Mr. PUCINSKI. I don't quarrel with the Court's ability to dispense proceedings, but it is going to be an entirely different kind of proceeding than you have had heretofore and it will entitle a lot of youngsters to representations they do not now have. I think it is going to substantially alter the nature of proceedings in juvenile courts.

It is going to mean that youngsters will be entitled to bail, which they have not been entitled to up to now. It will mean, I think, a serious revision of all court proceedings in comparison with the practice we have now.

Mrs. MCGARRY. Certainly, it will. One of the most important facets will be representation by counsel.

Mr. PUCINSKI. Mr. Ford.

Mr. FORD. I would like to concur with what the chairman said. I have just had a chance to read the Court's opinion, but if Mr. Justice Fortas said what you say he said, I am prepared to disagree with him very violently. I am not opposed to the decision. I think it is long overdue. But I think those who have not been down to the juvenile courts don't know what is going on.

Only in large cities do we have anything resembling a judicial system for the handling of juveniles.

Mr. PUCINSKI. If my colleague will yield, we do not mean or suggest there are not aspects relating to the juvenile which are valid, but the features of the juvenile which our opponents argue will not be impaired by constitutional domestication, for example, juvenile separated from adults are no longer involved nor affected by the procedural discussion.

They avoid classifying juveniles as criminals. I think John was making a very good statement as a very fine attorney. They are going to continue having juvenile courts hear these cases, but it is going to be an entirely different court atmosphere than you had before.

Excuse me for interrupting.

Mr. FORD. With this decision before us, I think the legislation becomes even more important and the $25 million becomes less significant. A massive amount of money will have to be put up for this kind of treatment. For one thing, you will have to redefine delinquent conduct between the quasi-criminal and questionable criminal conduct which brings the young juvenile before the court for conduct not juvenile at all on his part, conduct that would, except for the age of the personal, generally fall within one of the criminal statutes.

Juveniles do not, in the majority of cases, come before the courts as a result of a violation of a penal statute that would be called a criminal law. There are a variety of proceedings in States regarding juveniles, and it will take some hard work to identify these so that you handle regular juvenile cases the way they have handled them within the courts and switch others over so that the juvenile is handled in a different way if the charge involves a violation of the penal statute, as the Gault case did.

I would think this would lend support for the chairman's bill now before this committee to have the Appropriations Committee come up with some real serious money.

Mr. PUCINSKI. Mr. Scheurer.

Mr. SCHEURER. I have no questions.

Mr. PUCINSKI. Thank you for your testimony.

Our next witness this morning is Mr. Echols.

I think you can probably get started, Mr. Echols, and, if we do not finish, we will resume at 2 o'clock this afternoon. Why don't we at least start for the next few minutes.

STATEMENT OF ALVIN ECHOLS, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, NORTH CITY CONGRESS, PHILADELPHIA, PA.

Mr. PUCINSKI. We are happy to have you here this morning, Mr. Echols, and to hear your view of this exciting project, the North City Congress, which you have established in Philadelphia. It is my understanding it has been a very effective effort in doing exactly what we talked about a few minutes ago, tying together all the community resources for a concerted drive on this whole problem of juvenile crime.

The statement you have been kind enough to prepare will go in the record in its entirety at this point, along with a brief summary of the program that you have been able to develop.

(The statement follows:)

REMARKS ON THE PROPOSED JUVENILE DELINQUENCY PREVENTION ACT OF 1967 BY ALVIN E. ECHOLS, ESQ., EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR OF THE NORTH CITY CONGRESS, PHILADELPHIA, PENNSYLVANIA

In the written material which we have provided, you will find a full description of my organization, the North City Congress. To provide context for the remarks I have to offer here today, let me summarize that description quickly. North City Congress is a non-profit, tax-exempt community organization, a federation of neighborhood institutions, agencies, and individuals in the predominantly non-white ghetto area of North Philadelphia. Our area of primary concern contains some 300,000 residents, among whom the indices of poverty, unemployment, educational underattainment, welfare dependency, crime and delinquency are higher than the rest of the city, and whose housing, municipal services and facilities are worse than the rest of the city's. And every inch of that area is gang territory.

Our operations fall primarily under the heading of community organization and development. We work predominantly with adults, through the neighborhood organizations which they form to deal with the social problems affecting the area. It is in this context that we approach juvenile delinquency, since it is a subject of great concern to the organized residents of North Philadelphia. For almost one year now, we have operated a community-organization-based program which we designed to improve Police-Community Relations in our community. This program, to which I shall have specific references later on, is a combined demonstration and training effort funded through the Office of Juvenile Delinquency and Youth Development of the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare. To prevent any confusion, I should state that it is an adult-oriented program which includes experimental approaches to youth-police interaction, and involvement of youth in community organization.

As invited, we have reviewed the proposed legislation and are impressed with its general intent, and with the administrative flexibility it provides to support that intent. We are particularly pleased with the emphasis the bill places on prevention of delinquency, since that emphasis implicitly calls for the removal of identifiable causes of delinquency, rather than frenetic ministration to their effects. Further, we strongly support your belief that youths "should be given meaningful opportunities to be involved in the efforts designed to assist them." And we welcome the recognition and support this bill will bring to communitydesigned and community-based innovative efforts aimed at reducing juvenile delinquency.

NCC believes that the complex of individual and social problems subsumed under the heading "juvenile delinquency" requires a wide range of "before," "during," and "after" approaches to amelioration or solution. It is important that

in any given locality, the range of such efforts be carefully and comprehensively coordinated into an overall system to prevent (1) unnecessary or uncoordinated duplicate use of usually limited resources, and (2) effective in-process evaluation of the combined approaches to provide sound and realistic basis for program expansion, reshaping, termination, and innovation to fill holes and meet changing needs. The proposed bill provides a basis for meaningful developments in this regard. We voted with particular pleasure its inclusion (in Section 103 of Title II) of 90% support of planning efforts in the often-costly program development process, and its inclusion (in Section 201 of Title II) of support for demonstration programs based on relevant research and promising innovative designs. Our particular pleasure in this regard stems from two considerations. First. of course, is the fact that it was this sort of federal flexibility which enabled us to get our somewhat complex Police-Community Relations Program demonstration into operation. The 90% program development support, not available at the time we were putting our program together, will greatly enhance this flexibility. We welcome the continuance and expansion of such potential opportunity for ourselves and other like-minded, like-situated (i.e., relatively unwealthy) organizations. Second, however, is the fact that this aspect of the bill will allow its administrators to promote approaches to the prevention of juvenile delinquency in the general context of community development-a context which our Police-Community Relations Program attempts to reflect, and one which is too often lacking in the consideration of juvenile delinquency as a social problem.

I used the hackneyed term "social problem" with a purpose. This bill recog nizes juvenile delinquency as an alarming phenomenon in all reaches of American society. We regret that its phrasing was not explicit in dealing with the neces sary and logical counterpart of this finding to wit, that patterns of social forces which generate patterns of individual needs are primarily involved in this phenomenon. The forces and their patterns of effect are not well defined, and they differ in genesis and application in the various socio-economic and geographic elements of America's total community. Nonetheless, it must be recognized that juvenile delinquency, in general terms, is a problem generated by the society it afflicts. North City Congress, would submit, therefore, that its solution, or even significant reduction, requires social change not merely change in individual behavior patterns.

North City Congress' comments on juvenile delinquency are necessarily related to that problem as manifest in low-income urban communities, and particularly, low-income minority communities. It is in this context that I intend my remarks on social forces and social change, although I firmly believe the same criteria apply to consideration of the problem in the suburbs and more affluent sections of the city.

The forces that play upon low-income youth growing up in urban America have been under study for some time. In recent years, particular attention has been given to the particular twists, ramifications, and ethnic corollaries of those forces in the Negro community. There is a school of thought which finds the culture of the lower economic classes itself to be a generating milieu of gang delinquency. Matrifocal family situations, characteristic of all low-income groups, and particularly pervasive in the Negro community, contribute to this milien, but so do a wide variety of other environmental variables, not the least of which is the insidious effects of racial discrimination.

In a low-income community, cultural forms of communication and associative produce juvenile gangs which are functional peer-groups-groups in which youths obtain their status and identity. In a largely matrifocal community, juvenile gangs also serve as an introduction: to manhood-providing models for sex-role development, and status independent of females. In a drab community rife with overcrowded dwellings and streets, lacking recreational facilities, open space. and accessible transportation, juvenile gangs develop "territorial" concerns which provide meaningful locational attachments for youths otherwise confronted with an amorphous world terrible in its extent and saneness, and the same overall in its terribleness. In a segregated residential area, the territorial claims of a juvenile gang provide a basis for assumption of social power which ca: not be realized outside the color line.

Juvenile gangs are a natural outgrowth of low-income society, especially in its urbanized settings. And juvenile delinquency in such communities is primarily a function of gang activities. But gangs and their members are not inherently de

linquent, criminal, or even overtly hostile. The normal desire for "kicks" in a community with no kicking room except vacant houses and streetcorners has something to do with generating delinquent acts. So does permissive, or fearfulor hostile-law enforcement. So does the availability of liquor and drugs, and the desire for physical manifestation of individuality and status when little money is available. But so, too, do the generalized value systems of the bottom socioeconomic group in our society-the values which prize, for instance, toughness. self-protection (at the cost of others' protection), cunning, and defense against authority. These are positive values generated by an ancient history of rejection of class and race by a majority society: by the need to survive mentally, and physically, in a world which often seems purposefully or carelessly intent on crushing the poor and the black.

To remove the gangs, and the values and many of the pressures which cause them to act and react delinquently and criminally, their generating milieu must finally be removed.

I emphasize "finally" because there are obviously many things that must be done with the effects of the milieu while it is (hopefully) being changed for the better. This is particularly so in the area of prevention. I would like to relate to the Committee an incident which North City Congress considers significant in this regard. In 1966, during the famous Girard College demonstrations in North Philadelphia, a well-known and rather notorious gang in the vicinity of that institution went over to the civil rights side. The leadership and "old heads" wielding primary influence in the gang became the core of that long-drawn-out protest, converting their organizational strength and fighting spirit into militancy in the cause of changing their social environment. This leadership has stayed with the civil rights movement. After the conversion, the gang "went silent" as a hostile force in the community, and is only now being reorganized by new leaders-primarily due to the incursions by other gangs who sought to take over the territory."

This happening demonstrates a line of prevention which North City Congress considers almost ideal in the overall context of ghetto juvenile delinquency. We have sought to begin to institutionalize it through our Police-Community Relations Program by involving gangs and their members in program-oriented community organizations and issue-oriented, structured interaction with the police. This approach involves recognition of the functional status of self-developed youth organization, and the necessity for consideration of the drives and legitimate desires of such groups and their members. We have also sought to extend and shape this line of consideration to the context of the public educational process by bringing confrontation-type youth-police interaction into high school civics classes. Lessons on law and law-enforcement have more meaning when the enforcers are there to explain their interpretation of the situation, to explain (if they can) the reason for differences between principle and practice, and to respond as public officials to the real grievances many youths have due to those differences.

We welcome the aspects of this bill which make possible these sorts of approaches to the problem, and the many other variations, complements, and unrelated innovations which we and other organizations may develop. But we noted in our Program application that good police-community relations can only come about on a permanent basis when the social and environmental scene in general is changed for the better-that a Police-Community Relations Program is essentially meaningless unless conducted in the context of serious efforts to improve life chances in general-housing, employment, education, economic and racial integration, etc. North City Congress devotes the remainder of its organizational efforts to such causes. As with the Police-Community Relations Program, our efforts in approaching these other interlocking social issues are not unqualified successes-in many areas we have only our good intentions to offer up for view. But we proceed against the background of the terrible need for development of comprehensive approaches to the solution of urban social problems as they affect our community, and produce what actual programs we can while working with the many other concerned agencies for the needed coordination and innovation which will produce meaningful social change.

We must apply the same standards of evaluation to H.R. 7642, and to approaches to solving the problem of juvenile delinquency. Thus it is that we urge that among other things, the guidelines produced for the administration of this bill when (hopefully) passed include provisions of the following nature:

That particularly under Title I, Section 103, Title I, Part C, and Title II, Section 201, administrators actively seek the development of approaches to the pre vention and reduction of juvenile delinquency in low-income and minority populations which incorporate, or relate programatically to, efforts toward:

1. The improvement of employment and employment opportunities, particularly in areas outside low-income, minority ghettos, and toward the development of new career lines for non-professionals in the field of social service and in this context, particularly in the line of youth employment for the design and operation of ongoing youth-service programs.

2. The improvement of education, educational services, new educational methods, and racial and economic integration of educational systems, and particularly toward the development of capability in school systems to attract and educate youths who presently drop out due to a lack of that capacity.

3. The improvement of housing stock, housing choice, housing integration, and general improvement of the physical environment.

North City Congress feels that only in this way can the fight against juvenile delinquency-at least in its manifestations in the urban minority ghetto-be linked to the ongoing effort to produce changes in the society which will remove the causes for that delinquency.

North City Congress congratulates you on the production of a useful bill, and thanks you for this opportunity to present our ideas for consideration.

A summary description of the North City Congress and its activities is attached.

NORTH CITY CONGRESS: SUMMARY DESCRIPTION OF ORGANIZATION AND ACTIVITIES

North City Congress, a non-profit, tax-exempt community organization, is a federation of independent neighborhood groups, institutions, agencies, businesses, and concerned individuals in North Central Philadelphia. Its policy-making Board of Directors has as its majority component the presidents of 37 neighborhood civic organizations. The Congress' geographical area of concern encompasses some 330,000 people, 85% or more of whom are non-white. The indices of sub-employment, poverty, low educational achievement, poor health, overcrowding, deterio rated housing, lack of municipal services and facilities, crime, delinquency, and welfare dependency are higher in this area by far than in the rest of the city. Through its members and affiliates, the Congress has direct and indirect reach to some 10,000 individuals.

North City Congress (NCC) seeks to enable the North Philadelphia community, through its many neighborhood and civic organizations, to exercise a strong voice in the arena of government and social welfare operations as they apply to the improvement of the overall situation of this ghetto community. NCC's primary func tions in this context are four: organization, education, facilitation, and innovation. The wide range of activities needed to support these functions has required that the Congress maintain a high degree of administrative and operational flexibility, and its ongoing work pattern reflects a shifting variety of task response to community need.

First community organization and organization support. North Philadelphia is blessed with a host of neighborhood organizations the bedrock of social initiative in our community. The Congress was formed to unite this scattered leadership in coalition harness, so that its fragmented initiative force could be focussed on community-wide problems. NCC continues to work toward this end.

When a neighborhood organization, whether a member or not-requires support in order to work on community issues as well as localized problems, the NCC staff attempts to provide or arrange for that support. This sort of activity spans the range from referral calls, through provision of communications and meeting facilities, design and production of literature, correspondence and graphic aids, to actual door-to-door work and occasional legal assistance (for instance, in opposing a zoning variance or a liquor-license transfer).

Second-community education. When neighborhood organizations have time and energy to commit to work on community-wide problems, and an organizational structure to support that commitment, their first need is for operationally useful information on which to base decisions relating to goals, priorities, strategy and procedures. The needed material includes comprehensive analysis of the problems at hand, the approaches presently offered or proposed as means to their solution, the likely effect of those approaches, and suggestions of viable alternative co which might offer better hope of success.