Krs Francea Schoen-Naaapapar Room
U n iv e rs ity of Oraron L ib ra ry
bugene, Oregon 97403
County budget castrates MHRC
PORTLAND
OBSERVER
La* Brown: Now brood in low enforcement
s’ -„
According to nationally -syndicated
columnist Carl Rowan, A tty . Gen. Griffen
Bell is considering abolition of the Law
Enforcement Assistance Administration
(L E A A ). Rowan cites conclusions made
by the Attorney General's office, concur
rent with criticisms made earlier by the
National Urban League, that L E A A has
proven relatively ineffective due to
improper channeling of program funds by
L E A A Administrators: money which
should have gone to financing new crime
reduction programs was spent on new
hardware; little was spent to involve
Blacks, the disproportionate perpetrators
and victims of crime, in the war against
crime as partially indicated by the mini
mal allocation of funds to criminal justice
programs at Black universities, and the
hiring of only nine Blacks in filling
LEA A 's 198 professional, administrative
and management positions.
The study also indicated that police/
community relations are predicated on
fear and distrust.
In conclusion, the reporter suggests
that Bell "try a new staffing pattern and
targeting of its (LEAA 's) resources."
rather than scrapping the office.
I f Rowan's commentary were well
taken, it would provide all the more
reason for the Justice Department to
take a good, long look at people such as
Lee Brown. Director of Justice Services
for Multnomah County.
Brown was named earlier this year as a
candidate for the deputy directorship of
the agency and has been suggested to
President Carter as a possible candidate
for the directorship. Not that Brown to
some kind of soulful magician who can
cure the ills of the agency with a Black
face and some measure of administrative
prestidigitation; but as a policeman,
community relations person, educator,
sheriff and administrator, he has demon
strated his qualifications as a capable
public servant and administrator of inno
vative law enforcement programs.
D r. Brews (he has a PhD in law
enforcement) was appointed Sheriff of
Multnomah County in 1975 for the ex
pressed purpose of reorganising the
department to implement the innovative
and controversial Team Policing Program
which sought to maximize services in the
face of budgetary limitations.
Opinion
A year-and-a-half later, he was named
Director of Justice Services, another
product of radical reorganization in the
county justice system, which involves a
systematic approach to coordinating
personnel, planning, budgeting and policy
»«»ting of the many areas of justice
services including the District Attorney's
Office, the Courts, the Medical Examin
ers. Juvenile Court and Juvenile Home,
Public Safety. Corrections. Public De
fender. Legal Aid and the Law Library.
"One of the things you find in just
about all the literature that deals with
crime and the criminal justice system,"
explains D r. Brown, “to the fragmenta
tion of what to called the *Crimin«l Justice
System.' For all practical purposes, there
to no system...you have various compon
ents of an overall system that may or may
Multnomah County has announced that
its contribution to the Metropolitan Hu
man Relations Commission for 1977-1978
will be $42.790 rather than the $45,971
request. The City of Portland contribu
tion matches that of the County, making a
total request of $91,942 for the year. The
budget had already been pared down
from the original request of approximat
ely $96,000.
Since the City intends to match the
county contribution, the net effect of the
county's action will be a $6,422 reduction.
During the 1976-1977 budget year,
Multnomah County contributed only
$25,000 due to shortage of funds. The city
carried more than its share of the
operation, providing enough funds to
keep the Commission operative with a
reduced staff.
Metropolitan Human Relations Com
mission currently has a staff consisting of
a director, a human relations specialist
and a secretary. The requested funds
would allow the addition of two staff
positions.
In the public hearing Wednesday, Vern
Pearson, Chairman of MHRC that the
plans of the Commission for the coming
fiscal year include: a public information
project to bring to the community the
awareness of differences between groups
of people an« remind them of the
importance of equality; a study of racial
discrimination in housing; s Neighbor
hood Mediation Project which would deal
with neighborhood and family conflicts in
an informal way, avoiding police contact;
study the effect of practices of law and
enforcement and the judicial process on
minorities; develop civil disorder contin
gency plan; study school desegregation in
Portland; and continue to provide a
forum for greviences.
Nick Barnett. MHRC Director told the
County Board of Commissioners. “Now -
$3,211 in comparison to the much larger
sums other bureaus need might not be of
much impact to them. But for an office
such as MHRC, which for the past nine
months has had a permanent staff of only
a Director, one professional staff mem
ber, and one secretary to carry out duties
that are mandated to be responsive to an
entire County and City the size of this
metropolitan area, this obviously puts
MHRC's mission in critical jeopardy. . .
“In essence, our request represents a
strictly cost-conscious effort to carry
(Please turn to page 2 eoi. 1)
Eugene student earns Achievement aw ard
Brian Rousseve of Churchill High
School in Eugene has been selected for a
$1000 National Achievement Scholarship
sponsored by IB M Corporation. Rousseve
is one of two Oregon high school students
selected on the basis of competitive
testing in their junior and senior years.
Brian, who is seventeen years old, was
born in Hempstead, Texas, on November
17,1959. He has two older brothers, ages
19 and 20. His father is a professor at the
University of Oregon and his mother is a
housewife. Brian has lived in Eugene
since he was in the third grade.
Brian is president of Churchill’s chap
ter of the National Honor Society, a
member of the French Club, and last year
was the school's Assistant Budget and
Finance Director. W ith an interest in
acting, he played a minor role in “The
Emperor Jones.” He also served on a
community committee exploring alterna
tive schools in the Eugene area.
Brian was selected for inclusion in
“Who's Who Among American High
School Students, 1976-77" and has re
ceived awards for accomplishments in
Advancd Placement American History
and other social studies and literature
classes over the past three years.
He has been accepted by Stanford,
Lewis & Clark, and Oregon College of
Education and currently is leaning to
ward OCE.
He expects to major in
Geography.
S.
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M L L E E BROWN
not come together at some place.” A
coordinating body would provide a consis
tency toward the achievement of system
wide goals and prevent components of
the system from working against each
other.
“W hat I think we have here," he added,
“is a model that many people throughout
the nation are looking at for potential for
replicating it in their cities."
Brown
pointed out that the City of New York has
followed the example and appointed a
deputy mayor of criminal justice, a
position similar to his.
The relationship between the police
and the community is something that
Brown has been dealing with since he
developed and headed such a unit for the
San Joee Police Department in the late
60s at the height of campus disturbances
and the Black athlete protest spearhead
ed by H arry Edwards. "That involve
ment obviously gives you a perspective
on all aspects of community life, in terms
of those who are protesting, the issues
involved...and the ability and willingness
of the city to respond to differences of
opinion,” recounted Brown of the experi
ence.
Another aspect of the San Jose experi
ence dealt with the voicing of concerns by
the minority community about the qual
ity of life in the city. Says Brown. “My
primary objective was to attempt to
avoid the disturbances that were occur-
ing in other places...to bring about non
violent resolution to the conerns that
were being voiced.”
“There was a myth in the 60’» that
Blacks didn't want the services of law
enforcement agencies,” said Brown, add
ing that currently, "there is a high level
of awareness in the Black community and
a worldwide recognition that we must
have some law enforcement." Those
services, however, must be organized to
deal with cultural differences.
Brown sees this as an “exciting time”
for Blacks to get involved with law
enforcement and he cites the increasing
number of people, including Blacks, look
ing seriously into careers in that area.
The criminal justice system is being
challenged, even from within the system
itself, to make law enforcement more
responsive in all areas.
"There is more writing, more organiza
tions and more studies concentrating on
crime and the criminal justice system.
The Institution of Law Enforcement to
amenable to change,” he says, and there
is the recognition that public support is
necessary if law enforcement is to be
successful in carrying out its mission.
The injection of some new blood in an
anemic system in the form of the young
Blacks on the campuses and entering the
justice system, may be the answer to
the disease which plagues American
communities.
Brian was extremely pleased to receive
the scholarship award. “The award is
quite important to me for several reasons
the most important of which io the
original objective of the Achievement
Program - to recognize and honor the
Black students demonstrating exception
al achievement in school and promise for
the future. The fact that I have been
recognized as one of these students is
quite an honor.”
Brian attributes his success to several
factors: "I am a member of a family that
has always taken education seriously and
that has encouraged us to do well in
school. I've also benefitted from having
been taught by some really stimulating
teachers from grade school right up to
the present. Perhaps most important is
the fact that I've enjoyed reading and
learning things since I was a young child,
and I've been seriously committed to
mastering the content of my classes."
K
B R IA N ROUSSEVE
Vancouver
NAACP meets
The Vancouver Branch, N A A C P, will
hold a public education meeting on April
24th at the Pacific First Federal Hospital
ity Room, 915 Broadway, Southeast
entrance.
The topic of the meeting is “Reasons
You Should Belong To the N AA CP”.
Speakers include Board members: Bobby
Davis, Edith Roeder, Clarence Harris,
and Bertha Baugh; Marshall Hudson,
Instructor at Clark College and Theodore
Baugh, E x a m in e r-In v e s tig a to r, Real
Estate Division, State of Oregon.
Areas to be covered are: jobs, housing,
education, civil rights, public facilities,
political, emergency relief and others,
including the History of the NAACP.
Sherry Davis, daughter of M r. & Mrs.
Andrew Davis, of Vancouver, who
recently returned from Brazil as an
Exchange Student, will tell us about her
experiences. Sherry completed her high
school courses there, however upon
returning home, she reentered Fort
Vancouver High School to finish with her
class. She plans to continue her educa
tion this fall in college.
Everyone is welcome to the meeting.
B ARBARA A N N T E E R
Conference demonstrates arts
Barbara Ann Teer, founder and chief
visionary of the National Black Theatre,
is a liberating force of magical power who
takes an awiience on a “Soljourney into
Truth.” She is assisted on this journey by
liberators from the National Black Thea
tre whose creative skills and theatrical
expertise have received world wide
acclaim.
A Soljourney is a ritualistic revival
that tugs at the inner force of all who
encounter its presence. And, if you will
allow yourself the privilege, Barbara and
the National Black Theatre’s liberators
will show you a way to spiritual uplifting
that wiii allow you to reach inside
yourself and experience the love that is
(Please turn to page 2 col. 4)
were staying longer.
But even these statistics mask several
hidden figures indicating the rise in
detentions is much sharper, including:
*A growing number of youths sent to
adult jails to compensate for cutbacks in
juvenile facilities, a practice condemned
by reformers for more than a century.
L E A A jail census figures show that
between 1970 and 1972, when youth
institution populations began to drop, the
youth populations in local adult jails on a
given day shot up from 7,800 to 12,7000.
•A trend toward use of private facilites
to replace state and local lock-ups. These
include everything from large detention
centers run by private charities or church
groups to small private homes for juven
ile delinquents.
Though comparable figures are not
available for previous years, the L E A A
found nearly 32,000 youths in private
detention facilities in 1974. But a look at
several states that trumpeted “deinsti
tutionalization" in the early seventies
indicates the decline in public youth
prison populations was often accomp
anied by increased use of private facil
ities.
In Massachusetts, for example, the
number of youths in public custody
dropped all the way from 724 in 1971 to
161 in 1974. But by 1974 the state had
over 1,000 children in private detention
centers.
*An unknown number of youths sent
by the courts each year to homes for
neglected
and dependent
children,
mental hospitals and institutions for the
retarded.
In the early 1970's, several states
passed legislation requiring that many
“status" offenders- those, like truants or
runaways, whose crimes are illegal only
for. youths-be handled outside the juven
ile justice institutions. But no systematic
data is available showing where they
went.
Much recent research has questioned
the effect that diversion of youths from
the juvenile courts has had. The bulk of
federal delinquency prevention funds
goes for diversion programs, but several
studies suggest the effect has not been to
replace youth prisons.
Instead, as former Massachusetts
Youth Commissioner Jerome Miller has
argued, such programs have "swept new
people into the system who otherwise
might have been ignored.”
Malcolm Klein of the University of
Southern California, for example, re
cently found that the prime candidates
for police diversion programs in the Los
Angeles area were minor first-time
offenders.
Before the programs they would have
been released with a warning by police.
Now they are shunted into shelter care
(Please turn to page 2 col. 3)
More children behind bars
by EBtott Currie*
(PN 8) - Ten years ago, study after
study concluded that imprisonment was
the worst possible treatment for children
who broke the law.
But today the
number of youths behind bars in America
is skyrocketing.
A decade of liberal reform aimed at
channeling young offenders away from
penal institutions-into counseling, job
training programs, mental health ser
vices and the like-has been reversed.
The bewildering array of youth institu-
tions-public and private, local and state,
huge prisons and small homes-makes it
difficult to accurately estimate the num
ber of youths in detention. But it appears
that more children are locked up, in adult
jails as well as juvenile facilities, than
ever before.
The swelling ranks behind bars parallel
the shrinking opportunities for youths in
the streets and schools of America’s
cities. A t the same time that youth
unemployment has risen, financially
pressed cities have cut back on school,
recreational and social welfare programs.
As at least a partial result, youth
“property” crimes spurted up by 50
percent between 1970 and 1975. FBI
. statistics indicate youths under 18 now
account for ever half of all arrests for
burglary and auto theft and over one
third for robbery.
A growing public outcry against the
recession-spurred urban crime wave had
fueled what Jane Ward of the California
Youth Authority calls “a more punitive
attitude toward kids, a feeling among
judges and others that kids should be
locked up.”
With no place else to send delinquent
youths, juvenile justice has become a
boom industry-the agency of first, rather
than last resort.
The trend is spelled out by a national
study done at the University of Michi
gan's School of Social Work. "Juvenile
justice resources have increased,” it
concluded, “at the same time other youth-
serving agencies experienced declines in
their resources......
“Given the reductions in other key
sectors (e.g. public education and child
welfare), there may be a tendency to
refei youth to those institutions or
organizations with the greatest re
sources."
In more human terms, a California
juvenile justice worker laments, “So ws
know locking them up won’t do anybody
any good. So what else is new? Where
else are we going to put them?”
R EFO R M OF S IX IT IE S
During the 1960's, juvenile court
judges, scholars and blue-ribbon com
missions all agreed that locking youths up
not only failed to “rehabilitate” them, but
often made them worse.
In 1967, the President's Commission on
Law Enforcement and the Administra
tion of Justice declared the juvenile
justice system a “failure.” “The youth
who has once been through the process
and comes out a delinquent is more likely
to act delinquent again." it said.
“The most informed and benign institu
tional treatment of the child, even in well
designed and staff reformatories and
training schools, thus may contain within
it the seeds of its own frustration, and
itself may often feed the very disorder St
is designed to cure.”
Fueled by the emerging consensus,
many states experimented with pro
grams to “divert" youth from the justice
system to presumably more constructive
social services.
But today, after extensive studies of
this “diversion" process, most criminólo
gists agree that rather than replacing
jails, the new alternatives have simply
made room for more youths -including
less serious offenders-in the juvenile
justice system.
And pressed by the public outcry
against crime, even some of the states
that led the reform swing, such as
California and Massachusetts, are begin
ning to fund more lock ups.
SURGE IN D E T E N T IO N S
In 1960, one of every 50 American
youths aged 10 to 17 came before a
juvenile court on a delinquency charge.
By 1974, according to the University of
Michigan survey, the rate had doubled, to
one o f every 25.
Though comprehensive statistics for
the years since 1974 are not yet available,
the federal Office of Youth Development
says the rate is still climbing.
Between 1971 and 1973, though more
youths came before juvenile courts, the
diversion trend brought about a 16
percent drop in the youth population in
state and local facilities, according to the
federal Law Enforcement Assistance
Administration (L E A A ). In 1974, how
ever, the trend flattened out, despite the
fact that Texas was forced by a court
ruling to empty its youth prisons of more
than 750 inmates.
The Michigan survey, covering state
but not county or municipal facilities,
found the same drop between 1971 and
1973. But it recorded a nationwide surge
in detentions, from 28,000 to 34,000 in
1974.
Since then, evidence from those states
with data available suggests the trend
toward more lock-ups has continued.
In California, for example, a state that
gained national attention in the 1980's
when commitments to state youth insti
tutions dropped. Youth Authority deten
tions jumped 90 percent between 1972
and 1976. And once in custody, youths