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Dr. HARMON. I would be glad to. I am not suggesting that all State organizations are perfect by any means.

But, nevertheless, it would be possible to establish the machinery at a State level under the executive order of the Governor to at least be responsible for the coordination of plans.

This doesn't mean that the State agency would rule out any local plan, but certainly to review it and pass it on to the Federal granting authority, that this is a coordinated situation, that we do need X project in X town, and so forth.

As it is, sir, this would not be possible under this bill.

The other thing that I would hasten to point out, and I apologize for the neglect in preparing my written statement that I omitted the fact that the bill fails to recognize the tremendous need for the development and training of the personnel required to do the job that the bill suggests.

We cannot grab out of thin air the personnel who, in the last analysis, are the vital implemetation of everything in this bill.

We all know the tremendous manpower problem we all face in finding able people in this work. I am afraid, sir, this would be very important.

Mr. PUCINSKI. I would like to advise the witness that we do have an amendment drafted, and it will be proposed as part of this bill to provide training facilities and training programs.

Dr. HARMON. I see.

Actually, Mr. Chairman, on one other point, in terms of fiscal necessity, that is about all this bill would do. The $25 million spread throughout 50 States would be extremely minor, statements about the needs for construction, it practically would eliminate any construction aspects because of the obvious high costs.

Mr. PUCINSKI. On that point, I might advise you that we went over this very carefully with Secretary Gardner, and it is the Department's feeling that in the first year of operation it couldn't really use more than $25 million because of the great deal of planning involved.

But it would then go up to $75 million in the second year, and I believe to $150 million in 1971. So all told this legislation anticipates some $475 million of Federal aid to local communities over the next 5-year period.

I questioned seriously the $25 million in the first year, but the Department feels the States couldn't use more than that in the first year while they were cranking up.

Dr. HARMON. I certainly accept that point.

STATEMENT OF THEODORE PARRISH, DIRECTOR, DELINQUENCY PROGRAMS, YOUTH DEVELOPMENT UNIT, UNITED PLANNING ORGANIZATION, WASHINGTON, D.C.

Mr. PARRISH. Mr. Chairman and members of the subcommitte, I would like to thank the subcommittee for having the opportunity to testify in behalf of this bill.

I have a prepared statement which you have already inserted into the record.

I would like to refer to some of the aspects in the statement. Some of the members of the subcommittee may recall that in 1964 the Juvenile Delinquency and Youth Offenses Control Act of 1961 provided a

special national juvenile delinquency demonstration project here in the District of Columbia, and the United Planning Organization in 1964, with the assistance of this bill, was able to mount a demonstration program.

During the last 211⁄2 years, UPO has carried out a broad range of antidelinquency programs which have been limited to the Cardozo area of the District of Columbia.

The basis for some of these programs included in this effort were based on this Washington Action for Youth, which carried our research between 1962 and 1964. Washington Action for Youth became a subsidiary to UPO before the first moneys were made available and before some of the delinquency programs were made operational.

Some of this money under Washington Action for Youth did, however, enable the funding of several programs, including neighborhood legal services, model school programs, and neighborhood development programs.

Under the juvenile delinquency aspect of our programs, there were three kinds that we attempted to mount. The first type was projects operated by the District of Columbia government and private organizations aimed at providing services to delinquency or potentially delinquent youth.

For example, we provided group foster homes which were familytype homes for youth who would otherwise be institutionalized at the Children's Center.

We also provided a roving leader program which detached youth workers to alienated youth in the community, and these roving leaders enabled these youth to get in contact again with character-building agencies.

In addition, the Junior Citizens Corps is a type of program which provided leadership training for delinquency-prone youth.

Another kind of program operated by the United Planning Organization was projects designed to improve the rehabilitation system for juvenile and youthful offenders.

The youth community facilities are examples of this, a series of halfway houses which provide small group residences for youth in varying stages of conflict with the law.

One of the most interesting programs that we have mounted is the neighborhood development youth programs, about which I would like to make a few remarks.

The total sum of the results of these programs amounted to a decrease in juvenile delinquency in the District of Columbia in 1966. The neighborhood development youth program upon which I would like to elaborate, provides disadvantaged youth with an opportunity to articulate some of the problems that confront them and enable them to have a framework within which to describe methods of redressing some of these projects.

We feel this is an excellent way to do two things, really. On the one hand, it is a method of preventing delinquency by engaging youth in meaningful activities which make them feel that they have a stake in the community.

On the other, it is a way of building a foundation on which meaningful later adult social and political participation can take place. I would like to mention some of the things that this neighborhood development youth program has been able to accomplish. But first, I would like to briefly describe it.

A typical center, and we have 10 of these in the different areas of Washington, D.C., has as its director a youth organizer, usually a social worker, and he is assisted by another adult who is from the indigenous community.

Then there are two senior Neighborhood Youth workers, two of whom we have with us today, and four Neighborhood Youth workers supported by Neighborhood Youth Corps youngsters.

The job of this staff is to go out into the community, meet with other youth, find out what problems they have, and begin to engage them in discussing these problems and seeing what they can do about some of them.

These Neighborhood Youth workers have been able to form a number of groups. Some of the things that the centers have done are: To provide tutoring programs for other youth in the community, to negotiate with the Recreation Department, and to get some recreation centers provided for their particular areas.

They were able to involve youth in a fall-summer planning conference which was to plan programs for the youth of the District of Columbia.

It would be advisable, I think, in considering this bill, to continue this kind of an effort, as it provides a model which may well be copied in other parts of the country.

We would like to underscore in section 2.C. of the bill the statement which says, "Youth should be given meaningful opportunities to be involved in the efforts designed to assist them." This is entirely consistent with the neighborhood youth development program and what it has demonstrated to date.

We would also suggest that section 141, page 10, line 2, be amended to provide grants at a level of 90 percent of the project cost rather than 75 percent in the initial years of the program.

In section 141, page 10, line 4, the words "and preventive” should be added after the word "rehabilitative”.

In section 142, page 11, line 6, this clause very definitely underscores what the neighborhood development youth program is all about.

It is our feeling that the amount of money authorized to carry out the programs envisioned in this bill is clearly inadequate to meet the national problem of delinquency.

We would also suggest inclusion of language similar to that included in the 1964 amendments to the Juvenile Act of 1961, which would enable the neighborhood development youth program as a model to be operated by the United Planning Organization once the present funding discontinues at the end of this year.

We feel that this program has significant national importance in view of some of the comments that I have made earlier.

I would like to thank you at this time for allowing me to present my statement.

Mr. HAWKINS (presiding). Would you like to introduce your neighborhood workers at this time?

Mr. PARRISH. Yes, I would. We have Miss Tangra Pharis, a neighborhood youth worker in the Cardoza area, and we have Mr. Ronald Sinclair, also a neighborhood worker.

Mr. HAWKINS. Thank you. We appreciate their being with you this morning.

Dr. Herman.

STATEMENT OF DR. MELVIN HERMAN, DIRECTOR, CENTER FOR THE STUDY OF UNEMPLOYED YOUTH, GRADUATE SCHOOL OF SOCIAL WORK, NEW YORK UNIVERSITY, NEW YORK, N.Y.

Dr. HERMAN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I also have submitted a statement for the record and I would like to have it inserted into the record.

Mr. HAWKINS. Your statement has already been placed into the record.

Dr. HERMAN. I have one or two brief comments on some particular aspects of the bill.

First, I would like to indicate that I have been involved in various capacities with many of the activities undertaken under the Juvenile Delinquency and Youth Offenses Control Act of 1961, both operating some of the programs made possible as well as serving as a member of the Demonstration Review Panel, and now at the university level in which we are involved in teaching in the field of delinquency and social welfare.

The reason I mention this is because I would hope that there was no feeling of uneasiness on the part of the committee or the Congress on some of the major contributions which have been made under this modest legislation during the past 5 years.

As a matter of fact, I think it is because of a good deal of conviction which I have as to the merit of many of the activities undertaken under the earlier legislation that I would certainly support a continuation and an expanded or renewed effort under the new legislation.

As I understand it, one of the major thrusts of the new legislation will provide for a continuation of local community initiative which I think is terribly important because of the fact that I think perhaps even without stating it the legislation accepts the notion, which certainly I would support, that juvenile delinquency, of course, is not a unitary concept, which would mean, as has been mentioned earlier this morning, that its roots are different, it has to be coped with in local communities in different ways, and that different youths are delinquent for different reasons and will need different forms of intervention.

I have been particularly interested in the work or training for delinquent youth, and what, of course, we have found-I guess it is no surprise that work and work training is not useful for all delinquents. It is probably useful as a rehabilitative device for some.

I think one of the difficulties that we have had over the past years that I have been involved in these programs, is our inability to make sound judgments as to which delinquents need what kinds of programs. Consequently, while there is a need, to be sure, for certain kinds of institutional programs, nobody would argue that they are good for all delinquents.

It is the same way that we can argue that some youngsters can be treated best in a work-training situation, but this is not true for all delinquents. Unfortunately, while we are able to make this statement in general, our ability to differentiate at the present time I think has been very inadequate. I think some of our earlier efforts have been moving in the direction of trying to identify which youngsters can use which forms of treatment.

I think this is the kind of effort which should be underscored and supported in the new legislation.

If I may give just one example of the need also for zeroing in on some of the specific aspects of the problem and getting us below the level of the slogans, in my own work, and others have found this, while we are not certain that youth unemployment causes delinquency, on the other hand, it has become increasingly clear to us that delinquency causes youth unemployment.

Specifically what I am referring to here is some of the careful work which a number of projects around the country have been trying to do in studying the work patterns and work problems of delinquent youth, to cite one example which I am sure is true in other parts of the country, through the misuse and probably the illegal use, though I am not an attorney, of juvenile arrest records, these arrest records become a bar to employment.

I am not talking of convictions, but I am talking of the mere fact of arrest. We find in New York, both among the private employers as well as public employers, that they are asking on application blanks for the fact of a juvenile arrest.

This becomes a screening device in which youngsters, large numbers of them, are excluded from work as a result of having an arrest on their record.

We have pointed out and others have pointed out to employers that this is an inappropriate use of such records, and then employers find ways of getting around them, by asking for waivers, which they get from youngsters so that the information about an arrest can be found, or, again, ways in which young people who have been arrested but never convicted have been kept out of employment training and actual employment.

I raise this question not for the purpose of getting into the details of misuse of juvenile arrest records, but I think it is perfectly clear that some of the procedures which have emerged from the handling of delinquent and predelinquent youth have lacked a degree of specificity which I think must be encouraged in the new effort.

I have just one or two final comments, Mr. Chairman.

It is perhaps for this reason, too, that I might find myself in some perhaps modest disagreement with Dr. Harmon about the role of the States. Certainly I recognize full well the appropriate role of the States in these and other Federal programs.

However, I would hope in whatever language is finally arrived at that there would be adequate protection, even if there was appropriate clearance and whatnot at the State level, for local communities to mount their own individual efforts to cope not necessarily because of the fact that one is trying to strengthen the local community; that is another issue, but because of the fact that I am persuaded that the individual needs and the individual aspects of the problem vary tremendously from community to community within a State.

I would hope that the needs for State employment would not serve as a way for in any way reducing the need for individual local initiative to cope with individual problems.

My very last point is that I want to thoroughly underscore and agree with the point that Dr. Harmon and Congressman Pucinski have mentioned, that here is a significant amount of money, for the moment.

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