Conference Hammers Out Plan on Youth Violence

Assembled in the Oxnard Hilton’s ballroom Saturday were some of the county’s best minds on the subject of gang conflicts and teen violence: Social workers. Probation officers. Policy makers. Lawyers. Ministers. Judges. Cops.

It took a full day of intense brainstorming, but 160 of Ventura County’s most dedicated youth authorities delivered the goods: the first countywide plan for combatting youth violence.

Together, based on the currently popular philosophy that “the whole village raises the child,” they proposed that Ventura County’s communities and social service agencies:

* Expand after-school programs with current staff and new volunteers to keep children off the street, give academic help and personal guidance.

* Develop programs to identify and correct learning and discipline problems in children before they degenerate into misconduct.

* Find alternatives to expelling delinquent children that will keep them on campus and off the street.

* Network with businesses to develop more jobs, work training and mentor programs for youths.

* Work with businesses to keep children from getting hold of liquor and to discourage them from using drugs. Enlist news outlets to publicize the dangers of substance abuse.

* Draft a countywide master plan of programs and policies to keep youths busy and out of trouble. Develop similar plans for each community.

In tightly structured seminars and freewheeling chat sessions, the conference attendees outlined the root causes of youth violence and suggested possible cures.

And by day’s end, they had reached a communal resolve to keep the unprecedented meeting from fading away in memory as what one attendee called “just another self-congratulatory conference of the well-intended.”

In fact, representatives from each of the county’s 10 cities will report back in September on how well the plans are being put into action, said Kathy Marrujo-Thurman of El Concilio, a community outreach group.

“The people are going to take these goals back to their communities,” said Marrujo-Thurman, who helped organize the conference for the Ventura County Children’s Services Network. “And we’re going to help the communities to go through the steps.”

In opening remarks to the group, Juvenile Court Judge Steven Z. Perren said Ventura County’s parents are fed up with the increase in youth violence.

Perren said that an angry father recently rose in court and asked to address him at a hearing for the man’s wayward son.

“He said, ‘What I can’t understand is why the county of Ventura does not address this issue,’ ” Perren recalled.

He said that the father railed, “They close the libraries, there’s not enough employment for kids today, but when kids misbehave, they lock ‘em up. And if you keep locking them up, they’ll keep coming back here over and over and over again.”

Perren added, “If there’s one thing we recognize, it’s that there’s no one solution. If we save the child today, we prevent the crime tomorrow. If we save the child today, we prevent someone from becoming a victim tomorrow. . . . And most importantly, if we save the child, we save the child.”

Then the group broke into seminars, where lecturers outlined the root causes of youth violence and measured its reach.

Families are crumbling under the pressure of divorce, alcohol and drug abuse, domestic violence and economic segregation, warned Marcel Soriano, who teaches counseling and educational administration at Cal State Los Angeles.

“The bonding of parent and child is damaged” by this, he said.

When families fail, gangs spring up as surrogate support systems for suggestible youths, particularly in Latino neighborhoods, Soriano said.

“With gang-oriented kids, they have a history of unstable relationships within the first two to three years of their lives,” he said. “The implications are that we need to target those parents as soon as possible.”

In another seminar, Richard L. Morrison, director of administrative services for the Ventura County Unified School District, said that while children fear violence, it is relatively infrequent in school.

“Most kids are not violent,” he said. “Most kids are cooperative if you treat them well.”

He criticized news reports as overemphasizing children’s negative acts while underplaying positive news about youth.

“If there’s all this violence going on, wouldn’t you think kids would say that is one of the greatest worries to them?” he said.

He cited a recent district survey that shows the vast majority of pupils list their top worry as getting good grades. It also shows a drop in the number of pupils listing violence as their top worry from 16.6% of fifth- and sixth-graders surveyed to only 5.6% of 11th- and 12th-graders, he said.

But speakers in another seminar said that youth violence is fed by forces that have nothing to do with social ills like drug abuse or domestic violence.

While about one-third of U.S. families are headed by a single parent, the rate is higher in poorer neighborhoods, such as the Ventura Avenue area, where it is 65% to 70%, said Ventura Police Sgt. Carl Handy.

Some “latchkey kids” come home and dutifully plow through their homework, he said. But others accustom themselves to violence through television, certain Internet computer bulletin boards and video games like Mortal Kombat, he said.

“Does it make them killers? Probably not,” he said. “Does it culturize them to the culture of violence? Absolutely.”

Afterward, Perren said he was pleased to see the group reach a consensus on what Ventura County needs most to step up its attack now on youth violence: community activism, school involvement and neighborhood and family intervention.

“We know what the problems are,” he said. “The problem is being able to marshal the community commitment to turn off the TV, go down to the community center and take responsibility for your homes and neighborhoods.”