The City to Shut Down Curfew Centers?
WHYY's It's Our City has a pretty interesting video on the fate of Philly's Curfew Centers:
Fate of Philadelphia curfew centers uncertain from whyyphila on Vimeo.
The video shows Donald Schwartz, the Deputy Mayor for Health and Opportunity, discussing the Curfew Centers at a Philly Stat meeting. Basically, the punchline is that while the curfew centers are supposed to take kids off the street as an anti-violence program, the time in which youth violence generally occurs is right after school, not after 10.30PM on weeknights, and midnight on the weekends... And, while the City has made 4,000 referrals of kids to social services, they have only confirmed that 41 have actually been connected to those services.
Of course, if 4,000 referrals for social services were made, that means that the curfew centers are finding at-risk kids, correct? So, maybe the issue should be why so few kids (that we know of) actually got connected to the services they need.
Social service referrals
I just wanted to point out that it's not clear exactly how many of those kids and families did take advantage of the social services. Apparently in about 400 cases, curfew centers staffers got a family member on the phone, explained that DHS or behavioral health services might be useful, and the person on the other end of the phone said, "sounds good, we'll take it from here."
That 41 figure is the number where the curfew centers have been involved from start to finish and have therefore been able to verify that someone is actually taking advantage of the services. It's not clear how many of the other 400 families actually followed through. I was going to include this in the story, but it seemed a bit complex for a 3 minute report.
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www.whyy.org/city
Hey Mac Users
Does the video above work for you?
YouTube
We also posted the video to YouTube, but the audio came out funny. If the vimeo video doesn't play, you can check it out on YouTube here: http://youtube.com/watch?v=V1pF73db5tk
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www.whyy.org/city
Yes
It works fine with my Mac, using OS X 10.4.11.
Yes
On the video working but I can't listen to the audio currently.
-Sean
MrLuigi, my cat, actually only types half as badly as I do.
On the topic
On the one hand, its obvious that kids out that late who get picked up by police are probably pretty likely to be getting into trouble. On the other hand it does not surprise me an iota that most kids involved in incidents are immediately after school. It strikes me as not an "either or" but and an "and also". Of course with limited resouces that may mean less after hours curfew centers and more after school programs to serve the most kids, the best.
The truth of the matter is that the reason politicians will by default favor late night enforcement is because when dealing with a policy of going after kids which is de facto pointing fingers at other people's parenting skils - its politically "easiest" to throw the book at the folks letting their kids hang on the corner at 1:00 AM as opposed to the "good" working parents who are too busy working say between 3:00 and 8:00 pm to keep tabs on older kids. This whole issue runs real close to those "personal responsibility" issues social conservatives love to rail about. Politically its most expedient to go after the kids (and by extension parents)who are clearly breaking the law, even if in reality more kids' lives might be better impacted mixing that with more afterschool programs. And then there of course some conservatives who will fail to distinguish between lower costs in law enforcement and social costs for targeted after-school programs and the - to them - reprehensible whiff of city-supported day care for the older kids of the working poor.
In a lot of ways the dollars and cents part of this is not here in sufficient detail but likely will be the least controversial part of this decision.
-Sean
MrLuigi, my cat, actually only types half as badly as I do.
Question
So off topic- this issue was brought up at a Phillystat meeting according to the video. How long has Phillystat been meeting and who all is in the crowd? It seems without 311 records of calls from citizens and no representatives from council to be pretty staid in the film clip. It does seem at $13K per kid, 11 separate centers that often don't see a single kid in a night, that the money could be more effective someplace else.
I want to be there when City Council comes to discuss number of calls to L&I for clean and seals on abandonned houses versus responses as mapped by councilmatic district. i imagine that might be more exciting.
-Sean
MrLuigi, my cat, actually only types half as badly as I do.