile hall is alerted that releasing him prematurely could be a “threat to the public safety,” he said.

The probation officer is more likely, Owens said, to refer a SHODI case to the district attorney for prosecution than to the Juvenile Court. A special effort then is made by the district attorney, Owens said, to assign the same lawyer to follow the case up to the trial to ensure more efficient prosecution. And, according to attorneys in the public defender’s office, prosecutors do not plea bargain in SHODI cases.

Reservations About Program

Judge McNally said he agrees with the premise of the program--to coordinate the activities of the various law enforcement agencies to identify and prosecute the serious offenders. But he disagrees with basing the criteria on arrests and with labeling the offenders. Attorneys who use the label SHODI in court, he said, run the risk of losing their case on appeal.

“The words ‘serious habitual offender’ should be used for offenders who have been convicted of crimes,” McNally said. “A person may have 15 police contacts but no arrests--that’s why the label is dangerous. I like the premise of the program, but what’s wrong with simply saying: ‘Johnny R. has 16 prior burglaries in the last year and the guy should not be released because he’s a dangerous s.o.b.’

“Let’s say a judge from Bakersfield is sent here on a one-week assignment. He’s handed a 14-page packet with a big SHODI label. He asks the D.A. what it means and is told that he kid is a serious habitual offender. . . . It’s possible he could overreact.”

No overall statistics have been compiled for all the sites--Oxnard, San Jose, Portsmouth, Va., Jacksonville, Fla., and Colorado Springs, Colo. But Bob Heck, a program specialist for the Justice Department, said the program is a success because it has precipitated greater communication among various agencies in the justice system and it probably will be expanded when the grant ends.

Oxnard police conducted a study last year and determined that when all the SHODIS who had lived in a small Oxnard neighborhood were locked up, crime in the area dropped by 59%. During the first quarter of 1984, when the five SHODIS lived in the neighborhood, there were 69 burglaries, assaults and robberies; in the last quarter of the year, when all five were incarcerated, the number of serious crimes dropped to 28.

The public defender’s office tied the statistic to increased police patrols, but Police Chief Owens attributed the drop in crime to the arrest of the SHODIS. And last month, Owens said, Oxnard police received a distinguished service award from the California Youth Authority for the success of the SHODI program.

Logical Test Site

Oxnard, which received a grant of about $200,000 for the three-year program, was a logical test site because the Police Department has a sophisticated computer system and Ventura County has a reputation for being a strong “law-and-order” community, according to Dist. Atty. Bradbury. The county metes out stiffer sentences and has a higher incarceration rate than any other county in the state, Bradbury said.

Joyce Yoshioka, the chief deputy in the public defender’s office, complained that the county has a preoccupation with punishment and does not have adequate rehabilitation and treatment facilities. About half the SHODI youths have drug problems--many are chronic paint sniffers--program officials said, but there is no residential drug treatment facility in Ventura County for juveniles.

When Mark Burboa was convicted for sniffing paint several months ago, he was sentenced to 90 days in a detention facility. An attorney in the public defender’s office alleged that the sentence was stiffer than usual because Mark is a SHODI.

Mark was addicted to paint sniffing, he said, and was unable to break the habit. His 90 days could have been better spent at a drug-treatment program than in an environment designed for punishment, Sally Burboa said.

“Mark got into some of his trouble after sniffing paint and he needed some help,” she said. “But I don’t think throwing him in a place with kids who have raped people and held up stores is the answer. . . .

“He was 15 years old when he was branded with that name. He was too young to give up on.”