It is never too late…
For many youth, contact with the criminal justice system comes much sooner than you might expect. All too often, a child’s first contact with the system is due to actions taken by their parents, guardians, siblings or other family members. Abuse, neglect, drug addiction, and incarceration of the adults in their lives all have a way of influencing the decisions that young people make. There is little doubt that social class, poverty, race, gender and disability affect outcomes for every individual in society but the effect these factors have on children is striking. Imagine being 10 years old and already having witnessed brothers, sisters, uncles, aunts, and parents have some contact with the criminal justice system. Imagine having witnessed violent crimes, had your home broken into, or otherwise been victimized in your community. Imagine that gang presence is felt on every street corner and that drug and turf wars erupt regularly. While it is always difficult to isolate the one reason a youth becomes a delinquent, there is no doubt that these youth need intervention in order to get themselves on a track.
When a young person is coming close to contact with the Juvenile Justice System, the sooner that person can receive support and services the better. When that does not happen, and a young person ends up on probation or in detention, they need support and services more than ever. This is where City Youth Now comes in. Through programs that provide individual grants for medical assistance, clothing, and other emergency support, internship programs, and programs that promote dignity and expose youth to new opportunities and worlds they have never known, City Youth Now gives these youth the support they need. You can read more about our programs here: http://www.cityyouthnow.org/programs.
The support we provide comes at a critical time in the lives of these children. It comes when a child can easily feel that it is too late, and it shows them that it isn’t. By providing these kinds of support to San Francisco youth on probation or in detention, we are helping to remedy some of the injustices that may have contributed to these youth ending up in contact with the Juvenile Justice System in the first place. There is much that can be done to reduce the impact that a child’s upbringing will have in the future and to alleviate some of the harms it has already inflicted. And it is never too late.
For a variety of reasons, kids who have access to more resources will do better…better in school, in their jobs, in their relationships. Early interventions through counseling or other means can make a difference; they can even protect a child from a contact with the Juvenile Justice System that might otherwise be inevitable. City Youth Now works hard to make sure that resources are available to ALL kids in San Francisco.
