KNOW NOW:
Young and Poor in Urban America
COVID’s savage impact and what communities can do
This is Darin Mayo wrapping up an eight-hour day at Fresh Start, where troubled Baltimore teens stop in their tracks. Among boys and girls who’ve committed misdemeanors, even felonies, he’s one of thousands the city remands each year to work camps, rehab centers, and places like this nine-month carpentry workshop, where daily GED prep mixes with measuring, sawing, and assembling.
Here and across the United States, the convergence of a public health crisis with economic and social chaos is throwing record numbers of youth into an exploding category: underage, underfed, and impoverished. New York Federal Reserve data shows low-income populations, especially those of color, hardest hit: the job losses evaporating family housing and healthcare; the food insecurity now commonplace as school closures cut off daily meals students rely on for nutrition; the sudden lack of public spaces, parks, and rec centers. Even critical social services are remote.
Consider where Mayo grew up in East Baltimore, known for the worst narcotics violence, citywide. His mother “has a disability,” a euphemism, it turns out, for heroin dependence. His father wasn’t around. "There's a lot of drugs on the street," Mayo said, framing his low points: “I had my first misdemeanor charge at age nine, I failed ninth grade twice, and I dropped out of school at age 15.” Disorderly conduct and resisting arrest landed him at Fresh Start, where life skills, one-on-one counseling, and daily academics filled out his carpentry experience. He also gained self esteem, easy to see when he was the focus of students and instructors during the end-of-day circle gathering. He took kudos and caution from adults and teasing from kids, and beamed a broad smile.
Growing up poor and Black greatly increases the odds of going to prison -- police are three times more likely to apprehend a black teen than a white one. And serving time portends poverty, a cycle well-studied by the Brookings Institution and others. Mentor and peer support is slim for young offenders; programs that reset the trajectory of boys like Mayo are even slimmer. Fresh Start is part of Living Classrooms Foundation, which raises its profile and traction from local leaders, companies and foundations with a hometown focus. Think Under Armour’s backing for a community center; a Ravens Football sponsored turf field; a partnership with Michael Phelps Foundation to beat back youth depression deepened by COVID.
Urban America has many small, powerful initiatives connected to bigger strategic efforts. Some are replicable, even scaleable. Civic leaders know what’s working; they need the means to amplify it so the community of families, neighborhoods, PTAs, non-profits and business -- becomes the dominant player in crime prevention. Funding? Break down what seems too big to handle – the stunning 2.3 million total Americans incarcerated, and the $80 billion cost, per annum. American society is safer with 2.3 million people behind bars? Brennan Center for Justice researchers want to shatter this notion, documenting nearly forty percent of US inmates who are nonviolent, low-level offenders. If criminologists and decarceration advocates have their way, non-violent offenders and those who have served long terms will pour out of prisons and jails, and Brookings reckons, save taxpayers $20 billion. That’s enough to develop mentors and peer leaders, social workers and mental health professionals, addiction experts, trainers and employers to weave a safety net strong enough to rebound ex-offenders.
Plopping into a chair, Mayo’s soft voice hardly projected over the din of boys slamming metal lockers and mentors’ reminders to stay out of trouble. But his day wasn’t over. After Fresh Start, he’d board a series of buses to his job at a big box retailer. The pay was low, the hours long, but he said with a big grin, it was “legit.” That was 2015, two months after Baltimore exploded in riots following the brutal police murder of Freddie Gray. Its hyper-policing of black men then sparked a DOJ investigation.
George Floyd’s murder in Minneapolis this year morphed Black Lives Matter from a movement into a widespread consciousness. 2020’s demonstrations and riots, summer spilling into fall, have commanded public responses to major metropolitan forces like Baltimore’s, where forceful, concentrated policing has been a leading cause of death among young black males. Maryland’s Job Opportunities Task Force equates hyper-policing with “criminalizing poverty.” Generations have cycled through it in the city’s 30 public housing projects, all fertile ground for processing misdemeanors like Mayo’s. Baltimore is an oversized contributor to the nation’s youth offender arrest rate: law enforcement across the US picks up over two million boys and girls under age 18, each year.
Towns and cities cannot keep up with arrest rates. Their default is warehousing youth in state confinement centers, but the evidence clearly shows adjudicating teenagers breeds repeat offenders. Johns Hopkins University and Living Classrooms’ Safe Streets challenge this with authenticity, training ex-offenders as ambassadors who return to their neighborhoods, successfully mitigating street scuffles and mediating between gangs. As in other violence plagued cities in the US and abroad modeling after Cure Violence (previously The Chicago Project for Violence Prevention), Baltimore’ de-escalation efforts work because the intervention is personal, and trusted.
If Fresh Start’s teens thrive, it's because they are surrounded by professionals pushing them to succeed. Director William Holmes scrambles to make strong connections with students at home, on the street, or somewhere in between. Most live in crushing poverty, the kind that leaves children to fend for themselves. Holmes drives across town, delivering small gift card rewards to those making strides. Fresh Start, COVID-style provides work boxes, Zoom classes, and texts the students daily, but it’s no match for the bustling workshop. Disruption is the norm and staff members’ antennae are up. “If I overhear that a student has an urgent need for employment or that a student’s displaced from the home, I’m there,” he says, “or I’ll tell one of my students ‘meet me at the shop for a bag of food because I know your mother just got laid off.’”
Holmes’ focus on “the small picture” spurns any conversation about race, policing, or rage. “I tell my students ‘stay inside, respect your mother, wear a jacket when you go out.’” He isn’t modest about his bigger goal to convert crime-committing teenagers into youth with purpose, even promise. Each graduate is guaranteed a job; most finish their GED and more. Two thirds do not reoffend for three years after graduation, compared to 50 percent of Baltimore’s general youth offender population that recommit within the first year of their release. Mayo was last spotted working at a nearby restaurant. Five years after graduation, he’s had no serious run-ins with law enforcement.
Any criminal justice redesign intent on lasting change will pull hard on the climb in youth recidivism – the rate juveniles are arrested for crimes they commit during their first year of probation. Cities are filled with local solutions – in the neighborhoods, among school and parent groups, from faith-based services and nonprofits -- all staffed by locals who know the population. Fresh Start’s average annual recidivism rate is 17%; the national average is 52%. Let’s do the math.
DO NOW:
Tuned into US debates? You’ll hear VP nominee Kamala Harris on youth, crime and poverty. The former prosecutor, who critics blast for her own record convicting mostly Black low-level drug offenders, demands high impact change: release prisoners held on marijuana offenses and expunge their records. The venerable Marshall Project will keep you updated on prison, policing and decarceration issues. And the US National Academy of Sciences tracks best decarceration practices during COVID. Interested in police/community reconciliation? Look to John Jay College of Criminal Justice, a leading voice on law enforcement and civil society, with projects countrywide.. Adding someone with a criminal past to your payroll? Baltimore’s Johns Hopkins Medicine trained and hired 500+ ex-offenders and published a widely regarded “how to” guide for employers. Reach at-risk youth with your talents: whether you’re a whiz at teaching financial literacy, a skilled dancer, or simply want to share some kindness, the nation’s Boys and Girls Clubs are a good place to start. Need perspective? Several fine reads illustrate how US society developed these vexing problems. Nathan McCall’s Makes me Wanna Holler is a jarring and penetrating look at the nexus of youth, racism and crime. Michelle Alexander’s The New Jim Crow, a well-worn tome about the long and failed War on Drugs, gives anyone concerned about civil society a new battle cry.
Amy Kaslow
K/NOW Senior Researcher and Assistant Editor: Jordan Lee