Court Officials Laud Youth Work Program

Morton Rochman, who took over as supervising judge of the San Fernando Juvenile Court early this year, stood in a Van Nuys parking lot at 7 a.m. Sunday and watched as 18 youthful offenders were frisked and given the rules for the day.

“We get the whole gamut--from runaways and prostitutes, who come to Hollywood looking for the good life, to affluent (kids) and illegals,” Rochman said of the youths he had sentenced to a work program that would send the group to Granada Hills and Little Tujunga Canyon for a day of manual labor. The visit by Rochman, who was joined by Juvenile Court Commissioner Jack Gold, marked the first time that court officers who sentence youths observed the program firsthand.

The youths live at home and work off their sentences on weekends, instead of spending up to 30 days in Juvenile Hall. The two crews of nine spent Sunday cleaning brush out of a flood wash and weeding along a road.

Rochman and Gold watched as crew leader Bill Pugh sternly told his charges that he would tolerate “no talk about sex or drugs and no fooling around.”

They would be graded for their work and their attitudes, Pugh said. An “A” would get them a day off their sentences; a “D” would add a day.

“If you get an ‘F’, you’ll know it by the coldness of the handcuffs,” Pugh said, “because you’ll immediately be taken to Juvenile Hall.”

As the youths gathered in Van Nuys, similar work groups were forming at several other locations throughout the county, said Carl Curtis, who directs the program for the Probation Department. The 3-year-old program, called Juvenile Alternative Work Service, or JAWS, is for 13- to 17-year-olds who commit offenses such as first-time burglary, assault, theft or drug sales. He said about 1,500 youths participated in the program in the fiscal year that ended July 1.

Every weekend, 22 crews of about 10 youths each gather to work, Curtis said. “About two-thirds of them complete the program. Some just flat-out tell us, ‘I don’t want to work. Lock me up.’ It does teach self-discipline. For some, this is the first time they’ve worked in their lives. They get blisters, and they get sore muscles. It isn’t easy.”

Most of the youths Rochman and Gold observed working in a flood-control channel near the Knollwood Country Club in Granada Hills agreed that the work is hard.

“I work 56 hours a week at my regular job,” said a 17-year-old North Hollywood boy. “Then I work here eight hours on Saturdays and Sundays. When I get home, I’m too tired to get into trouble.”

‘One Heck of a Lesson’

The red-haired youth, who was sentenced to the program for violating his probation, said, “It’s a lot better than being locked up--it teaches you one heck of a lesson.”

He served five days in Juvenile Hall for a prior offense, breaking and entering a residence. “I was 15 then,” he said. “I cried every day I was there.”

“You pay the price,” said a 15-year-old who plays first-string football for his high school in Sherman Oaks. “I just want to get this over and get on with my life.” He said he was arrested for breaking into some lockers at a local private school, his first brush with the law.

Another worker, who has a regular job as a department store salesman, said that doing manual labor in the weekend program is “hard work, but it’s taught me a lesson. I’m here because I made a mistake and I want to pay for it.”

Department Paid for Labor

The Probation Department is paid $250 a day per crew for the youths’ work through contracts with the county Flood Control District and Roads Department, the cities of Los Angeles, Burbank and El Monte and other agencies.

Dressed in casual clothes, Rochman and Gold looked more like concerned fathers than officers of the court.

“It’s a great alternative to the crowded juvenile halls, where a lot of these young people might otherwise have to sleep on the floors,” Gold said.