Youth Intervention Quotes

To criminally prosecute a child not old enough to go to the school prom makes no sense, you get much more cooperation from a victim if you give them a safe harbor, a place to live, job training, an education.

I was invited to a luncheon with 49 other women to give my opinions about the problematic situation among young people. They wanted me to talk about why is there so much juvenile delinquency in the streets of America.

I don't want to send them to jail. I want to send them to school.

If we do not pay for children in good schools, then we are going to pay for them in prisons and mental hospitals.

You [ Peter R. Breggin] have basically implied that they've turned our schools into something other than schools. What do you think the government has in mind by turning our schools into little clinics?

What we do best is we target the young men and women who are on the fringe. They could go either way. Maybe they have been in trouble before, but not serious trouble. ... We cherry-pick them and circumvent them away from the gang members and drug dealers ... (and encourage) them to hang out with us and become a Guardian Angel.

I have sat with the mothers who have lost addicted sons. I have sat with families of kids who have been killed in drug-related gang violence. I have been to the prisons. I have seen the effects. At some point in time, I felt I had to do something other than write a novel about it, that I needed to try to make some sort of contribution, at least try to make some sort of difference in the real world.

From nine on I was forced to camp every summer. Not a volunteer. I played with the wrong kids so they made me go to camp to straighten me out.

The chief problem in any community cursed with crime is not the punishment of the criminals, but the preventing of the young from being trained to crime.

The only reason I can't recommend heroin to kids is because the effects wear off.

Reaching out to any fellow ghetto kids is an act he puts in the same category as doing drugs: the initial rush of warmth and euphoria puts you on a path to ruin.

I want the violence among young people in this country to stop - particularly gang violence.

I was lucky. My grandmother stepped up for me and said she would take responsibility for me and a compassionate juvenile judge took a chance and gave me one. They were getting ready to send me away to do real time, but they sent me instead to a juvenile alternative day school. And I guess that was the beginning of my turnaround.

As I have pointed out time and again, it's a hell of a lot cheaper to send little kids to school than it is to let them grow up into young thugs who have to be sent to prison, not to mention the savings in the wear and tear on the nerves, property, and safety of the rest of the citizenry.

The child needs a helping hand or he'll grow up to be an angry young man some day.

I like this idea of generation after generation helping children on the streets, kids who have run away fleeing violence. I like the whole idea of opening arms for children who have nowhere else to go, sleeping by dumpsters.

Some voluntary castaways there will always be, whom no fostering kindness and no parental care can preserve from self-destruction; but if any are lost for want of care and culture, there is a sin of omission in the society to which they belong.