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Local juvenile crime comes from many factors
  
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By STEFANIE THOMAS
They did it for kicks, police said, for the thrill of it. They took little but caused property damage in the thousands.
Somehow, the 16-year-old ring-leader of the group managed to convince a dozen kids to terrorize 12 Kingwood businesses over the summer, kicking in doors and smashing windows. Some locations, like Kingwood Country Club, were targeted twice.
Police said the young man who led the teenage group in the commission of the burglaries had just been released from a Texas Youth Commission facility where he had served time for several burglaries he and a handful of other Kingwood teens had committed, also under his leadership, in 2007.
This time around, he and his 12 followers were charged with engaging in organized criminal activity, a felony.
The common consensus among local law enforcement officials, mental health professionals and some members of the public is that teenagers who engage in criminal activity do so for two primary reasons: boredom and lack of parental supervision.
HPD Kingwood Division Lt. Carlton Brown said that locally, most kids get in trouble not because of gang pressure or poor socioeconomic conditions as is the case in other parts of Houston. Here in Kingwood, he said, kids have a future, the chance to go to college.
Except, according to Adkins, the gang of 13, students at Kingwood Park High School and Kingwood High School, was notorious for skipping school.
“I think they become bored. It’s almost a cultural crisis. They go to the mall, they do so much more than I did when I was a kid, but still they’re bored,” Brown said. “Here, the juvenile property crimes are almost thrill-seeking, for lack of something else to do. If some kids go through the neighborhood and open car doors and take credit cards...do they really need that? Are they planning on becoming a professional criminal? No, it’s just something to do. Most of the time they’re not out to buy drugs, they’re not out to buy food. They buy silly stuff.”
Case in point: The gang of 13 allegedly purchased things like shoes and clothing with their loot, Adkins said.
Kingwood resident Derek Salazar, who had a cooler full of beer stolen from the bed of his truck parked in his driveway last year during the ringleader’s 2007 burglary spree, said that boredom is a poor excuse for subjecting the community to a series of criminal acts.
“There are plenty of things to do, like church activities,” he said. “Too many kids sit in front of video games and TVs instead of doing things for the community.”
Salazar feels that parents are to blame for their children’s inappropriate behavior.
“It’s the parents’ fault,” he said. “I really just shake my head. Those teens need some help; get some counseling.”
Family therapist Saundra Dickinson, owner of Alternatives For Family Crisis in Humble, said that if parents make an effort to supervise their children, every minute spent with them is a minute spent teaching.
“If you supervise your teens, you’re helping them learn and there is no boredom,” Dickinson said, speaking of her experience as a licensed counselor. “Unfortunately, a lot of kids are left with too much time to figure things out on their own.”
Dickinson added that teenagers lack the wisdom that comes from experience to make good life choices and stay out of trouble, and it is therefore up to the parents to provide guidance to their children.
“The big people are supposed to have the wisdom to help the young people to live healthy,” she said. “But if you leave it up to the child on his own, he’ll find primitive ways of surviving.”
Police officials said that, along with the Harris County District Attorney’s Office, a process was put in motion to try the 16-year-old ringleader in the recent burglaries as an adult.
If convicted of organized criminal activity as an adult, he may face a minimum of 180 days in Harris County Jail and a fine of up to $10,000, depending on the degree of the charge.
Usually, though, delinquent kids are initially placed on juvenile probation before they ever see the inside of a prison cell or even the sparse furnishings at a Texas Youth Commission facility.
“You have to show yourself incorrigible to be sent to TYC. It’s not a pleasant place to be,” Brown said. “Going to TYC, just like for adults, is like going to prison and for some kids it’s a wake-up call. But others fail to heed the call.”
Recent reforms in the juvenile justice system now specify that only those youngsters who have committed felonies can be committed to TYC, whereas prior to 2007, teens who committed misdemeanor offenses were also accepted. As a result of the reform, new commitments to TYC declined drastically - from 2,327 in 2007 to 1,582 in fiscal year 2008.
The length of stay, on average, at a TYC facility, is anywhere between 10 and 35 months depending on the severity of the offense and seems to be on an as-needed basis.
“About 95 percent come in on indeterminate sentences, meaning there is no set sentence,” said TYC spokesman Tim Savoy. “They are instead given minimum lengths of stay, either nine, 12 or 24 months. He or she could end up staying longer if they continue to be in need of treatment, but they have to be released before they turn 19.”
According to TYC officials, facilities have veered away from the traditional approach of establishing control over offenders, fixing youth problems with professional services and increasing sanctions for antisocial behavior. Instead, the agency implements methods designed to “attach youth to positive social forces and assets, draw on community resources to engage youth, and engage youth in pro-social activities and opportunities.”
This modern approach is based on two critical questions, Savoy said.
“Our new treatment program examines what are called the risk and protective factors in a child’s life - risk factors being the chief negative influences and protective factors [being the] things that mitigate a youth’s likelihood of breaking the law or the things that can help break criminal behavior patterns.”
As police prepared to arrest the 13 members of the burglary gang one by one and obtained confessions from all but one teen, one mother scooped up her child and fled to San Antonio to keep him from the reaches of the law.
“He wasn’t even one of the main players in the group,” Adkins said. “The boy’s father brought him back and turned him in to us, but now the mother is charged with hindering apprehension, a felony.”
Most children, given proper treatment and their willingness to participate in their own reformation, can overcome past lives of crime and go on to become productive citizens of society, Savoy said.
“[But] you must consider the environments to which they return,” he said. “If the same environment that enabled them to become a juvenile offender exists, and that is where they return after treatment, it often can erode treatment progress to the point where the youth re-offends.”
For this very reason, Dickinson emphatically stressed that it is never enough simply to send the child to counseling. Overcoming a crisis, she said, is a family matter.
“Any crisis is about the whole family, not just about the child. The key is for the whole family to get involved,” Dickinson said. “If your car breaks down and you go to the mechanic, saying, ‘I think it’s the battery,’ the first thing he’ll ask for is to see the whole car.”
Brown said that most kids, like adults, find it difficult to break free from the cycle of crime because staying straight involves certain life changes that are hard to commit to, like staying away from old friends or kicking a drug habit.
“Especially if a child is chronically in trouble, it could be a predictor of how his adult life is going to be,” he said.
Savoy agreed that it is easier to rehabilitate first-time juvenile offenders than those with extensive records of delinquency. Nevertheless, he believes that most kids have the ability to turn their lives around if given the chance.
“At least with violent crime, it is rare that we ever get a youth with a true sociopathic personality that won’t respond to treatment,” he said.
Strict confidentiality laws, at least, enable juvenile offenders to leave their in criminal history in the past, as juvenile records are sealed and their contents not revealed to the public.
“It will never come to light in an official sort of way, and those kids still have the chance to straighten up,” Brown said. “But still, it’s hard to later play it down and say, ‘Breaking into cars, it’s just something I did when I was 15 or 16 years old.’”
Texas Juvenile crime
For more information and statistics regarding juvenile crime in Texas and Harris County, please visit the Texas Youth Commission website at www.tyc.state.tx.us.
TYC STATS
TYC statistics show that in 2007, more than 20 percent of boys serving a sentence at a TYC facility were convicted of burglary, by far the most common crime among juvenile males. A quarter of all female offenders, on the other hand, were serving time for assault.
Statistics also show that the majority of TYC inmates is received from Harris County (300 in 2008), followed by Dallas County (190) and Bexar County (125).
Somehow, the 16-year-old ring-leader of the group managed to convince a dozen kids to terrorize 12 Kingwood businesses over the summer, kicking in doors and smashing windows. Some locations, like Kingwood Country Club, were targeted twice.
Police said the young man who led the teenage group in the commission of the burglaries had just been released from a Texas Youth Commission facility where he had served time for several burglaries he and a handful of other Kingwood teens had committed, also under his leadership, in 2007.
This time around, he and his 12 followers were charged with engaging in organized criminal activity, a felony.
The common consensus among local law enforcement officials, mental health professionals and some members of the public is that teenagers who engage in criminal activity do so for two primary reasons: boredom and lack of parental supervision.
HPD Kingwood Division Lt. Carlton Brown said that locally, most kids get in trouble not because of gang pressure or poor socioeconomic conditions as is the case in other parts of Houston. Here in Kingwood, he said, kids have a future, the chance to go to college.
Except, according to Adkins, the gang of 13, students at Kingwood Park High School and Kingwood High School, was notorious for skipping school.
“I think they become bored. It’s almost a cultural crisis. They go to the mall, they do so much more than I did when I was a kid, but still they’re bored,” Brown said. “Here, the juvenile property crimes are almost thrill-seeking, for lack of something else to do. If some kids go through the neighborhood and open car doors and take credit cards...do they really need that? Are they planning on becoming a professional criminal? No, it’s just something to do. Most of the time they’re not out to buy drugs, they’re not out to buy food. They buy silly stuff.”
Case in point: The gang of 13 allegedly purchased things like shoes and clothing with their loot, Adkins said.
Kingwood resident Derek Salazar, who had a cooler full of beer stolen from the bed of his truck parked in his driveway last year during the ringleader’s 2007 burglary spree, said that boredom is a poor excuse for subjecting the community to a series of criminal acts.
“There are plenty of things to do, like church activities,” he said. “Too many kids sit in front of video games and TVs instead of doing things for the community.”
Salazar feels that parents are to blame for their children’s inappropriate behavior.
“It’s the parents’ fault,” he said. “I really just shake my head. Those teens need some help; get some counseling.”
Family therapist Saundra Dickinson, owner of Alternatives For Family Crisis in Humble, said that if parents make an effort to supervise their children, every minute spent with them is a minute spent teaching.
“If you supervise your teens, you’re helping them learn and there is no boredom,” Dickinson said, speaking of her experience as a licensed counselor. “Unfortunately, a lot of kids are left with too much time to figure things out on their own.”
Dickinson added that teenagers lack the wisdom that comes from experience to make good life choices and stay out of trouble, and it is therefore up to the parents to provide guidance to their children.
“The big people are supposed to have the wisdom to help the young people to live healthy,” she said. “But if you leave it up to the child on his own, he’ll find primitive ways of surviving.”
Police officials said that, along with the Harris County District Attorney’s Office, a process was put in motion to try the 16-year-old ringleader in the recent burglaries as an adult.
If convicted of organized criminal activity as an adult, he may face a minimum of 180 days in Harris County Jail and a fine of up to $10,000, depending on the degree of the charge.
Usually, though, delinquent kids are initially placed on juvenile probation before they ever see the inside of a prison cell or even the sparse furnishings at a Texas Youth Commission facility.
“You have to show yourself incorrigible to be sent to TYC. It’s not a pleasant place to be,” Brown said. “Going to TYC, just like for adults, is like going to prison and for some kids it’s a wake-up call. But others fail to heed the call.”
Recent reforms in the juvenile justice system now specify that only those youngsters who have committed felonies can be committed to TYC, whereas prior to 2007, teens who committed misdemeanor offenses were also accepted. As a result of the reform, new commitments to TYC declined drastically - from 2,327 in 2007 to 1,582 in fiscal year 2008.
The length of stay, on average, at a TYC facility, is anywhere between 10 and 35 months depending on the severity of the offense and seems to be on an as-needed basis.
“About 95 percent come in on indeterminate sentences, meaning there is no set sentence,” said TYC spokesman Tim Savoy. “They are instead given minimum lengths of stay, either nine, 12 or 24 months. He or she could end up staying longer if they continue to be in need of treatment, but they have to be released before they turn 19.”
According to TYC officials, facilities have veered away from the traditional approach of establishing control over offenders, fixing youth problems with professional services and increasing sanctions for antisocial behavior. Instead, the agency implements methods designed to “attach youth to positive social forces and assets, draw on community resources to engage youth, and engage youth in pro-social activities and opportunities.”
This modern approach is based on two critical questions, Savoy said.
“Our new treatment program examines what are called the risk and protective factors in a child’s life - risk factors being the chief negative influences and protective factors [being the] things that mitigate a youth’s likelihood of breaking the law or the things that can help break criminal behavior patterns.”
As police prepared to arrest the 13 members of the burglary gang one by one and obtained confessions from all but one teen, one mother scooped up her child and fled to San Antonio to keep him from the reaches of the law.
“He wasn’t even one of the main players in the group,” Adkins said. “The boy’s father brought him back and turned him in to us, but now the mother is charged with hindering apprehension, a felony.”
Most children, given proper treatment and their willingness to participate in their own reformation, can overcome past lives of crime and go on to become productive citizens of society, Savoy said.
“[But] you must consider the environments to which they return,” he said. “If the same environment that enabled them to become a juvenile offender exists, and that is where they return after treatment, it often can erode treatment progress to the point where the youth re-offends.”
For this very reason, Dickinson emphatically stressed that it is never enough simply to send the child to counseling. Overcoming a crisis, she said, is a family matter.
“Any crisis is about the whole family, not just about the child. The key is for the whole family to get involved,” Dickinson said. “If your car breaks down and you go to the mechanic, saying, ‘I think it’s the battery,’ the first thing he’ll ask for is to see the whole car.”
Brown said that most kids, like adults, find it difficult to break free from the cycle of crime because staying straight involves certain life changes that are hard to commit to, like staying away from old friends or kicking a drug habit.
“Especially if a child is chronically in trouble, it could be a predictor of how his adult life is going to be,” he said.
Savoy agreed that it is easier to rehabilitate first-time juvenile offenders than those with extensive records of delinquency. Nevertheless, he believes that most kids have the ability to turn their lives around if given the chance.
“At least with violent crime, it is rare that we ever get a youth with a true sociopathic personality that won’t respond to treatment,” he said.
Strict confidentiality laws, at least, enable juvenile offenders to leave their in criminal history in the past, as juvenile records are sealed and their contents not revealed to the public.
“It will never come to light in an official sort of way, and those kids still have the chance to straighten up,” Brown said. “But still, it’s hard to later play it down and say, ‘Breaking into cars, it’s just something I did when I was 15 or 16 years old.’”
Texas Juvenile crime
For more information and statistics regarding juvenile crime in Texas and Harris County, please visit the Texas Youth Commission website at www.tyc.state.tx.us.
TYC STATS
TYC statistics show that in 2007, more than 20 percent of boys serving a sentence at a TYC facility were convicted of burglary, by far the most common crime among juvenile males. A quarter of all female offenders, on the other hand, were serving time for assault.
Statistics also show that the majority of TYC inmates is received from Harris County (300 in 2008), followed by Dallas County (190) and Bexar County (125).
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Disturbed Citizen wrote on Oct 1, 2008 5:34 PM:
First, I would like to say that in no way do I condone the behavior or actions of this group of teenagers. They made some very poor decisions and I will not dispute that. I am somewhat disturbed that deeper issues are not being considered as root causes for the manifestation of this behavior.
To set the record straight, in this case in particular, the CHILD that is being called the "ring leader" is 15 years old, not 16. Not only is this child 15 but he is a 15 year old that is maybe 5 feet 2 inches tall and maybe weighs in at 100 pounds. This child was also diagnosed as ADHD at a young age and was medicated at the prompting of physicians and the school system. Due to his small size in comparison to his same age classmates, he has always had a low self esteem and struggled to find ways to fit in with his classmates. I would hardly say that he could be classified as a leader by any stretch of the imagination. It is clear that he is guilty for his part but to say that he was the "ring leader" is a ridiculous characterization. Seeing as all of these kids got into trouble together, does it even matter who came up with the idea of each burglary? They ALL made the decision to participate in each incident they were involved in and if they were unable to stand up to a smaller, 5 foot 2 inch, 100 pound classmate, then they are seriously lacking in the area of common sense. When kids get caught doing something wrong, the natural response is to point the finger and the finger usually gets pointed to the weakest kid. I know my older sister pointed the finger at me every chance she got!
It is widely known that the number of children in the United States being diagnosed as ADHD is increasing by rapid numbers each year. The typical response in the medical community and school system is to encourage parents to medicate their children. Of course parents trust the advice and direction of "professionals" and do what they are told out of concern for their children. While this does modify the behavior of the child and assists them in paying attention in school, it also causes them to become addicted and reliant upon a drug to function normally. What do you think happens once those children are weaned from those drugs in their teenage years? Many turn to recreational drugs to provide them with the calm feeling that the ADHD drugs had provided them for so many years and they often times fall into depression and act out.
If the writer would have scratched the surface of this story a little deeper, she would have also learned that the 15 year old child being characterized as the "ring leader" of these crimes is being raised by a single mother who began battling cancer shortly before these crimes occurred. Is it so ridiculous to think that this child could possibly be hurting from the fact that the main parental influence in his life is battling a disease that could potentially cost him the one parent he has in his life? Furthermore, has the writer ever heard of something called Manic-Depression (a.k.a. - Bi-Polar Disorder)?
Just to educate the readers, I would like to share a recent statistic that says "approximately 1 out of 100 teenagers will get SERIOUSLY depressed each year." Some of the main causes of depression in teenagers are parents getting divorced, someone you love being terminally ill and low self-esteem. Some of the ways teenagers react to the pain of depression are by getting into trouble, skipping school, drug/alcohol use and suicide. The manic side of this disease is rebellious and erratic behavior.
Because teenagers have the tendency to test the limits in their adolescent years, parents often times miss the signs of depression. I’m sure every parent reading my comments who has raised a teenager has heard their child say, “I’m fine.” Even the best of parents can miss the signs of depression because they simply have not been educated of what to watch for. In defense to all parents, especially those of teenagers, the last time I checked, parents do not receive a manual with all the answers of how to raise a teenager when their child hits age 13.
Without going into specifics, in the case of this 15 year old supposed “ring leader”, he has exhibited all the signs of manic-depression through his behavior. His mother definitely raised him to know the difference between right and wrong and to put the blanket characterization on her is unfair to her and counter-productive in getting him help. The old saying of, “It takes a village to raise a child” is true. We all hold responsibility in raising today’s youth. Why did the school counselors who are trained to identify signs of depression clearly miss the signs of this child? I do not say this to point blame on any ONE person or group but to point blame at all of us for how we have collectively failed in this situation. This behavior did not unfold overnight and I think it is fair to say that there were several signs that were missed.
The important thing to remember is that this is a child and fortunately his cry for help has now been heard. I only hope that the parents of the other children involved have taken the same steps to get their children help. To this child’s mother…Stay strong and know that you are doing the right thing by getting him the help he needs. This period in his life and yours does not define either of you. You and your son are and will continue to be in my prayers.
I would like to address the local police department and the juvenile detention center that were involved in this separately.
To the local police department…I know you have a very difficult job and you have seen much more than most of us will see in our lifetimes. That being said, I am aware of some extremely inappropriate comments that were made to these teenagers in the presence of their parents when they were arrested. I am sure that the comments were made to scare them as they entered the detention center but it was completely unnecessary. I will not go into details of the specific comments as I believe that would be completely counter-productive. I bring this up only to remind each of you that you took an oath to protect and serve the community and this includes these teenagers and their parents. Trying to scare these children in front of or away from their parents certainly does not protect or serve the community in any way. You did your job by finding the guilty parties and the court will do their job by passing down the appropriate judgment.
To the juvenile detention center...I was disturbed to learn that some of the detention officers gave these children derogatory nicknames to intimidate them. Contrary to what these officers may believe, some of the children in the facility are scared to be there and contemplating suicide. It is another example of some of the actions that have been taken in this situation that serve no positive purpose and is considered completely counter-productive. I encourage you to remember that these are still children and you hold the power to make a positive impact on their lives during the time that you have influence over them.
In all fairness, there have been several people involved that have truly had the best interest at heart. The judge in this case definitely took interest into making sure the doors where opened to help this child get the help he needs. There was also a youth ministry that came into the detention center and reached out to these teens in love. Those parties should be commended for their positive actions.
I hope my comments have caused the readers to view this article with fresh eyes and prompted the writer to dig a little deeper in her future articles. "