there are differences between circuit courts but i'm not going to go deeply into this. finalizing today's lecture is what happens if we stay at the status quo? what if we just do nothing and we keep the system as it is? first of all, we're not saving any money by continuing to not invest federal dollars. taxpayers are still going to foot the bill regardless, whether we're doing it through paying hospitals, through paying through loss of community stability, through inability to be gainfully employed. so there's no gain there. we haven't seen any reductions despite the general reductions in some areas of crime for serious violence for our youth and that's a pretty significant

warning sign. so we might be thrilled and happy that the crime rate has reduced in some areas, although those of you who follow this very closely know that we've seen increases in pockets, particularly in property crime. we know that the serious violence rate for youth is not decreasing. so here the investment is much better in prevention than it is in the so-called treatment, which is what we consider incarceration and the like. and what we also consider is the fact that we have seriously underestimated the public's willingness here to pay for prevention up front. so i think when we have lawmakers who are sticking with the slogans of get tough on crime and reform this and three strikes that and wave kids to criminal court and do all, that we're really doing a disservice to the public and we're really underestimating their ability to understand what it is that they can contribute through taxpayer

dollars to making a better life for these kids who in the end of the day, they are going to be responsible for anyway. and so with the final plug, rational legislation is probably the only thing that can help us at this point. what's promised in the youth promise act is everything we need to guide states to provide guidance, to achieve binding standards with the states and locality to provide local decisions to benefit from local strengths and assets and to bolster what we've already invested in other social programs like head start and north town visiting. and we can also anticipate further risks to human rights as the system continues to adjust to the loss of economic resources. so with california closing facilities, which is great news, other states closing prisons, we still are going to be addressing the ramifications. crowding and the subsequent violence that will inevitably

take place, and we can anticipate that. with, that i'll leave it and say thank you very much, and again, i'm very honored to be here. >> thank you very much. are you going to make your slides available so we can put them on our website? >> absolutely. >> they'll be on our website. also, appreciate the fact that you're talking about we're already paying talking about a primary prevention which will not only reduce crime but also teen pregnancy, dropouts, and a lot of other problems. you point out we're paying already the hospital costs, the prisons, particularly youth prisons, which can run $100,000 or more per year, reduction in costs for teen pregnancy, fewer medicaid and social services. like you said, we're already paying. thank you very much. dr. leap.

>> hi, i'm georgia leap and i'm honored to follow dr. gallagher but i'm embarrassed to tell you that while i am a professor, what i do -- i'm going to try to move this over. i'm a different type of scientist. i'm an anthropologist. and most anthropologists go to foreign countries and study tribes. my tribe consists of the young people who have either been in gangs, are in gangs, or are thinking about joining gangs. and i do my work in the city of los angeles, and as you know, most people think of it as ground zero for gangs. one out of every gang member in the united states of america resides in los angeles. so i have a lot of people to observe. and i have a lot of people that i spend my time with, who i talk with, who i live with, who are my sisters and brothers, my

godchildren, and they are my guides. i've introduced and done life histories on over 300 gang members. and i think it's very important, we've heard a lot of stories today but i want to mention a group that hasn't been mentioned which are women and young girls. and i'm looking out at some of your faces knowing that your sisters are part of gangs or at risk for joining gangs in our country as well as transnationally right now. now, as i've listened to these voices that we rarely hear, and we're so lucky to hear them today, as i listen to these voices that i rarely hear, there's a young man who is 18 years old, one month past his 18th birthday. he was facing life in prison without the possibility of parole.

precisely like mr. hill harper offered the account of in that letter. his entire life was gone one month after his 18th birthday. and he asked me a question. he said, why wasn't there anyone who tell me there was another way to go? and his question has haunted me. i am sorry to be here talking in support of the youth promise act. let me tell you why i'm sorry. i was here over three years ago talking in support of the youth promise act. why am i still here talking in support of this? why isn't it already law? why isn't it already funded? you are going to hear from panelists and you have heard from panelists who are telling the truth. they are armed with statistics. they are armed with information. i can tell you what i am armed with from the streets. i am armed with these words.

why isn't there another way? i am armed with the stories of people like a young woman i know named dark eyes, who committed her first crime when she was 10 years old. her father belonged to a gang, her mother was a drug dealer, her brothers and sisters were all in a gang. why wasn't there another way? and i'm not here just to ask that question. for the past 3 1/2 years, i've been engaged in evaluation of homeboy industries. some of you may have heard of homeboy industries. father greg boyle, who's an amazing man, was here on capitol hill also advocating for the youth promise act. for three years i have studied home boy industries. i was very honored to see one of our other speakers come visit there. homeboy industries is the largest gang intervention agencies in the united states of america. it offers all the things that we're talking about here.

mentoring. therapy. counseling. education. job training. it's a place to belong. after three years, and by the way my study is going to last at least five years. i have been following former gang members for these past three years. 300 of them. two-thirds of them have not gone back to jail. two-thirds of them have not gone back to prison. really. and the reason why is that homeboy offers exactly what the youth promise act talks about, and it can only reach 400 people. that is all the funding they have. the need is so great. the funding is small. and we have to ask ourselves, why aren't we doing better by our children? i have also been working, i have been honored to work in jordan

downs which is one of the most gang-infested housing projects in the united states of america. every wednesday night, i go there with a courageous group of men who are gang members who want to make sure that their children do not join gangs. even active gang members look for something like the youth promise act. i can tell you what it takes. it takes community involvement. it takes former gang members and former incarcerated youth to reach out because they have street credibility. it takes professionals, therapists, doctors, lawyers, who can expunge records. and it takes research like what dr. gallagher is doing, what i am doing, what a lot of researchers across the country are doing. it takes all of those elements. we know it's best practices. ojjdp knows it's best practices.

everyone in this audience knows it's best practices. without having read a scholarly article or looked at statistics. it is pure common sense. to incarcerate a youth in california costs $180,000. to put them through the program at homeboy industries for one year full-time costs $30,000. i am not a math whiz, i'm an anthropologist. i can tell you one is cheaper than the other. what are we doing? why am i still here? why are we talking about the youth promise act? we have to engage and make sure this becomes public policy law and is funded. we need to think about how many poets we have lost, how many doctors we have lost, how many musicians we have lost, how many scientists have we lost? who has died because this act is

not yet law? what is the matter with us? i want everyone to leave this room thinking of the question that was asked of me. thinking about what a young boy, a young boy who is facing the rest of his life in prison, asked me. we have to all engage and work unceasingly to make this act law. we have to think of that question. why wasn't there someone to show me another way? we have to dedicate ourselves to no child, no youth, no young adult ever asking that question again. i would urge you to talk one another, i would urge you to listen to these voices, i would urge you to read all of the

books that are talked about. i would also urge you to listen to what this young man had to say and other young men like him have to say. and i would urge us all to find an answer to that question. why wasn't there someone to show me another way? i'm glad you're all here. i'm glad we're engaged in this research. i'm glad we're gained ngaged i type of policy. but we need to make it the policy of this country. we need to find the funding for these programs. we need to make sure there are these comprehensive wrap-around services. we need to make the promise act law. thank you so much. >> chairman scott, could we add to dr. leap's fine presentation a request that everyone that sees or hears about this

afternoon's activity check and ask their member of congress about where they stand on this subject? >> sounds like a good idea. >> bobby kemper. >> thank you, congressman scott. thank you again for having me to capitol hill to talk about such an amazing i think legislation. i'm with dr. leap, i'm wondering why we continue to talk about this. i believe, congressman scott, we've been doing this two decades or better. we were talking about this a long time ago in our home of newport news, virginia. which brings me to my remarks today. 1977, i joined my hometown police department in newport news, virginia. everybody wants to know what you want to do when you grow up. as a third grader i always

wanted to be a police officer. so i got that opportunity at the young age of 20. i joined the department and i saw a lot of things i found were very unusual. but i also remember being judged by the number of people that we locked up. a good police officer worked on numbers. a good police officer was one who stepped up to the plate and made sure that everybody knew who he was in the community, not from a peaceful perspective, but from a perspective of making sure that incarceration was at the top of your list. i went on that track for a number of years early in my police career. and then i was asked by one of the supervisors to go to one of our local elementary schools that was actually a very young primary school. on 16th street down in newport news. and they wanted me to give a talk on citizenship. so there i was, a young white male police officer, going into a predominantly african-american populated school.

made up mainly of kindergarten through second grade students. as i walked in, i learned this was a graduation. and i was told very quickly that this was a first step and head start program. and not being very familiar with educational policy at the time, i had to inquire exactly what that meant. and i was told very quickly that a number of these children had not earlier in their education shown promise to be able to achieve those early childhood educational goals. well, being a person who questions just about everything in life i wondered how that could be. then i was told that many of these children did not have the opportunity to have early childhood education. i began as a young police officer to really understand the terms of injustice. and it stung me hard that day. but i did something that most people should not do. i asked at that particular gathering if any of these young people had any questions.

well, if you know that 5 to 7-year-old children don't have questions, they have a lot of stories. and they all begin to raise their hand and one by one i was listening to stories about their i've. sleep under my bed. and i looked at her and just a surprised look thinking, child abuse or child neglect? i'm not sure what i'm hearing her. so i went to her again and i said to her, what is your name? she said, my name is keisha. i said, keisha, what did you say? she said, at night mama makes me sleep under my bed so when the bullets come in from those mean drug dealers, they won't hurt me. i don't know whose eyes watered up the most, mine or hers. and i realized in that auditorium that day that what we had done and what i established as a career goal of

incarceration was not working. i knew that day that we would not arrest our way out of this problem. that we had to find other solutions for the community. thus, my career changed. i began to believe the only way to fight crime in communities is by improving the quality of life in communities. it had nothing to do with who you put away. it had everything to do with who you picked up. and i don't mean picked up from a police perspective, but picked up and saw that they had the quality of life to succeed. thus i went on a campaign as a local law enforcement officer. congressman scott will let you know that i formed a number of prevention programs in our city. we were committed to making sure that the message got out to every young person. i believed as a police officer that the power of positive messaging came first before any warrants were served. and in many localities in america that does not occur. it is not a message of hope for

young people in our community, it's a message of how quickly they can be embraced in these facilities that have been talked about here today which we know do not work. had the opportunity shortly after my retirement, congress man scott's aware of this too, to be asked to be the director of virginia's gang reduction program. had the honor to serve in that capacity for almost four years. one day i was pulled in and told that we had $2.5 million of federal money to improve the city of richmond. city of richmond at the time i might report was the fifth most dangerous city in america by per captain, homicide and violence. i was told that i could architect a program, could sort of engineer an effort to bring that crime rate down. put together a program that we sort of pushed everywhere we can go andabout sort of called it a peer program. it was originally called the

grip program. i was the director of richmond's grip program. in it i focused on prevention and intervention. i put most of our $2.5 million of public funding in prevention and intervention and re-entry. and just a little bit into enforcement. because i knew that prevention and intervention and re-entry would be the rule of the day to get the job done. i'm proud to sit here today to tell you richmond's one of five communities in america that's been able to hold their gang issues and their violent crime. we cut violent crime drasty lick in that city and we took it from one of the most dangerous cities in america to a thriving business community where people love to work, go to school, and now live. many people ask me today, how did you do this in a community? we built community. we rebuilt the dreams of people in communities. i can tell you that we took health caravans into the

probably highest-crime areas of that community, and we triaged over 5,000 people. many of those people who had not been to a doctor and a medical facility the community started taking their own community back. they started believing that when you raised a quality of life in citizens, when you raise their hopes, their dreams, especially when they're young, then you do get them to believe in their community and get them to believe in their own life to the point where they seize their neighborhood and call it their own and they become proud of where they live and they do defeat crime. this is what the youth promise act stands for. it's not soft on crime. it's smart on crime. it doesn't have anything to do with just pushing out a program. it makes every community in america responsible for adopting their strategy. we're not passing federal legislation or asking for

legislation to be passed to make sure that this program shines or that program shines, but this legislation is creative in nature. it is the same creativity that i used in the city of richmond to take the city back. and make it a viable place to live i agree with dr. leap. . this is a no brainer situation and i have come here today to testify to the fact that i have been on the streets and have placed people in handcuffs myself and i know that we like to hear the rhetoric of three strikes and you're out. we like to hear the rhetoric of charging teenagers at a very young age. you know what educators tell me, this is really fascinating. i'll finish up with these comments. they say that they spend about 90% of their day in their of the population, but what's more important to that statistic is they tell us who that 10% can be.

we can do a lot with technology, i'm here to tell you that i've been a witness, we can do a lot with people, communities and yes, through the evidence based that we talked about here today and pure community strategies which is incorporated in the youth promise act, we can save communities one life at a time. thank you very much. >> thank you. >> you'll tell what grip stands for. >> be glad to. >> it's model came out of united states justice department and we took the model and made it a little bit different by calling it peer as we moved it through communities. that stands for prevention, intervention, reenforcement, and reentry. we'll be glad to give anybody

further information on that. >> thank you. and bobby mentioned the richmond program where he spent $2.5 million and they reduced the annual murder rate from 19 to 2. 17 fewer murders. you think of the number of people who are shot and don't die and multiply how many people didn't show up at the medical college of virginia emergency room, trauma unit and hospital, obviously have more than $2.5 million in medical care right there, nothing about the reduction in law enforcement expenses. not having to lock up all those people. so it's a very successful program. thank you, bobby. >> thank you. first of all, chairman, thank you for having me. it's an honor to be here

representing the youth promise act. everyone, welcome. my story takes us back to when i was 15 years old living in california, in a suburb just outside of los angeles. there i was riding my bike at a local park with my friends and an officer pulled up right next to us, on to the lawn and just chitchat started. where you guys from, who's your mom, your dad? what school do you go to? by the way, do you mind posing for a photograph. we all did. i think i smiled in mine. what happened soon after that, that photograph was used in a crime investigation about a year after that was snapped where it turns out now that a crook officer, deputy sheriff, coerced 15-year-old boys into selecting my photograph, so i was arrested based on that moment, based on that identification of that photograph. i was soon tried as an adult.

i was in adult court, confused, not sure what was going to happen to my life, but i had some sense of what justice was about and i was relying deeply on that. trial started and it ended with wrongful conviction. i was sentenced to 30 years to life plus life and spent the next 20 years in prison. not until a woman, an attorney named ellen eggers got involved were they able to prove my innocence. the witnesses who 20 years prior testified against me all recanted, and so here i am today. i've been home for one single year. to the month. i've been home for a year. my story is not basically my story. it's the story of many people.

many young men who i left behind in prison. many adults who have the inner child still damaged and hurting and maybe can never take that back. can never relive that. but there are grown adults now who suffer from a terrible upbringing. since my release, i have jumped right in. i made myself a promise that if and when i ever get out, i would lend my voice and lend my time and dedicate myself to issues that were close to my heart as is the youth promise act. to my true blessing was i came across professor scott wood and seth winer from the law school center for justice and these men embraced me and i embraced them and our mission to restore a number of issues, mainly those involving of youth and the cities, mainly los angeles.

i've been spending my time on youth detention centers of juvenile halls going back and what hurts me so much is to realize that not much has happened in 20 years. i was amazed at the technology that was transpired since i have been gone. graffiti has dropped in los angeles. the streets seemed a lot cleaner, but at least in my opinion, how we handle youth and how we make the mistake of thinking that youth can kind of figure it out themselves and we'll just stand back and let them make a mess of it and then complain. on the way in today, i saw the statue, there was a statue of lady liberty with the light in her hand and there was a young child and the engraving said the

spirit of justice and it struck me because there was a child there and this inscription of you know engraving, the spirit of justice. there it was in the marble form. it bothered me that here i am, this young boy, well, part of me feels like a young boy, but a grown man from los angeles who never imagined being here on capitol hill to witness something of that magnitude and beauty, but there it is and i think that one of the things that the promise act can do is liberate that child and that woman and allow that to just be part of our every day communities. and i think about my youth and think about how easy it was for not only myself and my community to take on the behavior of a sheep and to be herded around and eventually pinned up and made to feel insignificant, that our voices weren't to be heard,

and you know, if they hear the panelists talk about in their own form, what it is to support this deal and see this, hill harper, and to connect with brian because i was brine. i am brian. it breaks my heart. the relief is that hope is on the way and the message is still passing can definitely be for those who have committed themselves to reform, but also to the children who are paying attention. i guess i'll close with my new life. you know, i've been -- it's an honor to have been accepted at loyola miramonte university. i've been home for a year -- i