HARSH REALITIES
By Joe Piasecki

Pasadena Weekly
ail/harsh_realities/6982/
March 5 2009
CA

Students discuss crime and punishment at Washington Middle School
screening of ‘Juvies’

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."