Harsh realities
Students discuss crime and punishment at Washington Middle School screening of ‘Juvies’
By Joe Piasecki 03/05/2009
Some 3,000 juveniles are currently behind bars, with 20,000 more on some form of criminal probation, according to the LA County Probation Department.
In 1999, Leslie Neale became a writing teacher at Los Angeles Central Juvenile Hall, and over time continued working with juvenile offenders, developing relationships with several young men and women who had been sentenced to years of hard time.
Later, Neale became involved with a project in which 12 juvenile offenders were given video equipment training and asked to document their lives.
One of them was Duc, a high school student who had driven a car from which a gun was fired. Although no one was hurt, the boy was tried as an adult and received a sentence of 35 years to life. Another was Anait, a 14-year-old Armenian immigrant who was locked up for seven years because she gave a ride to two friends who later were involved in a fight that killed a boy.
Neale came to believe that the punishments dealt to these and several other young people were overly harsh for the crimes they had been involved with, and began work on “Juvies,” a 2004 documentary that splices their stories with commentary questioning the fairness of the juvenile justice system itself.
“I think the Duc story impacted me the most,” Neale said. “I was just there to teach and I had no plans to make a documentary, and then I realized people did not know what was happening. I was just like everybody else; I thought gangbangers were out to kill everybody.”
Neale said it took more than a year for the courts to allow her to film the kids. “I used to joke that we had no problem sending kids to prison as young as 14, but don’t dare try and photograph them,” said Neale of the film, which includes narration by actor Mark Wahlberg and hip-hop recording artist Mos Def.
“I heard Mark had a history as a juvenile offender. We asked his agent and sent them a rough cut, and he said absolutely. He said, that could have been me. With Mos Def, I was just trying to find a voice to read the poetry, and he immediately said absolutely.”
On Feb. 26 members of Washington Middle School’s Student Peace Ambassadors Project, a violence-prevention initiative by the nonprofit El Centro de Accion Social, hosted a screening of “Juvies” to encourage fellow students to make positive choices.
“It’s a powerful documentary. It shows the reality of what happens when you get caught up in the juvenile criminal justice system. You can end up doing life when you’re a kid,” said El Centro Director Randy Jurado Ertll.
“When someone’s been charged with a felony, it’s hard to get that off their record or for them to get a job and live the rest of their lives. So many young people, especially in middle school, are unaware of the consequences. We want to help them make the right choices,” he continued.
The Student Peace Ambassadors Project was established at Washington Middle School and John Muir High School six months ago after five students at each school were chosen to attend a conflict resolution workshop performed by the nonprofit Western Justice Center. Those students then recruited others into the group, which has organized speaking engagements by community figures such as Pasadena Police Cmdr. John Perez, who oversees the officers patrolling Pasadena high schools and middle schools, and anti-gang activist Tim Rhambo.
The initiative is also a push to keep kids in school.
“A lot of times, the reason students drop out is because they join a gang or do other things they aren’t supposed to be doing,” Ertll said. “We don’t want them to destroy their own futures.”
DIGG | del.icio.us | REDDIT