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Articles, information and additional online resources. |
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Voices from the Trenches
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Tamesha Wise, youth case manager for the Beacon Center, helps coordinate educational services for troubled youth who live in Bayview Hunters Point, a neighborhood disproportionately represented in San Francisco's juvenile justice system. |
Wise on difficulties facing Bayview Hunters Point youths:
"I'm not a counselor at school; I am not a teacher; I am not a social worker; and I am not the police or anything of that nature. So I try to let the youth I work with know I am just there for them. And they do come to me, if they are having a problem with a teacher, another student, or have a problem at home. I think if a young person has someone in their corner who sees what is best for them, in the long run youth will make different choices.
"I was born and raised here and know what life is like in Bayview Hunters Point. A lot of kids in this area are being raised by their grandparents, foster parents, single mothers and single fathers, or their sisters and brothers are raising them. A lot of the youth I work with are around the neighborhood, and they see the drugs, the killings. They see the police all the time. Some of the kids, it's their relatives who are getting killed. If a child doesn't have a stable home life and the environment outside of their home life is not stable, then how can you expect the kids to be stable? You can't.
"I have concerns that some police officers treat the youth as if they were adults, but they are not. If you are 11 years old and you are getting arrested, you are still a child. I think law enforcement doesn't always take into account everything in a child's life -- how their home life is or what happened to them when they were younger."
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