Judge Steven Z. Perren

It makes no sense that in Ventura County, a county as dedicated to law and order as it is passionate about its kids, decisions about how best to handle individual juvenile offenders are often restricted by lousy facilities.

Antiquated, overcrowded, rundown, depressing, unsafe--the county’s four detention centers have been inadequate for years. The other services intended to help parents and schools put troubled kids back on the right track are scattered all over the county and similarly overwhelmed.

That’s why county officials have made such a powerful case for building a modern, integrated juvenile justice center that would bring together detention facilities, courtrooms, probation offices, classrooms and substance abuse, mental health and counseling programs. The long-envisioned project took a giant step 10 days ago when the state Board of Corrections agreed to contribute $40.5 million toward the estimated total cost of $64 million.

No one has been a more dedicated crusader for this project that Superior Court Judge Steven Z. Perren. Eight years ago he was presiding judge with the authority to decide which judge would handle which court. Counter to tradition, which regarded juvenile court as a not-particularly-plum assignment, he assigned himself to that task--partly because its schedule included “a little skosh of open time when I could do my administrative duties as presiding judge,” he says.

“What started as an assignment of convenience turned into an assignment of passion. Retrospectively, I happen to think the most important assignment is juvenile justice.”

Each week he is forced to send young Ventura County residents to facilities that seem designed to snuff out what’s left of their decency and optimism. With the juvenile justice center dream finally beginning to come true, he spoke last week with DOUG ADRIANSON, editor of The Times Ventura County Edition opinion pages.

* * *

Question: Are we doing all we can to turn kids away from a life of crime?

Answer: It depends on who you define as “we.” Our concept is an evolving one called systems of care, which seeks a global solution to the problems of being a young person. It’s the schools, it’s the parents, it’s the courts, it’s law enforcement, it’s counseling, it’s community intervention groups, it’s Boys & Girls Clubs, it’s Scouts, it’s anything I can grab onto that will enable the system to deal with a kid.

For example, we have two grant programs going on right now: Santa Paula Youth Alliance and South Oxnard Challenge. These seek to identify the kids before they even get into the system, to get them into some sort of activities to turn them away from the major threats to kids, which are gangs and drugs. These programs seem to be enjoying some success.

The “big three” of intervention are home, school and the juvenile justice system. But there are wide-ranging gang intervention programs that work in conjunction with police and with the courts in an effort to have all services complement one another. The rubric is prevention and intervention--that’s the best solution.

*

Q: Tell us about some recent situations in which you haven’t been able to take the action you felt would be most effective because we don’t have the facilities.

A: Last week I heard the case of a young woman whose problem, basically, is acting out in school and some fighting. The best solution would have been to send her to Colston Youth Center. But with 18 kids waiting to get into Colston at that time, I had to rely on in-home or in-community resources to address her problems.

I had two cases just this morning, both first-time entrants into the system, major offenses--one had three residential burglaries, multiple thousands of dollars of damage, a kid who has tremendous issues that I would like to keep in a facility for six months so we could really take a strong attack at the problem. The recommendation was 120 days; I gave him 150.

What we really need is the potential to deal with kids for up to a year with the kind of services that Colston offers.

*

Q: What would that accomplish?

A: First, we could extract them from the social environment that’s causing the difficulties--community or family, and often it’s a combination. We could stabilize the educational situation, which almost without exception is poor performance in school or not in school at all. And we could eliminate drugs and alcohol. We’re trying to create a stable environment in which the kid can at least start to heal.

But here the problem gets a little more subtle. If we make a too-pristine environment it’s rather like having a child grow up in a bacteria-free bubble. Ultimately you’re going to turn them back to the community and the antibodies aren’t there to deal with the danger of contamination. So you’ve got to be preparing this kid for reentry.

Second, you’ve got to do it in an environment that is safe. Right off the bat, we have to segregate genders. I think young women are constantly threatened, if not expressly then implicitly, when they’re in some sort of confinement with young men because boys have a very strong libidinous issue in mind and girls just don’t.

And you have age issues--younger kids versus older kids. And you have gang issues--you have to segregate the conflicts of gangs. You have educational issues. You have drug issues and therapeutic issues, where you have kids who are legitimately suffering from some diagnosable psychological problem. Well, you have to create an environment to address those specifics.

The easy answer is, “Why address them at all? Who cares? The kid did something wrong so, in the immortal words of ‘Hawaii Five-O,’ ‘Book ‘em, Danno!’ ” That is a very short-term, expensive solution.

The right solution is to solve the problem once and for all. Now, I’m not going to mislead anybody: We don’t do that. We’ll never do that. Crime has been with us so long . . . the first time a stone was taken to slay a brother, we had juvenile crime. I guess that was the second crime--the first one was the apple. So crime has been around a long time. The issue is, how do we identify those kids who are in the system, get them out of the system and save them--and we do do that.

Our modern stones, our modern apples, are gangs and alcohol and marijuana.

[Ventura County School Supt.] Chuck Weis gives us schools in all our programs. That’s essential. Next to family, schooling is the most important component we have, done by dedicated professionals who care.

*

Q: When I toured Youth Hall last year, a teacher there told me that because he can count on perfect attendance and few distractions, he often sees kids make great progress in school.

A: He’s right, and the tragedy is that these kids may not have darkened a school’s door in months or years. You can get on a roll of failures; you can also get on a roll of success. If you can get that going, maybe the kid will continue on that positive roll when he or she feels the brakes of the community being applied.

We’re not building a structure for structure’s sake. This is not an issue of bricks and mortar. You go to the present facilities, they’re lousy. They’re dark, they’re dank, they’re old, the size is inadequate, the playground area is an embarrassment. It’s reminiscent of the ‘60s line, “not healthy for children and other living things.”

If you want kids to feel that society is concerned and is making a legitimate effort, you don’t put them in a facility that’s over 50 years old, that looks like something out of a Raymond Chandler novel.

It’s not a question of bleeding-heart liberalism. It’s not a question of not seeing that punishment is appropriately meted out. It is a recognition that the kid is going to come back into society and that punishment alone is never sufficient.

We have to recognize that if you take a kid into an appropriate program, give them an education, give them counseling, deal with the issues that they have as well as enabling them to understand social issues, we may prevent that kid from offending.

Now, that’s the joy. There’s not going to be any more victimization by that kid. No property is going to be lost. No person is going to be hurt and we aren’t going to have to spend taxpayer dollars thrown down a rat hole of eternal confinement rather than seeing this kid prosper and make something of himself or herself. That, after all, is what we’re after.

*

Q: What are some of the trends that are making this challenge more difficult now?

A: One is the significant increase in the level of alcohol consumption among kids. Parents absolutely cannot tolerate kids’ drinking. It says to the kids, “It’s OK.” And the problem is not simple drinking. It’s kids who don’t know what they’re doing drinking to excess regularly and engaging in collective intoxicated behaviors that are damaging to themselves and others.

One thing we know about kids as very different from adults, and we know it painfully today, is that adults act alone. Kids tend to act together. Kids will do things together that they would never do alone. So if a parent can recognize in his or her child troubling behaviors, not only will that parent impact their own kid, they’re going to impact the group with which that kid hangs out.

Problem number two is the age. We’re finding much younger kids entering into the system with gang behaviors. Parents have an obligation to look at the way their kids dress. Look at the hairstyle. There’s nothing wrong with being young and rebelling against the earlier generation. That is a perfectly normal growing-up process and, in fact, should probably be encouraged. But that doesn’t mean it’s without end and with license. When that takes a decidedly wrong turn, then the parents have an obligation to intervene.

When parents come to the court, I say, “What can I do to help you?” What I’m really saying is, “Parents, I can’t do this without you.” I can’t!

*

Q: So what’s your best advice to parents who are reading the headlines about school shootings and bomb threats and agonizing over their own kids?

A: These things aren’t manufactured from thin air. What we know is, in virtually all of these cases the evidence was there if somebody wanted to look. If a parent walked into the child’s bedroom and looked.

Now if the parent says to the judge, “My child is entitled to his or her privacy and I’m going to respect that,” I say, “OK, good. Make the child earn that respect, and be attentive. Casually walk by your child to see if there’s alcohol on their breath. Is their room clean? Do you check out their room? Who are their friends? ‘I don’t know who my kid’s friends are’ is a terrible phrase. Meet the friends; bring them into the house, don’t force them out.”

One of the virtues that we have in juvenile justice that we do not have in adult justice is schools--you have the focus of the kid for a period of the day. And parents--adults may or may not have parents but they probably aren’t living with them. So you have two major distinctions. The court can complement this by incorporating its resources into education and into the family in ways that don’t exist in the adult world. So we have an advantage. And we have a duty to make that advantage work for us to the best possible effect.

*

Q: Where would you like to see the new Juvenile Justice Center located?

A: I would like it on a main artery so parents can get there by bus. Both of the currently leading sites, in El Rio and Saticoy, have that advantage. I would like it to be near the communities that will be the principal beneficiaries. I think more than 60% of those who are served by the juvenile facilities would be best served by one of those two locations.

I think there’s no downside to having this facility in your community. It’s been in Ventura for more than 50 years, in a residential neighborhood, and there has not been a problem.

I pray that there is--within this community that demands protection, service and the enforcement of laws fairly and justly--a commitment to be players and not watchers. Playing, in this case, may mean that the juvenile justice center will be in your community--and you’re not going to be worse off for it. It’s not going to be some sort of barbed-wire, James Cagney-ish, stark, dark Bastille that cries out, “Here is the unwanted trash of our society,” but rather a decent, attractive full-service facility for citizens to attend to the needs of children.

Not to get cloying about it, but “he ain’t heavy, he’s my brother”--that still works. And I like it. It means somebody has to give them help.

And if it’s a parent who says, “He ain’t heavy, he’s my child,” so much the better. And if it’s a community that says “They’re not heavy, they’re our children,” then we have really reached the point where this community can move forward.