Juvenile crime near state low
SAN BERNARDINO - In the last month, a spate of gun violence among children has riveted the city and region, beaming the faces of accused killer kids into living rooms and splashing them across newspapers.
The latest installment in the episodic drama featured the conclusion of a police manhunt for a boy.
In that scene, 15-year-old fugitive foster child James Lemont Bagsby stood handcuffed with a glassy-eyed stare moments after police extricated him from a crime-plagued apartment building and charged him in connection with the shooting death of an 11-year-old boy.
The victim was Anthony Michael Ramirez, who was gunned down June 21 while playing basketball on the grounds of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Middle School.
But despite the local horror stories of kids accused of killing kids, juvenile crime is actually near an all-time low statewide.
From 1980 to 2004, the rate of juvenile incarceration plummeted nearly 50 percent statewide, a trend that dovetails with skyrocketing adult incarceration rates during the same period, according to a nonpartisan research institute study released June 28.
The 16-page report produced by the Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice further concluded that in addition to the drastic reduction in the number of youths behind bars, juvenile felony rates dropped 58 percent over the same period.
"One of the important identified trends is that youth crime fell simultaneous to the youth incarceration rates," said Daniel Macallair, the center's executive director and one of the study's authors.
"The drop is unprecedented. Felony rates among juveniles are now at their lowest in 40 years."
But not all is rosy. Macallair acknowledged that while juvenile crime is down statewide, it flares up in pockets and communities.
And San Bernardino County, while on the whole lowering its rates of incarceration, did so at a clip ranking 20th out of 21 major counties, according to the study.
"A couple of things are happening," Macallair said. "These reductions (in crime) are real. The news is good overall, but we see pockets of violence in low-income urban areas, problems led to by deeper problems."
Macallair said there are other differences, particularly in perception, in part due to more focused local news coverage.
"While the problems can be concentrated in particular areas, so can the perception," Macallair said. "Murders occurred 40 years ago, but today murders get more publicity, which heightens public awareness. But overall, you can't minimize that kids in California are doing as well as they've ever done."
But some are not doing as well as they've ever done in San Bernardino, where portions of the city have become the "pockets" to which Macallair referred.
County Chief Probation Officer Michelle Scray said San Bernardino County is in a tough period.
"We have a new generation of children in San Bernardino," Scray said. "These are often former crack and meth babies, now grown children with severe mental health and behavioral issues coupled with intergenerational criminality in their families. These kids struggle to begin with, and to be brought up as toddlers and teens inside a gang culture is a powerful way to become socialized to violence."
Born in the middle of a crime wave that led to a record 82 homicides in San Bernardino in 1993, Bagsby was "always growing up too fast" his mother, Deborah Carter, has said.
His father was in and out of jail. Carter struggled with her own demons, always poor and sometimes caught up in drugs and prostitution, she said.
She was jailed when her boy was 10. Bagsby was on the streets before he was a teen and was a bullet-scarred survivor by 14, Carter said.
Bagsby's life on the streets may have ended on the evening of June 21, when police say he opened fire on the grounds of a middle school, killing 11-year-old Anthony.
"When you have a kid who can kill someone, that is a pretty good indicator of the issues in their past," Scray said. "We as a county have to look at doing things differently or we may continue to see more of this type of behavior."
Scray said the total population at the county's three juvenile halls hovers between 450 and 500. In addition, about 2,500 are on probation and an additional 300 are placed in other lower security facilities, Scray said.
Joey, 15, lives in a group home and doesn't know his father, just like Bagsby.
Joey, who is afraid to give his last name, thinks that he has found the right path.
"For the first time in my life, I feel happy," Joey said, sitting with Terrance Stone, his mentor and the leader of the Young Visionaries youth leadership program, which caters to kids who have been through the system's wringer.
"When I think about my future, I don't know exactly what I'm gonna do, but I do know I want to be positive," Joey said.
Joey grew up in Los Angeles and was arrested and charged with burglary in San Bernardino in September, he said. After a stint in juvenile hall, he was placed in a group home in northwest San Bernardino, where he and five other boys live under constant supervision.
Bagsby bolted from a similar situation. Joey could go AWOL, too, if he wanted.
"I like what I'm doing," Joey said. "Church, classes, this is a way different atmosphere than anything I was doing before."
Bagsby's tale and those of others are in stark contrast to the hard data from the Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice that indicates kids are getting less violent.
According to the center's report, from 1993 to 2004, commitments to juvenile facilities per 100,000 population declined from 45.9 percent to 29.3 percent.
The study's authors concluded that simultaneous drops in juvenile incarceration rates and crime refutes the "incapacitation theory," the idea that increased incarcerations decreases crime.
"As most major counties are now relying less on state correctional institutions, state policy-makers must examine the shifting of state resources to local jurisdictions to improve the capacity of counties to provide a broader range of interventions that will achieve the stated goals of the juvenile justice system," the authors wrote.
Cal State San Bernardino criminologist Steve Tibbetts said San Bernardino's escalated violence is an aberration of a nationwide decline in crime and reflects issues germane to the region.
"The three major issues are rapid population growth, high dropout rates and poverty," Tibbetts said.
"In terms of the poverty, especially the children living in poverty, and the high school dropout rates, these issues are huge."
San Bernardino City Unified School District statistics show that as recently as 2003, 22,380 children ages 5 to 17, or more than one in three, met the federal definition of living in poverty.
San Bernardino County also has rates of teen pregnancy well above state and national averages. A survey of the nation's 100 largest school districts by the Manhattan Institute earlier this year found the San Bernardino school district tied for 99th place with the Detroit City School District.
The data, taken from the class of 2003, found that only 42 percent of the San Bernardino district's students who were set to graduate did so.
The national public high school graduation rate for the class of 2003 was 70 percent
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