I'm finding it a bit hard to weep for this $470 million mess-up by the city.
That is, sure, nobody wants to be hard-hearted about charity programs that actually help families with disabled children or troubled youth who have broken the law.
But why can't we have some scrutiny, sunlight and accountability on these myriad charities that suck down city dollars? Of course, I'm scratching my head, as I have for years, why these jobs of caring for the poor that should be funded by any liberal democratic society are not in the city government's hands, but are farmed out through a complex contract system to various non-profits that exist usually solely on such government contracts. I guess it's supposed to be more "efficient" to put these services into the private sector, but has anybody checked lately to see if in fact they are less costly and more effective than actual state-run offices?
Every time I read another "gotcha" and "I told you so" about ACORN, which was a typical bloody battle between the left and the right, I have to say -- but what about the "progressive ideology" of ACORN that surely needs questioning, but what about many aspects of what amounts to Shakedown Street, as even the liberal New Yorker once famously called it, but what about some sort of cost/benefit consumer rights analysis of these public functions performed by private entities that in fact don't get the bulk of their income from the private sector, like many religious organizations do.
Of course, these various charities of uneven quality in their performance are a legacy of the 1960s and 1970s when American cities, after devastating race riots and the sex, drug and rock n' roll revolutions, put into place various poverty "entitlement" programs to essentially transfer city wealth to the poor to improve their lives. This wealth transfer may have lifted some people out of poverty, but many remained entrenched in the system and generations later, have little hope -- or motivation for -- escaping it.
There's a reason why these limping white liberal programs persist and continue to sprawl: white liberals (and increasingly black and Hispanic liberals) get jobs in these programs -- and aren't the consumers of them.
If any of these white liberals had to send their children to any of these city programs for one day -- so unlike the "better" schools and programs they feel *they* are entitled to by their zip code and condo purchases -- we'd likely see massive reforms of them -- pronto.
Consumer control never happens with these charities because the beneficiaries of them are in too dire straits to conceptualize what is wrong with them -- and not motivated in some cases to disrupt the cosy relationship, either.
If you've ever been to Family Court downtown, you'll be amazed at the spectacles. A 10-year-old or 12-year-old boy charged with possession of a weapon or holding up a convenience store or stabbing a playmate. His weary mother, with usually 2-3 or more toddlers in tow. Sometimes a grandmother along for the ride. With the free daycare provided by the court, the day that mother brings her older miscreant to justice might be one of the few days she can go out to lunch without kids clinging to her so that it almost becomes a festive occasion. Standing around the mother are four city employees or city-paid workers: her social worker, the boy's social worker, a free lawyer, and an advocate from some other city social program designed to help families avoid incarceration.
Naturally, you wonder if you gave a one-time grant of all those people's salaries --or perhaps, even one quarter of all those salaries -- to this family, whether they might be doing better. But the real problem is obvious: not a father, not a male friend, not a grandfather in sight -- the only males in the room are the few who willing to take the lower-paid city jobs as social workers or free lawyers.
Much of the time, Family Court or even real court down the street will sentence the youth offender to some kind of program for "at-risk youth". "At-risk" is one of those liberal euphemisms that covers a multitude of sins. If a child is already in that category and in a program with that moniker, he's not merely "at risk," he's been risked already by the adults in his life and already exposed to crime, corruption and abuse and "risk" doesn't begin to describe it. Liberals came up with this fake term because they wanted to avoid pejorative terms like "juvenile deliquent" from the 1950s. One could analyze whether children and their parents or parent, rather, would do better if there were more of a stigma, but the situation isn't always of their making.
From Family Court, the child is likely to be assigned to one of several programs run by non-profits to handle such cases. The child will be required to go after school or during the day or risk re-arrest. But there's a lot of latitude, as managers of such programs take their time in filing a case back with the court. Some times a judge will rule for a few days of "jail therapy" under the old "scared straight" concept that liberals resort to when all their other liberal concepts fail them, but then relent and put the child back in a "program" after a hearing.
What do kids do in these programs? Well, I know of one that was absolutely appalling and I hope to find time to write to the city fathers analyzing this mess and see what could be done. The kids are brought in and put in front of a bank of computers. They are given a brief pep talk about the need to get their lives back on track, then left to do anything they like on the computers -- play games, surf the net, or go and click on various websites to "earn dollars" under a scheme either the adult leaders or youth participants teach newcomers. They play for hours, and wait to see if some other activity is organized.
Perhaps once a month, the children are taken to a park or outside the city for a bike-ride, but most of the time, they are left in the room with computers, and interrupt their game play only for a once or twice a week course. And what is this course?
Graffiti. I kid you not. In the sort of contorted politically-correct thinking for which New York City education can be infamous, youth program planners decided that rather than try to take hardcore multiple-offense youth criminals -- yes, criminals, because they are now not merely "at-risk" but are now *a risk to other people* -- and try to teach them a trade -- perhaps even something like computer operation or repair -- they give them what could only be charitably called "gut courses". Instead of placing some demands on them to make up for their bad behaviour and actual crimes, they try to "meet them half way". A child is then taught -- if he didn't know already -- how to make a graffiti instrument out of a deodorant bottle. The tubular wick inside, once used up, makes a great substrate for ink, and a great magic marker sort of drawing tool. They are taken to city sites where presumably nobody will care that much if there is graffiti, like under a bridge, and told to be creative to their heart's desire.
Another course involves...design of video games. Except the concepts of computer applications and 3-D graphics required to design something as intricate as a video game are too hard for young kids, especially those who likely flunked out of school, to pick up. So it becomes another session in playing games, not learning anything. And please don't give me any palaver about "serious games". Even if used -- and they are not -- the cohort of people you are trying to reach with them are...not white liberals. Teaching them that oil companies are evil and pollute the environment might make for great political propaganda to a captive audience, but these are people whose aspirations are -- grimly -- going to have to include at best things like getting a job at the gas station or perhaps even in car repair.
One day a youth offender in a city program of this nature steals the cell phone of the adult supervisor. No adult running the program is able to secure the exits and he and his friends skip the program with the phone. Despite efforts to question witnesses, nobody will say anything. (I could point out the Catholic School method of dealing with a question like this: everyone is held after school until the children report what they know about the thief.) The kids wander back in a few days later, and no one questions them, despite the fact that one of them has to be in possession of a new cell phone. No effort is made to check their backpacks. The children are sent back to their video games...
Other programs exist where a fullly-benefited and payroll-taxed fairly well-paid social worker will actually come to your home. Even twice a week. Even for two or three hours. These people have difficult case loads -- but not really an overload, as the supply of fresh graduates of college with degrees in psychology and social work seems unlimited and for a first job, the pay is great and the city coffers available for funding such people seemingly bottomless.
Like all social work programs, these lavish and intrusive arms of the state do have some sort of quality control mechanism in place -- but it's a silly, mechanistic, pro-forma questionnaire administered weekly by bored clerks in call services who have no direct relationship to the program in question and don't know the people they are hearing evaluations about.
Again, all it would take is a week of a few smart white liberals -- I think even liberals would be appalled, but conservatives would be apoplectic -- to start pruning and repurposing these sort of programs so they have some impact evaluation: ok, we spent millions of dollars on "at-risk" youth. Did we reduce *society's* risk from their crime? Did any of them graduate high school and go to college? These are simple metrics that surely we can agree on, right?
By the time a youthful thug reaches the age of 19 and has flunked out of school, however, he's already spent a life in every conceivable taxpayer-funded program from "Head Start" which was supposed to prevent such outcomes, and been given every conceivable label from "differently abled" to "learning disabled" to "challenged" to "at-risk" to even "gifted" -- but misunderstood. Millions have already been poured into him and the team of benefited, payroll-taxed employees that surround him from the city hospital neonatal unit to his casual nearby-school dope-smoking sessions while indifferent teachers with the job description of a warehouse manager wait for him to see his way clear to maybe wandering back inside to class...
Scrutiny and revision of these programs is WILDLY in order. With scrutiny, eventually would come better practices and outcomes. Right now, however, they are able to wave the emotional-blackmail cards of "we are helping underprivileged minorities and disabled children!" and get skittish liberals to keep away. The liberal ideology brought these programs into being; but the same liberal ideals of democratic participation and concern for people have to be triggered to reform them. This means review of salaries paid, review of how contracts are publicized and administered, creation of an ombudsman system where people could file complaints about how they function and settle disputes, random intrusive inspections, including by "mystery shopper" type clients (it shouldn't be only conservative bloggers who pose as clients to check out these programs; inspections have to be built into the system given the serious allegations of corruption).
Inspections must, indeed, be employed in these cases. Having an organized and well-planned program is truly needed to help youth offenders. They must always be heard, and programs must devise a unique approach for each person. :)
Posted by: Carolin Newmeyer | 01/09/2012 at 10:30 AM