Youths say boredom and basic needs landed them at Maryland detention centers
MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:
We've all read the stories or seen them in the news, or maybe we've lived it ourselves - carjackings, public brawls, shootings, smash-and-grab robberies.
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UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER #1: Baltimore police data reveals more than 7,000 cars have been stolen in the city so far.
UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER #2: Two incidents, two young people shot.
UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER #3: While several other businesses have been burglarized over the past week.
MARTIN: These are excerpts from Baltimore-area news reports. Now, violent crime is unsettling in any case, but what makes it even more disturbing is when kids are involved, as victims or as perpetrators - or both. And when it does happen, we often hear from the police or advocates or public officials. But kids who are involved in crime are rarely heard in all this, so we spoke with a group of teenagers in Maryland who've all been locked up in connection with violent crimes. The only restriction was that we identify them by their initials to maintain their privacy. In a later conversation, we're going to hear from Vincent Giraldi. He's the secretary of Maryland's Department of Juvenile Justice. But first...
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #1: Once you build a deck with new timber and stuff, I mean, they want you to wait, like, over a year to...
MARTIN: Right. Right, right, right.
DAVE: Yeah, we would've stained this one when we built the place if it weren't for that, but..
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #1: Yeah.
MARTIN: To western Maryland, where young detainees from the Backbone Youth Center made improvements to a day care center as part of a Habitat for Humanity project. They worked on stripping, sanding and refinishing a deck to make it safe for little kids. I worked alongside them. It was hard work.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #1: Are you going to hit this with an electric sander, Dave (ph), or not? I mean...
DAVE: I don't know if it can help with this.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #1: OK.
MARTIN: Because that wears the wood down?
DAVE: Well, it's just...
MARTIN: Gets in your...
DAVE: ...One more thing.
MARTIN: Yeah.
That's where we met K.S., who's now 19. On a water break, he told us that this was his second stay at the youth center in four years, this time for assault charges after an argument with his girlfriend and a neighbor that landed the man in a hospital.
K S: Most of my charges just came from me hanging out with the wrong people - stolen cars, stolen four wheelers, dirt bikes, fighting.
MARTIN: When did that start? How old were you when that started?
K S: Like 10 or 11. My first time being locked up, 13. And I was out with one of my buddies. And he just got the dumb [expletive] idea to go steal a car, so my dumb [expletive] followed him.
MARTIN: What did he want the car for? What did y'all want the car for?
K S: I didn't want the car for any specific reason. He just said, hey, let's go get a car.
MARTIN: Have you ever had a charge involving a gun?
K S: No.
MARTIN: No?
K S: Yeah, I got an American flag tattooed down my arm. My Second Amendment is important to me.
MARTIN: I understand that, but why do you think you've never used a gun in a crime?
K S: Because, one, you catch a gun charge, you can't get any gun permits, you can't get your gun license. And then once you get your second gun charge, it becomes a felony.
MARTIN: Under state law, 33 types of crimes automatically send kids to be tried as adults before they can enter the juvenile detention system.
What would make you stop?
K S: I was 17 when I caught this charge. I sat in a jail cell on my 18th birthday. I was getting bailed out of a jail cell for my 18th birthday, and now I'm here for my 19th. Like, this was a blessing for me.
MARTIN: Why do you say it was a blessing for you?
K S: Because I could have been doing 25 years.
MARTIN: K.S. says he has a lot of regret. Now, at 19, he's hoping to become a diesel mechanic once he's out, following a path carved out by his dad's sister and older brothers. We also spoke with C.A. during his break. He was just 15 when he first got charged. It started, he says, with intimidating people to take what he wanted, and then it escalated.
What do you think got it started for you?
C A: Just trying to get money so I could basically have clothes and stuff.
MARTIN: Not having the things you wanted or needed, like enough clothes, or not wanting to ask parents for things, that was an issue that came up over and over again, but another was boredom. Several kids told us they first got in trouble because they were bored, looking for something to do, and started hanging out with other kids who were bored and restless, and it went from there.
What do you think made you want to do that?
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #2: Being bored.
MARTIN: Boredom, friends and also fear of other kids. That also came up at our visit to the juvenile detention center in Baltimore.
OK.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #3: All right. All right, then. Come on, ma'am, let me bring you in real quick.
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MARTIN: All right, go ahead.
That's where we met R.S. He said he started carrying a gun when he was 12, and when I asked him why, he looked incredulous and said because he needed one.
But for kids who are robbing people and taking cars and whatever, why do you think they're doing it?
R S: Some people just like to do it to show off, have fun. They just want to have something, and they don't got it coming up.
MARCO THOMAS: My name is Marco Thomas. I'm a case manager supervisor with the department of juvenile services for 20 years. My take on it is this, they're bored. The youth that we serve, they make up stuff to do. And they're finding negative stuff to do to drive that adrenaline. If we take some of that energy and use it in a positive direction, then we can start to see some progress.
MARTIN: So is there something you really would like people to know about the kids you work with?
THOMAS: The only thing that I would say is, these are our kids. These are the same kids that you're going to see downtown. These are the same kids that you're going to see, you know, at the mall, at the parks or whatever the case may be, around your children. So, you know, in order to make this world a better place, we need to help out all kids, regardless of where they at.
MARTIN: At Thomas' facility, we also met Jason. It was his fourth stay there since he turned 14 four years ago.
JASON: I was bored with my homeboys. And I just said, let's go get a car.
MARTIN: How did you get the car?
JASON: Yeah, I took it off them.
MARTIN: Why did they give you the keys?
JASON: Fear. Like, it was in fear of me. Like, he see me and how aggressive - and my aggression, I guess. I do hurt sometimes. Like, I can't just walk in the world and be a regular person. Like, I'm a monster sometimes to these people.
MARTIN: How did that make you feel?
JASON: It didn't feel like it was meant for me to be doing. That's why I had to change my surroundings and I went to selling drugs. And I liked the money. It was me doing right for myself, doing for my family, being able to give your mother some money.
MARTIN: What are you trying to do now?
JASON: I'm just trying to figure out how I'm going to survive in this world.
MARTIN: What would help you?
JASON: A lot of these programs that they have going on in the community, that's going to help. There's a lot of good people out here that really want to see a Black man prevail in his world, instead of seeing him in a casket somewhere or in a prison somewhere.
MARTIN: Boredom, friends, fear, feeling stuck, wanting basics they didn't have and not believing they had any other way to get them, wanting to be somebody. People might not like what these kids had to say, but that's what they told us. Later, we'll hear what the head of the department responsible for juvenile justice has to say. His name is Vincent Schiraldi, and he's had a long career as both an activist and a public official.
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