I got a tip last
week about a community event set for tonight that I think merits widespread
attention. It addresses an important community problem in a proactive fashion.
The issue is how
our community is putting ordinary children doing ordinary things at
life-threatening risk by our failure to understand what is happening around us,
and by using the blunt instrument of our juvenile justice system as a
convenient but expensive means of tackling a more complex situation.
The event, “Youth
in Peril: A Community Response Public Forum”, is being presented by the South
Euclid City Council Safety Committee from 7-9PM at the city’s community center,
1370 Victory Rd.
The program has a
diverse panel of presenters, including County Juvenile Court Judge Michael
Ryan, Cuyahoga County Juvenile Court; Judge Gayle Williams-Byers, South Euclid
Municipal Court; South Euclid police chief Kevin Nietart; law professor and
former assistant county prosecutor Carmen Naso of Case Western Reserve Law
School.
Also on the panel:
Chad Welker,
Director of Business Services, SEL School District
Keith Benjamin,
Director for Community Services for South Euclid
Karen Jones, a South
Euclid teacher and board member/immediate past president of Cleveland
Hts.-University Hts. School District
The program seeks to provide information about a process
that is resulting in the criminalization of large parts of our population in
ways that reverberate to our detriment, and to discover and begin to implement
solutions that address behavioral issues in ways that mete justice and reform
perpetrators without demonization-for-life.
For more, read today's second post.
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