Judiciary Committee

JOINT FAVORABLE REPORT

SPONSORS OF BILL:

Governor M. Jodi Rell

REASONS FOR BILL:

Presently there are insufficient funds to implement urban violence prevention programs in the major urban areas of this state.

SUBSTITUTE LANGUAGE Added Sections 501 and 502 that appropriate $500,000.00 to the Department of Public Safety to fund the State-Wide Trafficking Task Force. Also adds Section 503 directing the Department of Public Safety to maintain a database regarding lost and stolen firearms.

RESPONSE FROM ADMINISTRATION/AGENCY:

Brian Austin, Jr., Under Secretary Criminal Justice Policy and Planning, Office of Policy and Management (OPM)

In her budget, Governor Rell is proposing $4 million to establish this grant program. These funds would allow municipalities to work with their community organizations to develop programs with the highest potential for benefit in their community. Bridgeport, Hartford and New Haven would be eligible to apply for grants of up to $750,000 each. Waterbury and New London would be eligible for grants up to $500,000 each. The remaining funds would be available to other urban areas.

This initiative is designed to combat violence in urban areas. Urban violence is by no means a strictly law-enforcement issue. Under this proposed grant program each community would have the opportunity to determine which programs and services would best serve their youth. These programs and services could include mentoring and tutoring services, youth athletic leagues, and training in conflict resolution and peer counseling. The new funds would supplement current efforts and offer real opportunities to reduce violent activity in our cities.

Elizabeth C. Brown, Commission on Children

This bill targets Connecticut's largest cities with a history of gang violence and seeks to assist communities to provide services to youth at risk for gang involvement, academic failure, health and mental health issues that negatively impact a young person's ability to achieve adulthood with the skills and inner resources for successful adulthood.

The commission recommends that the Youth Futures Committee serve as the coordinating entity in conjunction with the Office of Policy and Management who is a member of the Youth Futures Committee in administering the grant. Linking it to the broader work of the Committee will provide a structure on the state level to work with the communities and leverage resources to avoid duplication and reinventing the wheel.

Grantees of the urban violence grant would report to the Youth Futures Committee and be able to share findings and report on progress in reducing violence, gang involvement but, also how the youth are progressing in school, with their peers, families and communities.

This would establish a new paradigm for doing business in Connecticut. Breaking down the silos we constantly talk about. All state agencies would be involved with working with the community and a consensus would be developed on how to best address the systemic problems in these cities in Connecticut. Instead of thinking about a grant program, we need to think about helping communities build “assets” in the community that foster positive youth development. The critical question to ask is: What are the assets in this community, and how can all stakeholders in the community build more assets for all youth to succeed?

I recommend the following components be part of this new paradigm shift. The Urban Violence Grant shall explicitly seek to decrease gang participation and gang violence and foster positive youth development, provide community-based services that are research based and/or identified as promising practice, foster meaningful relationships with family, school, and community, and increase opportunities for youth leadership, civic engagement, academic success, employment, and other types of activities that build life skills and job readiness.

Grantees would be required to establish a local urban violence task force, co-chaired by the chief of police and the chief elected official with a whole bunch of pertinent stakeholders, including youth on the local level.

Research is very clear. In order to sustain the efforts, you need the whole community at the table working together. We can no longer just give money to a youth service bureau or a family service bureau or a school.

We have to make them work together. No one reports back on progress or how we are monitoring everything. We need to close the loop, have these grantees come to the Youth Futures Committee, share their findings so that we can constantly improve and hold us all accountable.

NATURE AND SOURCES OF SUPPORT:

Timothy Bartlett, Executive Director, Bridgeport YMCA

To succeed in life a person needs to feel safe, the threat of violence is far too real for many of our teens today. More can be done to ensure that this does not have to be a way of life for young men and women. We would welcome the opportunity to work with the city and the state to expand our programming and to implement additional programs to successfully reduce violence in our community.

Connecticut Conference of Municipalities

This bill would provide financial support for municipal and other programs that provide much needed learning, growth and recreational opportunities for youth.

Many studies have shown that youth who have mentorship relationships, tutoring and recreational activities are much less likely to engage in risky behavior, which decreases the likelihood of involvement with the criminal justice and social services systems. Further, such endeavors help build the self-esteem of young people.

Bridgeport Child Advocacy Coalition

We applaud the fact that this bill specifically targets youth between the ages of 12 and 18 years of age. This age range constitutes the group of children which are primarily exposed to urban violence and the juvenile justice system. This bill provides funding for all the services which research has shown to be related to positive healthy development in youth,

mentoring, tutoring, enrichment activities, social and cultural activities, athletic and recreational opportunities and training in problem-solving, decision making, conflict resolution, peer counseling and similar topics designed to reduce youth violence.

It is critical to emphasize that there is no one bullet method in reducing youth violence. Instead, any effective preventative strategy in reducing youth violence is one that has a dual focus of not only targeting violent behavior but even more importantly focusing on creating developmentally healthy youth.

NATURE AND SOURCES OF OPPOSITION:

None presented