Juvenile Justice System and Procedures

Big Brother Big Sister Mentorship Program

Hector I. Rivera

Columbia College

Juvenile Justice System and Procedures

Abstract

At-risk children need mentorship programs in order to deviate from a path of delinquency and crime. Therefore, private organizations have created mentorship programs that target at-risk children and provide alternative means of mentorship when not adequately available at home. This essay will provide a discussion on the effectiveness of the program and the characteristics that make it up.

Big Brother Big Sister Mentorship Program

      At- risk children of the city of New York have the opportunity to participate in a mentorship program that is specifically constructed for the purpose of guiding and providing positive ways of coping with the environment in a young person’s life. It may possibly change their life’s trajectory from delinquency and crime to a more productive one. The Big Brother Big Sister (BBBS) program of New York City provides a learning and mentorship environment where adults and children come together on a one-to-one basis and participate in activities such as sports, education, and workplace mentoring. This program is completely voluntary and in order to make a change in the young lives of children, adults must get involved and give up their free time to the BBBS organization. The same is applied to the children. They must willingly participate in the program and their parent(s) or guardian must enroll them in the program.

      The BBBS chapter in New York City was started in a courtroom on December 3rd 1904 when a child stood in front of a judge waiting for his sentence to be imposed. The courtroom clerk by the name of Ernest Coulter plead “There is only one possible way to save that youngster, and that is to have some earnest, true man volunteer to be his big brother. To look after him, to help him do right, to make the little chap feel that there is at least one human being in this great city who takes a personal interest in him, who cares whether he lives or dies. I call for a volunteer” (BBBS, 2016). By the end of that court session 39 men volunteered and the beginning of BBBS took place. Since then, the program bloomed to encompass more than five thousand children that have been partnered with adults in any given year.

      The program acknowledges the challenges that exist in the city as it relates to children. The website states that “524,000 children in New York City live below the poverty line” and 149,000 come from broken homes (BBBS, 2016). The New York Daily News published an article in

December 2015 that accredited 49% of shootings in New York to gang and small street crew activity in the low-income neighborhoods, particularly to the boroughs of Brooklyn and Bronx. Murders were at 40% or 130 of the 324 committed as of December 6th of 2015. Children as young as 10 years of age were found to be active gang members and participants in violent criminal activity and the oldest gang member was said to be 30 years old. On the statistics provided alone one can determine that a problem and a need for an alternate role model in the young lives exists. A 30 year old gang member and harden criminal cannot be a positive role model for elementary and junior high school level children.

     The BBBS is both a prevention and diversion program. It’s true effectiveness comes from the volunteers that have and demonstrate a genuine concern for the “littles” that are assigned to them. In an article written in the Huffington Post regarding the effectiveness of the Big Brother concept, Mike Eskenazi wrote “I realized two things right then. Each of our worlds seemed to becoming less alien to the other. Also, just like that, I was a trusted adult in this kid’s life. What started on something of a whim, with the five minutes it took me to fill out that online form, was now very real. I’d like to think that places that once seemed off-limits are starting to seem accessible to both of us. And that he may be getting something out of this whole thing, too.” (Eskenazi, 2012). Mr. Eskenazi was assigned a 6-year-old boy from East New York, Brooklyn who had no father figure and lived with his mother and two older brothers. His mother had seen the successes that her older children were having in the program and she enrolled her youngest as well. In doing so, the young child has gained a true friend and someone he can look up to.

           It is calculated that 97% of high school seniors in the program graduate and 96% of those are accepted to college. The mentorship from adults that stem from true concern is possibly the biggest and most prevalent factor. Adults that have no invested interest other than to see a child succeed is what may well be the biggest influence imposed on the teens and children.

       The BBBS offers Traditional, Juvenile Justice, New American, Education Initiative, Workplace, and Summer Internship programs. The varied programs allow for mentorship in different career path possibilities as well as educational and community based involvement of the youths. All programs inherently have an adult that is capable of effectively guiding and mentoring a child within that field. For example, the New American program is specifically for immigrant children that are having trouble adjusting to the “language, culture, and custom” of the United States and are assigned a mentor from the same ethnic background as the child to help in the transition. This would ease some of the negative issues and hardships that exist within the child and facilitate the educational opportunities that the child may think he doesn’t have due to language and cultural barriers.

       Other social service programs that offer the same type of mentorship and guidance can work together with the BBBS mentorship program in achieving one common goal. That goal should always be to keep a child from going down the wrong path of trouble and keep them from seeking the influence from negative role models.

     A program available throughout the community is the Police Athletic League (PAL), which allows officers to volunteer their off-duty time as coaches of youth sports teams within the community. Even though they are off-duty, juveniles still see them as officers out of uniform and therefore, may be reluctant to accept them as true mentors. Although the PAL is similar to the BBBS program in many ways, unlike BBBS, volunteers of the PAL are almost always police officers that need to win the trust of the community to effectively do their jobs of fighting crime. Another program available is the NYPDs explorer program that is constructed by the police department as a partnership between an officer and high school students. It is used as a recruiting program as well as a mentorship and prevention tool.