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The improvement of the Juvenile Justice System will lead to the bettering of how we discipline delinquents. In the understanding that juveniles admitted into the system are at fault of their own choice, they do need to be treated like people. Although the system is not anything like Guantanamo Bay, there are still juveniles being treated with no quality of their own life. This is due to the state not observing facilities or giving large enough funding.

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After failed attempt, legislature looks to address GenX pollution

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After failed attempt, legislature looks to address GenX pollution

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After a previous attempt by state lawmakers to address the GenX pollution scandal ended in an abrupt dismissal by the North Carolina Senate, legislators are set to try once again this evening.

A Senate environmental committee will meet at 5 p.m. Wednesday and will take up a new Senate Republican version of a bill that Senate leadership shot down last month.

Both versions aim to give the Department of Environment Quality access to equipment it says it needs to check water supplies for pollution.

As of 11 a.m. Wednesday the bill was not listed on the committee's agenda, and the new version of the bill was not yet available to the general public via the General Assembly's website, but a copy was shared with the News & Observer.

In the budget passed last summer, DEQ's budget was set to be $78 million this year, and then cut to $77 million next year. This new version of the bill would add at least $2 million to its budget for this year only, bringing the total up to $80 million before dropping back down to $77 million next year.

The version of the bill that unanimously passed the House earlier this year also gave some funding to DEQ. The House bill directed DEQ to work with the Secretaries' Science Advisory Board to review health goals; that board was created earlier this year by Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper.

The new version of the bill removes all references to that board and instead directs DEQ to work with the North Carolina Policy Collaboratory at UNC-Chapel Hill, a new science group with a former science advisor to Berger in a top job. The choice of that advisor, Jeff Warren, as research director for the center spurred complaints by university professors who feared politics might outweigh research.

The version of the bill that passed the House had extra money to buy the equipment DEQ says it needs - known as a mass spectrometer - and hire scientists to operate it, but Berger objected to that, saying DEQ should try to borrow one instead. Berger said there's equipment available that the agency can access for free.

This new version of the bill that might come up in the Senate on Wednesday doesn't call for DEQ to buy a mass spectrometer, but it does dedicate $1 million a year for the next two years from the UNC collaboratory's budget to work on the GenX problem.

The new version of the bill tells DEQ to work with the federal Environmental Protection Agency to use a mass spectrometer the EPA owns; if that fails, it gives the collaboratory the authority to coordinate the use of tools and faculty throughout the UNC System to achieve DEQ's goals.

Senate Republicans said in a news release that their bill would make available more than 100 mass spectrometers.

"Water quality is not a political issue - it is a public health issue, and a deeply personal issue to me," Sen. Michael Lee of Wilmington said in the release. "The health of my constituents in Southeast North Carolina, neighbors and family depend on what we do, and I am pleased this bill will leverage the expertise of our university system's world-renowned scientists and utilize state-of-the-art equipment that already belongs to our taxpayers to research ways to improve and protect our drinking water."
Correction: A previous version of this story said the Senate bill would provide money to the NC Policy Collaboratory. The bill would dedicate existing money from the collaboratory's budget to the GenX problem.

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After failed attempt, legislature looks to address GenX pollution

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After a previous attempt by state lawmakers to address the GenX pollution scandal ended in an abrupt dismissal by the North Carolina Senate, legislators are set to try once again this evening. A Senate environmental committee will meet at 5 p.m.

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Robots Help Reduce Port Pollution — But They Also Steal Jobs

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Robots Help Reduce Port Pollution — But They Also Steal Jobs

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A foul-mouthed longshoreman named Frank Gaskin pointed his phone at a chain link fence at the Port of Long Beach last summer and made a video of the robots that had taken his and his buddies' jobs.

In the video, flatbed carts glide by carrying cargo containers around the dock. They're self-driving, guided by computers and magnets beneath the pavement. As one passes soundlessly near the fence, Gaskin yells, "f- you automation mother f--!"

At 21 of the 22 docks at the Port of Long Beach, most of the work of loading and unloading cargo from containers ships is still done by people, not by robots.

The Long Beach Container Terminal, which opened in April 2016, is an exception. It requires two-thirds fewer workers than traditional terminals. And that frightens the International Longshore and Warehouse Union, which controls all the jobs at the docks.
Note: This video contains profanity.
But viewed from another perspective, automation is part of the solution to one of Southern California's most vexing environmental problems: the worst air pollution in the country.

Diesel trucks and equipment are the largest contributors to that air pollution, and the ports are the largest single source of those emissions.

But the automated carts at the Long Beach Container Terminal run on electricity, which can be generated by natural gas or renewable energy. Look closely as the cart nears Gaskin's camera, and you can see the words, written in bright white letters on a green background, "zero emissions."

Gaskin captioned his video: "Automation in Long Beach Container Terminal will hurt everyone."

But what if automating is also a way to help everyone by cleaning the air and fighting climate change?

Where People Run the Port

To understand how radically different the Long Beach Container Terminal is, you first have to visit a traditional terminal, where people control each piece of equipment.

Gary Herrera, the vice president of the ILWU Local 13, took me on a tour of the Everport Terminal at the Port of Los Angeles. He pointed out workers unloading containers, driving forklifts and operating cranes.

"Everyone you see, those are longshoremen," Herrera said proudly.

There are just over 14,000 unionized longshoremen on the West Coast, but that number is half of what it was in 1960. That's even though the ports move more than 14 times as much cargo.

The ILWU's founder, Harry Bridges, started preparing for automation in the 1950s. At that time, "automation" came in the form of containers that replaced individual bales, bundles and boxes of goods to be shipped. The containers carried more cargo and required fewer hands. Bridges signed an agreement with the terminal operators allowing that, but he did so only after ensuring his members got higher pay and pension guarantees.

And any new equipment they used would have to be operated by union workers.

"Even if it comes down to one person pushing one button to run a whole port," Bridges reportedly said, "that person will be union."

That agreement largely remains in place, and ILWU members are among the best compensated blue-collar workers in the U.S. They receive an average salary of $155,000 a year, pay almost nothing for their health insurance, and get up to six weeks of paid vacation.

The longshoremen owe their leverage to the fact that, unlike factories and auto plants, ports cannot be outsourced.

Where Machines Run the Port

Ports can also be run by machines and computers, and, increasingly, robots.

My tour with Herrera continued as we headed across a towering bridge toward the Port of Long Beach and the Long Beach Container Terminal. Herrera's mood changed as he looked across the water and saw remotely operated cranes and self-driving trucks.

"It makes me sick to my stomach," he said, tightening his hands on the steering wheel. "I look at this place, and I do not like what it stands for. These machines get rid of men."

I'd tried for weeks, unsuccessfully, to get into the Long Beach Container Terminal on my own. I even got so far as to get their president, Anthony Otto, on the phone. He agreed to show me around, but said I couldn't record any audio, take any pictures, or quote him.

Then, the morning of the tour, he canceled. "It's a sensitive time for us," he said, referring me to his PR firm for further explanation.

The firm didn't return my call.

Officials with the ILWU can enter the terminal at any time and bring guests. Herrera had invited me to come along.

He drove us into the terminal, and we stopped in front of LBCT's 48 stacking cranes. They load containers onto semi-trucks that haul them out of the port to distribution warehouses. In a traditional terminal, workers operate them from booths on top, but in the LBCT, four people can control all 48 cranes at once.

"The same guy who used to drive the crane out in the yard eight hours a day is now doing it from a remote console, sipping coffee and listening to light music in air conditioning," Otto said in a YouTube video touting the benefits of automation.

The ILWU estimates that two-thirds of the longshore jobs at LBCT have disappeared due to automation. Neither Otto nor anyone else from LBCT would confirm the number of jobs lost, nor comment on the record for this story.

But they say automation creates opportunities for new kinds of jobs, like mechanics to maintain the self-driving vehicles. And, they say, their robots are cleaner than the diesel fueled, human-controlled machines they're replacing.

The Long Beach Container Terminal emits 85 percent less diesel soot, 58 percent less nitrogen oxide (a component of smog), and 33 percent less carbon dioxide than a traditional dock at the ports.

Those kinds of reductions give Adrian Martinez, an environmental lawyer with Earthjustice, a very different take on the automated equipment at LBCT than guys like Gary Herrera.

"It's exciting to see zero emissions equipment actually on the terminal," Martinez said. "Because from a basic level, we're not going to solve the air pollution crisis in the Los Angeles area until we eliminate port and freight pollution."

So, More Robots?

In November 2017, the Port of Long Beach and the neighboring Port of Los Angeles pledged to dramatically slash their emissions by phasing out internal combustion engines. Their goal is to replace all diesel trucks and cargo-handling equipment with zero-emissions equivalents by 2035. Usually that means electric vehicles.

The big question is whether the ports' new mandate will lead to more automation.

Currently, electric cargo-handling equipment is more than twice as expensive as its diesel equivalent. That could lead terminal operators to choose to automate to save on labor costs, said Thomas Jelenic, who represents terminal operators as the vice president of the Pacific Merchant Shipping Association.

"People generally won't seek out automation in and of itself unless they can justify it in some way," he said. "But if they're forced to electrify, the costs of electrification then dictate the need to automate."

But Mark Sisson, a port planner with the consulting firm AECOM, thinks concerns about price are overblown.

He believes the price of electric cargo-handling equipment will drop now that there's a mandate for the largest ports in the Western Hemisphere to buy it. And right now, at least three other marine terminals are testing human-controlled electric cargo equipment.

Rage Against the Machine

Of all the automated equipment inside the Long Beach Container Terminal, it's the 72 self-driving vehicles that elicit the strongest reaction.

They're the ones Frank Gaskin swore at in his video, and they're the ones Gary Herrera glared as he stepped out of the SUV on the last stop on our tour.

"They got rid of jobs, there's no more drivers," he said, looking across the fence at the little green carts. "And so this is why we're skeptical at all when they wanna say zero emissions."

Because of all the uncertainty, the ILWU isn't taking any chances.

In September 2017, Gov. Jerry Brown signed a budget bill allocating $900 million from the sale of carbon permits under California's cap and trade program.

Up to $140 million will be sent to the ports for clean freight and ships, but the ILWU lobbied hard to ensure that none of it could be used for automated equipment.

If the terminals want to automate, they have to do it on their own.

Robots Help Reduce Port Pollution - But They Also Steal Jobs

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Robots Help Reduce Port Pollution - But They Also Steal Jobs

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A foul-mouthed longshoreman named Frank Gaskin pointed his phone at a chain link fence at the Port of Long Beach last summer and made a video of the robots that had taken his and his buddies' jobs. In the video, flatbed carts glide by carrying cargo containers around the dock.

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Noise Pollution May Impact Heart Health, According to New Research

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Noise Pollution May Impact Heart Health, According to New Research

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Noise Pollution May Impact Heart Health, According to New Research

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Researchers from Denmark and Germany looked at data from previous studies and found that noise may be a risk factor for heart disease.

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Air pollution may lead to unethical behaviour: Study 

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Air pollution may lead to unethical behaviour: Study 

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NEW YORK: Exposure to air pollution, even imaginative, may lead to unethical behaviour such as crime and cheating, according to a study conducted on adults in India and the US.

The findings published in the journal Psychological Science suggest that this association may be due, at least in part, to increased anxiety.

"This research reveals that air pollution may have potential ethical costs that go beyond its well-known toll on health and the environment," said Jackson G Lu, behavioural scientist at Columbia Business School in the US.

"Our findings suggest that air pollution not only corrupts people's health, but also can contaminate their morality," said Lu.

Previous studies have indicated that exposure to air pollution elevates individuals' feelings of anxiety, which is known to correlate with a range of unethical behaviours.

In one study, the researchers examined air pollution and crime data for 9,360 US cities collected over a nine-year period.

The researchers found that cities with higher levels of air pollution also tended to have higher levels of crime.

In one of the experiments conducted with university students in the US, the researchers measured how often participants cheated in reporting the outcome of a die roll.

In the other experiment with adults in India, they measured participants' willingness to use unethical negotiation strategies.

Participants who wrote about living in a polluted location engaged in more unethical behaviour than did those who wrote about living in a clean location; they also expressed more anxiety in their writing, researchers said.

Since they could not randomly assign participants to physically experience different levels of air pollution, the researchers manipulated whether participants imagined experiencing air pollution.

In one experiment, 256 participants saw a photo featuring either a polluted scene or a clean scene. They imagined living in that location and reflected on how they would feel as they walked around and breathed the air.

On a supposedly unrelated task, they saw a set of cue words (eg sore, shoulder, sweat) and had to identify another word that was linked with each of the cue words (eg cold); each correct answer earned them $0.50.

Due to a supposed computer glitch, the correct answer popped up if the participants hovered their mouse over the answer box, which the researchers asked them not to do.

Unbeknownst to the participants, the researchers recorded how many times the participants peeked at the answer.

The results showed that participants who thought about living in a polluted area cheated more often than did those who thought about living in a clean area.

As the researchers hypothesised, anxiety level mediated the link between imagining exposure to air pollution and unethical behaviour.

Together, the archival and experimental findings suggest that exposure to air pollution, whether physical or mental, is linked with transgressive behaviour through increased levels of anxiety, researchers said.

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Air pollution may lead to unethical behaviour: Study

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Exposure to air pollution, even imaginative, may lead to unethical behaviour such as crime and cheating, according to a study conducted on adults in India and the US. The findings published in the journal suggest that this association may be due, at least in part, to increased anxiety.

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Radical solutions to the air pollution crisis from around the world

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Radical solutions to the air pollution crisis from around the world

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Air pollution is a serious global concern, linked by the World Health Organisation (WHO) to over 5.5 million deaths every year. It has been described as a greater threat to the world population than malaria and HIV combined.

As policymakers and scientists scramble for ways to battle the deadly smogs and clouds of particulates that have descended on their cities, some have suggested radical solutions.

In the UK, levels of toxic nitrogen dioxide have been branded illegal and "life-threatening" by the EU, and the Government's clean air strategy has been described by critics as "toothless and woefully inadequate ".

London is the epicentre of Britain's pollution crisis, and as it passes the 10th anniversary of its low emission zone scheme - designed to restrict high-polluting vehicles - it still remains one of the worst-polluted cities in the country.

Nearly 10,000 Londoners die prematurely each year due to the effects of air pollution, and in 2014 Oxford Street was described as having levels of nitrogen dioxide that were " easily the highest in Europe ".

"Impacts on cardiovascular and respiratory diseases are well known," says Professor Kian Fan Chung, a respiratory-medicine specialist at Imperial College London.

"But new information now indicates effects on the brain, low birth-weight babies, increased cancer risk etc. At certain levels of pollution, even normal people start to experience symptoms such as coughing and tight breathing, with increasing risk of chest infections."

Successive mayors have promised action on air pollution, and yet despite this, efforts to bring levels down in the city have, until recently, been rather modest.

"Until the last 12 months, polices introduced to London have had little benefit," says Professor Frank Kelly, who leads the Centre for Environment and Health at King's College London.

"Recently however, the introduction of a substantial number of electric single-decker buses and hybrid double-decker buses on specific routes has shown that improvements in air quality on those routes can be made."

Changes implemented by the current Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, have been welcomed by campaigners for making a slight dent in the city's air pollution. However, the emphasis is on "slight". Brixton Road in Lambeth still managed to hit its annual air pollution target at the end of January, with 335 days left to go.

In response to this Oliver Hayes, campaigner for clean air at Friends of the Earth, said "the frequency and severity of these pollution spikes shows we've still got a long way to go in cleaning up our air".

However, while London's air pollution is serious, it pales in comparison to that found in some of world's "mega-cities".

"It is in the intermediate range - the most polluted areas are in China and India and also in some other parts of the world," says Chung.

"We are still exceeding the limit of various pollutants set up by the EU, but the levels we get up to are nothing compared to the levels that are often seen on a daily basis in cities such as New Delhi or Beijing."

In other parts of the world, cities dealing with serious levels of air pollution are beginning to implement innovative measures to tackle the situation. London, and other highly polluted cities in the UK such as Glasgow and Leeds, may need to pay attention.

China has been ranked the world's deadliest country for outdoor air pollution, with one study calculating 1.6 million people die as a result of exposure to dirty air there every year.

The response to the crisis has been dramatic. The Chinese government has vowed to "make our skies blue again" by massively cutting down the country's steel and coal capacity, and investing in renewable energy instead.

More controversially, the government has announced that the populations of both Beijing and Shanghai will be restricted in an effort to battle what it calls "big-city disease".

By 2020, the size of the Beijing population will be kept at 23 million, while Shanghai's population will be limited to 25 million by 2035.

Though ambitious as an approach to tackling pollution, critics have noted the profound social consequences that could result from such a dramatic intervention.

Dr Liang Zhongtang, a research fellow at the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences, told state media upon the Shanghai policy's announcement that such targets are "unpractical and against the social-development trend".

He noted that migrant workers and low-income groups will be the most likely to suffer, as the government will likely meet its targets by demolishing the wholesale markets and cheap housing where they tend to work and live

A less controversial, but perhaps more ambitious, citywide intervention has been suggested by architect Stefano Boeri. His plan for polluted Chinese cities is to fill them with tower blocks covered from top to bottom in greenery.

Besides the aesthetic appeal, the plant-covered buildings would absorb carbon dioxide and fine particulates in the atmosphere, making the air far safer to breathe - or so Boeri says.

The architect has already constructed small-scale " vertical forests " in his native Italy, and he has big plans for tackling pollution in China. Beginning with prototype skyscrapers in the city of Nanjing, he has expressed a desire to create entire "forest cities" for people to live in.

A less ambitious suggestion is simply to plant more trees, in the hope that they can absorb unpleasant chemicals from the atmosphere and perhaps shield pedestrians from the aerial onslaught.

However, guidelines released last year by the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (Nice) poured cold water on this idea by stating that "leaves and branches slow air currents, causing pollutants to settle out".

It added that the trees might act as "sinks" with the potential to harbour and store particles, and this could have direct or indirect effects on air quality.

If greenery is not the solution, maybe technology can save cities from air pollution?

In 2016, the scientific press flew into excitement over a proposal put forward by Massachusetts Institute of Technology scientist Moshe Alamaro.

The aeronautical engineer wanted to use a jet engine to blast Delhi's air pollution into the upper atmosphere. By placing the engine next to a coal-fired power plant, Alamaro suggested, it would be possible to create a "virtual chimney" that could displace pollutants into the upper atmosphere where their toxic effects would not be felt by the population.

However, as with so many bright ideas, Alamaro's never became any more than that: an idea.

"It has never been tested," he says. "We don't know how successful it would be except for some calculations."

More recently, in the Chinese city of Xi'an, an enormous air-purifying tower has been constructed. The team behind it have said their creation will clean pollutants from the air on a city-wide scale. Whether or not their claims are accurate remains to be seen.

"As there isn't any hard data publicly available to support the claim, for now a dose of scepticism is likely in order," writes Professor Alastair Lewis, an atmospheric chemist at the University of York.

Other technological solutions to air pollution include bus stops equipped with filters that remove harmful toxins from the air, and even in-car filter systems. The problem with these methods is that they are something of a sticking plaster - they do not address the root of the problem.

Of course, strategies do not need to be radical to make a difference.

One of the most obvious tactics for fixing air pollution is banning cars, or at least heavily restricting them.

"The ultimate solution to London's problem is less traffic, and for that reduced traffic to be zero-emission. So certain areas of the city should be pedestrianised and public transport improved further," says Dr Kelly.

Professor Chung agrees, citing stringent rules on car emissions and restrictions on central-London traffic as the best ways to deal with the city's pollution.

Banning cars is not necessarily a fix-all solution. Mexico City has a serious problem with air pollution, though one that has improved markedly since the 1980s. "We saw birds that suddenly fell down. They fell out of the sky and they were dead," pollution researcher Gabriela Alarcón , recalling the bad old days.

In an effort to address the problem, the city introduced driving restrictions on Saturday, but they have since been dismissed by scientists as having an impact "close to zero".

This has not stopped cities from Sao Paulo to Oslo implementing car bans in one form or another, and in many places they have been hugely successful.

Barcelona has received acclaim for the rapid implementation of its "superblocks" scheme. Spearheaded by the mayor Ada Colau, the scheme involves changing traffic flow by simply introducing signage that directs cars straight back out of the city once they have driven in.

What is notable about the scheme is its simplicity. It requires minimal changes to the city's infrastructure, and could play a key role in helping the city meet its air pollution targets.

The air pollution crisis in UK cities will not be solved overnight, but it does need to be solved. The Government is currently being threatened with court action by the EU, while closer to home it has recently been taken to court for the third time over its strategy by environmental lawyers ClientEarth.

"It's not an easy problem to solve. It will take time," says Chung.

"All the potential solutions are available or will be soon, but there is a balance of what can be done and what should be done, determined by political, social and financial considerations."

Campaigners and scientists emphasise the importance of cutting pollutants off at the source, rather than investing in schemes that remove the pollutants already there. That means cutting down on fossil fuels, investing in electrical power and keeping high-polluting vehicles away from cities.

While it is tempting to look at exciting new solutions to the air pollution crisis, the best solutions may also be the simplest.

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Radical solutions to the air pollution crisis from around the world

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Air pollution is a serious global concern, linked by the World Health Organisation (WHO) to over 5.5 million deaths every year. It has been described as a greater threat to the world population than malaria and HIV combined.

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Ohio's Successful Youth Incarceration Alternative Program

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Ohio's Successful Youth Incarceration Alternative Program

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The 'status quo' can be a barrier to progress. Moving out of the comfort zone can promote innovation and generate outcomes. This is especially true when it comes to juvenile justice.

Ohio recognized this when it came to reforming its juvenile-justice system. In 1993, it created RECLAIM Ohio (Reasoned and Equitable Community and Local Alternatives to the Incarceration of Minors) in an attempt to get courts to use community-based programs "to meet the needs of each juvenile offender or youth at risk of offending." By providing funding incentives, in the first pilot year alone, it had a 42.7% drop in commitments.

Despite its successes, the state didn't stop there. It added two important initiatives to the RECLAIM model to divert youth at the local level-the Behavioral Health/Juvenile Justice (BHJJ) and Targeted Reclaim (TR) projects. Under these funding opportunities, a number of Ohio communities selected Multisystemic Therapy (MST) as one of their evidence based interventions.

The BHJJ project is a collaboration between Ohio Department of Youth Services (ODYS) and the Ohio Department of Mental Health and Addiction Services (OMHAS). To receive funding, local courts and mental-health/substance abuse authorities had to propose a process that would identify, refer and serve youths through evidence-based and promising practice home- and community-based services. A detailed and ongoing evaluation of this project is conducted by the Begun Center for Violence Prevention Research and Education at Case Western Reserve University. The clinical and fiscal results are notable including:

A reported decrease in substance use, including alcohol and marijuana

A 50-percent reduction in the risk for out-of-home placement after a youth left the program.

Sixty-five percent of those who went through the BHJJ program were identified as successful treatment "completers"

The TR project identified the Ohio counties referring the highest numbers of youth to DYS. The six largest were offered additional funding in exchange for a designated percent of reduced commitments by the local juvenile court. TR required that the courts only choose evidence-based/promising practices as part of the diversion efforts. These six counties brought their percentage of DYS overall admissions from 63 percent to 50 percent. The TR program is now in 15 counties, and its grant funding jumped from $2.8 million to $6.3 million. Furthermore, the University of Cincinnati found that young people who went through TR were 2.4 times less likely to be subsequently locked up than those who put into a state facility.

In addition to these initiatives, Ohio participated in the MacArthur Foundation's National Campaign for Reform, which focused on improving the juvenile-justice system to lessen youth incarceration. With advocates, lobbyists, researchers, content experts and local foundations collaborating, significant changes to Ohio's juvenile-justice laws were made.

Key was the condition that when a state DYS facility is closed because of fewer referrals, a percentage of savings would be redirected to community-based services. To fulfill that aspect of the law, ODYS recently requested $2.2 million to be for non-residential community-based evidence based/promising practices designed to keep youth with their families and in their communities. The full story of Ohio's reform journey can be found in a case study by the Schubert Center for Child Studies at Case Western Reserve University.

Collectively these and other efforts challenged the status quo. The results: a reduction in the rate of youth incarceration and an increase in the use of home and community evidence-based and promising practices. Reinvesting the significant fiscal savings provide more hope and better outcomes for Ohio's youth and their families.
Patrick Kanary is the Director of the Center for Innovative Practices, Begun Center for Violence Prevention, Case Western Reserve University.
To learn more about the long term cost savings of MST download this whitepaper.

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Ohio's Successful Youth Incarceration Alternative Program

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The 'status quo' can be a barrier to progress. Moving out of the comfort zone can promote innovation and generate outcomes. This is especially true when it comes to juvenile justice. Ohio recognized this when it came to reforming its juvenile-justice system.

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Until recently she served on the Superior Court of Santa Clara County, where she heard both juvenile and adult cases. A state court trial judge since 1982, she presided over

Manny's fitness case.

A number of recent surveys have shown that there are profound racial disparities in the juvenile justice system, that African-American and Hispanic youth are more likely to be tried as adults. They are more likely to receive longer sentences, they're more likely to be in locked facilities, and on and on and on, even when charged with the same offense as whites. Do you think that that's true?

. . . . I believe, absolutely, that what you have described exists in the system. The statistics prove it--they're there. What is hard is that if you go up to your average juvenile court judge, and that judge is the one who sends these kids off--we're the ones ultimately responsible for these statistics--that judge will look you dead in the eye and say, "I'm not unfair, I'm not racist, I'm not prejudiced. I do the best I can." And that judge is telling you the truth. . . .

But what is at play here in most cases? I'm not saying there aren't those judges who are so prejudiced and so racist; there are those. But I think, in the main, most are not. But I think what happens is that stereotypes are so embedded in the psyche of human beings, that those stereotypes come to play. So that when a young black kid comes into court before a white male judge, who perhaps doesn't have any experience dealing with young black males, and this black male has on baggy pants, has an attitude, may have a tattoo, immediately a picture, a mindset comes up in that judge's head. We make assumptions; that's what stereotypes are. Assumptions get made. . . . I think, in the main, that's what happens, and I think that's what accounts for those statistics. . . .

Now, how do we solve it? How do we remedy it? One way is to increase the number of judges on the bench who are judges who look like the people who come before them. So, if I have judges who are African-American, who are Latino or Latina, who are from the Asian-American communities, they are less likely to engage in that kind of stereotyping when some young kid who is of the same background or same ethnic background comes before that judge. . . . The other is, there are judges who are white, black, whatever, who have those biases. The idea is to address those biases, to get them to address it, which means judicial training. . . . where we say, "We've got to talk about this, we've got to put it on the table and talk about stereotypes and your biases, so that when you go back to work, we change the system that we have." The numbers are astounding, shocking, and they are indeed a reflection of what's going on in the system. . . . Until recently he was the presiding judge of the Juvenile Court of Santa Clara County, a division of the California Superior Court and presided over

Shawn's case. He heard between 300 and 350 cases a month.

Many of the kids we've interviewed believe that white middle-class kids get a break--that they are more likely to be kept at home, they are less likely to get the stiff sentences, they are more likely to be given opportunities to continue their education. Do you think that's true?

Well, all the studies and the statistics say it is true. I know we talk about that a lot in our judges' educational workshops and conferences. I have yet to hear anybody who has a definitive answer, and I sure as heck don't. I don't know of anybody who has a solution to it, other than to simply raise the consciousness of the judges the best we are capable of doing and to try to apply the resources that we have at our disposal . . . in a fair and equal way. . . .
Some people might argue that if you have the social advantages of being white and middle class, then you deserve even less of a break. So why . . . does the system seems to be so inclined to tolerate these disparities?
It all depends on what perspective you're giving it. Probably most judges who would disagree with that statement, who would want to be defensive about it and argue with you, would say pretty much something like this: they would say that kids who come from inner cities, kids who come from economically deprived areas, are more likely to come from an ethnic group, a minority group, in our culture. They also come from areas that don't have strong neighborhood resources. Their parents do not have enough money to provide the type of supervision through a public school or a mentoring or after-school activities that a kid from an affluent white neighborhood would. So why should the system then put the white affluent kids in custody, when the parents can do as good or a better job, spending their own money doing it?

The kids who don't have those resources, if we just turn them loose to let them go home, they'll be back on the streets running with the gangs again, getting into more trouble, and perhaps even hurting themselves the next time around. So why don't we do what we can for them in the system? And that means detaining them. A white kid goes home to an affluent neighborhood. But what the story doesn't tell you is that that a set of parents is putting out big bucks in order to do what we do through the taxpayers dollars in the system. So there's your statistic.

So you hear all these different arguments, but you still can't lie about the figures. We have to deal with them. There is a disproportionate minority population in our custody facilities, and there shouldn't be. My solution is to front-end the whole thing and to make our communities healthier and stronger, which means that you work with the people who live in those communities, such as in our restorative justice programs that are starting to really take hold around the country. Starting to work with community based organizations and the faith community. . . . Former supervisor of the juvenile division of the Santa Clara County Public Defender's Office, she represented The supervising deputy district attorney for the Juvenile Division of the Santa Clara County's District Attorney's office, he's practiced exclusively in juvenile court for the past six years. He was the prosecutor for

Shawn at his disposition.

The system is not fair. Institutional racism is alive and well in the juvenile justice system, as it is in the criminal justice system. It's easier to identify with people that are more like yourself, so if you have judges that are predominantly from that same community, they can identify. . . . The same thing happens with people who have money versus people who don't have money--if they can demonstrate a support system that can act as a safety net or think they can act as a safety net for them on the outside, judges are more prone to buy into that.

Manny's fitness hearing.

You can't go into any courtroom in this state and take a look at the kids that are in custody and the kids that are out of custody and deny that there is racial disparity in the juvenile justice system.

...I think there are a number of reasons why there are racial disparities in the system. The law is skewed with respect to the social factors that are considered, in terms of making a determination of who gets locked up and who doesn't. And since it is skewed in such a way as to essentially favor more affluent kids or to punish kids that are less affluent, that has racial and ethnic consequences.

A perfect example is if a kid comes from a wealthy family where mom doesn't have to work, and another kid comes from a single-parent family. Those two kids come to court in a detention hearing. And the affluent mom says, "Your Honor, I can stay at home. I can watch my child, we can provide for all of these services. He will never be outside of adult supervision, we will have him go to a private counselor, we will do this, we will do that, because we can afford it." And the judge says, "Sounds good to me. I will take advantage of these resources. It won't be a drain on the system. You're out of custody." You take another kid who does not come from that privileged background, who may be from a single-parent family who can't afford time off, who doesn't have extended family to watch over him. And it doesn't mean that there is no less love in that family. It's just that the circumstances can't provide for this privatization of vigilance that can be provided in a more affluent family. I think it's there.

Is it a good thing or a bad thing that this happens?

. . . I don't think that it is necessarily a bad thing for that white kid, but the problem is that it's a bad thing for that kid of color who doesn't have that access. And it's a bad thing for the system as a whole, because it creates the racial disparity. There's more to [the racial disparity] than that. We talked earlier about trying not to react with your gut . . . and I had mentioned that I try as best I can not to be subjective in my criteria. ... Subjectivity in prosecution, defense, and the courts, and frankly even out on the street with law enforcement, is another reason that there is racial inequity in our system.

The Color of Justice
This study, released by the Justice Institute in February, 2000, found that in California, African American, Latino and Asian American youth are significantly more likely to be transferred to adult court and sentenced to incarceration than white youths who commit comparable crimes. Compared to white youths, minority youths are 2.8 times more likely to be arrested for a violent crime, 6.2 times more likely to wind up in adult court, and 7 times more likely to be sent to prison by adult court.
Youth Crime/Adult Time: Is Justice Served?
This study released on October 26, 2000 by Building Blocks for Youth, found that minority youth, particularly African American youth, were over-represented and received disparate treatment at several points in the process. In the 18 jurisdictions in the study, 82% of the cases that were filed in adult courts involved a minority.

And Justice for Some
This 2000 study was prepared by The National Council on Crime and Delinquency for the Building Blocks for Youth Initiative. It concludes that "African American juveniles are overrepresented with respect to their proportion in the population at every decision point" in the juvenile justice process.

manny · shawn · marquese · jose
from both sides of the bench · facts & stats · related report: little criminals
discussion · synopsis · press · tapes & transcripts · credits
FRONTLINE · wgbh · pbs
web site copyright 1995-2014 WGBH educational foundation

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From Both Sides Of The Bench - Is The System Race Biased? | Juvenile Justice | FRONTLINE | PBS

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Until recently she served on the Superior Court of Santa Clara County, where she heard both juvenile and adult cases. A state court trial judge since 1982, she presided over Manny's fitness case. A number of recent surveys have shown that there are profound racial disparities in the juvenile justice system, that African-American and Hispanic youth are more likely to be tried as adults.

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JJC is a state-wide advocacy organization that works with Ohio youth who are at-risk of involvement or involved in the juvenile court system. LATEST NEWS: JJC and ACLU Provide Path Forward for Cuyahoga County Detention Center JJC works mainly through policy advocacy and advocating with youth and families.
In recent weeks, the Cuyahoga County Juvenile Detention Center has come under scrutiny after a recent incident with youth in the facility's care. Unfortunately, the county's response has focused on moving youth to the adult jail, which could potentially violate federal law. JJC has responded to this by submitting a letter to the editor and providing quotes in two articles, which can be accessed here and here.
JJC Issues Statement on the Death of 16-Year-Old Joseph Haynes
On January 26th, JJC and the ACLU issued a letter to Cuyahoga County officials about the incident and the county's response thus far with an accompanying press release, which was covered on cleveland.com. JJC will continue to work with the ACLU to monitor this situation and ensure that the county is responding in a way that will not harm youth and will be based on research-based practice on what works for maintaining facility and community safety.
JJC Responds to Shared Services Proposal from DYS and DRC
On January 17, 2018, 16-year-old Joseph Haynes was shot and killed by a deputy in the Franklin County Juvenile Courthouse while attending a hearing. JJC has issued a statement on this tragic event. The Columbus Dispatch has released several articles on this incident, including an article addressing the incident specifics an article questioning whether security officers in juvenile courts should carry guns.

On December 11, the Department of Youth Services (DYS) and the Department of Rehabilitation and Corrections (DRC) announced a proposal to share services between the two agencies. The plan proposes to co-locate the two agencies in the same building (which is both smaller and higher cost than the two agencies' current spaces). In addition, the plan proposes combining certain functions and housing these functions at either DRC or DYS. For example, DRC will house accreditation/research, HR (including staff training), finance, and records, while DYS would take religious and volunteer services, quality assurance, and IT.
In Memoriam: Remembering Ed Sparks - JJC's Board Vice President.
JJC released a statement expressing concerns about the proposal, particularly as the two agencies have very different goals and serve vastly different populations. We are concerned that this proposal will dilute DYS's current focus on youth and their unique developmental needs and could potentially lead to further merging in the future.

Ed Sparks, President of JJC's Board from 2006 - 2014, passed away on September 14, 2017. Ed was the "heart" of JJC - he kept the organization focused on our vision of the best interest of the children. He joined the board in the mid-1990's and remained on it until his death - most recently as Vice President.
In Memoriam: Remembering William Avery ("Avery") - JJC's First Board President.
As Executive Vice President of the National Youth Advocate Program, he offered JJC both his own expertise and the resources of his organization - meeting space, access to other professional knowledge, van trips to visit institutions, and more. Ed mentored many JJC board members and was a model to the board of kindness and service. We will miss him greatly but his memory will continue to guide our work.

William Avery, the first President of the Board of the Juvenile Justice Coalition when it formed in 1993 as the Ohio Coalition for Better Youth Services, passed away on June 28, 2017. "Avery" exemplified the vision of JJC - working to get children out of institutions and into community-based settings that were more effective, as well as fighting racial disparities throughout the juvenile justice system.
HB 410 Goes into Effect 2017-2018 School Year.
Avery started his work in juvenile justice in 1969 as the superintendent of Blossom Hill School for delinquent girls. In 1972, he was appointed by Governor of Ohio as the Regional Administrator of the Cleveland Regional Office of the Ohio Department of Youth Services (then called the Ohio Youth Commission). Avery was the first African-American person to serve in these leadership positions. He retired from state government in 1992, but returned to work in juvenile justice in 1998 as the Chief of Probation for the Cuyahoga County Juvenile Court until his retirement in 2001. Avery was highly regarded throughout the state for his leadership and advocacy on behalf of marginalized people. He mentored many people who continue to serve his vision.
JJC and VOU Go to DC.
As the 2017-2018 school year starts, HB 410 - a bill that changes Ohio's truancy and school discipline laws - goes into effect. HB 410's purpose is to work with students who are missing school to re-engage them in school and keep them out of formal juvenile court processing. To learn more about HB 410, please visit JJC's dedicated HB 410 page.

In July 2016, JJC staff and 4 Voices of the Unheard (VOU) youth attended the National Juvenile Justice Network's (NJJN's) annual national conference in Washington DC. The conference brings together juvenile justice advocates from across the country to brainstorm, share best practices, and learn from each other as we push for reforms.

At the conference, Amber Evans, JJC's Policy and Community Engagement Director, was awarded NJJN's 2017 Emerging Leader Award after being nominated and chosen by her peers. Amber was selected for her unique work blending organizing and policy efforts and was featured in an article. Amber shared her award with the VOU youth at the conference and it was amazing to see Amber's dedication and passion for the work recognized.

From left: Ekudayo Igeleke, Dafonta, Bahirah, Amber Evans, Sarah Bryer (NJJN Executive Director), Nafisah, and Michael.

The VOU youth who attended the conference also flexed their leadership - leading icebreaker sessions, visiting OH legislators, speaking on several panels to lift youth voices, and sharing spoken word pieces at the reception. With support from Amber and VOU mentor Ekundayo Igeleke, they explored the city and each grew into their leadership and saw new possibilities for themselves, like flying on a plane for the first time or picturing themselves attending law school.

Thanks to NJJN for the opportunity and to all of you for your ongoing support of JJC!

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JJC is a state-wide advocacy organization that works with Ohio youth who are at-risk of involvement or involved in the juvenile court system. LATEST NEWS: JJC and ACLU Provide Path Forward for Cuyahoga County Detention Center JJC works mainly through policy advocacy and advocating with youth and families.

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President Donald Trump defended his positions on climate change, gun control and even his tweeting and eating habits during a rare, wide-ranging interview with British television personality Piers Morgan.

Interested in Donald Trump?

Add Donald Trump as an interest to stay up to date on the latest Donald Trump news, video, and analysis from ABC News.

Although portions of the ITV interview, conducted this past week in Davos, Switzerland, had been released, the entire exchange aired Sunday night in the U.K.

In a previously unseen excerpt, Morgan asked Trump what was being done to stop shootings in the U.S. in the wake of this past week's high school shooting in Kentucky in which two 15-year-old students died and more than 18 others were wounded.

ABCNews.com

When Morgan said accused Las Vegas shooter Stephen Paddock had bought 55 guns legally in the year prior to the October shooting that killed 58 people, Trump responded, "Well, we do have gun control laws and this sick person -- he was a sicko. I mean that's the big problem -- they're sick people. If he didn't have a gun, he would have had a bomb, or would have something else."

When Morgan repeated that Paddock had bought 55 guns, Trump said: "The point is, he would have had 55 bombs. He would have had 55 of something else."

"I'm a Second Amendment person. I think you need it for security," Trump said. "You've had so many attacks, where there was only a gun -- a bad person's gun -- going in this direction and if you had one on the other side. In fact, that's a very big example. And if they had the bullets going in the opposite direction, you would have saved a lot of lives."

When asked about his decision to withdraw the U.S. from the Paris climate accord and whether he believes climate change exists, Trump answered, "There is a cooling and there's a heating -- I mean, look, it used to not be climate change. It used to be global warming," Trump said. "That wasn't working too well because it was getting too cold all over the place. The ice caps were going to melt. They were going to be gone by now, but now they're setting records, okay? They're at a record level.

A NASA report from last March said satellite images showed Arctic and Antarctic wintertime sea ice at record lows.

"I'll tell you what I believe in," Trump continued. "I believe in clean air. I believe in crystal clear, beautiful water. I believe in just having good cleanliness and all."

Trump added, "We could go back into the Paris Accord, but it would have to be a completely different deal. As usual, they took advantage of the United States. We were in a terrible deal."

Twitter/PiersMorgan

Later, when Morgan asked Trump to respond to how he's portrayed -- as Morgan put it -- as either someone delivering on his promises or a "raging, tweeting, wrecking ball who's destroying the country and terrifying the entire planet," Trump replied, "I plead not guilty. I think I shook things up. The country had to be shaken up."

On whether his tweeting habits distracted from his message, Trump said he doesn't call it tweeting but instead "social media" -- what he said is "a modern-day form of communication" he uses to counter " fake news."

"And are you actually lying in bed with your phone, working out how to wind everybody up?" Morgan asked.

"Well, perhaps sometimes in bed and perhaps sometimes at breakfast or lunch or whatever," Trump responded. "But generally speaking, during the early morning or during the evening, I can do that. But if I'm very busy during the day I'll sometimes just dictate out something really quickly and I'll give it to one of my people to put it on."

Morgan also asked Trump about his health following his recent physical.

"Everyone was being led to believe that you were insane and physically incredibly unfit," Morgan said. "It turned out from your recent medical that you are 30 for 30 on your cognitive tests."

"Which most people are not going to do too well," Trump said.

When Morgan noted Trump had called himself a "stable genius," Trump answered, "Yep. I am a stable genius."

Shifting to the president's diet, Morgan noted: "We do see lots of pictures of you with burgers and Cokes and stuff."

Trump responded: "Don't want to change it. Nope -- don't want to change that, no.

"They build that up. I eat fine food," Trump continued. "I eat really the finest -- some of the finest chefs in the world. I eat healthy food. I also have some of that food on occasion. Sometimes it makes sense. Actually, when you're campaigning, there's a lot of sense to it because it's you know, boom boom boom. But, uh, no I think I eat actually quite well."

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Trump defends gun control, climate change positions in wide-ranging interview

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President Donald Trump defended his positions on climate change, gun control and even his tweeting and eating habits during a rare, wide-ranging interview with British television personality Piers Morgan. Add Donald Trump as an interest to stay up to date on the latest Donald Trump news, video, and analysis from ABC News.

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RICHMOND, Va. - Democratic legislators said Tuesday they will continue to fight for gun control laws as Republicans continued to kill bills to restrict firearms.

Six Democratic delegates held a press conference to discuss proposals such as banning weapons from public libraries. Del. Roslyn Tyler of Sussex County said gun violence has been endangering Virginians for years.

"We cannot allow this problem to get worse," Tyler said. "We cannot stay idle as gun violence leads to more and more empty seats at the dinner tables across the country."

Del. John Bell of Loudoun County touted his bill to require applicants for a concealed weapons permit to show in-person "competence with a handgun." Currently, applicants can get a permit by completing a video or online training course.

Bell called HB 91 a "very common-sense bill." Last week, a House subcommittee killed it on a 4-2 vote.

Bell, who served in the U.S. Air Force for more than 26 years, noted that he went through extensive training to be able to carry a weapon. He said civilians also should receive adequate training in front of a certified instructor before obtaining a concealed carry permit.

"The current online training is far inadequate," Bell said. "It doesn't have eyes on from qualified instructors to know if that holster is properly fitted. You have to watch those things in real life, in real time."

Groups such as the National Rifle Association opposed Bell's measure. He said they should support it.

"I believe the groups like the NRA and the Virginia Citizens Defense League who oppose this bill are missing a tremendous opportunity to provide low-cost frequent training and to do a public good," Bell said.

"I believe in the Second Amendment. I'm a gun owner. But I think responsible gun ownership is important, and I believe every gun owner should have a background check and should show they were properly trained before they're given a concealed carry permit."

So far this session, Republicans have defeated several gun control bills sponsored by Democrats, including one to require background checks on all gun purchases. On Monday, the Republican majority in the House rejected a resolution to ban firearms from the chamber's gallery while delegates are in session.

Shortly after the Democrats' news conference, Republican legislators held one of their own. They argued that citizens should be able to carry weapons in places of worship.

Virginia law prohibits guns in churches and other religious settings. But last week, the Senate voted 21-18 along party lines to repeal that law.

Just as politicians are protected by armed security, members of a congregation should be allowed to arm themselves for self-defense, said Del. Dave LaRock of Loudoun County.

He stood next to a poster of Democratic Gov. Ralph Northam speaking to an interfaith group about gun violence at St. Paul's Episcopal Church last week. LaRock pointed out that the governor's security detail was nearby.

LaRock said it is not fair that the governor gets treated differently than Virginia citizens who are barred from carrying weapons in places of worship. He said it appears to be a double standard.

"The law that's on the book says that weapons are prohibited in church without good and sufficient reason, which is vague," LaRock said. "And we don't believe laws that are vague should be on the books."

He said Northam signaled that he would veto SB 371, which would rescind that law, if it passes the General Assembly.

"We pose the question," LaRock said. "He deserves armed protection in church, but others don't? We're just asking him to fill in the blank and explain to us why."
By Aya Driouche/Capital News Service Capital News Service is a flagship program of VCU's Robertson School of Media and Culture. Students participating in the program provide state government coverage for Virginia's community newspapers and other media outlets, under the supervision of Associate Professor Jeff South.

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Democrats vow to push for gun control laws

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RICHMOND, Va. - Democratic legislators said Tuesday they will continue to fight for gun control laws as Republicans continued to kill bills to restrict firearms. Six Democratic delegates held a press conference to discuss proposals such as banning weapons from public libraries. Del. Roslyn Tyler of Sussex County said gun violence has been endangering Virginians for years.

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GOP Opponent Shifting Gun Control Stance

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GOP Opponent Shifting Gun Control Stance

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A GOP candidate opposing Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand slammed the Democrat Sunday, calling her a self-promotor with shifting positions on gun control.

"When she was in the House, she was known as 'Annie Oakley,'" Chele Chiavacci Farley told John Catsimatidis on his AM 970 radio show Sunday.

"And now in the Senate people laugh and they call her 'Jane Fonda.' That's quite a change to the left."

Gillibrand, from Brunswick in Rensselaer County, once had an "A" rating from the National Rifle Association. But she has become an outspoken critic of the NRA and the need for stricter gun laws.

Farley also criticized Gillibrand's opposition to Trump.

"Kirsten Gillibrand's greatest success is self-promotion, not accomplishments," Farley added.

"She's voted against more Trump nominees than any other senator and was the only one to vote against (Defense Secretary James) Mattis."

Farley previously worked as a partner and managing director of Mistral Capital International, a New York City private equity firm specializing in the real estate and energy industries.
RELATED: Kirsten Gillibrand through the years
Gillibrand, who has served in the Senate since 2009, defended her voting record.

"Kirsten is proud of her record in the U.S. Senate fighting for New York families as hard as she fights for her own and looks forward to the opportunity of earning the privilege to continue serving New Yorkers for another term," her spokesman Glen Caplin said in a statement.

More from New York Daily News:
White House pulls environmental advisor nominee who doubted climate change
Rep. Trey Gowdy says GOP memo doesn't discredit Mueller probe
Four current California lawmakers accused of sexual misconduct

Read Full Story

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Republican opponent slams Sen. Gillibrand for shifting gun control stance

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A GOP candidate opposing Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand slammed the Democrat Sunday, calling her a self-promotor with shifting positions on gun control. "When she was in the House, she was known as 'Annie Oakley,'" Chele Chiavacci Farley told John Catsimatidis on his AM 970 radio show Sunday.

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NRA-ILA | Washington: Gun Control Bills Fail to Meet Deadline

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Friday, February 2nd marked the deadline for bills to be voted out of committee in the house in which they originated. As previously reported, several anti-gun bills received committee votes prior to this deadline; however, many of the bills NRA-ILA has been actively opposing in Olympia failed to receive a vote before the cut-off and are likely defeated for the year.

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Contrary to the popular imagination, bearing arms on the frontier was a heavily regulated business

smithsonian.com

It's October 26, 1881, in Tombstone, and Arizona is not yet a state. The O.K. Corral is quiet, and it's had an unremarkable existence for the two years it's been standing-although it's about to become famous.

Marshall Virgil Earp, having deputized his brothers Wyatt and Morgan and his pal Doc Holliday, is having a gun control problem. Long-running tensions between the lawmen and a faction of cowboys - represented this morning by Billy Claiborne, the Clanton brothers, and the McLaury brothers - will come to a head over Tombstone's gun law.

The laws of Tombstone at the time required visitors, upon entering town to disarm, either at a hotel or a lawman's office. (Residents of many famed cattle towns, such as Dodge City, Abilene, and Deadwood, had similar restrictions.) But these cowboys had no intention of doing so as they strolled around town with Colt revolvers and Winchester rifles in plain sight. Earlier on this fateful day, Virgil had disarmed one cowboy forcefully, while Wyatt confronted another and county sheriff Johnny Behan failed to persuade two more to turn in their firearms.

When the Earps and Holliday met the cowboys on Fremont Street in the early afternoon, Virgil once again called on them to disarm. Nobody knows who fired first. Ike Clanton and Billy Claiborne, who were unarmed, ran at the start of the fight and survived. Billy Clanton and the McLaury brothers, who stood and fought, were killed by the lawmen, all of whom walked away.

The "Old West" conjures up all sorts of imagery, but broadly, the term is used to evoke life among the crusty prospectors, threadbare gold panners, madams of brothels, and six-shooter-packing cowboys in small frontier towns - such as Tombstone, Deadwood, Dodge City, or Abilene, to name a few. One other thing these cities had in common: strict gun control laws.

"Tombstone had much more restrictive laws on carrying guns in public in the 1880s than it has today," says Adam Winkler, a professor and specialist in American constitutional law at UCLA School of Law. "Today, you're allowed to carry a gun without a license or permit on Tombstone streets. Back in the 1880s, you weren't." Same goes for most of the New West, to varying degrees, in the once-rowdy frontier towns of Nevada, Kansas, Montana, and South Dakota.

Dodge City, Kansas, formed a municipal government in 1878. According to Stephen Aron, a professor of history at UCLA, the first law passed was one prohibiting the carry of guns in town, likely by civic leaders and influential merchants who wanted people to move there, invest their time and resources, and bring their families. Cultivating a reputation of peace and stability was necessary, even in boisterous towns, if it were to become anything more transient than a one-industry boom town.

Laws regulating ownership and carry of firearms, apart from the U.S. Constitution's Second Amendment, were passed at a local level rather than by Congress. "Gun control laws were adopted pretty quickly in these places," says Winkler. "Most were adopted by municipal governments exercising self-control and self-determination." Carrying any kind of weapon, guns or knives, was not allowed other than outside town borders and inside the home. When visitors left their weapons with a law officer upon entering town, they'd receive a token, like a coat check, which they'd exchange for their guns when leaving town.

The practice was started in Southern states, which were among the first to enact laws against concealed carry of guns and knives, in the early 1800s. While a few citizens challenged the bans in court, most lost. Winkler, in his book Gunfight: The Battle Over the Right to Bear Arms in America, points to an 1840 Alabama court that, in upholding its state ban, ruled it was a state's right to regulate where and how a citizen could carry, and that the state constitution's allowance of personal firearms "is not to bear arms upon all occasions and in all places."

Louisiana, too, upheld an early ban on concealed carry firearms. When a Kentucky court reversed its ban, the state constitution was amended to specify the Kentucky general assembly was within its rights to, in the future, regulate or prohibit concealed carry.

Still, Winkler says, it was an affirmation that regulation was compatible with the Second Amendment. The federal government of the 1800s largely stayed out of gun-law court battles.

"People were allowed to own guns, and everyone did own guns [in the West], for the most part," says Winkler. "Having a firearm to protect yourself in the lawless wilderness from wild animals, hostile native tribes, and outlaws was a wise idea. But when you came into town, you had to either check your guns if you were a visitor or keep your guns at home if you were a resident."

Published in 1903, Andy Adams's Log of a Cowboy, a "slightly fictionalized" account of the author's life on the cattle trails of the 1880s, was a refutation against the myth-making dime store novels of the day. The book, which included stories about lawless cowboys visiting Dodge City firing into the air to shoot out lights, has been called the most realistic written account of cowboy life and is still in print today.

Adams wrote of what happened to the few who wouldn't comply with frontier gun law:

"The buffalo hunters and range men have protested against the iron rule of Dodge's peace officers, and nearly every protest has cost human life. ... Most cowboys think it's an infringement on their rights to give up shooting in town, and if it is, it stands, for your six-shooters are no match for Winchesters and buckshot; and Dodge's officers are as game a set of men as ever faced danger."

Frontier towns with and without gun legislation were violent places, more violent than family-friendly farming communities and Eastern cities of the time, but those without restrictions tended to have worse violence. "I've never seen any rhetoric from that time period saying that the only thing that's going to reduce violence is more people with guns," says Winkler. "It seems to be much more of a 20th-century attitude than one associated with the Wild West."

Aron agrees that these debates rarely went on, and if they did, there's scant evidence of it today.

Crime records in the Old West are sketchy, and even where they exist the modern FBI yardstick of measuring homicides rates - the number of homicides per 100,000 residents - can exaggerate statistics in Old Western towns with small populations; even one or two more murders a year would drastically swing a town's homicide rate.

Historian Robert Dykstra focused on established cattle towns, recording homicides after a full season of cattle shipments had already passed and by which time they'd have typically passed firearm law. He found a combined 45 murders from 1870-1885 in Kansas' five largest cattle towns by the 1880 census: Wichita (population: 4,911), Abilene (2,360) Caldwell (1,005), Ellsworth (929), and Dodge City (996).

Averaged out, there were 0.6 murders per town, per year. The worst years were Ellsworth, 1873, and Dodge City, 1876, with five killings each; because of their small populations, their FBI homicide rates would be high. Another historian, Rick Shenkman, found Tombstone's (1880 pop: 3,423) most violent year was 1881, in which also only five people were killed; three were the cowboys shot by Earp's men at the OK Corral.

As Dykstra wrote, frontier towns by and large prohibited the "carrying of dangerous weapons of any type, concealed or otherwise, by persons other than law enforcement officers." Most established towns that restricted weapons had few, if any, killings in a given year.

The settlements that came closest to unchecked carry were the railroad and mining boom towns that tended to lack effective law enforcement, a functioning judicial system, and firearm law, says Aron, and it reflected in higher levels of violence. Like Bodie, California, which was well-known during the 1870s and 1880s for vigilantism and street violence.

"The smoke of battle almost never clears away completely in Bodie," wrote a young Mark Twain on assignment for the Virginia City Territorial Enterprise. Historian Roger McGrath found that from 1877 to 1882 there were 31 homicides in Bodie which, according to the 1880 census, had only 2,712 residents. As the contemporary paper Sacramento Union called it a "shooter's town," Bodie by 1880 had acquired a national infamy. Even as far as New York, a dangerous man was euphemistically called "a bad man from Bodie."

The one-man law seen of TV and film Westerns is how we remember the West today. It was a time and place where rugged individualism reigned and the only law in the West that mattered was the law on your hip - a gun. Most "cowboy" films had nothing to do with driving cattle. John Wayne grew his brand as a horseback vigilante in decades' worth of Westerns, from his first leading role in 1930's The Big Trail to 1971's Big Jake, in which the law fails and Wayne's everyman is the only justice.

But as the classic The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance tells us, "This is the West, sir. When the legend becomes fact, print the legend."

As the West developed, towns pushed this mythos of the West as their founding ideology. Lax gun laws were just a part of an individualistic streak that manifested itself with the explosion in popularity of concealed carry licenses and the broader acceptance of openly carrying firearms (open-carry laws) that require no permit.

"These Wild West towns, as they developed and became more civilized and larger, there was an effort to promote their Wild West heritage very aggressively, and that became the identity of the town," says Winkler, "but that identity was based on a false understanding of what the past was like, and wasn't a real assessment of what places like Tombstone were like in the 1880s."

So the orthodox positions in America's ongoing gun debate oscillate between "Any gun law is a retreat away from the lack of government interference that made this country great" and "If we don't regulate firearms, we'll end up like the Wild West," robbing both sides of a historical bedrock of how and why gun law developed as America expanded Westward.

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smithsonian.com It's October 26, 1881, in Tombstone, and Arizona is not yet a state. The O.K. Corral is quiet, and it's had an unremarkable existence for the two years it's been standing-although it's about to become famous. Marshall Virgil Earp, having deputized his brothers Wyatt and Morgan and his pal Doc Holliday, is having a gun control problem.

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New England Patriots Support Juvenile Justice Reform

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New England Patriots Support Juvenile Justice Reform

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THE NEW ENGLAND PATRIOTS represent a six-state region and we are grateful for many things, including our region's national leadership in improving our justice systems, especially for children and youth. The Patriots organization cares about the safety of our communities and we know the best place to start is with our youngest members. If we get it right with our youth, they will become our future leaders, neighbors, and trusted colleagues.

In some ways, we are ahead of the game. All six New England states recognize the importance of accountability, but children are not adults and should not be treated as such. Each state has a separate juvenile justice system that aims to provide rehabilitative, developmentally appropriate responses for kids who have made bad choices.

While we have made strides in this area, there is still plenty of room for improvement as we search for the appropriate age range for the juvenile justice system. Unfortunately, we end up sweeping in kids who are too young, and then we exclude older teens who would benefit the most. Right now, the Massachusetts juvenile system applies to youth ages 7 through 17. This means 7-year-olds who are in the first grade - children reading "Green Eggs and Ham" - can be arrested, prosecuted, and confined. Yet, 18-year-olds who are still in high school are automatically charged as adults and excluded from the juvenile system, regardless of the crime.

This age range is an outdated policy that compromises public safety. It should be obvious that very young children cannot understand the court process and lack the reasoning to participate fully in their own defense. In fact, mere exposure to the justice system can be particularly harmful - both to them and to society. Seven-year-olds would be better served by agencies like child welfare or mental health.

As for the upper age of the juvenile system, research shows what any parent knows - that celebrating an 18th birthday does not magically transform everyone into a mature adult. The physical, emotional, and practical transition from childhood to adulthood is a lengthy process, stretching into the mid-20s. The American Academy of Pediatrics defines youth as up to age 21 - and even then the academy has noted that this age is an "arbitrary demarcation" since continual growth occurs into the 20s. Fortunately, research shows that most youth will age out of crime by age 25, if given the opportunity to develop and mature.

The state Senate passed a sweeping criminal justice reform package last week that could be a national model. The state House would be wise to follow.

Sadly, it is our most vulnerable youth - children of color - who bear the brunt of our misguided age policies. Black and Hispanic youth become system-involved at shockingly disproportionate rates that cannot be explained by differences in behavior. In Massachusetts, children of color constitute approximately one-third of the state's youth population, but two-thirds of those committed to the state youth correctional agency. Although there are no Massachusetts data publicly available for 18-year-olds, we know that the national rate of incarceration in 2012 was more than nine times greater for black males ages 18 to 19 than for white males.

This issue of the age of juvenile jurisdiction takes on particular importance as New England struggles with a sweeping drug epidemic. A recent report by the Columbia University Justice Lab revealed that substance-related offenses in Massachusetts are the leading cause of arrests for 18-year-olds, that two-thirds of people in treatment for opioid addiction started using opioids before age 25, and that opioids accounted for more than a quarter of all fatalities in the 18 to 24 age group.

To avoid such tragedies, we can begin by including late teens in the much smaller, individualized treatment-oriented juvenile justice system. That will give us a better chance of preventing and addressing substance use disorders for the youth who are the most vulnerable to addiction and its consequences.

We strongly support the proposal being considered by the Massachusetts Legislature that would first raise the lower age of juvenile jurisdiction from 7 to 12, and second, raise the upper age from 18 to 19. Both moves would constitute more appropriate and effective responses to the needs of our youth. We also support Vermont and Connecticut in their ongoing efforts to consider and adopt similar proposals.

Finally, we know that we have a lot left to learn. We believe that research should drive strategies to right-size the juvenile justice system, thus guiding our youngest and most vulnerable citizens to healthy, safe, and productive adulthood.

Devin McCourty is a New England Patriot player and charter member of the Players Coalition; Jonathan Kraft is president of The Kraft Group and the New England Patriots; Robert Kraft is chairman and CEO of The Kraft Group.

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As Patriots, we support juvenile justice reform - The Boston Globe

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THE NEW ENGLAND PATRIOTS represent a six-state region and we are grateful for many things, including our region's national leadership in improving our justice systems, especially for children and youth. The Patriots organization cares about the safety of our communities and we know the best place to start is with our youngest members.

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1. Juvenile Justice System
2. Gun Control
3. Pollution