Children: Finding the Third World in Jacksonville

Posted on February 8, 2010 at 12:30 pm by Webmaster

Categories: Promise 5: Juvenile Justice

Date Published: 02/08/2010

I was recently asked by friends and family in my home country of Kenya how I would describe the children of Jacksonville.

I was astonished when I realized my answers would be so different from what they would have expected.

- One of four residents in Duval County is a child under the age of 18.

- Nearly 40 percent are black or another minority.

- Among African Americans, only 4 of 10 children live in a two-parent family.

- Nearly 50 percent of all children in Duval County are living in functional poverty. In the black community, the number is much higher, approaching 90 percent in some areas.

They would be surprised by the high infant mortality rate in Duval County (9.5 deaths per 1,000 births), but astounded by the huge disparity in rate of black vs. white infant deaths (12.7 vs. 6.8).

They probably will not even believe that teenage birth rates are as high as 51 per 1,000 females ages 15 to 19.

The statistics are far from what they would imagine in the United States of America.

Compared to the health and well-being of children in other economically developed countries, America’s kids score last; and more than 10 percent don’t have enough food to survive well.

This is not how they would have expected the world’s only superpower to treat their children.

As a pediatrician and a citizen of Duval County, I know we can do better. But it will take time and resources, both of which we have precious little to spare.

I want to urge everyone, and in particular our legislators, to support and participate in programs, committees and coalitions that are concerned with our kids.

These programs range from Head Start and other school readiness programs, Nemours’ Dyslexia initiative, the Northeast Florida Healthy Start Coalition, Jacksonville Children’s Commission, the Bridge, PACE Center for Girls and the Childhood Obesity Prevention Coalition.

Also, we should support our schools, libraries and initiatives advocating for improving community parks, building sidewalks, improving housing, bringing food markets into disadvantaged communities and so on.

The list is endless. Every little improvement has a direct result on our youth, their life course and our community’s well-being in the future.

Source: jacksonville.com

Gang Activity Charges In Question At Mowat Middle School

Posted on February 8, 2010 at 12:28 pm by Webmaster

Categories: Promise 5: Juvenile Justice

Date Published: 02/05/2010

A violent video captures a bathroom beat down in at Mowat Middle School. At first glance it looks like a fight, but if you take a look closer even the boy that’s taking the hits seems to enjoy it.

“I think it’s pretty awful, I can’t believe it they’re just kids,” said parent, Rebecca Anders.

The Bay County Sheriff’s Office sees it as a gang initiation and charged 8 boys, ages 13-15 with recruiting criminal gang activity. That’s a felony.

“We do feel it’s an appropriate charge, by the level of what was occurring there,” said Major Tommy Ford of the Bay County Sheriff’s Office.

But it’s up to the state attorney to decide if this activity should be taken up in the Juvenile Justice system. So far, it’s unclear.

“I see the kind of violence that scares people, I’m not sure by looking at that violence if you can tell if it’s gang behavior or gang style behavior,” said State Attorney Glenn Hess.

Take a look at it this way. If you watch a school wrestling match, the boys are fighting but it’s consensual. Legally, it’s not a crime. So it comes down to the question of whether or not the boys fighting in the bathroom are in fact conducting a gang initiation for the Gangster Disciples.

“If this was a consensual battery, or a consensual fight, then no crime has been committed therefore there was no initiation,” said Attorney, Waylon Graham.

In Graham’s opinion, the charges have no legs to stand on.

“I’m just saying with a vigorous defense, I think most of these people could win,” said Graham.

If charges are dropped, the Sheriff’s Office fears fights like this will continue.

“I think it sends the wrong message. I think the message is, that this is not going to be tolerated and that if you engage in this sort of activity you are going to be charged criminally and dealt with like a criminal,” said major ford.

The boys have been expelled from school. Now, they wait to find out their fate as the State Attorney makes his decision.

Read more: http://www.panhandleparade.com/index.php/mbb/article/gang_activity_charges_in_question_at_mowat_middle_school/mbb7721281/#ixzz0exyo2lLP

Source: ABC WMBB News 13

Florence Snyder: Secretary of DJJ sets a bad example

Posted on February 8, 2010 at 12:25 pm by Webmaster

Categories: Promise 5: Juvenile Justice

Date Published: 02/07/2010

Charlie Crist wants to know why so many Florida public officials are so sleazy so often.

One obvious answer is that Frank Peterman still has a job.

The “People’s Governor” has yet to explain what possessed him to tap Peterman as secretary of the Department of Juvenile Justice in the first place.

DJJ is a $618 million enterprise. The agency is, literally, home to 10,000 or so of the most troubled of the 85,000 kids under DJJ supervision for “delinquent behavior.”

Homes and communities failed to teach them that crime doesn’t pay; for many of these kids, DJJ is their last chance to avoid poverty, pregnancy or prison. They deserve a secretary who is committed to their future.

What Crist gave them instead is a guy who also has a part-time job in St. Petersburg that pays more than a lot of DJJ’s 4,800 employees make in a year.

In the St. Petersburg Times, Steve Bousquet reported: “He has traveled frequently to St. Petersburg, where his family lives and where he continues to serve as pastor of the Rock of Jesus Missionary Baptist Church and earns a $29,000 salary. He owns two houses in St. Petersburg and a town house in Tallahassee.”

Peterman got the DJJ post and the state credit card that comes with it in February 2008. Almost immediately he began to commute between jobs on the taxpayers’ time and dime.

In workplaces with a passing respect for the owners’ money, Peterman’s travel vouchers would earn him the opportunity to “resign to pursue other interests.”

What he got instead was an ethics intervention team made up of high-level staffers in the governor’s office and at DJJ.

Inspector General Melinda Miguel reports that a baker’s dozen of the Crist high command spent almost two years trying to put the brakes on “Part Time” Peterman’s use of the public purse for private pursuits.

Miguel’s post-mortem is a riveting tale of high-priced staffers reduced to thinking up one junior high-school manipulation after another in hopes of steering the secretary toward behaviors less likely to attract the attention of the IRS or the media.

Apparently it never occurred to anyone to cut up his credit card.

Peterman, we now know, blew off repeated admonitions from Crist’s chief of staff, Eric Eikenberg. He ignored advice delivered at weekly counseling sessions by Deputy Chief of Staff Lori Rowe.

As Supernanny could have told them, talk is cheap and travel is expensive. In the absence of real-time consequences, children and ethically challenged adults will get away with whatever they can.

Peterman is still on the job — both of them — having repaid the taxpayers a portion of his commuting bill. It’s a sweet deal and one not generally available to white-collar workers who appropriate corporate resources.

Every day, front-line staffers at DJJ do their dead level best to teach kids that it’s not OK to break the rules, to get over, to game the system. Peterman’s continued employment is a slap in the face to them, to the kids, and to every Floridian who pays his own way to and from work.

Source: Tallahassee.com