A Job or a Gang (NY Times Editorial)

December 30, 2008

EDITORIAL

If the country has learned anything about street gangs, it is that police dragnets — hauling large numbers of nonviolent young people off to jail, along with the troublemakers — tend to make the problem worse, not better. Public policy should discourage young people from joining gangs in the first place by keeping them in school, getting them jobs and giving them community-based counseling and social service programs.

Federal and state programs that are supposed to provide jobs, services and counseling have been poorly financed for years. They are likely to suffer further as cash-strapped states look for ways to save money. The timing couldn’t be worse.

A new study by James Alan Fox and Marc Swatt of Northeastern University suggests that violent crime among young people may be rising, that the much-talked-about reduction in the crime rate in the 1990s may be over, and that much more must be done to prevent young people from succumbing to the gang culture.

The study also shows that the murder rate for black teenagers has climbed noticeably since 2000 while the rate for young whites has scarcely changed on the whole and, in some places, has actually declined. While more financing for local police would be useful, programs aimed at providing jobs and social services are far more important.

It is too early to say whether the numbers represent a long-term trend. But the economic crisis has clearly created the conditions for more crime and more gangs — among hopeless, jobless young men in the inner cities. Once these young men become entangled in the criminal justice system, they are typically marginalized and shut out of the job market for life.

President-elect Barack Obama’s administration and Congress will need to address the youth crisis as part of the country’s deep economic crisis. That means reviving the federal summer jobs programs that ran successfully for more than 30 years. It also means directing more federal money at proven programs that keep young people in school and out of the clutches of the gangs.

Murders by Black Teenagers Rise, Bucking a Trend (NY Times Article)

December 29, 2008

By ERIK ECKHOLM

The murder rate among black teenagers has climbed since 2000 even as murders by young whites have scarcely grown or declined in some places, according to a new report.

The celebrated reduction in murder rates nationally has concealed a “worrisome divergence,” said James Alan Fox, a criminal justice professor at Northeastern University who wrote the report, to be released Monday, with Marc L. Swatt. And there are signs, they said, that the racial gap will grow without countermeasures like restoring police officers in the streets and creating social programs for poor youths.

The main racial difference involves juveniles ages 14 to 17. In 2000, 539 white and 851 black juveniles committed murder, according to an analysis of federal data by the authors. In 2007, the number for whites, 547, had barely changed, while that for blacks was 1,142, up 34 percent.

The increase coincided with a rise in the number of murders involving guns, Dr. Fox said. The number of young blacks who were victims of murder also rose in this period.

Murder rates around the country are far below the record highs of the late 1980s and early 1990s, when a crack epidemic spawned violent turf battles.

“Regrettably, as the nation celebrated the successful fight against violent crime in the 1990s, we grew complacent and eased up on our crime-fighting efforts,” the authors said.

The report primarily blames cutbacks in federal support for community policing and juvenile crime prevention, reduced support for after-school and other social programs, and a weakening of gun laws. Cuts in these areas have been felt most deeply in poor, black urban areas, helping to explain the growing racial disparity in violent crime, Dr. Fox said.

But Bruce Western, a sociologist at Harvard, cautioned that the change in murder rates was not large and did not yet show a clear trend. Dr. Western also said that the impact of the reduction in government spending on crime control would have to be studied on a city-by-city basis, and that many other changes, including a sagging economy, could have affected murder rates.

Conservative criminologists place greater emphasis on the breakdown of black families, rather than cuts in government programs, in explaining the travails of black youths.

Much of the increase, experts say, is a product of gang activity, in midsize and large cities.

“The aggregate national murder rate since 2000 has been impressively flat — not to say there haven’t been fluctuations in individual cities,” said Alfred Blumstein, a criminologist at Carnegie Mellon University. “But when you see a spike in a city,” he said, as in Chicago recently, “it very often involves young black males shooting other young black males.”

Dr. Blumstein said that while federal cuts might have contributed to the rise in murders by black teenagers, “I think there are much more endemic problems going on.”

“In the inner city, you have large numbers of kids with no future, hanging out together with a great emphasis on their street credibility,” he said. “They’ll go to great lengths to avenge an insult.” Many of these teenagers do not stay in school, let alone join the Boys Clubs or other after-school programs.

The heightened attention to security after the 9/11 attacks might, paradoxically, have contributed to a decline in crime-fighting.

“One problem we faced was a disinvestment in policing in the post-2001 environment,” said Chief Edward A. Flynn of the Milwaukee police, who served from 2003 to 2006 as secretary of public safety in Massachusetts. “I witnessed homeland security become the monster that ate criminal justice,” Chief Flynn said, as money went to security equipment and communications and the number of police officers fell.

To fight violent crime, Chief Flynn said, the police must be a visible presence in neighborhoods with high crime rates.

From 2000 to 2007, according to the report, murders in Milwaukee by whites ages 14 to 24 rose by 4 percent, while those by blacks rose by 62 percent.

This year, Chief Flynn’s first leading the department, he deployed new teams of officers to the most violent neighborhoods, having them patrol on foot and bicycles, while federal agencies helped bring down some large gangs. The number of murders this year — 70 as of last Friday — is down one-third from last year and is the lowest since 1985.

Still, Chief Flynn said, “any improvements will be temporary unless there’s more investment in the futures of our young people.”

Teen Murder at Rikers Jail (Village Voice)

New details about the slow and painful death of a Brooklyn kid. Did guards turn a blind eye?

By Graham Rayman

published: November 19, 2008

• 
  

  Illustration by Ward Harkavy

  
  
  The teen is believed to have bled to death internally after the beating caused one of his ribs to puncture a lung, sources tell the Voice.
  
  The murder has drawn more public attention than any other jail homicide in recent memory — a series of investigations, more than the usual smattering of newspaper articles, a lawsuit, the transfer of three jail bosses, desk duty for several officers, an upcoming city council hearing, and a protest.
  
  While Charnel Robinson denies that her son had any gang affiliation, the Correction Department had him listed as a member of the Crips gang, records indicate.
  
  "Whether he was or wasn't, it bears no relevance to the fact he was a teenager beaten to death under the supervision of the Department of Correction," says Robinson family lawyer Sanford Rubenstein. "He's still the victim."
  
  Bishop Wilbur Jones, the Robinson family pastor, adds, "There had to be officers who heard his cries from his cell and if it happened in the cell, somebody had to let these inmates in. The Department of Correction failed this man."
  
  The complicity of guards in inmate assaults has been a recurring problem at RNDC and other city jails, as the Voice has reported ("Rikers Island Fight Club). And other violent incidents have sparked continual criticism. (See "A Short Life Ends on Rikers Island, in a Place Where Suicide Isn't Supposed to Happen," May 27, and "Woman-on-Woman Rape Claim at Rikers," August 5.)
  
   
  
  

  ---

  Correction records indicate that two days before the fatal assault, a Blood alleged that five inmates, including Robinson attacked him in another housing area at RNDC.
  
  It is unclear what, if any, role Robinson had in that attack, because correction staff did not witness it, the records show. The alleged victim sustained a minor injury — sore ribs.
  
  The victim in the prior assault was transferred to close custody, where inmates are held in 23-hour lockdown ostensibly for their own protection.
  
  But Robinson was transferred to a less secure unit, one for inmates with behavioral problems.
  
  Publicly, the Correction Department has proclaimed faith in its gang-intelligence division's ability to separate inmates who might have a beef with each other.
  
  Robinson was seen alive in his cell at 11:40 a.m. by a guard, records show. Robinson told the guard, according to records compiled by guards, that he wanted to stay in the cell. When the guard returned, Robinson was unconscious on the bed. A review of a Correction Department document obtained by the Voice indicates that there was a gap between the beating and Robinson's treatment, but the precise duration remains unclear.
  
  If Robinson was involved in an altercation with Bloods before he was murdered,it's curious that he was transferred into a housing area dominated by Bloods.
  
  There are only two ways in which Robinson's attackers could have entered his cell without his consent: Either the guards opened the door on purpose, or they left it open long after it should have been closed. The location of guards during the assault remains unclear.
  
  Sidney Schwartzbaum, president of the Assistant Deputy Wardens/Deputy Wardens Association, says that after the earlier incident that may have involved Robinson, a deputy warden at RNDC tried to have Robinson placed in punitive segregation, where no one could have entered his cell.
  
  But the division chief's office denied the request. "He was told there was no room in punitive segregation," Schwartzbaum tells the Voice. "Inmates have been placed in punitive segregation for a lot less. The sad part is that had he been placed in segregation, he probably would be alive today."
  
  Schwartzbaum says he has complained for years that transfers of inmates facing disciplinary charges to punitive segregation have been delayed because of a lack of bed space.
  
  In connection with the subsequent beating death of Robinson, several guards were transferred, and at least two others have been placed on modified assignment.
  
  Officials with Bronx District Attorney Robert Johnson have scheduled a meeting with Robinson's family for Thursday, a family lawyer said. A spokesman for that office says no arrests have been made, but an investigation is ongoing.
  
  Jones, 65, says the case is particularly tragic because Robinson was trying to turn his life around. "He was only in jail because he had to work overtime and missed curfew, violating his parole," Jones says. "He was a fine young man and he had a future in front of him."
  
  Robinson was initially picked up on a shoplifting charge for allegedly stealing a cell phone from a store. He served a few months, and was released on probation.
  
  He found temporary work at Staples. One night, he was asked to work late, and wound up breaking his curfew, Jones says. Robinson was sent back to Rikers on the violation.
  
  The teen's mother says that he told her only two days before the fatal assault that he had had an argument with someone. Mother and son last spoke by phone on the day of the assault and were scheduled to see other that Sunday. Robinson is now buried in a cemetery in New Jersey.
  
  "I could tell in his voice that something was wrong," says Charnel Robinson, who works as a store manager. "He should be here with me. The only thing I can do is bring these people to justice."
  
  She says she's also upset that Correction officials have not reached out to her. "It just really troubles me that to this day I haven't heard anything from the DOC, not even a simple condolence," she says.
  
   
  
  

  ---

  Investigators are surveying inmates at RNDC in an unusual effort to determine to what extent officers are working in collusion with prisoners — "letting them run the show," as one source put it.As the Voice has previously reported, the Bloods have come to dominate many jail housing areas, at times controlling other inmates' access to phones, recreation time and the commissary.
  
  In some cases, they are tapped to staff the "cleaning crew" which gives them extra time outside their cells and access to brooms, and other equipment that have been used as weapons.
  
  Even before the investigation is completed, Horn has transferred RNDC warden Gregory McLaughlin and two deputy wardens, in addition to the officers placed on modified assignment and desk duty.
  
  "Commissioner Horn felt that the jail was in need of stronger leadership and management," says DOC spokesman Stephen Morello.
  
  But the two deputy wardens—Mark Scott, a 23-year veteran, and Artemio Colon, a 28-year veteran—had previously initiated investigations of staff who condoned inmate on inmate violence at RNDC.
  
  Their efforts last year and this year led to at least one indictment of an officer, and several firings.
  
  Schwartzbaum says the transfers were an effort to "point fingers" at middle management without addressing the underlying problem or holding the executive staff accountable.
  
  "Accountability in this department stops at the warden's level," he says. "Although I think Commissioner Horn has done an excellent job on many things, the one criticism I have is that he doesn't hold his chiefs accountable."
  
  Two weeks before Robinson's murder, the chief's office applauded the work of the RNDC bosses, Schwartzbaum notes.
  
  "It's ironic that they moved this staff down, because two weeks prior they were told what a great job they were doing," he says. "To me this [series of transfers] is merely an attempt to say they took some sort of action."
  
  And, according to one correction source, the transfers don't really address the problem. "The extortion of inmates by other inmates has to be stopped, and the staff has to be in control," the source says.
  
  Correction spokesman Morello declined to comment on details of the investigation. "Maintaining staff integrity and providing for safety and security of all in our custody is paramount," he said in a statement. "That is why we immediately asked the NYPD, District Attorney and Department of Investigation to look into not only who may have attacked inmate Robinson but also staff behavior." The city council hearing prompted by the Robinson murder is scheduled for Nov. 24.
  
   
  
  

  ---

  Correction officials have publicly downplayed the severity of the problem of inmate-on-inmate violence at Rikers, but the incidents — particularly ones in which guards are involved — just keep taking place.The Voice was the first media outlet to report extensively on the phenomenon of guard involvement in such violence.
  
  Consider the following:
  
  • In February, Correction Officer Lloyd Nicholson was charged with ordering teenage inmates to beat other teen inmates at RNDC. As the Voice reported, Nicholson used a select group of teen enforcers under a regimen he called "the program."
  
  "Basically, it was like the movie A Few Good Men," a source told the Voice in April. "Either you were in the program or not. He thought the ones who weren't abiding with the program were misbehaving, and he used other inmates to discipline them."
  
  • Ex-inmates Camillo Douglas and Luis Soriano are suing the city, claiming that Bloods assaulted them last year at RNDC after guards purposely opened their cell doorsafter bedtime to allow the beatings to take place, their lawyer, Julia Kuan, says.
  
  When Douglas alleged to the Voice that the Bloods controlled the housing unit, Correction officials pooh-poohed it, and he was ignored.
  
  But in September, the Voice obtained internal Correction Department documents showing that top officials at RNDC were aware that Bloods indeed controlled the housing area.
  
  "Gang members known as Bloods are in fact giving orders to other inmates," wrote Captain Belinda Nicks. "They conspired to attack and assault Douglas and Soriano."
  
  Assistant Deputy Warden Zina McLean wrote in her report, "Bloods were trying to manipulate the feeding with distribution of the portions."
  
  And a May 2007 report written by the RNDC warden, Gregory McLaughlin, says the same thing in more muted tones: "It is evident that this incident was a result of Bloods attempting to influence the feeding and telephone use with other inmates."
  
   
  
  • Back in 2000, Bloods got into the cell of Bronx teen Matthew Velez and fatally beat him. Correction officers broke policy in opening his cell door and then either ignored his cries for help or failed to do the required security checks.
  
  During a 2002 trial, one of Velez's killers testified the unit was a "Blood house" and that an accomplice actually asked an officer for permission to "make it hot" — or beat up Velez.
  
  "In the house I was in," he testified, "it's very common. You go to [certain] officers. Every day, there's a fight."
  
  Little seems to have changed since then. Within the past several weeks, correction sources say, inmates in one RNDC housing area were obliged to ask permission from another inmate to enter and leave the dayroom.
  
  "We do get complaints about gang violence and collusion with officers in distributing contraband and quote, enforcing discipline, close quote, by inmates at RNDC," says Jonathan Chasen, a lawyer with Legal Aid's Prisoners Rights Project.
  
  RNDC may be more vulnerable to that kind of behavior, jail observers tell the Voice, because youthful inmates are more vulnerable than adult inmates, they don't speak up as often, and they are seen as easier to coerce by the staff.
  
   
  
  • RNDC has been the site of three suicides in the past two years, including two in the highly secure close-custody wing, where inmates are locked in their cells for 23 hours. One of the suicides was 18-year-old Steven Morales, who hanged himself with a towel after his girlfriend dropped him. The incidents have raised obvious questions about the quality of supervision in the jail.
  
   
  
  

  ---

  Guard involvement in inmate assaults has been reported at other Rikers jails as well. 
  
  In March, 2007, the city agreed to pay $500,000 to settle a lawsuit involving a near-fatal assault by the leader of a house gang.
  
  The plaintiff in the lawsuit, Donald Jackson, was punched once in the head by inmate Kirk Fisher in an AMKC mental observation ward in May 2003.
  
  Jackson's head struck a piece of protruding metal on the floor so hard that he developed a blood clot in his brain and almost died if not for an operation at Elmhurst Hospital, records show.
  
  "The inmates tell us it's a really common set-up," said Andrew Stoll, a Brooklyn lawyer who specializes in police and Correction Department cases, at the time. "In a lot of the houses, the correction officers use the house gang as enforcers, and pay them with cigarettes and extra commissary."
  
  Fisher testified that, indeed, he had been "deputized" by correction officers to run the unit — a violation of DOC rules.
  
  "I was the house captain, and it was my job to enforce certain rules," he testified. "Anybody that acted up in the house, it was my job to put them in line."
  
  A deposition given by former correction officer Roger Cullen was even more dismaying.
  
  Cullen, the officer who witnessed the assault on Jackson, testified in the deposition that Fisher told other inmates when to shower, when to lock-in, and when to clean their cells.
  
  "It was like he was in charge," Cullen said, adding, "Any officer knows you're not supposed to do that — it's wrong."
  
   
  
  Meanwhile, the mayhem continues. Earlier this month, the Daily News reported that a former inmate named Jeffrey Treffy, of Queens, claimed he was forced to fight another inmate in December 2007 for the amusement of correction officers. Treffy claims that officers allowed him to get medical care only if he told doctors that he hurt himself in a fall.

Teen Found Dead in Rikers Cell (NY Daily News)

BY SIMONE WEICHSELBAUM AND ALISON GENDAR
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITERS

Monday, October 20th 2008, 1:25 AM

The NYPD is investigating the murder of an 18-year-old inmate found dead in hisRikers Island jail cell, officials said Sunday. Christopher Robinson was discovered faceup in his cell Saturday morning, his body covered by welts and bruises, police sources said.

City Correction Department officials worked to revive him, but he was declared dead at 11:58 a.m., sources said.

Detectives were poring over Rikers' security tapes for hints at what might have happened, a police source said.

"He was given a beatdown, a fatal one," another police source said.

The city medical examiner will determine a cause of death, but detectives from the 41st Precinct in the Bronx are investigating Robinson's death as a homicide, police sources said.

Why Did Darryl Die? (NYTimes Editorial)

August 28, 2008

EDITORIAL

Why Did Darryl Die?

Two years after a child died there, the Justice Department is conducting a much-needed investigation of New York’s Tryon Boys Residential Center, a juvenile facility in upstate Fulton County. The investigation could take a year or more to complete. But it has already shined a klieg light on disastrous juvenile justice policies, not just in New York, but all across the country.

All too often, juvenile justice facilities are operated by workers who have not been trained to handle the mentally ill children who make up much of the caseload. Facilities also overuse dangerous restraint and disciplinary practices in which children are handcuffed, hog tied, bound to chairs or wrestled to the floor and held down.

According to grand jury testimony, staff members at the Tryon Boys facility used the so-called prone restraint strategy against Darryl Thompson, an emotionally disturbed 15-year-old. He is said by the medical examiner to have died of arrhythmia.

The two large-framed men who forced Darryl onto the floor and held him there with their bodies say that they had no choice because the child was agitated and flailing about. There is no excuse for their failure to begin cardiopulmonary resuscitation immediately after Darryl’s heart stopped. According to state officials, all three staff members who were present had been trained in C.P.R. and were required to administer it. None did.

The medical examiner labeled the death a homicide, but the grand jury declined to indict the two workers.

The Justice Department will not say why it is now investigating Tryon, but the problems there clearly have not ended. This summer, according to state officials, a staff member was caught on videotape punching a handcuffed child in the face.

Gladys Carrión, the reform-minded commissioner of New York’s Office of Children and Family Services, took office soon after Darryl’s death. She has been struggling ever since to move New York away from a prison-style juvenile justice system that relies mainly on force toward one that focuses on rehabilitation. Like reformers elsewhere, she is encountering stiff resistance from the unions that represent the facilities’ staff.

To remake the system, New York State will need to downsize some facilities. It will need to hire more mental health professionals and retrain current staff members, some of whom have been doing business the bad-old way for 25 years or more. The state needs to help cities and towns develop community-based treatment programs. New York City is sensibly moving in that direction. New York and all states have a responsibility to protect children, including those who have committed crimes.

Help Younger Offenders Closer to Home (NY Times Editorial)

New York Times

July 11, 2008

EDITORIAL

One proven way to prevent borderline young offenders from becoming serious criminals is to treat them — and their families — in community-based counseling programs instead of shipping them off to juvenile facilities that are often hundreds of miles away from home. Early data suggests that New York City’s alternative-placement programs are cutting recidivism rates.

In addition to saving young lives, the community-based programs cost a lot less: $20,000 per child per year versus as much as $200,000 for holding a child in a juvenile facility. Despite that, politicians and labor unions — eager to preserve local jobs — are fighting hard to keep facilities open.

Earlier this year, Gladys Carrión, the commissioner of New York’s Office of Children and Family Services, announced her intention to close five of the state’s 22 facilities for low-level offenders and an intake center in the Bronx. A longtime advocate of community-based therapies, Ms. Carrión was fiercely criticized by the unions and communities where the facilities are located. The Legislature then restored funding for one of the facilities and the intake center. Gov. David Paterson will need to press a lot harder to close the rest of the unneeded centers and to help keep the reform effort on track.

If there is any doubt, Governor Paterson and other politicians in Albany should review the data on recidivism. About 80 percent of the young men who are placed in juvenile facilities in New York end up committing more crimes within three years of their release. Preliminary data from New York City suggests that the recidivism rate for the new community-based programs might be as low as 35 percent.

The idea is to help borderline young offenders before they turn to serious crime. Young people are required to participate in the programs as a condition of probation. Both they and their families are provided with counselors who teach parenting skills and who often mediate between troubled children and their families.

New York and other states will always need some facilities for young people who commit grave crimes. But they need to stop reflexively confining young people who present little or no risk. New York needs to greatly expand access to community-based programs. It can do that by closing unneeded juvenile detention centers and investing the savings in programs like the ones adopted in New York City.

Helping Girls as Victims, Not Culprits (Clyde Haberman, NY Times)

This article appeared in the New York Times Metro Section on July 8, 2008

Helping Girls as Victims, Not Culprits
By Clyde Haberman

Miranda’s story is typical, and yet not.

It’s typical of many girls who run away from home, only to land in the arms of older men whom they mistake for protectors. Most adults would recognize these men for what they are. They’re pimps.

She was all of 14 when she fled her mother’s house in Brooklyn and found herself “in the life” — the world of the street hustler. “I didn’t really know what I was getting into,” said Miranda, who, for reasons that should be obvious, avoided giving a last name or even a true first name.

Before long, she was arrested for prostitution. It would not be her last run-in with the law.

At least this pimp did not beat her. Her second pimp did, knocking out a few teeth and sending her to the hospital. Miranda was 16 then. She had tried going back home, but her mother lost patience with her and kicked her out. “I thought for a while that I was crazy, and I was the child from hell,” she said.

As we said, her story fits a familiar pattern with girls and sexual predators. Not necessarily typical is the way she reversed direction, with help from Girls Educational and Mentoring Services, or Gems, a Harlem-based organization that each year offers counseling and other assistance to more than 200 of the city’s Mirandas.

At 18, Miranda has just graduated from high school and is looking at possible colleges. That she is firmly on an educational track at a normal age is no small accomplishment, given her rough past. “I feel like a lotus,” she said. “A lotus starts in muddy water but grows into something beautiful.”

Also not typical are her journeys to Albany to urge that lawmakers rethink how the state deals with children — girls, in the main — who become sexual prey. Her efforts and those of others paid off a couple of weeks ago when the Legislature, by unanimous votes in both houses, passed the Safe Harbor for Sexually Exploited Children Act.

Instead of being treated as criminals, as they are now, girls age 15 and under would be viewed as victims the first time they are arrested for prostitution. They would be classified as “persons in need of supervision,” or PINS, and offered social services and protection from their pimps in a dormitory-style shelter.

Essentially, the Safe Harbor bill brings state law in line with federal statutes governing foreigners who make it to the United States in the clutches of sex traffickers. Those non-Americans are dealt with as victims, not criminals.

“Now, people born in Brooklyn will get the same treatment as someone born in Ukraine or Thailand or wherever,” said Mishi Faruqee, director of the youth justice program of the Children’s Defense Fund in New York.

It is not clear, however, if Gov. David A. Paterson will sign the bill. A spokeswoman said only that the governor would look at it once it is formally sent to him.

Were Mr. Paterson still in the State Senate, “this would have been an issue he would have been all over,” said Robert Gangi, executive director of the Correctional Association of New York, a nonprofit group that focuses on prison policy. But groups like his worry that the governor might be leaning toward a veto, in part to avoid a new multimillion-dollar expense in tough times. And despite those unanimous legislative votes, an override of a veto cannot be assumed, said Assemblyman William Scarborough, a Democrat of Queens. He is a chief sponsor of the measure, with State Senator Dale M. Volker, a Republican of western New York.

A prominent opponent of the bill is the Bloomberg administration, although it has stopped short of urging a veto, publicly anyway. City Hall agrees that the girls are victims, said John Feinblatt, the mayor’s criminal justice coordinator. But “the PINS process has no teeth,” he said, and so keeping these children firmly in the court system is preferable.

“Our thought was that the best way to reach them was not through decriminalization but rather using the leverage of court-ordered services,” Mr. Feinblatt said in an interview.

His assessment of the legislation was a lot harsher in an article that he wrote for The New York Post in June under the headline “NY’s Pro-Pimp Bill.” If it became law, he wrote, girls would find it relatively easy to run right back to their exploiters.

He’s wrong, says Rachel Lloyd, who founded Gems a decade ago and is its executive director. Born in England, Ms. Lloyd was “in the life” herself as a teenager. In part, the problem is one of perception, she said. “These are not kids with cancer — they’re not the kids people feel the most empathy for.”

Can’t these girls be quite a handful, though?

Ms. Lloyd is not convinced that they are all as tough as many might think. “Whatever your stereotype is,” she said, “when you sit down and talk to them, you see that a kid is a kid.”