A police officer had eliminated Medina, pointed from the some regional graffiti, and you may questioned this new highschool student if he previously spraying-painted the fresh new graffiti. Medina answered he wasnt responsible. He said that brand new officer following gestured towards the an artwork sprinkle can also be quit nearby the sidewalk suppress and informed Medina: “As to the reasons you should never you decide on one up personally.”
Medina refuted and you may was presented with. More than a decade after, nowadays a grownup, Medina shows on that day and you will notices clearly how condition have without difficulty escalated and perhaps triggered their arrest to have an offence he’d perhaps not the full time.
“I get therefore mad, with the knowledge that if i could have been naive during those times, to think of what might occurred,” said Medina, twenty eight.
For the twenty four hours like any almost every other, Abraham Medina is walking house out-of school from inside the Lawn Grove whenever the guy confronted a decisive time: One incorrect disperse have arrived your when you look at the juvenile detention, however the quick-thinking teenager realized how to proceed
You to sense wasn’t an isolated you to definitely. Medina told you he with his nearest and dearest was indeed constantly stopped by cops officers for the Yard Grove, in which the guy grew up, and also in Santa Ana, where he invested the majority of their free time. Into the his Santiago Twelfth grade university, Medina told you law enforcement officers manage remove children away and ask them after and during meal to determine if the children was basically when you look at the gangs and also to assemble information to possess police data files.
Medina continued to learn at University regarding California, Irvine, however, he never forgot exactly how he, his classmates, and society household members had been handled for the difficult-on-crime time that caught up generations off youth towards the state juvenile fairness program.
Medina understood this particular aggressive approach to brand new policing and you will prosecution out of Latino teens only locked the therefore-called troublemakers aside at the rear of taverns, but didnt get right to the cause of what was operating youngsters to act out otherwise to visit criminal activities.
So 5 years ago, Medina began functioning and you can reaching out on the part of the newest citys youth as an element of Santa Ana People and you may Males off Color (BMOC), an organization focused on remaining young people at school and you can from the new teenager fairness program. In the event it is and also make demonstrations until the Santa Ana college or university panel, working together that have Lime State probation officials into the possibilities to detention, or simply linking having young people and you can mothers from the message boards, Medina produced anything obvious: detention and punitive procedures weren’t providing Santa Anas youth.
Instead, Medina recommended into the adoption of curative fairness means, which eschew conventional kinds of abuse such as teenager hall detention and you can college or university expulsion, and only practices that allow youth when deciding to take obligations having their tips, and offer intervention attributes to arrive at the root of their behavioural items.
But he along with his associates on BMOC, where up to last year he supported due to the fact opportunity movie director, seen a familiar thread among the younger men it served
Of a lot got mental health and you may behavioral factors along with understanding pÅ™Ãklady profilů blackplanet handicaps, told you Medina, who’s making their pros training inside the legal and you may forensic therapy.
“All of our programs are made to feel culturally advised and stress advised, however, of course we have been confronted from the childhood who have twin diagnoses,” told you Medina. “And they youthfulness are the ones which get into brand new teenager fairness program, and also the juvenile justice system either does not understand how to act on it.”
“These types of youngsters are those who end up in the new juvenile justice system, together with teenager justice system possibly does not learn how to function in it.”