Students to Investigate CA's Juvenile Justice System


For Immediate Release: August 4, 1997

SAN FRANCISCO -- From a boy's boot camp in Sloughouse to the prison cells of Chowchilla, 27 high school students will later this month embark on an intense trip through California's juvenile justice system.

"Juvenile Justice: Unplugged," sponsored by the ACLU of Northern California's Howard A. Friedman First Amendment Education Project, will give students an opportunity to meet with the people behind the justice system as well as explore the reasons and alternatives to a life in prison.

In Stockton, the students will meet with the staff and youth at Chaderjidan, where they will observe the daily procedures of a maximum security facility. They will also spend one day at Boy's Ranch in Sloughouse, CA, where they will meet with staff and tour the facilities to receive a glimpse of the lives of boys living in a boot camp.

One highlight of the trip will be a rare opportunity to interview prisoners on Death Row, and also talk with family members of murder victims and the wives of condemned inmates in San Quentin. Students will then attend the Mumia Abu-Jamal Freedom Rally in San Francisco, where they will share the platform with former Black Panther leader Geronimo Pratt and novelist Alice Walker to protest the death penalty.

The students will also observe San Francisco's Teen Court, and visit organizations such as the South East Asian Violence Prevention Project and the Rites of Passage Program to investigate the reasons leading to juvenile crime and discuss ways to solve issues of violence, police harassment and youth curfews.

"The purpose of the week-long trip is to educate students on the issues affecting the juvenile system and to place faces on the people who are affected by it," said Nancy Otto, Director of the Howard A. Friedman program. "Afterwards, they will educate their peers in classrooms throughout Northern California about their experiences in hopes to facilitate discussion and spark possible solutions to remedy the problems."

Students from the trip will also publish an expose, documenting their experiences and the situations they came across on the trip.

The diverse group of students, ranging from age 14 to 18, come from cities as far as Sacramento, Vacaville, and Modesto to Bay Area cities of San Jose, Concord, Oakland and El Cerrito.

The Howard A. Friedman First Amendment Project of the ACLU-NC was founded in 1991 and works with teachers and students in an effort to educate others of the Bill of Rights and its relation to them. Last year, the Project took students to the U.S.-Mexican border and the farming fields of northern California to explore issues surrounding immigration. The 18 students from that trip later shared their experiences with more than 1100 high school students in classrooms throughout Northern California.