Lots of attention has been focused on so-called "flash mobs" in the aftermath of the brutal unprovoked assault in Center City Philadelphia. In an effort to prevent future such incidents, leaders have focused primarily on harsher punishments. But do we have the right diagnosis?
Like most doctors, I know the perils of a wrong diagnosis. Many a physician has erred, sometimes with disastrous consequences, with a conclusion about a patient’s malady that seems so obvious, but in the end, proved wrong. Most often such errors happen when doctors “go with their gut” or simply suppress the urge to question what everybody else seems to feel is wrong. Sometimes such problems can be avoided by simply taking the time to step back and ask, “Have I considered all of the possible explanations, even if the one in my head seems irresistibly correct?” I know I have been saved by a colleague or two who has leaned in and asked “Are you sure?”
So as I read newspaper accounts of marauding herds of criminal youth who organize on Facebook with the singular intention of descending on downtown Philadelphia (
Top city officials meet to plan response to teen mobs) to commit violent crime have to ask that question: “Are we sure?” Make no mistake. I too am appalled at the violence that a small number of people, some youth, and some adults have perpetrated sporadically in downtown Philadelphia. By no means am I attempting to excuse it – it is inexcusable. Violence is never okay. But I am interested, like any public health scientist, in trying to explain it. While one explanation could plausibly be the one that newspapers and television outlets are trumpeting and which politicians are scrambling to address. But is there any other possible explanation for large groups of adolescents showing up somewhere?
I would suggest that boredom might be one explanation. Any parent of an adolescent can testify that “idle hands” are a parent’s worst nightmare. For this reason, most parents with any resources whatsoever, attempt to occupy as much of their adolescent’s time and energy as possible with swimming, football, soccer, dance, music, camp, etc. as they can think of. Adolescent brains live in the precarious space between childhood magical thinking and adult reasoning. They are consumed by the opinions of their peers and remarkably resourceful in circumventing even the most vigilant parent’s best surveillance. Ask any parent who thought it was safe to slip away to the Mann Center leaving a teen in the house alone for just an hour or two and returned home to the remnants of a spontaneous beer bash.
Other cities have recognized that it is in all of our best interest to make sure that there are no bored kids, no idle teens with nothing to do. Los Angeles poured its resources not into jailing kids but keeping them busy with Saturday Night Lights a program that ran from July 7 thru September 4. Their website
LA Summer Night Lights describes the program
Summer Night Lights is an anti-gang initiative that keeps parks open after dark--during the peak hours for gang activity--with free food and expanded programming. By empowering communities and targeting the traditionally most-violent summer months, Summer Night Lights has become a national model for violence reduction.
They were able to engage over 700,000 youth at risk by involving them in evening activities in parks and serving them meals. All it bought that city of 4 million people was a 57% drop in gang homicides, a 55% decrease in shots fired and a 45% decrease in victims of violence in just 2 years. Though still working to end gang violence, last year LA City’s homicide count that was less than 300, lower than Philadelphia’s, in our city of 1.5 million.
Yet here in Philly our only diagnosis is to heap wholesale blame the parents of all the kids, not just the fraction who committed crimes. Our only “big idea” is to threaten to throw the parents in jail for failing to keep their kids in the house on a sizzling summer evening. Well maybe. But if it is the wrong diagnosis, we will soon find out.
Maybe our better strategy is to simply decide as a city that we will do everything in our collective power to ensure that there is “No kid with nothing to do!” That is to say that there will be no kid who wants something to do who we will allow to be bored and idle. That would mean more pools, more recreation centers, more computer camps. For those kids who for whatever reason actively avoid involvement, then let’s deal with them too by putting outreach workers on the streets in their neighborhoods to engage them and their families as cities like Boston have done (
Boston Foundation Street Safe).
In the end, we save ourselves money. More importantly, we make a first good step toward making sure that the 99% of kids who showed up downtown to “see what was gonna happen” have something real to do with themselves. Give them something satisfying and engaging to do, and we will see their overall health and school performance. Doubt me if you like, but the youth development and public health experts who have long put forth positive youth development and family engagement as a more effective strategy than waiting for a “flash mob” (whatever that term really means) and trying to stop it. (
UPENN Community Violence Exposure and Positive Youth Development in Urban Youth and
National Clearinghouse on Families and Youth) And if you doubt them, ask the parent of any teenager.