Northpinellas: When kids stray, now neighbors have say

About 10,000 times per year in Pinellas County, a child is charged with a crime and entered into a clogged criminal justice system. Months may go by before that child's case is resolved. Victims may receive no restitution. The community where the child committed the crime may have no knowledge -- let alone a say -- in what happens to that child.

But residents in five Clearwater and Largo communities will experience a new form of juvenile justice starting Monday. The Pinellas-Pasco State Attorney's Office is launching a community prosecution program that will empower residents to deal with neighborhood children who get in trouble with the law.

The program is a form of community prosecution, a fairly new idea of justice that dozens of prosecutors' offices around the country have adopted to draw closer to their communities. It's an echo of the community policing initiatives many police departments started making in the 1980s.

The program will work like this:

When a child is arrested for a crime committed in one of the five neighborhoods, prosecutors will review the case file, looking at the child's age and criminal history along with the details of the crime committed.

If the child meets certain criteria, the case will be diverted from the court system and brought before neighborhood residents. That panel of everyday Joes and Janes will decide the child's fate.

If the community park needs cleaning, the child may be assigned to do it. If the child has a spotty school record, he or she may be barred from missing another class. If the child broke a neighbor's window, he or she may be ordered to fix or pay for it, then write a letter of apology.

Youths who commit violent crimes will not be eligible. Most cases that wind up before the board will be misdemeanors. And if the child fails to live up to expectations, back to the court system he goes. The community prosecution will be fast, the victims will be satisfied, the community will be involved and the neighborhood may be improved, backers say.

"The community knows what's going on and sees the consequences," said State Attorney Bernie McCabe. "The community can see that something's being done."

McCabe's office recently received a $200,000 grant from the U.S. Department of Justice to start the program. It is one of the first community prosecution programs in Florida, and the only one in the state to focus specifically on juvenile offenders.

McCabe picked four Clearwater neighborhoods, and a fifth in Largo, to start the program. He said he picked so many in Clearwater because police Chief Sid Klein has made inroads in those communities with his innovative community policing techniques.

The Clearwater neighborhoods are: North Greenwood, South Greenwood, Jasmine Court and Wood Valley. The fifth community is in the Starkey Road area in Largo, which is patrolled by the Pinellas County Sheriff's Office.

"It's really an extension of community policing," Klein said. "It really parallels what the police have been doing a long time."

McCabe has assigned two prosecutors, Theodora Taktikos and Sharon Gallagher, to helm the program. Both are interested in helping children. Gallagher used to work with juvenile delinquents before becoming a lawyer.

They plan to work closely with victims and parents to ensure the child receives a good balance of punishment and rehabilitation. If children refuse to follow the board's orders, they will be sent back to court.

One of the attorneys' first tasks will be to find volunteers to serve on the boards in each neighborhood. McCabe wants five to nine people on each board. He said he thinks there are strong and dedicated residents in each of the neighborhoods who will be glad to serve.

Margaret Jetton, a 30-year resident of the Wood Valley neighborhood, is one of them. The community around her Applewood Drive home once thrived, but it suffered a painful stretch of crime and drugs before residents and police pulled together in recent years to make it better. A police substation recently opened there and 15-20 residents regularly attend neighborhood watch meetings (up to 100 if it's a covered-dish meeting, Jetton said).

There's still crime there, sure, but the neighborhood is packed with residents who care. It's a good fit for community prosecution. When a prosecutor presented information about the plan at a neighborhood watch meeting recently, more than 30 people -- including parents of neighborhood children who could one day be in the program -- showed up.

"Most of the parents that were there thought it was a good idea," Jetton, 72, said.

She plans to serve on the board and figures she would know all the kids who came before her and would know what's best for them, whether it be cleaning the police substation or paying for a broken window.

"Most of the children, unless they're new, they know me," said Jetton, who still breaks up fights between kids in the park across from her home. "And they know I'll be fair with them. They know I know their mothers or their grandmothers.

"Maybe that would stop them before they went on to other crime," she added.

That's the idea of community prosecution, said Catherine Coles, a research fellow in Criminal Justice Policy and Management at Harvard University who has studied the subject for about seven years.

"Community members should be able to say this made a difference," Coles said.

The role of the prosecutor can also extend beyond just forming boards and bringing youthful offenders in front of them. The attorney can help the community with other problems.

In Austin, for instance, neighborhood district attorney Meg Brooks helps organize festivals in Spanish-speaking communities where justice officials encourage Hispanic residents not to be afraid of the police and to report when they are victims of a crime. She also has partnered with local banks to help local Hispanics open bank accounts. This way, they don't carry so much money and aren't as tempting to robbers and burglars.

So why should prosecutors, of all people, be involved in neighborhood improvement?

Coles says the answer is simple: Prosecutors make things happen. They are powerful. People listen to lawyers. And they can easily navigate the court system or a government bureaucracy to get things done for a community whose members may be intimidated or unsure how to do it themselves.

For example, prosecutors can quickly file a complaint with a nuisance abatement board. If a neighborhood is being ignored by code enforcement workers and a prosecutor calls to complain, the department director will listen.

"Things begin to happen when prosecutors get involved with this community problem-solving mode," said Coles. "Community prosecution is what makes community policing work.

"I've heard prosecutors say we shouldn't be doing all we're doing, but no one else is doing it," Coles added.

The result is a community advocate with a kick.

Says Brooks: "People return my phone calls. It's using that power and those skills to get things done for a community."

The result: Problems can be solved before they become bigger problems.

And while the justice system has taken some shots for allegedly being soft on crime, officials say this isn't a softball program.

"It's one with teeth in it," Klein said. "It happens fast . . . and it really brings the issue right back in the neighborhood where the juvenile has committed the crime."

Funding for the Pinellas County program will expire in 18 months, at which point McCabe can reapply for another 18 months of federal funding. But after that, he will have to decide whether to pay for the program with his office's own money. He plans to evaluate the program at that time.

"If it's really successful and I can make a judgment that it's cost-effective, I'll find a way to do it," McCabe said.

-- Chris Tisch can be reached at 445-4156 or tisch@sptimes.com.

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