THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, December 31, 1995 TAG: 9512310061
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A1 EDITION: FINAL
SERIES: KID CRIMINALS
SOURCE: BY JUNE ARNEY AND LISE OLSEN, STAFF WRITERS
LENGTH: Long : 368 lines
The 1996 General Assembly will soon consider some of the most sweeping reforms ever in Virginia's juvenile justice system. This story examines how the system now works in Southeastern Virginia.
If it weren't for Southeastern Virginia, the population of the state's juvenile correctional centers would be cut in half.
Each year, hundreds of young car thieves, burglars and other toughs from Hampton Roads are shipped in handcuffs and shackles to institutions known as juvenile correctional centers.
It's called ``commitment,'' and it's the last resort for young offenders who've often exhausted the patience of parents and judges.
In the 1994 fiscal year, one of every two youths sent to juvenile correctional centers came from Southeastern Virginia. But fewer than a third of the state's youths live in what officials call the Eastern Region, one of three in Virginia.
The imbalance dates at least to the beginning of the decade.
Every city in Hampton Roads locked up more kids per capita than the state average in fiscal years 1993 and 1994. Norfolk led last year, committing young criminals at a rate nearly four times that of the state, according to an analysis by The Virginian-Pilot of state juvenile justice statistics. And those figures do not even include the most serious youthful offenders; those cases often are tried in adult court.
At a time when two statewide commissions recommend sweeping changes in youth crime laws, members are not addressing the regional imbalance. Many officials are unaware of it.
But some experts worry about what they call ``justice by geography.''
``I am concerned any time a juvenile who does similar acts is treated differently simply by virtue of where he or she lives,'' said Robert E. Shepherd Jr., a professor of law at the University of Richmond. ``The most serious danger is the clear perception, and perhaps reality, of fundamental unfairness.''
Frank J. Kern, long-time director of the Tidewater Detention Home, says commitment rates in Hampton Roads have been high for about 15 years and are ``driven by community standards. The mores are different here. Public safety is an anthem right now.''
The jury is out on whether this region sets a tough example that everyone else should follow, or whether it punishes children too harshly. It's unclear whether a greater threat of being locked up deters juveniles from crime.
Punishment vs. rehabilitation will be one of the key issues in the upcoming General Assembly. Proponents of punishment, including Gov. George F.Allen, need look no farther than Southeastern Virginia for a massive case study in the lock-'em-up approach.
In our region, only a slightly higher proportion of youths enters the juvenile justice system, statistics show. But a much higher proportion is committed to juvenile correctional centers in Tidewater than in the rest of the state.
The explanation for the high commitment rate can be found in our homes, our streets and our courts.
Poverty, racial factors, strict judges, and increases in fighting and stealing (both common reasons for locking up kids) add up to a tougher dose of punishment for Hampton Roads youths, according to the newspaper's analysis and interviews with experts.
Norfolk Circuit Court Judge Charles E. Poston locked up so many kids as a juvenile judge that he earned the nickname ``Pack-Your-Bags Poston.'' During his six years on the juvenile bench, he helped set the tone for Norfolk judges. In the 1994 fiscal year, the city had committments, the most in any Hampton Roads city.
``I think punishment is the first essential step in rehabilitation,'' Poston said.
Some juvenile offenders are not so sure.
Mark Boisvert, an 18-year-old from Roosevelt Gardens in Norfolk, committed as a juvenile for sodomy against a relative, said he's grateful to the judge who sent him to the treatment program at Beaumont.
``I'm glad I got locked up so I could slow down, stop and think about my life,'' he said. ``I could have gotten 30 years.''
But Mark Graham, 20, of Chesapeake, who has been in most of the state's juvenile correctional centers, says the justice system only taught him to be a better criminal.
``All I've known since I was 12 was being locked up,'' he said. ``It's really sad. There are a lot of kids like me. The (juvenile correctional centers) aren't showing people anything.''
Nestled in and around the rolling hills of Richmond lie five of Virginia's juvenile correctional centers. The sixth is in Natural Bridge. They used to be called ``learning centers.'' Earlier generations knew them as ``reform schools.''
One of the toughest juvenile centers is Beaumont, a 100-year-old fortress ringed by tall chain-link fence topped with razor wire. It is home to the state's oldest juvenile offenders, 15- to 20-year-old boys, some of whom spend their time in maximum security. Beaumont, along with three adult prisons, makes up what is called ``correctional valley.''
Many of the boys here come from Southeastern Virginia, though officials would not provide exact numbers.
Walls and lockers at Beaumont testify to a Hampton Roads presence.
Someone scratched ``Virginia Beach'' on the plastic covering of a light in one 9-by-12-foot cell. In a nearby cottage, graffiti draws a straight line to Hampton Roads' neighborhoods: ``Norview,'' ``T-water,'' ``Park Place.'
Beaumont's rated capacity is 200, but with mattresses on the floor, it held 387 on a recent day. These are the state's most aggressive male delinquents, sent here for everything from larceny to sex crimes. Half are first-time offenders. But others have ricocheted through the juvenile system, and Beaumont is the end of the line - their last chance to shape up or face the consequences in adult court.
Juveniles at Beaumont are ``at a point in their life when they're trying to discern is it worth it to even try to stay straight,'' said Graham of Chesapeake, who spent 11 months there. ``I know there are kids feeling these things, because I did.''
Six youths in navy blue work pants, sweat shirts and knit caps emerge from a nearby yellow brick building called Bryan Cottage. They are sex offenders in a program that lasts 18 to 24 months. Inside, the wood floors are polished to a high gloss, and the tile floors gleam, the result of the labors of the youthful residents. White curtains make the space seem light and airy.
It's late afternoon at Nichols Cottage, a red brick building considered maximum security, and several youths glance up from their card game as strangers walk by. A handful of books sit on a mostly bare shelf in an adjoining room: James Michener's Iberia, the New Testament, a volume of the World Book encyclopedia.
Two flights down are the isolation rooms. Tiny cells with heavy metal doors and narrow windows line both sides of a tight corridor. Outside each door is a pair of shower sandals. The air is steamy and hot.
At several doors, a shadowy hand or a face presses against the slit of glass. Most of the hands and faces are black. One is shouting: ``I just got back from Powhatan (an adult prison). What am I doing back here in a juvenile center?''
1. URBAN RISK FACTORS
At Beaumont, Hampton Roads kids used to have a way of letting those from other cottages know they'd better steer clear.
``They'd walk by and we'd make sounds like `Ch-choo!' '' Graham recalled of his days at Beaumont. ``We were shooting. They'd shoot back, and the staff would laugh.''
Sometimes they made sounds like Uzis and cannons. ``It was the Wild West,'' he said. For some at Beaumont, it was a lot like life back home in Hampton Roads.
Growing up in Norfolk can be dangerous. In a study of all Virginia cities and counties, Norfolk ranked as the place where a child was most likely to become a juvenile offender. Portsmouth and Newport News also were among the five worst in the 1994 study, conducted by the state Department of Youth and Family Services.
Compared to other places in Virginia, youths in those cities are more likely to drop out of school, grow up in poverty, encounter abuse or become parents as teens - all experiences that can draw them into the juvenile justice system.
The juvenile correctional center population reflects these same factors. More kids come from Norfolk, Portsmouth, and Newport News. Many come from single-parent families. At Beaumont, about a fourth of the boys are fathers themselves.
Experts say a complex chain of events explains why poor kids more often end up in trouble, and ultimately locked up.
Kids who grow up in poor areas may be turned in more often by neighbors. They're more likely to be detained once they have a brush with the law. And that means they're more likely to have formal records than kids in more affluent neighborhoods, said Hunter Hurst, director of the National Center for Juvenile Justice.
Those extensive records can justify more severe punishment later on, Hurst said. And poor parents often don't have the resources to help their children defend themselves in court.
``Just as the class of defense lawyer is dependent on the material resources you have, the kind of sentence you get in the juvenile justice system is related to the financial resources in the family,'' Hurst said.
Wealthier parents often help their kids out of trouble by paying damages, hiring counselors or promising to put their children in private treatment centers.
``In more affluent areas, it's OK for police to do a lot of `adjustment,' especially for youths,'' he said. ``A kid steals a TV, parents say they'll pay, he'll go to classes - that's the American way.''
2. TOUGH JUVENILE JUDGES
Many kids at Beaumont can name the judges who handled their cases. Some know the courtrooms you want to avoid - the ones where the judges are sure to send you away. The word is on the streets.
Tomiko Christian, 19, from Colonial Place in Norfolk, has been in Beaumont since May, convicted of sodomizing a relative. He remembers the number of the courtroom where the judge sentenced him, Courtroom 3.
Several years ago, the members of two rival gangs in Norfolk were locked up, mostly in juvenile correctional centers. A year or two later, the gang members were not turning up in Norfolk courts as expected.
When authorities questioned a couple of them, they said they had moved their operation to Virginia Beach. The reason one gave: ``The judges in Norfolk are too tough on us.''
In general, all Hampton Roads courts lock up a lower percentage of kids for violating probation, when compared to the rest of the state. That may sound like they're being soft. However, it may mean that judges here lock up more kids in their first appearance in juvenile court compared to other parts of Virginia. The information is not complete enough to draw exact conclusions.
Many Hampton Roads prosecutors routinely attend juvenile sentencings, which is not as common elsewhere. Their presence in the courtroom ups the ante. Local prosecutors also push for tougher punishment when guns are involved.
Yet judges, more than prosecutors, seem to have set the tone.
Take Poston, for instance. He sat as a juvenile judge from April 1988 until June 1994. Many expected him to be lenient because he had served as a defense attorney for juveniles. But within his first year, Richmond officials told him he led the state in committing juveniles. Poston wasn't surprised.
He said he earned a tough reputation by offering few second chances.
This is how he got his nickname: ``I said, `If you come back here, you may as well have your bags packed, because you're not going to be going home.' ''
Poston said he always believed that if kids knew the rules, they would accept the consequences.
Recently, he recognized a 20-year-old man who appeared in his Circuit Court room. Poston had committed the man in 1989 and 1992 as a juvenile. The judge asked the defendant, now an adult, if he remembered Poston's earlier warnings.
``You told me if I ever came back, you would slam me as hard as you could,'' the defendant replied. Poston did just that.
3. RACE
These days, visitors to Beaumont will see mostly black faces and sometimes experience a racially charged atmosphere, replete with slurs.
Across Virginia and across the country, black youths are about twice as likely as whites to be locked up. The imbalance is smaller in Southeastern Virginia, where minorities are committed about 1.5 times as often.
But because more blacks live in Hampton Roads, more are committed here than in other parts of the state.
Experts debate whether racial factors can be separated from cultural and economic ones.
David B. Miller, an assistant professor of social work at Case Western Reserve University, argues that the system is more willing to jail African Americans - especially young ones.
``We have racism as well as classism playing out in juvenile court,'' he said. ``Judges tend to be lenient on young kids in good neighborhoods.''
But the imbalance may be more cultural than racial, according to Hurst, of the National Center for Juvenile Justice, since it occurs even in areas where African Americans hold power. For example, in Washington, 100 percent of the kids in long-term juvenile facilities in 1991 were black. At the same time, 88 percent of the city's juveniles were black, according to the national Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention. ``To me it looks less like racism and more like cultural bias,'' Hurst said.
The racial imbalance has become part of the Virginia juvenile justice reform debate.
Even in cases where youths came from similar backgrounds and committed the same crime, Virginia judges still sentenced black kids to jail twice as often as whites, based on a review of 3,000 juvenile cases by the Joint Legislative Audit and Review Commission. The report, released in November, noted that black youths more often committed violent crimes, used firearms or had prior criminal records.
In Hampton Roads, the racial imbalance has been fed in part by drug and crime problems in inner cities, where adults have involved African-American teens as mules - or couriers - and lookouts. In our metro area, most of the youths arrested on drug charges are African-American - a sharp contrast from 10 years ago when most were white.
In Southeastern Virginia, more black juveniles than whites were committed for nearly every category of crime except abusive language, sexual assault, arson, fraud and obscenity in fiscal years 1993 and 1994.
4. THE CRIMES
Rhetoric about a juvenile crime wave can conjure up horrific images such as Virginia Beach teen killer Shawn Novak. Novak started out mutilating animals; later he killed two young neighbors in the woods.
But murder accounts for about one percent of the offenses for which youths are committed, according to statistics from the state Department of Youth and Family Services. The worst violent offenders, like Novak, wind up in the adult system.
In fact, only 3 percent of teen arrests are for violent felonies. One of every three kids committed from Hampton Roads stole something or broke into a house. Often their motive was a thrill, profit, peer pressure, or just a hot car, like red Mazda Miatas, the current favorite.
Another common reason is fighting - in homes, schools and neighborhoods. Violence between kids, sometimes tied to gang activity, has boosted the number of assaults. And guns have raised the stakes. Assault has become a more common reason for commitments of juvenile offenders in Southeastern Virginia than it is statewide.
The statistics reflect the number of commitments - not individual kids. That means, a few very troublesome kids could be driving up the numbers in the region.
Here and statewide, many juvenile offenders get in trouble over and over.
Elizabeth Gold, a Virginia Beach attorney, is now representing a juvenile with 23 previous offenses. She says it's common to see 10, 15 or 20.
``It does seem that certain kids get stuck in a mode of bad behavior,'' Gold says. ``There are a lot of kids who aren't leaders, but followers. . . . They don't understand that you are going to be in trouble if you're with the kid who breaks into the house.''
Corey Drew, 18, of Norfolk, is in many ways typical of the youths who wind up behind bars. He started by stealing cars. He hung with law-breaking friends. He carried a gun.
On two occasions he appeared before judges in Norfolk and Virginia Beach for stealing Honda Accords, and both times he was released to his mother's custody.
On Feb. 26, Drew once again climbed into a stolen Accord, this one taken by a friend. It was a Saturday night, and they had nothing to do. They headed for Mr. Magic's, a Virginia Beach club.
They never made it.
They stopped at a Chinese restaurant in Norfolk about 10 p.m. Drew was packing his Glock - a semiautomatic pistol he had bought on the street for less than $100 a month before. It held 16 9 mm bullets.
He spotted a deliveryman for the store. What followed wasn't something he'd planned.
``I got out of the car. It was still running. I caught him before he went in.''
Drew stood 3 feet from the man and drew the gun.
Was he scared?
``Uh-huh, I thought he might have tried to grab me,'' Drew said.
Was he afraid he'd have to pull the trigger?
``That's what scared me, if I had to shoot him. I just told him to give me all the money. He said he didn't have no money at first, but I checked him.''
Drew got $14. He already had $80 of his own.
The two jumped back in the car, and sped off.
Police quickly picked up their tail. He and his friend led them on a chase at speeds of up to 110 miles per hour, ending in a crash at a miniature golf course next to Military Circle mall. They were in custody within an hour.
This time when Drew went to court, substitute Juvenile Judge Robert M. Yacobi sentenced him to three years at Beaumont.
``In a way, I'm glad to be here, 'cause either I'd be dead on the street or locked up for the rest of my life,'' Drew said in an interview at Beaumont in October. ``This gives me a second chance. I'm going to get my GED, take the SAT, learn a job and get a trade.''
Unanswered questions
In all the debate over punishment vs. rehabilitation, no one knows what works.
The programs now in place seem to have helped Mark Boisvert, the 18-year-old convicted sex offender now at Beaumont. He doesn't plan to get in trouble again - but he knows it will be difficult.
``I'm a human,'' he says. ``I made a mistake. I just want another chance. I understand the community, also. I wouldn't want no child molester in my neighborhood either.''
If every kid were like Boisvert, perhaps experts could solve the juvenile justice problem. But every teen is different.
``I really don't know'' what the answer is,'' said Graham, whose juvenile file is three volumes thick. ``It takes a conscious decision to stop and find something else. . . . I grew up in the system, and I came out mean and cold.''
Graham's ticket to Beaumont was threatening to burn down a store and then assaulting a staff member at Tidewater Detention Home with a telephone. He was eventually released from Beaumont, and soon rearrested as an adult for assault, hit and run, and drug charges, among others.
In a November interview, Graham said his salvation will be through the Lord, not the Department of Corrections.
``The difference comes from within a person,'' he said. ``Either you have a spirit that's willing to do right by people or you don't. . . . Either you're doing the devil's bidding or you're doing God's bidding. There's only good and evil.''
Graham knows that such talk won't go far with the juvenile crowd locked up across the state.
``You just can't tell a bunch of 16- or 17-year-old kids to go to church,'' he said. When he was that age, ``Nobody could have told me nothing.'' MEMO: TOMORROW: One of the alternatives to locking youthful criminals away is
military-style boot camp. We visit a camp and see what the future of
juvenile justice in Virginia could look like.
ILLUSTRATION: [Photo-illustration]
TAMARA VONINSKI/The Virginian-Pilot
The 1996 General Assembly sono will consider some of the most
sweeping reforms in Virginia's juvenile justice system. This story
examines how the system now works in southeastern Virginia.
Graphics
Research by LISE OLSEN; graphic by JANET SHAUGHNESSY/The
Virginian-Pilot
MORE VIOLENT YOUTHS
JAILING OUR YOUTHS
Number of commitments to juvenile correctional centers per 1,000
youths (ages 10-17)
PORTRAIT OF A KID IN TROUBLE
SOURCES: The The Virginian-Pilot analysis of juvenile justice
statistics, and a JLARC study of 3,000 Virginia juvenile cases from
1992-1995.
[For complete graphical information, please see microfilm]
KEYWORDS: CRIME JUVENILES YOUTH STATISTICS
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