Although juvenile offenses have been declining for several years, and although juveniles are more often victims than perpetrators of crime, one of the final acts of Pete Wilson as Governor was to place an initiative on the March 2000 ballot to demonstrate his "tough" stance on crime. The following is a summary of the provisions of this measure:

Restricts participation in drug rehabilitation or other court-approved diversion programs to minors who have admitted responsibility for an offense, and provides no funding to assure these programs will in fact be available to juveniles.

Extends third strike (felony status) to graffiti and other property destruction offenses causing more than $400 in damages, and to participation in any gang, while expanding the definition of serious and violent offenses to include any conspiracy, and all forms of robbery and 1st degree burglary.

Permits authorities to use wiretaps whenever gang activity is suspected, and creates a new registration system to monitor persons convicted of any offense that is deemed gang related.

Mandates that juveniles 14-years of age or older be tried in adult court if charged with capital murder, rape, or a serious sex offense, regardless of the strength of the case, and regardless of the character of the youth. These cases would be subject to adult plea-bargaining and sentencing practices.

Permits the prosecutor to elect whether or not to pursue a case in the adult or juvenile court, if one of 30 enumerated offenses, including assault with force likely to cause great bodily injury can be alleged. Requires minors to be detained in such cases. If the charges are made in adult court and later reduced, there is no provision for remand to juvenile court for a disposition suitable to the needs of the minor.

Permits prosecutors to seek the death penalty for any gang-related murder.

Prevents the sealing of juvenile court records when the offender has remained offense-free for six years or more after a serious offense, if the minor was over 14 years of age when the offense occurred.

Makes juvenile records more accessible, and requires rap sheets to include all juvenile offenses, unless all juvenile matters were misdemeanors.

California Attorney General's Youth Council on Violence Prevention: 1998 Final Report. Information, call (916) 324-5437.

Keeping Youth Safe: The Critical After-School Hours. Information, call (415) 331-5991.

Kids Who Commit Crimes: What Should Be Done About Juvenile Violence? Information, call (800) 228-0810.

School House Hype: School Shootings and the Real Risks Kids Face in America. Information, call (415) 621-5661.

Violence Among Middle School and High School Students: Analysis and Implications for Prevention. Information, call (800) 851-3420.

Recently the interdenominational group, People of Faith Working Against the Death Penalty, held a press conference at Grace Cathedral in San Francisco. Bishops and other religious leaders from a broad cross section of faith traditions were making statements against capital punishment as reporters scribbled notes and cameras rolled.

Suddenly the ear-splitting roar of jet fighter bombers shattered the event. Military jet planes were flying formations over the city -- a "celebration" of Fleet Week in San Francisco. The disruptions continued for the several days of the conference, a constant reminder of the force and potential violence surrounding our proceedings.

What are the messages being sent by such a display? The connections between military force and capital punishment, and our resistance to the death penalty, illustrate contradictory messages replete in our culture and the kind of legacy we seem to be building. We don't have to look farther back than the last few months.

Look, for example, at our nation's treatment of Kosovo, or before that Iraq, or maybe some other country you can think of. There are deep, dividing problems in these countries. And to a greater or lesser extent there is something called "American interests."

Regardless of whether you thought our mission in Kosovo was justified -- and certainly people of good will can disagree about this -- my concern is with a bomb-and-starve foreign policy. My concern is with eight or nine years of starving the people of Iraq because we did not "win" that war sufficiently. My concern is with the messages that we are sending.

Then we have Littleton, Colorado -- a high school where 15 victims were gunned down, including the perpetrators.

A carpenter in Littleton made 15 crosses and placed them all on a hill near the school. Some folks objected to the crosses for the perpetrators. So, instead of just taking those two down, he took them all down. That is what we need to begin to do in our own ways. We need to take a stand that refuses to separate the good guys from the bad guys.

The President came on television following the tragedy in Littleton and spoke out against the proliferation of guns and the messages our children seem to be picking up about violence. But he never mentioned the effect that bombing by the United States might have had. He never made the connection. We have to help him put all these crosses together.

And in the same 30 days that brought us Kosovo and Littleton, we heard about several cases of extreme police abuse in New York, in Riverside County, in San Francisco. People were killed or seriously maimed at the hands of police, and the press initially treated each incident as "justifiable." It later turned out that the initial reports erred.

How, given this punitive, rush-to-judgment attitude, can we convict the beaters of Rodney King of civil rights violations and give them 18 months while a person who steals a piece of pizza in California, is convicted of a third strike and gets 25 years to life? How can we withhold water, food and medicine from the children of Iraq, 8 years after the war, while we charge children as adults in this country for robbing Safeway, and send them to adult prisons? Why are the companies that dump toxic wastes into drinking water punished with a fine, but juveniles who endanger the lives of other juveniles are labeled "monsters" and often imprisoned. We label companies, including those with terrible environmental or labor records, as successes because we use a monetary standard -- and ignore the human toll they take.

We need to examine the double standards we apply through our enforcement mechanisms. Four billion dollars of damage is attributed to burglaries each year; $200 billion is attributed to white collar crime. 20,000 murders occur each year - an appalling number; 169,000 people die each year as a result of dangerous products, environmental hazards, or medical negligence.

The Justice Department devotes only a small sliver of its budget to consumer enforcement--one half of one per cent. We are more afraid of a guy who might point a gun at us than the unseen hazards in our water supply. Fear, too often, sets the priorities in this country.

The other value that seems to be dictating the course of events -- and clearly it is the flip side of fear -- is power. We have an addiction to the power of violence and weapons and we have no trouble justifying that addiction, just as every other addict justifies abuse of drugs or drink or sex or anything else that delivers a high or relieves a pain.

Again, power is something heroes have. Wasn't Kosovo primarily a show of NATO's strength -- its ability to dominate? If that strength didn't need to be displayed we could have gone through the United Nations. What were the perpetrators in Littleton offering, other than some kind of twisted proof of the power of a couple of outcasts to wreak revenge? What, beside revenge, do prosecutors exert when they execute more and more of these same broken, so-called misfits?

If the problem we are experiencing with violence in our culture is truly an outgrowth of power politics, power capitalism, the psychology of power, the way out of this, it seems to me, is found in Matthew 25. "Even as you do it to the least of these, my brothers and sisters, you do it to me," Matthew says, speaking of people who are hungry, people who are homeless, people who are imprisoned. What if we were judged on the basis of what we did to "the least of these"? What if the United States were judged on the basis of how it treats immigrants, the unemployed, the mentally ill, the physically ill, the poor? God help us if that were the standard against which our nation were measured.

Violence didn't spring up overnight in Littleton. It didn't spring up overnight in the neighborhoods we live in. It didn't spring up overnight in the schools. We are reaping a harvest here that is not too hard to trace. It has seeped into our national mentality everywhere. But there is also a national legacy that says "Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free." There is an American generosity that has generated millions of dollars in private donations to help the people of Honduras recover from the floods, and the refugees in Yugoslavia survive another day. We know this very directly because the American Friends Service Committee has been collecting these donations and distributing them.

So we don't have to be stuck with the politics of power, but we must lift up a different truth. We need to plant our own crosses for the victims and the perpetrators. And we have to dare to go inside the dark places where people who have been discarded by our culture dwell, bringing those people a different kind of message. We have to bear witness to a new kind of message and to the power of compassion.

-Laura Magnani ***

Laura Magnani is on the staff of American Friends Service Committee -- Pacific Mountain Region. This piece is adapted from her remarks at the Convocation of Jail and Prison Ministry, 1999.

Governor Gray Davis signed the 1999-2000 state budget on June 29. On time for once, the budget was, at best, a small improvement over the Scroogian approach to state spending taken by his predecessor, Pete Wilson.

Davis blue-penciled $581 million out of the $80.4 million funding plan presented to him by the legislature; he reserved his deepest cuts for health and welfare funding. The governor vetoed $262 million of that funding -- approximately 1.3 percent of the $20.9 billion appropriated by the legislature. Some of his more significant cuts included:

$56.4 million (63%) out of the $90 million increase for In-Home Support Services (IHSS). Davis justified his action by noting that the state does not currently participate in IHSS provider wage and benefit negotiations, "and therefore would not be able to manage program costs." The governor wants the counties to pay a greater share of IHSS funding increases before the state permanently kicks in additional funding. However, Davis did leave $67.9 million in the budget for a one-time-only 50 cent/hour increase in provider wages starting July 1, 1999 and ending June 30, 2000.

$26.7 million (39%) out of the $67.7 million increase for expanding Medi-Cal for low-income families. The money remaining in the budget will allow 250,000 individuals out of the state's estimated 7 million currently uninsured individuals to receive medical services. The governor did retain funding to add 125,000 children to the Healthy Families Program.

$1 million (50%) out of the $2 million increase for the Emergency Food Assistance Program, which provides funding to local food banks.

$6 million (55%) out of the $11 million increase for rural health clinics, seasonal and migratory worker clinics and Indian health clinics.

$7.4 million (96%) out of the $7.7 million increase for staffing at public health facilities.

$10.1 million (56%) out of the $18 million increase for Expanded Access to Primary Care (EAPC) clinics.

$22.6 million (100%) out of $22.6 million increase for the California Healthcare for Indigents Program (CHIP) and Rural Health Services. In vetoing these items, Davis noted that the Proposition 10 tobacco tax revenues that fund these programs are a diminishing funding source and that expansion of other health programs will cover some individuals affected by these cuts.

$55.6 million (14%) out of the $402.3 million appropriated for the Department of Health Services. Most of these cuts came out of funds for county health departments and for treatment of chronic diseases.

$13.4 million (21%) out of $64.8 million appropriated for county support from the Department of Mental Health.

For purposes of comparison, it is interesting to note that the governor reduced the Youth and Adult Corrections budget by only $18 million, or .004 percent of the total of $4.775 billion appropriated by the legislature.

Also, the budget added $24 million for planning and land acquisition of a new $350 million prison mostly financed with costly bonds. More than $30 million was included to improve the transition of inmates back into the community after they have served their sentences.

In many instances, Davis did not offer specific reasons for his vetoes, but his stated guiding principles included 1) establishing a reserve of $881 million for "economic uncertainties"; 2) holding the federal government accountable for certain programs whose appropriate funding source is in dispute; and 3) not obligating the state to expenditures it might have difficulty sustaining when state revenues decline.

To his credit, the governor did not tamper with cost-of-living increases for welfare and disability benefits recipients. And he did accept an $18.3 million augmentation for low-income and homeless housing assistance, while leaving the door open for another $7.9 million still under negotiation. His performance in these areas is a major improvement over the Wilson years, when cuts in cash assistance declined as much as 33 percent (in constant dollars) and new low-income housing funds were basically non-existent.

Overall, though, the Davis administration seems to be continuing down the path established by the previous occupant of the governor's office -- standing on the backs of the state's poor, undocumented, and disabled while putting forth a façade of fiscal responsibility to the state's voters. While politically expedient, this short-sighted approach will only end up costing the state more -- and cause unnecessary human suffering -- in the long run.

The alternative to expediency is often discussed, but seldom, if ever, practiced. That alternative is long-term planning, evaluation, and budgeting with the intent to minimize, if not eradicate, systemic problems such as joblessness, mental illness, and educational failure. Until Davis and the legislative leadership move more decisively in that direction, California will continue to fall far short of the opportunity afforded by the richness of its peoples and resources to be a model for the rest of the nation and even the world.

For more information on the state budget, contact the Office of the Legislative Analyst at (916) 445-2375 or www.lao.ca. gov or the Department of Finance at (916) 445-4141 or www. dof. ca.gov.

-Ken Larsen

On Sunday, July 11, a van load of AFSC youth and adults drove to Sacramento in scorching heat (106 degrees!) to discover how the Friends Committee on Legislation (FCL) of California really works.

On our arrival, we checked in at a magnificent 19th century mansion that had been converted into a youth hostel only five years ago. The interiors were decorated in the opulent style of the gilded age, with impressively carved hard wood fireplaces and wainscoting. The fascinating guests at the hostel came from all part of the world.

On our first night, we went to "Old Sacramento"—a remnant of the city a hundred years ago when the sidewalks were made of wood, and gold prospectors roamed the streets. There we had a pizza party and were joined by FCL lobbyist Steve Birdlebough who related the history of FCL and forecast our experience for the week to come.

During the next three days, we met with lobbyists, legislative assistants, former FCL interns, and officials who explained what they did, how they became involved in government, and how the legislative process works. The group observed the Assembly debate on the assault weapons bill, and sat in on legislative hearings, including a public safety committee meeting where the FCL lobbyist was supporting several important measures. "I enjoyed all of the people I met on the trip," observed Eric Watts. "I met Greg Schmidt, Secretary of the Senate. I even met Pasadena Assembly Member Jack Scott." This was a particularly busy week since the legislature was wrapping up its business before going on its summer vacation.

Staff from Common Cause and the Faculty Association of Community Colleges spoke to the group about their lobbying work. We also had an opportunity to work at the FCL office doing a variety of tasks, from organizing the clipping file and stuffing envelopes to working on the computer. "I really enjoyed the time helping with the office work," noted Magdalena Beltrán, who says that someday she would like to be "a lawyer or doctor to defend and help people." She added, "Hopefully next time I will get to come again and help...."

This feeling was shared by the rest of the group. We are all looking forward to coming back again and learning more about the work of FCL!

By Anthony Manousos
AFSC Youth Program Director
Pacific Southwest Region

Photo caption: Pictured during their visit to the State Capitol are (left to right)
Back Row:
Gustavo Cervantes, high school senior active in Pasadena Youth Coalition for a Non-violent City, Brian Hooks, political science major at Concordia College, Irvine, Jon Hutchinson, political science major at Cerritos College, Eric Watts, high school senior, participated in the AFSC service project in Mexico, Steve Birdlebough, FCL Lobbyist,
Front Row:
Johana Shull, youth program intern at AFSC, English major at Mt. San Antonio College. Magdalena Beltrán, volunteer at Washington Middle School, also active in Pasadena Youth Coalition for a Non-violent City.