Family and Friends of Incarcerated People (FFOIP) is an organization that was formed in prison by fathers trying to maintain strong bonds with their children while locked behind bars. Today, FFOIP continues it’s work on the outside. Their primary mission is to foster community support that effectively meets the needs of today’s at-risk children and families of those incarcerated. It operates solely to promote charity, literacy, public safety, and to prevent inter-generational incarceration.
On the weekend of June 21-23, FFOIP took 25 young people from the Washington DC metropolitan area to the Wayside Center for Popular Education in rural Faber, VA. They brought youth from the city to a rural environment to quiet their minds and free them from daily obligations. The weekend consisted of a number of activities including a know-your-rights training, organizing skills and a leadership circle. The kids also had a chance to hike through the woods, swim in the lake and roast s’mores at night by the campfire.
FFOIP strongly believes that it takes a village to raise a child. This retreat is one example of FFOIP’s commitment to empowering young people in their communities. Please support FFOIP: www.gofundme.com/ffoip
Since 2003, Washington D.C. has seen a 43 percent decline in children placed in foster care. Though some progress has been made we are still seeing greater numbers of families struggling to access the resources they need to stay together when compared to the rest of the country. Our nation’s capital has one of the highest child poverty rates in the country with nearly 50 percent of youth in Ward 8 and 40 percent of youth in Ward 7 living below the federal poverty line. In 2011, Ward 8 had the highest unemployment rate in the nation.
These same wards are predominantly African-American and have the highest rates of children entering the child welfare system, of which 99 percent are youth of color (93 percent African-American and 6 percent Latino) according to research in Fostering Change, the latest report put out by the Justice Policy Institute. Fostering Change shows how family and neighborhood poverty are two of the strongest predictors of child maltreatment, and that the conditions poverty creates can ultimately lead to a child being removed from their home.
When considered in a broader socioeconomic context, poverty becomes more than the absence of income and or earning potential—that is, a lack of work opportunities, quality or not, to support oneself and her or his dependents. It is also dealing with the collateral effects of not being able to take care of basic needs such as buying food, medical care, school supplies and adequate clothing or paying for transportation, utilities and rent. These are just some of the conditions that can lead to children being maltreated. JPI’s report found that abused and neglected children are 59 percent more likely to be arrested, 28 percent more likely to be arrested as adults, and 30 percent more likely to commit a violent crime. In 2011, half of youth under the supervision of the District’s juvenile justice agency, Department of Youth and Rehabilitative Services (DYRS), were from Wards 7 and 8.
You see, in the end, these children grow up. For all people currently incarcerated in the United States 1 in 3 women and 1 in 10 men report a history of abuse as children. So, when we think about the needs of children in poverty, equal thought must be extended to that child’s family on whom she ultimately depends.
How many hardships would be mitigated and lives spared the trauma of family separation and or justice system involvement if they had access to quality jobs, mental health services and for the child, an uninterrupted education? Fostering Change cites parental incarceration, substance abuse and inadequate housing as some of the leading causes for youth involvement in the child welfare system. Nationally, 80 percent of children entering foster care are a result of at least one parent experiencing a substance abuse disorder. In 2010, 1 in 6 District youth entering foster care had an incarcerated parent. Think if substance abuse were treated like a public health issue rather than a criminal one? Or if instead of building exorbitantly priced condos, there were parallel investments made in maintaining and increasing the availability of affordable housing that kept pace with the need, as articulated by the city’s poverty levels?
These problems, however daunting, aren’t insolvable. Families are doing their best and brave varying levels of unrelenting uncertainty every day. That is courage and something we need a little more of in this city—not from those going through it, calling for it, and writing reports about it but the decision makers with the power to eliminate these conditions that flat-line the trajectory of countless African-American and Latino youth in D.C.’s at-risk communities.
The other half of what’s needed is a comprehensive plan that’s viable. Substance abuse, disproportionately high incarceration rates, poor health, and low educational attainment are symptomatic of deeper systematic social inequity and a historical lack of access. Fostering Changeis a report in a four-part public safety and juvenile justice series that offers a way forward for the District in the way city agencies, through strategic collaboration and community partnership, address the needs of its most vulnerable residents. Public safety starts with securing our city’s youth, and their families, who need it the most.
“People are just not reaching us where we are at. We want to be reached.”– Washington, D.C. focus group youth participant.
In the following audio podcast, radio journalist Netfa Freeman interviews Dr. Melissa Neal about her reportMindful of the Consequences: Improving the Mental Health for DC’s Youth Benefits the Districtas well as Dr. Joy DeGruy on her bookPost Traumatic Slave Syndrome. Netfa’s reports can be heard regularly on WPFW’s Voices With Vision, Tuesday mornings at 11:00 AM. [haiku url=”http://www.grassrootsmediaproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/JpiReportAndPtss_finalMixdown.mp3″ title=”Experts Report on Mental Health Issues Faced by DC’s Youth”]
By Melissa Neal, DrPHThe mental well-being of our youth is crucial to achieving progress and prosperity in our communities. In Washington, DC, youth face particular challenges as disparities in resources and risks vary drastically in just a matter of miles. I wrote JPI’s report, Mindful of the Consequences: Improving the Mental Health for DC’s Youth Benefits the District, to show that current prevention and treatment services do not match the level of need and many youth are at risk for contact with the justice system due to untreated mental problems. To illustrate this, I mapped where arrested youth are coming from: predominately areas of low income and high rates of risk factors that impact mental well-being.
The general attitude toward youth living in these areas (both with and without juvenile justice involvement) has been fear and blame. However, as I prepared to begin writing this report, I came across a few quotes gathered from a focus group with youth on the various challenges that come with growing up in D.C. These youth commented on what they needed…
“If they gave different programs to fit the criteria to why you were locked up, services that help you specifically, maybe even invest in psychologists.”
“Guidance and someone there they can look up to that is on the right path.
Support other than tutoring, someone they can talk to sometimes if they have a problem.”
I was struck by the fact that these kids know they are not getting the help they need. They are discerning of what their problems are and what they need to begin recovery. What lingered in my mind was “…maybe even invest in psychologists.” Sadness pervades their words: they can be helped but it seems to be too much trouble. These youth are not demanding what they need – they seem to hardly believe they deserve it. But, they do. They deserve an investment in psychologists. They deserve a system that understands the challenges they’ve faced. They deserve a community that cares and will provide the support they need to recover and thrive. Mental health problems are treatable. Whatever the challenges youth have faced that have resulted in poor mental health, they can still be helped into becoming citizens of pride and productivity.
Some D.C. leaders will criticize this report citing the millions of dollars being spent already on mental health – as if that should be enough. My challenge to D.C. leaders is to admit that what is being done is not enough. Too many children are suffering from poor mental health while not receiving the attention needed. Too many youth are being misunderstood when their cry for help looks like aggression. Far too many are being penalized and channeled into a lifetime of involvement with the justice system just because it was too expensive to…invest in psychologists.
Melissa Neal, DrPH, is Senior Research Associate for JPI.
Ms. Bennett’s eldest son is 48 years old. She has not touched him since he was 14 and 1/2 years old. He is incarcerated in Texas. Ms. Bennett’s son was instructed to plead guilty to a charge over thirty years ago by a public defender. He was only supposed to get two to five years. After he began to serve his term he was subjected to vicious abuse by correctional officers for years. His abuse led him to defend himself, which resulted in him being charged with murder. He has obtained a degree in prison and is an accomplished portrait artist and poet. He is currently looking for avenues to publish his poetry.
Ms. Bennett made an impassioned plea for her son. She said she had been waiting for a chance to speak out about her son, and asks for prayers for him. Many parents are dealing with the heartache of having a child incarcerated with no hope of finding help or a voice for them to speak out. Ms. Bennett’s story will be heard. Many families have been shattered by the incarceration of juveniles and the stigma attached to it. The most common thought is that “they weren’t raised right”. This family is an example of how wrong those preconceived notions are.
Grace Ebiasah is an organizer for Different Avenues, a DC nonprofit working to change, improve, and protect the health, rights, and safety of women and girls in the region. She spent an afternoon at the Boys and Girls Club of Washington, Number 14 on Benning Road in Northeast. While there, Grace took the opportunity to survey some of the program participants about the budget cuts to social services that the city and federal government have been making in response to the down economy. One of the questions explored was why the government continues to cut programs such as for mentoring and Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) that would help young people while continuing to increase funding for policing and youth rehabilitation. Results of that portion of her survey are in the following video.
In the video, one of the participants asks, “Why is the government putting more money into locking up youth? How does that help our economy?” I asked Different Avenues director Kelli Dorsey if indeed locking up youth helps or hurts our economy. Her response was that it depends where you fall in the economy. Progressive organizers like Dorsey claim that the commonly-held belief that imprisonment will fix problems brought on by a lack of positive opportunities in low-income communities of color encourages government to put more money into policing those communities than it does in providing for their needs. Companies like Victoria’s Secret, which uses cheap prison labor to produce their products in California, or Bob Barker Company, Inc., America’s leading detention supplier, make plenty of money via the prison industrial complex. Youth and others who are locked up in prison do not profit from these relationships.
While Different Avenues works to change a system that would use youth in communities of color as a potential source of profit rather than as citizens worthy of support, they are also aware that young people need direction to help them keep from getting caught up in the prison-industrial complex. To that end, Different Avenues organizer Jasmine Archer has created a guide for youth who are stopped by the police. HEY GRRL! What Time Is It? Time To Know Your Rights!!! is geared toward youth but is useful for anybody who gets stopped by the police. Different Avenues is currently looking for funding to publish and distribute this guidebook. In the meantime, feel free to download and distribute it at will.
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