i got five boys of my own and i mentor them real good. i even have a little brother. just sad the way that you know, things happen, you know. i basically was on the streets at the age of 11 years old, you know. where i should have been in school. didn't nobody care at all. didn't nobody, you need to go to school this, no teachers came to the house, nothing. but you know, like now these days for me doing a lot of things that i do, the teachers really know the kids that's in school that need the help. a lot of the teachers know that these kids need help, these kids need help. some don't need the help. there's a lot of kids that need

the help. i just wish that, you know, like the young guy who did shoot my brother, if it was programs out there that help serve the community a little better, the guy probably never would have shot my brother. i had another little brother fell through the you know, cracks, too, where he end up dying himself. if it wasn't for john, half of the time, i wouldn't even be here from him mentoring me. i've been knowing john since i was 7 years old, he could tell you the stuff that i've been through in life. you know, when i needed him in life he was there. to mentor me. and my life was a sad situation but now i'm proud of myself from

john pender gast mentoring me. and we really need these programs for these kids. the kids is the future. he really, you know, they need help. there's a lot of kids that need help. and we can't help. we can help with the programs. and i do my helping too. me and my wife, we run a football program, with like 300 kids. and i never dreamed that i would be running a football -- well, my wife is the president of the football program where she be running a program with 300 kids. and that's amazing. i think i'm a good role model to my boys. they watch everything i do. i would love to see more programs out there for the kids. i would love to see way more programs for the kids. that's very important.

that's all i got to say. [ applause ] >> dr. gallagher. good afternoon and as always, thank you, congressman scott, for your great leadership on these issues and i'm thrilled to be in this really, really esteemed panel. it's very exciting for me as an academic so you'll have to forgive my enthusiasm over here. my job, i think, is to bring the evidence to bear on the issues surrounding the youth promise act so i titled my presentation evidence which hopefully won't

be as boring as it sounds. for those of you who have seen any of these briefings that i've done before, forgive me, it's part of our seven-minute graduate seminars and i'll review what we covered last time and move into some new territories as well. i have never been a big brother but i spent quite a bit of time in facilities and i think that experience has really shaped my research, how i understand the problems and the complexities. but also what these kids are asked to persevere and to survive in. so, with that i'll move ahead to the evidence at hand. so, i promised a review of our last lecture and i'll keep these to less than three minutes total. but in previous discussions we've covered things like the organization, the oversight, and

the youth who are involved in the juvenile justice system. sometimes we forget not everyone's familiarized with the complexities and the irregularities with the system. we also talked about cost and what it actually does cost to keep kids in the system versus prevent kids from getting in the system and also what happens when we fail them at each level. we talked about that in terms of taxpayer burden, and we talked about it in terms of a cost effectiveness study that we're about to conduct. actually in the process of conducting with the pew center for the states. we also went through the evidence surrounding the promise act and in some of our briefings we've gone piece by piece through the components and conclude on the whole there are significant evidence. today i'm going to be talking along a different vain, considering the company we're keeping i thought it might be

interesting and important to remind ourselves about not just prevention and cost but what the human rights and the human losses when we fail to do our job in the juvenile justice system. so, i'm going to bring in some evidence that our group has compiled about the deleterious effects of crowding, what we see in terms of health care and what we see in terms of avenues of relief for youth who are in facilities and who are failed when they are there. i'll conclude this bit of our lecture and i don't know what our next lecture will hold but with the risk of maintaining our status quo. and some action items i hope that will help us move forward. the next few slides i'm going to go over in rapid speed. they are available elsewhere but it's just a reminder about major milestones in juvenile justice. what you see on the screen is a

lot of different stripes. the blue stripes represent major court interventions in juvenile justice policy. and what you see in yellow is legislative interventions in juvenile justice policy. and considering it spans over a century you can see there haven't been many major interventions. one of them is the youth promise act. another is what the supreme court is hearing or considering at the moment. which is the cases of graham -- sorry, miller v alabama and jackson v. hobbs which considers life without parole. we also talked about what the system looks like and even if you could read the slide you'll know that it's very complex, hard to understand its organization and processes. despite being an academic who loves conceptual models it's

hard to depict it in a meaningful way. so it's hard to imagine people who are unfamiliar with the juvenile system trying to navigate it and manage it and especially people who don't have the resources or the constituency to manage it effectively to get their children safely through to the other side. we also talk about the numbers of kids who go through these systems. the facilities and not to mention probation and parole systems, but facilities process over a million kids a year. this is a lot of potential lost and a lot of lifetime spent the for cent wecurity is extremely high, and services are very low. we also talked at a different briefing about some costs and we looked at it in terms of firearm injuries. we thought well, if we can't put a dollar figure on how much it cost to keep a kid in the

system, we can begin to chip away at the costs for what happens to kids when we fail them. and one way in which we fail them if they arvictim of a firearm injury. what you can see from this graph, you don't really need to be able to read it to see the top t blue stripe, is the -- sorry, firearm injuries for black males between the ages of 13-19, the red stripe is for hispanic males of the same sage group and the white stripe for white males of the same age group. between 2001 and 2010. what is alarming about this graph, despite in addition to the gross disparities is also the fact that it's not evidence necessarily from this picture but these rates have remained stable over the last decade. many of us celebrated reduced crime rates but this is an area

in which we've not seen a reduction. i can talk more about what this graph means at a different time and we have resources available for you. but we moved along and we considered what the firearm injuries mean in terms of costs not just to these kids but to their families and society as a whole. and we used as a bench mark measure the entire federal budget spent on the office of juvenile justice and delinquency prevention which is the sole arm mandated for guiding the states and providing fundings to prevention and for some minimal standards and protections. what we came to realize is that we spend more on hospital bills for adolescents who have been shot in a year than the entire federal budget combined to support these programs. if we consider not just kids who have been firearm injuries but

victims of other violent injuries we can make that almost quadruple the amount of the federal budget from 2012. so, we also conclude in this, sorry, i'm going to not overstep my time boundaries, but we also concluded that even the hospital bills do get passed back to the taxpayer through medicaid billing, through the reabsorption of unpaid bills to community hospitals t taxpayers are getting double billed, not just through, well, whatever we have spent in the federal funds but through being charged again for treating these injuries. so, what we came up with was once again i used a lot of analogies to health care because that's really our area of expertise in addition to juvenile justice. but in terms of the true costs to the juvenile justice system we're still a ways away from

truly understanding a per kid, per cost, across all systems and all providers. as i mentioned we're working on that with the pew center for the states. but it's sort of the same analogy as we don't understand what it costs to treat a patient across all systems of care. in all provider types for a specific condition. moving along i'll just say skrim complex, it is entangled with other social, health, educational, economic problems and it's impossible to disentangle it and pretend as though it's a separate phenomenon. we covered at the end in this summarizes our prior lectures, that the youth promise act really provide as rational structure for local leadership. and it also conforms to our scientific understanding about what the best means of intervention is, at what point,

with great local discretionary decision making, and a lot of variation to support what the local communities' assets and strengths are. again, i mentioned i have more detail on this but i'm going to move along to keep on time. today i wanted to talk a little bit about well okay, what happens when we fail in prevention, which clearly we have failed in prevention in many, many cases. and i thought i would speak a little bit on the human rights protections and risks that are faced by these kids. really what happens at the deep end. and i use three examples here. we're going to talk a little about crowding, about health care, and a little about seeking relief through the courts for violations of rights. first of all, i'll do this in rapid fire, happy to give you more information in a separate forum, but we first look at the issue of crowding.

so crowding, first of all, we have between 5 and 7% of facilities in the united states crowded on a given day. that amounts to about 20,000 young people who are housed in crowded conditions. and if any of you spent time in a facility, it's not just it's a little crowded. you know that it smells, it's noisy, there's no privacy, and it's degrading. sometimes anecdotes show kids are put in bathrooms, innd othe places. so beyond all of these different really inappropriate ways to house children, there's the issue the fact that violence is directly linked to crowded conditions. so one of the studies we conducted was relationship between crowded conditions and subsequent violence in a facility.

and what this table shows and it's a little hard to explain but it basically shows we have a threshold effect in the amount of crowding and how much violence we anticipate on top of the crowded conditions. so as soon as a facility reaches one point over capacity, meaning they move into a makeshift bed or a makeshift sleeping arrangement, we see an increase of 129% in the odds that a violent event will occur, not just any violent event but requires emergency hospital care which is a pretty significant step for a facility to take given what it means in terms of staffing and overtime and the like. moving on to health. this chart shows that across many conditions, some related to behavioral risk factors and many not, these condition, youth who are in our facility populations are on the whole about 25% more

likely to have any of these conditions. so, obviously these young people are underserved when they arrive, and in need of health care interventions. well, the courts say you are legally required to provide youth with some form of health care but the form of that health care or the standard at which it's provided and the extent to which it's provided is not really made clear. basically we can agree there is a basement in terms of the standards, and that basically is to check and make sure that youth is mostly alive and is going to stay that way until all of the general population. here we see using the lowest level standards possible whether or not facilities in the united states meet these lowest standards. and what we see in the red column and in the dark blue column are facilities that are partly or fully concompliant

with a very basic health care requirements of making sure that the youth is not suffering for example from an injury or trauma or is intoxicated or at risk of suicide as they walk in the door. we see in this chart that the risk of death in a facility is on average three times greater than that in the general population of youth. we can argue if the general population of youth is the appropriate comparison point, i myself feel that of course it is but others feel that you should look at the highest risk youth as it compares in point. but nonetheless, what we see is youth in the system are much more likely than kids on the outside to die from suicide and from illnesses. they are not only more likely to die while they are in the system, they are more likely to die upon release. that's a strong finding found not just in the united states

but around the world. i'm going to skip that slide. trying to keep up with time here, but one of the things that occurred to us when we were looking at these issues is if there are no real strong guidelines about how to provide health care, about how to protect youth, about how to relieve crowding, how to bring court cases what's the court doing and how are they responding to these issues? well, as you can imagine, the burden of proof is rather high and in a civil litigation which is the place of relief for youth who have suffered some bad outcome in particular death from suicide, the courts are the way to go. so we looked at every single reported case that was a case related to a family or a youth bringing a charge of either negligence or failing to treat, and the outcome in each case was either a death from suicide or a

serious irreparable damage from a suicide attempt so. we looked at all of these 37 court cases. granted, it doesn't represent the full universe of cases. we found across 37 cases, of all of those cases, just one made it through the appeals process. so, four to six could make it through the first round in the court, but by the circuit court review there was only one that succeeded and the final value -- for the plaintiff in this case was $34,000. so, it was kind of mind boggling to realize that 37 deaths in situations that weren't simple kids just taking opportunity. there were signs and there were rules that had been violated and gross negligence, there was just $34,000 which to me and i'm sure to you certainly does not

young person. 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 of that, we are really doing a disservice to the public and are 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 allow 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 nurse home 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 jorja 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 interviewed and done life histories on over 300 gang members. and i think it's very important, we've heard a lot of stories today and are going to hear a lot of stories here 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 to 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 agency 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. [ applause ] 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