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Student Drug Use, Violence Rising, Survey Finds (The Seattle Times says the
seventh annual Kids Count Data book survey of Washington students suggests
the use of alcohol, tobacco and other drugs that are illegal to Washington
schoolchildren is on the rise, with "regular" use starting in sixth grade and
escalating to more than one in four 12th-graders reporting they went to
school drunk in the past year. More than one in three adolescents also showed
signs of clinical depression.)
Date: Wed, 7 Apr 1999 16:55:05 -0700
From: owner-mapnews@mapinc.org (MAPNews)
To: mapnews@mapinc.org
Subject: MN: US WA: Student Drug Use, Violence Rising, Survey Finds
Sender: owner-mapnews@mapinc.org
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Organization: Media Awareness Project http://www.mapinc.org/lists/
Newshawk: John Smith
Pubdate: Wed, 7 Apr 1999
Source: Seattle Times (WA)
Copyright: 1999 The Seattle Times Company
Contact: opinion@seatimes.com
Website: http://www.seattletimes.com/
Author: Lynne K. Varner, Seattle Times staff reporter
STUDENT DRUG USE, VIOLENCE RISING, SURVEY FINDS
Regular use of alcohol, tobacco and illegal drugs by Washington
schoolchildren is on the rise, with regular use starting in sixth
grade and escalating to more than one in four 12th-graders reporting
they went to school drunk in the past year, according to an annual
survey.
One in three teens experienced problems of substance abuse,
depression, violent behavior and poor school performance, said the
seventh annual Kids Count Data book, which acts as a yearly yardstick
of children's economic, social and physical well-being throughout the
state.
Moreover, the majority of teens who smoke or carry a gun exhibited
behavioral problems when they were 11 or 12 years old and if they
didn't receive help, those problems multiplied by 10th grade, said the
report, which was released today.
The survey also found that many sixth-graders already engage in risky
behavior. Two out of five tried alcohol last year; one in eight
attacked another person; and one in seven had been suspended from school.
"In sixth grade, these behaviors should not be viewed as harmless,
youthful experimentation," says Dr. Frederick Connell, a professor at
the University of Washington's School of Public Health and co-author
of the survey.
By 10th grade, the survey found, the numbers had risen, with two in
five students drinking alcohol regularly, and one in four involved in
fights and being suspended from school.
Schools need to increase their early-prevention programs to match the
large scope of these problems, says Rick Brandon, a UW Graduate School
of Public Affairs professor who researched the data in the survey.
Brandon said the right steps include preventive programs like STARS
(Students Taking a Right Stand), in which they sign contracts pledging
a nonviolent lifestyle, and creating a positive code of conduct.
Several middle schools and one high school in the Seattle School
District have STARS programs.
At Madison Middle School, where the STARS program won a Governor's
Award for being the best drug-, alcohol- and violence-prevention
program in the state, one-third of the student body is involved in it.
Eighth-graders mentor sixth-graders, and both groups go out to
elementary schools to talk to 9- and 10-year-olds about drugs and
alcohol. The students in STARS hold alcohol- and drug-free events and
perform community services.
The 300 or so STARS students at Madison also put on Day of the Dead in
which they symbolically "die" every half-hour to spotlight the rate at
which U.S. teenagers die because of drugs, alcohol or violence. The
continuous activity means kids are actually involved in preventing
substance abuse rather than listening to an adult tell them to "just
say no," says Madison's STARS coordinator, Jacob Ellis.
Other findings from the Kids Count Data Book:
-- The number of children in foster homes and other out-of-home
placements is outgrowing the system's capacity to handle this need.
-- The number of adults a child can talk to diminished from sixth to
12th grade.
-- The number of divorces in families involving children and the
percentage of out-of-wedlock births continued to rise.
-- One in three children continued to live in a family without
adequate income to afford the basic necessities.
-- More than one in three adolescents showed signs of clinical
depression.
-- Last year, one in 25 children lived in a family that had been
investigated for child abuse or neglect.
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Truth or DARE - The Dubious Drug-Education Program Takes New York (The
Village Voice says over the next four years, the Drug Abuse Resistance
Education program will implement its full curriculum - kindergarten through
12th grade - in all of New York City's public schools. After first gaining a
foothold in the city in 1996, DARE America now donates $1.5 million worth of
supplies annually for 271 New York City elementary schools, while the NYPD
covers $8.5 million a year in salaries and benefits for the city's DARE
officers. Since 1983, DARE has become the world's dominant drug prevention
program. The $230 million operation conducts courses in all 50 states and in
44 countries, from Sweden and England to Brazil and Costa Rica. Eighty
percent of U.S. school districts have DARE. More than a dozen studies have
concluded that DARE has no lasting impact. And one six-year study found
increased drug use among suburban kids who graduated from DARE.)
Date: Wed, 7 Apr 1999 16:57:38 -0700
From: owner-mapnews@mapinc.org (MAPNews)
To: mapnews@mapinc.org
Subject: MN: US: Truth or D.A.R.E.
Sender: owner-mapnews@mapinc.org
Reply-To: owner-mapnews@mapinc.org
Organization: Media Awareness Project http://www.mapinc.org/lists/
Newshawk: Nicholas Merrill http://www.calyx.net/
Pubdate: 7 - 13 Apr 1999
Source: Village Voice (NY)
Copyright: 1999 VV Publishing Corporation
Section: Feature Article
Contact: editor@villagevoice.com
Address: 36 Cooper Square, New York, NY 10003
Feedback: http://www.villagevoice.com/aboutus/contact.shtml
Website: http://www.villagevoice.com/
Author: Jennifer Gonnerman Research assistance: Hillary Chute
Note: Calyx supports an exellent email list about DARE. To join DARE-LIST,
send an email to listproc@calyx.net with the subject blank and the BODY of
the email containing nothing but the following line, without the quotes:
"subscribe DARE-LIST name"
Truth or D.A.R.E.
The Dubious Drug-Education Program Takes New York
Thirty sixth-graders begin to shout as a police officer enters their
classroom at P.S. 20 on the Lower East Side. "Good morning, Officer
Carla!" they call out to their favorite teacher. Officer Carla is
Carla DeBlasio, 35, a one-time transit cop who teaches weekly classes
as part of the NYPD's Drug Abuse Resistance Education program, known
as DARE. On a recent Wednesday, the officer strides into the classroom
clutching DARE's mascot, a fuzzy stuffed lion named Daren.
Officer Carla wears a DARE pin above her police badge and a gun tucked
discreetly inside the waistband of her navy blue slacks. But she seems
more like a dedicated teacher than a typical cop. Indeed, she knows
every student's name, and when she discovered that P.S. 20 did not
have a basketball team, she started her own. Such devotion has made
Officer Carla a star in the city's DARE program. At first, the
students fired the usual questions at her. "Have you ever used your
gun?" "Have you ever shot anybody?" But now, near the end of DARE's
17-week curriculum, any anxiety the students may have had about cops,
or at least Officer Carla, seems to have dissipated.
Officer Carla begins by recapping last week's lesson on "positive
alternatives." "What happens when we hang out with the wrong people?"
she yells. Tiny hands shoot into the air as students holler the answers.
"Drinking!"
"Smoking!"
"Drugs!"
"Good," says Officer Carla, flashing a warm smile. Apparently, her
students have internalized DARE's message - resisting peer pressure and
choosing the right friends will keep them away from drugs.
DARE America started in Los Angeles in 1983 with what seemed like a
good idea: put cops in fifth-and sixth-grade classes to teach kids
about drug abuse. Since then, DARE has become the world's dominant
drug prevention program. This $230 million operation conducts courses
in all 50 states and in 44 countries, from Sweden and England to
Brazil and Costa Rica. Eighty percent of U.S. school districts have
DARE. The largest city program is right here in New York, with DARE
officers teaching in 271 public elementary schools. By the end of the
current school year, the total number of graduates from New York
City's DARE program will climb to 210,000.
As DARE America grows, so does criticism of its effectiveness. More
than a dozen studies have concluded that DARE has no lasting impact.
And one six-year study found increased drug use among suburban kids
who graduated from DARE. Even more damaging than these little-read
reports were a pair of stories penned by Stephen Glass, the prolific
young con man who wove fictitious anecdotes into his articles. Glass
wrote scathing pieces about DARE for The New Republic in 1997 and
Rolling Stone in 1998. Now Glass admits that many of the embarrassing
allegations in his stories were false. In February, DARE slapped
Rolling Stone with a $50 million libel suit.
Glass's deceitful journalism has not, however, dispelled the doubts
that continue to dog DARE. The list of cities that have dropped DARE -
either because they cannot afford it or do not believe it works - has
grown to include Seattle, Oakland, Spokane, Omaha, Austin, Houston,
Milwaukee, Fayetteville, and Boulder. Despite DARE's uneven track
record, New York City adopted the program in 1996. "I really believe
it is effective," says Captain James Serra, who oversees the NYPD's
DARE officers. "Any kind of prevention we can give the kids of New
York City is a great thing."
For the beleaguered DARE - struggling to hold on to its schools and
reputation - winning over New York City was a major coup. To woo the
NYPD, DARE offered an attractive deal. The national organization
provides free workbooks to New York City students - a perk for which
other cities usually pay. When Safir announced that the NYPD would
adopt DARE, he mentioned this freebie as a convincing selling point.
The price tag for the city's DARE program is $10 million a year, most
of which is paid for by the NYPD in the form of salaries for 100
full-time DARE officers.
To further strengthen its relationship with the city, DARE's national
office hired a fundraiser just for New York. (DARE programs in other
parts of the country raise their own funds.) "It is very important to
us to have a successful program in New York City," says Bill Alden,
DARE's deputy director and a former agent with the Drug Enforcement
Administration. "It took us four years to break through and finally
see the impact. Whatever it costs it's worth because we're reaching so
many kids we couldn't reach before."
New York City's DARE did not get off to a smooth start. In early 1998,
DARE's local fundraiser, Ronald J. Brogan, booked the Marriott Marquis
and was about to mail invitations to a $1000-a-plate dinner. That's
when the Rolling Stone story appeared. The dinner's honoree pulled out
and DARE cancelled the caterer. "Stephen Glass cost me $1 million,"
says Brogan, also a former DEA agent. "He cost me a year's worth of
work. If not for that story, there could be a DARE middle-school
program [in New York City] by now."
The 11- and 12-year-old kids in Officer Carla's after-lunch class are
riveted. Today's topic is "role models." So a handful of students have
moved their chairs into a circle around visitor Steven Adorno, a
22-year-old senior at Hunter College. Each child's DARE workbook is
open to a list of 19 suggested questions.
One student pops question number six: Why is it important for you to
be drug-free? "Drugs make you lazy," Adorno explains. "You want to
relax. You don't want to do your homework. You just want to play video
games."
After a few minutes, Adorno admits that he used to smoke weed. The
sixth-graders slide their chairs closer and begin peppering Adorno
with their own questions. "When you used drugs, did people still play
with you?" "Did your parents ever find out?" "Where in your house did
you hide the drugs?" "Did you have a girlfriend?"
Adorno answers every query and then delivers DARE's zero-tolerance
message. "It's fun in the beginning," he says. "But then it catches up
with you. It's hard to get out. You destroy your life by drinking, by
smoking even cigarettes."
In DARE's worldview, Marlboro Light cigarettes, Bacardi rum, and a
drag from a joint are all equally dangerous. For that matter, so is
snorting a few lines of cocaine. DARE's student workbook features an
eighth-grade alcoholic named Robert on page seven, Wendy the
pot-smoking eighth-grader on the next page, and by page 10 a
ninth-grader named Laura is trying to score some cocaine. After
reading these tales, students are supposed to list what they learned
about each drug.
This zero-tolerance, just-say-no approach has attracted plenty of
critics. "It really is irresponsible to place all drugs in the same
category," says Marsha Rosenbaum, who heads the West Coast office of
the Lindesmith Center, a drug policy reform organization. "What I
don't want kids to hear is that all drugs - and any amount you do - will
be the road to devastation. Once kids get to an age where they're
experimenting . . . they know that is not true, so they throw away the
entire prevention message. It isn't really education. It's
indoctrination."
The DARE curriculum condemns not only tobacco and drugs, but also
graffiti and tattoos. One section of the DARE workbook describes
sticky situations kids might confront, and it tells them to choose the
best "way to say no." These scenarios include Pete's friend urging him
to scrawl on the wall of a park bathroom, and Jana wandering into a
party packed with dangerously decorated strangers. "In a corner of the
room they . . . noticed that all of the boys and many of the girls had
tattoos," the workbook states, ominously. "There was even someone
getting a tattoo."
Glenn Levant, DARE's cofounder and president, insists it makes perfect
sense to include graffiti and tattoos in a drug prevention curriculum.
"What we're endeavoring to do is to keep kids from getting involved in
that type of activity because it can lead to a dangerous situation,"
says Levant, a former deputy chief with the Los Angeles Police
Department. "You could be involved in graffiti, and there are cases
reported from time to time when a property owner gets a shotgun and
tries to shoot someone involved in that type of thing. . . . It's a
social peer pressure that really leads to most of the trouble."
Back in the classroom, several students spend more time squeezing
Daren the lion, a foot-high stuffed animal dressed in a DARE T-shirt,
than they do studying their workbooks. The children play tug-of-war
with Daren, poke him with a pencil, and shake him so hard his mane
stands straight up. "I'm almost embarrassed to bring him," Officer
Carla says. "But when I leave him in my office, it's like 'Where's
Daren? Why didn't you bring him?'"
At the end of a recent DARE class, Eleen Ahmed, 12, is particularly
enthusiastic. "It's great," she says. "They teach you not to use
drugs, and not to get into fights, and it's fun to hug that doll Daren."
DARE may be fun, but does it work? Leonard Golubchick, the principal
of P.S. 20, insists the program is a success. "The bottom line is that
it creates relationships between children, students, and parents that
you rarely find anywhere," says Golubchick, whose school hosted the
city's first DARE. "My opinion is that the national data does not tell
the story of the great effects on children."
But a growing pile of evidence suggests that DARE's impact is
short-lived. Dennis P. Rosenbaum, a onetime DARE supporter who heads
the criminal justice department at the University of Illinois in
Chicago, published one of the most recent studies. Funded by the
Illinois State Police, Rosenbaum tracked 1800 kids at 31 schools over
six years. He found that all of DARE's effects - including instilling
negative attitudes toward drugs, positive attitudes about cops - had
worn off after four years.
Such findings anger DARE fans. "If you take German for 17 weeks,
you're not going to speak German," says Brogan, DARE's New York
fundraiser and spokesperson. "The critics say the effect dissipates
over the years. No shit, Sherlock. Is that supposed to be surprising?"
(DARE officials say the solution to this problem is not less DARE but
more of it, and they urge cities to teach DARE in middle and high school.)
Another of Rosenbaum's findings was even more alarming. He discovered
that "suburban students who participated in DARE reported
significantly higher rates of drug use . . . than suburban students
who did not participate in the program." DARE's president Levant
dismisses this explosive finding as "not statistically significant."
Also, Levant points out that DARE has changed its curriculum nine
times since 1983, which he claims raises doubts about the accuracy of
such critical studies.
Part of what makes DARE so popular is that participants get lots of
freebies. There are fluorescent yellow pens with the DARE logo, tiny
Daren dolls, bumper stickers, graduation certificates, DARE banners
for school auditoriums, DARE rulers, pennants, Daren coloring books,
and T-shirts for all DARE graduates.
Marsha Rosenbaum of the Lindesmith Center worries that sophisticated
kids will find these DARE items corny and eventually begin to mock
DARE's no-tolerance teaching. "What happens is that the culture takes
these messages and twists them around," Rosenbaum says, "which is what
happened with the 'This is your brain. This is your brain on drugs'
commercials. And now there's a whole T-shirt line that's a spoof."
DARE's just-say-no mantra and all its logo-bearing toys have also come
under attack from academics. Richard Clayton, director of the Center
for Prevention Research at the University of Kentucky, conducted a
five-year, 31-school study that, once again, found DARE has no lasting
impact. "It is sad to say, but an overwhelming majority of people in
the United States have a rather naive view of . . . how to solve
social problems such as drug use and abuse by adolescents," Clayton
cowrote in a 1996 book on drug prevention. "Drug use is not a simple
phenomenon. It will not be solved by simple slogans and bumper
stickers and T-shirts and a bunch of people believing DARE is 'the'
answer to drug abuse in America."
The NYPD captain who oversees the city's DARE officers shrugs off such
criticisms. "We'll never be able to measure how many kids do and don't
get involved with drugs," says Serra. "But whatever we are teaching
them, it's better than giving them nothing."
This better-than-nothing argument is popular among DARE boosters. But
there are programs that have proven more effective than DARE. The best
known is Life Skills Training, which was created by Gilbert J. Botvin,
a professor of both psychiatry and public health at Cornell University
Medical College. This program targets middle-school students and
stretches its classes over three years- longer than DARE's 17-week
core curriculum. A division of the U.S. Department of Justice recently
pledged $4.9 million to teach Life Skills Training at 70 sites across
the country, while the National Institute of Drug Abuse plans to spend
$5 million over five years to study its impact.
"This has got to be scaring the hell out of [DARE]," says Michael
Roona, an experienced researcher who is now a doctoral candidate at
Syracuse University studying drug prevention programs. "DARE America
is like any other multimillion-dollar corporation- they're very
concerned about competition in the marketplace. They were the IBM of
drug-prevention programs for a long time, and they don't want to go
the same way as IBM, when suddenly PCs transformed computing in
America and they weren't there."
So while DARE's Levant publicly insists that DARE works, behind the
scenes he is scrambling to bolster it. Mounting skepticism - and
prodding from Congress - has led DARE to solicit advice from its
fiercest critics. DARE leaders have met twice in recent months with
Dennis Rosenbaum, Richard Clayton, and other drug-prevention
researchers who have exposed DARE's failings. According to Clayton,
the first meeting was "blunt and bloody."
But by the next meeting, held in New York last October, the
researchers and DARE officials had smoothed out their differences, and
together drafted a plan to conduct a long-term study testing other
drug-prevention curriculums. Herbert D. Kleber, the Columbia
University psychiatry professor who chairs DARE's scientific advisory
board, says, "DARE has agreed to abide by the results of the
research." The project will last at least three years.
"We're very willing to change," says Levant, DARE's president. "If
someone's got a better mousetrap, we'll use it."
DARE supporters boast that their program is cheap. "The program costs
a buck a year per kid," Levant says. But this dollar covers only the
price of supplies, like workbooks and T-shirts. DARE America spends
$1.5 million annually on supplies for New York City, while the NYPD
covers the bulk of the program's costs. The NYPD's payroll includes
$8.5 million a year in salaries and benefits for the city's DARE officers.
DARE proponents insist the program is inexpensive because police
departments often redeploy officers rather than hiring new ones. To
launch its program, the NYPD trained cops in its Youth Division to
become DARE officers. "A critic would say the cops cost $10 million a
year, and that money could be better spent somewhere else," says
Brogan of DARE. "But the officers are already there."
Not every police department accepts this rationale, however. In 1987,
Rochester became the first city in New York State to adopt DARE, and
its DARE budget eventually climbed to almost $1.2 million. But last
year, Rochester dumped DARE. "We, as a police department, could not
justify being able to put in 30 or 40 officers just for this," says
Officer Carlos Garcia, spokesperson for the Rochester police
department. "We chose to move away from DARE because we needed more
officers on the street."
The recent uproar following the fatal police shooting of Amadou
Diallo, an unarmed immigrant from West Africa, raises questions about
what role, if any, cops should have in the city's classrooms. "It's
hard to face kids when a tough situation like that hits the papers,"
says Officer Carla. "Kids will come right out and ask why they shot
this guy 41 times. I tell them, 'Listen, I can't explain why they shot
this man 41 times, but don't pass judgment on all cops.' I told them
it's sad for both sides - it's sad for the man's family and it's sad
for the families of the cops."
During such tension-filled times, DARE can perform a valuable
public-relations service. "DARE officers give a different face of law
enforcement," says Levant, DARE's president. "A child's first
experience with a uniformed police officer is in a friendly, helpful
way. . . . You have to have programs like DARE in place so police
aren't viewed as an occupying army."
From the beginning, improving police-community relations was part of
the impetus for bringing DARE to New York City. "That seemed to me to
be one of the major benefits of the program," says Robert Strang, the
former DEA agent who chaired the mayor's advisory committee on
antidrug initiatives. "Forget about the drug education. . . . We saw a
relationship that could be built between the students and the police
officers. There's no other vehicle for that that we're aware of. . . .
For critics who say it's good PR for the police department, they're
absolutely right and we should do more of it."
This is precisely what DARE plans to do. Hoping to double the
program's size, the NYPD recently applied for a federal grant to add
100 more DARE officers and expand into the city's middle schools. But
DARE doesn't intend to stop there. Sounding like a proud father,
DARE's president reveals that over the next four years DARE will
implement its full curriculum - kindergarten through 12th grade - in all
of New York City's public schools.
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As Inmate Population Grows, So Does A Focus On Children (The New York Times
examines some of the unintended consequences for families of America's
booming prison-industrial complex. There are 7 million children with a parent
in jail or prison or recently released on probation or parole. Experts warn
that the nation's emphasis on imprisonment may be helping to create the next
generation of criminals.)
Date: Wed, 7 Apr 1999 09:20:34 -0700
From: owner-mapnews@mapinc.org (MAPNews)
To: mapnews@mapinc.org
Subject: MN: US:NY: As Inmate Population Grows, So Does A Focus On Children
Sender: owner-mapnews@mapinc.org
Reply-To: owner-mapnews@mapinc.org
Organization: Media Awareness Project http://www.mapinc.org/lists/
Newshawk: Steve Young
Pubdate: Wed, 7 Apr 1999
Source: New York Times (NY)
Copyright: 1999 The New York Times Company
Contact: letters@nytimes.com
Website: http://www.nytimes.com/
Forum: http://forums.nytimes.com/comment/
Author: Fox Butterfield
AS INMATE POPULATION GROWS, SO DOES A FOCUS ON CHILDREN
OSSINING, N.Y. -- Baba Eng had been a prisoner at Sing Sing for 22 years,
serving a life sentence for murder, when a new inmate walked into the shower
room one day and stared at his face.
"Dad," the stranger finally exclaimed.
The man was his son, whom Eng had not seen since his arrest, and who now was
in prison himself for armed robbery. "It was the worst moment of my life,"
Eng recalled. "Here was my son; he had tried to imitate my life."
Eng's experience reflects a side of the nation's prison-building boom that
is only now gaining attention: there are 7 million children with a parent in
jail or prison or recently released on probation or parole. Those numbers
alarm experts who say that having a parent behind bars is the single largest
factor in the making of juvenile delinquents and adult criminals.
Although most jails and prisons do not even ask new inmates if they have
children, a few are taking steps to counter the effect of parental
incarceration, as experts have begun to realize the seriousness of the
problem. Some prisons have created special visiting areas for children; some
offer parenting classes for inmates.
But the experts also warn that the nation's emphasis on imprisonment to
fight crime may be helping to create the next generation of criminals.
"There is no free lunch in this business," said Lawrence Sherman, dean of
the University of Maryland's school of criminology and criminal justice. "If
you increase the number of people arrested and sent to prison, you may
actually be creating another problem. There is a multiplier effect."
Some 1.96 million children have a parent or other close relative in jail or
prison on any given day, according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, a
branch of the Justice Department, and 5 million more have parents who have
been incarcerated and are on probation or parole.
The link between the generations is so strong that half of all juveniles in
custody have a father, mother or other close relative who has been in jail
or prison, said Allen J. Beck of the Bureau of Justice Statistics. About 40
percent of the 1.8 million adults in jail and prison have a parent, brother
or sister behind bars, he said.
There are several reasons why children with a parent in prison are more
likely to get in trouble, experts say. Most of these children grow up in
families troubled by poverty, abuse, neglect and drug use. And separation
from a parent -- for any reason -- is a well-documented problem for
children.
But incarceration adds a special hazard. Children who see a parent arrested
and handcuffed, and who are frisked by guards during a prison visit, become
contemptuous toward law enforcement. More troublesome, many children with a
father behind bars make a hero of him.
"When children are not in contact with their parents, it is a breeding
ground for idealization, and when the parent is a big-time criminal, they
can turn them into legends," said Jaime Inclan, a clinical psychologist who
is director of the Roberto Clemente Center, a mental health center serving
poor families on the Lower East Side of Manhattan.
Despite the dimensions of the problem, little attention is paid because the
criminal-justice system is set up to deal with offenders, not their
children.
In most cities, when the police make an arrest, when a judge passes
sentence, or when an inmate enters jail and prison, no one asks if the
offender has children -- or if they happen to ask, does anything with the
information. And inmates are often evasive about their children, out of
shame or fear of losing custody or government benefits.
There is so little research on the subject that there is no agreement even
on the seemingly simple issue of whether it is good for children to visit
their father or mother behind bars.
Juliana Perez, a social worker who directs a parenting program in the county
jail in San Antonio, says contact between incarcerated parents and their
children is essential. In addition to helping the children, she said, "If
the system doesn't allow bonding, we destroy whatever chance we have of
changing the offenders' behavior."
But Judge Kathleen Richie of the Juvenile Court in Baton Rouge, La.,
disagrees. "The more these kids are exposed to prison by visiting, the more
they get used to it, and prison loses its stigma," she said.
Judge Richie recently had a case in which a social worker was taking four
children to prison to visit their mother, who had been convicted of selling
crack cocaine and was awaiting trial on charges of neglecting the children.
The judge ordered that the visits take place in her chambers, with the
mother in civilian clothes, so the children would not become accustomed to
prison.
The mother was puzzled why prison visits were a problem. She had taken her
children to visit her friends and relatives in prison for years before her
own arrest. Three of the four children have since been arrested and sent to
juvenile prisons.
"Sadly, these kids have fond memories, and their only memories, of their mom
behind bars," Judge Richie said. "If you have parents in jail, then it is
part of your life, and there is nothing offensive about it."
THE FATHERS Staying in Touch With Some Help he Children's Center of the
visiting room at Sing Sing is a small glass-enclosed space with shelves of
children's books, boxes of building blocks and toy cars, a crib full of
stuffed animals, and a computer.
It may not look much different than a day care center. But in one of the
nation's oldest and most forbidding prisons, it is a revolution, an attempt
to create a haven where convicts can meet quietly with their children in an
effort to preserve, or rebuild, the family bonds that prison often breaks.
One day Hector Millan, a 38-year-old from Spanish Harlem serving a 20-year
to life sentence for murder, was seated at a low table with his young
grandson, Hector III. His wife, Maritza, stood nearby. Millan has three sons
and two daughters, and is one of the lucky inmates who is still married and
visited by his family.
Nationwide, less than a quarter of male inmates are married, and fewer than
a third are visited by their families. But two-thirds of them have children.
"Prison destroys families," Millan said matter of factly. "I can't tuck my
children in bed at night. I can't be there to comfort them when they scrape
their knees. I can't help them when they have problems at school. The damage
done is irreparable."
Millan is enrolled in an unusual 16-week program at Sing Sing that tries to
teach convicts how to overcome the obstacles to parenting behind bars. The
program is part classroom reading -- with selections from the great child
psychologists Jean Piaget, Erik Erikson and Bruno Bettelheim -- and part
family therapy with counselors to help bridge the gaps during visits or in
writing letters home.
The program, and the special section of the visiting room, are the
brainchild of Elizabeth Gaynes, executive director of the Osborne
Association, a group based in New York that sponsors programs to aid
prisoners and their families.
"We tell them prison walls certainly make it harder, but you can still be a
parent," Ms. Gaynes said. "We say prison can be an excuse for not taking
your children to the library, but it is not an excuse for not teaching your
children the value of reading."
Among the lessons the program tries to impart, she said, are that prisoners
should stay in touch with their children, that they should not make false
promises about when they will be released, and that they should acknowledge
the pain they have caused their children, who are also victims of their
crimes.
The good news for the inmates, Ms. Gaynes said, is that while society "will
forever remember them for what they did on the worst day of their life,
their children will not judge them for just this."
In the past few years, as the number of inmates has exploded, a handful of
other programs have been started to help incarcerated parents, but most have
been for mothers.
Ms. Gaynes acknowledges that the impact on a child may be greater when the
mother is locked up, because the mother is often a single parent and the
child may be sent to a grandmother or foster home. But in sheer numbers,
fathers pose a more serious problem. Because most inmates are men, in 93
percent of the cases in which a parent is behind bars, that parent is the
father, the Justice Department said.
"People forget most of these men are someday going to be released," said
Creasie Finney Hairston, dean of the Jane Addams College of Social Work at
the University of Illinois in Chicago. "There is a growing body of research
that shows maintaining family ties while in prison leads to lower rates of
re-arrest for the fathers and makes a difference in the lives of their
kids."
Prisons, however, are in the business of punishment, and security is their
primary concern. Helping inmates preserve family ties is at the bottom of
the list.
Visits by wives and children are often viewed as a security threat by prison
officials, or at least a nuisance, because they can be an opportunity to
smuggle drugs or weapons and they consume guards' time.
For the families, visiting prisons, which often are in rural areas, can be
time-consuming and costly, and when they finally arrive, they can be kept
outside in the cold or rain for hours and then subjected to humiliating
searches.
"A visit to a prison is a very emotionally difficult experience," Dean
Hairston said. "There isn't time or space for normal family arguments, and
the kids tend to act out afterward and the wives or girlfriends can be
resentful."
Juan Hernandez, an inmate at Sing Sing, said his 14-year-old son is angry at
him for abandoning him, and his 16-year-old daughter is embarrassed and lies
to her friends about where he is. Neither will write or visit.
"I don't know how to deal with it," said Hernandez, who had just begun the
parenting class. "It's impossible to be a good father from prison."
One of the inmates' greatest fears, which they realize too late, is that
their children may consciously or unconsciously imitate them.
Gregory Frederick, a 52-year-old from Harlem who has been at Sing Sing for
10 years for murder, finds that his grandson "thinks I'm some sort of
countercultural hero."
"When he comes to visit," Frederick said, "he sees these guys walking around
with big muscles, and then when he goes back home, he tells his friends, 'My
grandfather is in prison,' and he's proud of it. In some communities, prison
just has no stigma any more. It's a very distorted rite of passage."
Children often imitate the behavior of those they are close to, said Angela
Browne, a psychologist who is an expert on prisoners and their children.
"Unfortunately," she said, "children imitate strong behavior, like anger and
drug abuse, more than subtle behavior."
THE CHILDREN Following Father, Right Into Prison he impact on children can
fall most heavily on blacks in poor city neighborhoods, where a
disproportionate number of people go to prison, contributing to a
concentration of fatherless families. But research has found the dynamic of
children being influenced by parents in prison in all populations.
In the 1940s, two pioneering researchers at Harvard Law School, Sheldon and
Eleanor Glueck, found that among boys sent to a reformatory from the Boston
area, two-thirds had a father who had been incarcerated, and half had a
grandfather who had been locked up.
Race was not an issue. All these boys were white.
Similar findings, that about half of incarcerated juveniles have a parent
who has been locked up, have been reported wherever the issue has been
studied: in London, Minneapolis, or Sacramento, Calif.
The most recent research, conducted last year in California among 1,000
girls in detention in Los Angeles, San Diego, Alameda, and Marin counties,
revealed that 54 percent of their mothers and 46 percent of their fathers
had been locked up. Leslie Accoca, a senior researcher with the National
Council on Crime and Delinquency, who directed the study, said that the real
number of fathers who had served time was undoubtedly higher, but the girls
knew less about them.
"Incarceration today is a family matter," Ms. Accoca said. "There is an
entire kinship system that is now moving through jail, prison, probation and
parole."
Corrections officials are sometimes stunned to find whole families locked
up. At the Laurel Highlands state prison in Pennsylvania, a father and son,
convicted of separate arsons, share the same cell. At the Allegheny County
Jail in Pittsburgh, a father, mother, and their four sons and two daughters
were all incarcerated for different bank robberies. In California, a
daughter, her mother, and her grandmother were in one women's prison for
separate crimes.
THE VISIT A Child's Treat, a Parent's Reward Sareena Bain, all of 4 years
old and dressed in a turquoise jumper, was waiting by the slam gate entrance
to the Bexar County Detention Center, the San Antonio jail, for a new treat,
a Saturday contact visit with her father, Bobby Bain, a convicted burgler.
A guard gently ordered Sareena to take off her shoes so they could be
searched for drugs, then passed her through a metal detector. Nearby,
civilian volunteers took off the diapers of a group of babies to check for
contraband, replacing them with fresh, jail-issued diapers.
Inspection finished, the children were ushered into a special visitors room,
the walls painted jungle green and emblazoned with a mural from the "Lion
King." Sarena scanned the large, unfamiliar men in orange jump suits in the
room and then let out a whoop. "Daddy," she said, and jumped into Bain's
arms.
Bain and the other men had earned the right to a one-hour visit with their
children by volunteering for an innovative program, Papas and their
Children, in which 70 of the 3,200 inmates in the San Antonio jail live in
the same pod and attend an hour of parenting classes five days a week.
Other inmates can talk to their visitors only by telephone through a glass
wall.
The San Antonio program, and an equivalent one for mothers in the jail, are
the best of their kind in the country, said Anna Laszlo, a criminologist in
Washington, D.C., who conducted a nationwide survey of programs for children
of incarcerated parents for the Department of Health and Human Services.
In the visitors room, Derrick Hunt, a bear of a man convicted of drug
possession, was bottle-feeding his month-old son, DiAnthony, in his arms.
Unfortunately, the baby had picked this moment to take a nap. But Hunt was
able to quiz his 5-year-old son, Derrick Jr., on his ABCs.
"I never really had a relationship with my children until I came to jail and
took the classes," Hunt said. "But I've learned how to control my anger and
how to put my kids in timeout rather than shout at them."
In the visitors room of the women's section of the jail, Mary Anne Garza was
lying on the gray carpet with her three children tight around her: Edward,
7, Anna, 4, and Briana, 9 months. Tears rolled down her cheeks. Ms. Garza's
brother is in prison for murder, her husband is in jail, and she had now
been convicted of auto theft.
Anna could not stop hugging her mother. "She wants to come to jail with me,"
Ms. Garza said. "She is so worried about what is happening to me, and she is
scared of the police and the guards."
Not long before, there was an automobile accident near her mother's house,
where the children are staying. When the police came, Anna said, "Don't go
outside. The police will take you away and there won't be any more moms."
Ms. Perez, the social worker who created the San Antonio, program for the
sheriff's department said, "From a management point of view, it has been a
success because it has been so popular it has changed jail culture."
The inmates who take part in it have never tried to smuggle in drugs, they
openly express their emotions and there are no racial cliques or fights in
the pods where they live.
"They are just parents, not brown, black or white," Ms. Perez said.
The inmates may actually be better parents in jail than before they were
locked up, Ms. Perez said. "Most of them are addicted, and when they are out
there, the drug is the number one thing to them. But once in here, they have
to be clean, they are able to think clearly and they learn now important
parents are to their children."
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Farmers Show Interest In Hemp (The Intelligencer Journal, in Pennsylvania,
says Lancaster County Farm Bureau president Jane Balmer believes that falling
prices for corn, soybeans and tobacco mean the time is ripe for local farmers
to consider planting alternative crops, including hemp. The farm bureau board
voted Tuesday night to investigate the matter, so an organizational meeting
to explore the viability of forming the Pennsylvania Hemp Growers and
Processors Co-op will be held April 16 in New Holland. According to Shawn
Patrick House, owner of Lancaster Hemp Co., a wholesale distribution
business, Lancaster County in 1850 was growing 540 tons of hemp, the same
amount that was imported to the United States in 1996.)
Date: Tue, 13 Apr 1999 17:49:17 -0700
From: owner-mapnews@mapinc.org (MAPNews)
To: mapnews@mapinc.org
Subject: MN: US PA: Farmers Show Interest In Hemp
Sender: owner-mapnews@mapinc.org
Reply-To: owner-mapnews@mapinc.org
Organization: Media Awareness Project http://www.mapinc.org/lists/
Newshawk: agfuture@kih.net
Pubdate: Wed, 07 Apr 1999
Source: Intelligencer Journal (PA)
Copyright: 1999 Lancaster Newspapers, Inc.
Contact: intellletters@lnpnews.com
Website: http://www.lancnews.com/intell/index.html
Author: Daina Savage Intelligencer Journal Staff
FARMERS SHOW INTEREST IN HEMP
County Official wants Government to Lift Ban on Growing Crop
With sinking prices for corn, soybeans and tobacco, the time is ripe for
farmers to consider planting alternative crops, according to county Farm
Bureau president Jane Balmer.
One of her suggestions is a crop that was grown abundantly here for more
than 200 years, providing textiles, food, oil and paper.
Trouble is, it's presently illegal to cultivate industrial hemp in the
United States and has been since a 1937 ban was imposed to eliminate
harvests of marijuana, industrial hemp's intoxicating cousin.
Balmer's hope is that state legislators and the federal government will see
fit to lift that ban and reintroduce industrial hemp as a cash crop for
farmers.
But first she wants to find out if the state's farmers are interested in
growing a crop that hasn't been cultivated here for generations, but could
be an answer to plummeting tobacco prices.
An organizational meeting to explore the viability of forming the
Pennsylvania Hemp Growers and Processors Co-op will be held April 16 from 1
to 4 p.m. at Yoders Restaurant in New Holland. The meeting is open to the
public, but seating is limited. Call 399-8369 for reservations.
The county's farm bureau board voted Tuesday night to investigate the matter
and decide if it should be grown again here.
And a number of states, including Hawaii, Minnesota and Virginia, have
introduced legislation to make the crop legal.
"There are a lot of states getting into this. I guess we're going to try to
be one of them," Balmer said.
At an estimated return of $700 an acre, hemp doesn't seem as lucrative a
crop as tobacco, which was earning more than $3,000 an acre several years
ago. But declining tobacco prices in the past two years have brought that
yield down to $1,000 an acre, with an increasingly uncertain future.
"It's a 90 to 100 day crop," Balmer said of hemp. "It needs to be planted
the same time as we plant tobacco. It's harvested at the same time. So it
would work in with same schedule as tobacco."
"We've got to do something to help these farmers," she said. "This may be a
way to help save farms the right way by helping farmers make a profit."
According to Shawn Patrick House, owner of Lancaster Hemp Co., a wholesale
distribution business, reintroducing hemp here is a natural step to
diversifying farms.
"We want to prepare farmers for the inevitable," House said. "We want to be
growing hemp here by the year 2000."
House's ambitious plans include first teaching farmers how to grow the crop
by visiting Canadian farmers that grow hemp and then how to sell it to a
burgeoning American market.
"We want to see what Canada's doing, but do it better," he said. "We're
behind now but will swiftly catch up."
According to House, in it's heyday in 1850, Lancaster County was growing 540
tons of hemp, the same amount that was imported into the United States in
1996 to meet the growing demand.
"I personally want to see Lancaster County be the first county in the nation
to grow hemp," House said. "If farmers desire to grow industrial hemp they
should be able to. We need to find out what laws need to be repealed to make
it possible."
He said there are 50,000 products that can be made from hemp, from the
heavy-duty roping made from hemp fibers, to the oil, food and cosmetics made
from its seeds.
"When you read about all of the uses, my mind wonders: Why did we ever give
this up?" Balmer said.
to the 1999 Daily News index for April 2-8