This past week the Children’s Legal Rights Journal hosted its annual symposium. Its topic: “Gun Violence Among Youth in Chicago.” The approach to violence and its solutions were framed as a public health issue, not a criminal one. Speakers from professors, to community organizers, to friends of victims of gun violence, to policy makers spoke of preventive measures and programs to help make Chicago and children safer. The goal is to allow all children to actualize their right to safe neighborhoods and bright futures.
Gun Violence Among Youth in Chicago Symposium
First, it is important to share what I learned is happening with gun violence in Chicago in 2013. According to the media, Chicago is a murder capital, needs the National Guard, and is worse than it has ever been. While incidents of gun violence are still far too high, as a city, Chicago’s violence has been in a steady decline for the past decade. This year we are down 20%. However, this is a city-wide average and is not consistent throughout the neighborhoods. While violence has significantly declined in some, it has actually increased in others. So for some children, Chicago is even worse.
“The vast majority of homicide victims are between the ages of 17 and 25.”
Though this may be difficult to digest, knowing the concentrated areas of violence has led to creative solutions. My favorite speaker was from an organization called Cure Violence. They approach violence like an epidemic, such as Cholera. By their metaphor, diseases break out in concentrated areas at points in history. He presented maps that plotted gun violence next to maps that plotted a Cholera outbreak to visually represent their similarities. To continue the metaphor, he argued that in health to cure or stop an outbreak, we try to prevent transmission. His organization tries to prevent transmission of gun violence by de-escalating conflicts. They hire people from communities and ex-violent offenders to monitor tensions in a neighborhood and to serve as mentors. When a shooting occurs, people will go to hospitals to try to prevent retaliation. They work with children to show them other options. They have had some really good success.
While this speaker was an interesting perspective on the issue, all of the speakers consistently felt education was crucial. Providing children with good schooling keeps them off the streets. It gives them critical thinking skills to help make better decisions. It puts them in an environment of learners, as compared to prison to be surrounded by violent adults. While the law defines children as under 18, often children as young as 15 are tried as adults. Even though brains do not fully develop until early twenties. Because the child brain does not have the full capacity to reason and critically think, children engage in imitative learning. They largely learn by repeating other people’s behavior. A reoccurring theme of the symposium was, how do we provide children with the right behaviors and people to imitate?
This issue is extremely complex and this blog post barely scraped the surface. The conference took a critical eye to our criminal justice system and its emphasis on punishment, not treatment. Race also may not be ignored. In a segregated Chicago, race is a huge factor in the history, the impact, and the solutions to gun violence. Speakers encouraged us to create policy through the lens of equality: does this law work towards creating equality of people? While I cannot encapsulate the issue, or even the conference, it is an important topic that is impacting children all throughout the city. I was happy to spend the day discussing these issues and learning how I can contribute to peace as a person and a lawyer.
This American Life recently released a 2 part podcast, where they spent five months at Harper High School in Chicago, trying to understand the impact of gun violence on students. Listen to Part 1 and Part 2.
Questions for Amie? Email law-admissions [at] luc [dot] edu with the subject “Ask Amie” and she will make sure to answer them.