Teen Justice
Parents of Hartford students want to help keep their kids out of court for minor disciplinary problems and ask city to help with funding
by Meir Rinde - November 4, 2004

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Rolanda Anderson´s teenage son has an arrest record because of repeated run-ins with a fellow student at his school.

The root of the criminal charges against Rolanda Anderson's 15-year-old son go back at least two years. Another student used to taunt her son, a special education student, until one day in the eighth grade he responded by punching the other boy. They were both suspended. When the school still could not keep the two boys apart, she decided to move her son back to the relative safety of her home state of Alabama. This fall, Anderson -- who asked that the Advocate not publish her son's name -- brought him back to Hartford and enrolled him at Weaver High School. A few weeks into the school year, she was astonished to receive a call from a school official one morning saying her son's old nemesis was in classes with him again, with the same result as before. Except this time the school threw the book at her son. He was charged with third-degree assault after an altercation with the other boy.
"She told me, like, your son is being arrested for assault," Anderson recalled. "I said, 'What? Assault?' My son never got in trouble. He's not that kind of kid. But when she told me who the [other] student was, I'm like, OK, this is no assault. This boy's been picking on my son since seventh grade."

In at least 30 other cities in Connecticut, even if a schoolyard fight got the attention of the police, the case would never go to court. It would be referred to a juvenile review board -- a panel of town, school, police and court officials, along with clergy or other local leaders -- which arranges for kids to make restitution for their offenses or get counseling.

In exchange, the boys and girls don't go to court, don't accumulate criminal records and don't see their lives thrown off course by hamfisted legal responses to childish mistakes, mental health issues or broader social problems.

Hartford had a similar review board from 1985 until 2000, when years of cumulative budget cuts by the city forced the nonprofit that ran the program to shut it down.

This year the local child advocacy group African Caribbean American Parents of Children with Disabilities has been gearing up to create a new, pumped-up version of the board, with members drawn from the community. Nonprofits that want to run the program have submitted proposals to the state's judicial branch, which will help with funding.

AFCAMP, as the group is known, wanted to spend $250,000 on a first-year pilot program to serve 250 kids from Frog Hollow and Upper Albany neighborhoods, with hopes of eventually helping more than 600 annually throughout Hartford, executive director Merva Jackson said.

However, the city is again proving reluctant to help keep kids out of the court system. During talks last month, officials refused to commit any of the $50,000 AFCAMP requested, Jackson said. Other funding from private foundations is still pending.

But the kids can't wait, Jackson said. So the organization is going ahead with an even more abbreviated version of the review board.

"The need is just too great," Jackson said. "If our city won't step to the plate and do it, we're going to have to do the best we can."

The program will serve up to 100 young people in the first year, she said. If it succeeds, the city and other potential donors will eventually see it is worth the investment.

"If they don't come up with it, it's time to say somebody don't want it to happen," she said. "We have too many of our kids getting juvenile records and sinking deeper and deeper into the justice system."

In the case of Rolanda Anderson's son, at least the courts have an alleged crime they can point to. But in most of Hartford's juvenile cases, the police were called in because parents could not handle their children and needed help, said Art Weiner, regional manager for juvenile issues in the state's Court Support Services Division. For many, their offenses are non-crimes like truancy or running away. Some fail to abide by court orders, making them guilty of delinquency charges and subject to further punishment. Lacking recourse to a review board, Anderson's learning-disabled, teenage son now has an arrest record, must plead his case before a judge and risks ending up in a state facility. Anderson, a single mom working on a degree in accounting while holding down a full-time secretarial job, has had to take time off from work for two court dates and a meeting at the school.

The two boys are no longer in classes together, and Weaver High is setting Anderson's son up with an individualized education plan, which should have been done as soon as he reentered the school district with learning difficulties, she said. At his next court date this month, the prosecutor will probably offer him a deal to drop the charges. But Anderson said she is still stunned he got into such a mess.

"Now we're going to court, I'm taking time off work, and the prosecutor's going to throw it out," she said. "It shouldn't even have come to this point."

mrinde@hartfordadvocate.com