Wednesday, August 09, 2006

the kids are not alright

here is a story about fighting that broke out at a teen concert near the florida avenue market.

anybody have solutions?

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

No, there are no solutions. Except to move these people out of our neighborhood and into SE or PG County.

Anonymous said...

Sorry but I can't help commenting on the comment. I concur though in that there aren't easy solutions, but they do exist and we're responsible for supporting and helping find them.

I think it would require heavy investment from the city in education, outreach and job-creation for youth. Anonymous, have you thought about tutoring or getting to know some of "these people" on a personal level?

Anonymous said...

An hour or two of tutoring or mentoring each week can't compete with the bad influence of broken family and corrosive street culture 24/7. I've known a number of people who have tried to mentor disadvantaged youth. They've generally been bewildered when their kid starts to drift away at age 12-14, and then is arrested or joins a crew.

Sean Hennessey said...

we've all seen programs that didnt work. mentoring that doesnt pan out.

money doesnt fix a problem. the city can't fix homelife.


we can find many faults and problems, so what's a solution?

is there something a neighborhood could do to support our kids?

our neighborhood churches have seemed to been effective and have many programs. can they do more?

Anonymous said...

I agree, the problem is complex and multi-faceted and no easy solutions. I wasn't recommending tutoring as a cure-all. I was just put-off about the comment about moving "these people" out of the neighborhood. It seemed like an over-generalization that any community activity might prove just that. Most anti-crime programs I know of are mutli-facteded: enforcement (hard side - police, 911), prevention (soft side - education, community outreach, social work & job creation, and intervention (also soft-side). Usually prevention programs target younger individuals that are not yet involved w/criminal activity, and intervention activities target those already involved w/crime and facilitate the transitition to a non-crime way of life.

Anonymous said...

Actually, now that I think about it I think Scenic Artisan's neighbors represent the two approaches - your 1st neighbor is a bit more of the soft side, prevention approach to crime prevention, and 2nd neighbor (zero tolerance) represents the hard-line ("mano dura") approach.