Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake announces changes to the city’s Youth Connection Centers during her press availability at City Hall. (AFRO/photo by Roberto Alejandro)
Baltimore Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake has announced changes to the operations of the city’s youth connection centers, which, she said, were designed to connect children who have violated the city’s curfew with whatever support and services they need. Because of a reduction in the number of nighttime curfew violators, but an increase in daytime violations, the city will have only one center open at night during the school year, but two during the day.
“Since the implementation of the year-round centers we have seen a dramatic decrease in the number of nighttime curfew violators, and we’ve successfully connected dozens of children with the support that they need,” said the mayor. “Now that we are moving along with the new school year, we’re witnessing an increase in the number of daytime curfew violations, which has prompted my administration to adjust our tactics to better meet the needs of children who are out on the streets, instead of at school getting a good education.”
Moving forward, the city will have one centralized nighttime center during the school year, expanding to two during the summer. While school is in session, the city will operate two daytime centers, rather than one.
In announcing the change, Rawlings-Blake addressed the concern which dominated the run-up to the city’s expanded curfew last summer—that the curfew would serve as a pretext for involving more young people in the criminal justice system.
“This is not about criminalizing our children, this is about reaching our children before they find themselves in a situation where the only option left is law enforcement,” said the mayor. “We’re very encouraged by the early success of our youth connection center, but I believe we have more work to do, and these common sense adjustments will help us to do our part to make sure our children are out of harm’s way, and will help us to make sure that they’re getting a good education.”
According to Angela Johnese, director of the Mayor’s Office on Criminal Justice, the adjustment to the operation schedule will not affect the costs of running the centers.
“Based on the budget that we received for the youth connection centers for this fiscal year, we will remain within that budget,” said Johnese, who also said the city was seeing between 12 and 15 daytime curfew violators and between two and four nighttime violations per week.
ralejandro@afro.com