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Study: County bad on violence, good on prevention

By David Scharfenberg Daily Planet Staff
Tuesday November 19, 2002

Soaring assault rates and a large number of self-inflicted wounds make Alameda County one of the most dangerous areas in the state for young people. But the county does a better job than most in providing after-school programs, job training and other violence prevention programs, according to a new study. 

The study, released by San Francisco-based Choices for Youth last week, ranked Alameda County 15th of the largest 16 counties in the state on youth safety, tagging the area with a “D” grade. By contrast, the county finished second on violence prevention, earning a “B+.” 

Laurie Kappe, director of Choices for Youth, a public education campaign focused on violence prevention, said Alameda County has made a recent shift toward prevention efforts and is still waiting for the investment to pay off in greater youth safety. 

“There’s been a big wake-up call that we need to protect Alameda County’s kids,” said Kappe. “It’s an investment and it takes a long time to see the results.” 

But Alameda County Supervisor Keith Carson, who represents Berkeley, said the state’s budget shortfall, now estimated at $20 billion over the next 18 months, could threaten the county’s ability to sustain prevention efforts. 

“It’s going to be more difficult to fund these programs,” he said. 

Choices for Youth, working with 25 violence prevention experts, identified five measures for grading youth safety in each county: hospitalization rates for assaults, self-inflicted injuries, student-guidance counselor ratios, juvenile hall incarceration and high school students graduating with the courses needed to attend the University of California or California State University. 

Although the study graded only the 16 largest counties, which include 83 percent of young people ages 10-17, it scored each of the 16 counties based upon how it stacks up against all 58 California counties. 

Alameda County ranked 55th of the 58 counties in hospitalization rates for assault and 56th for self-inflicted injuries, with 115 per 100,000 young people ages 10-17 injuring or killing themselves in 1999 and 2000. 

Nancy Salamy, director of education at the non-profit Crisis Support Services of Alameda County, said suicide crosses socio-economic and racial lines, making it difficult to pinpoint why any one county has higher rates than another. 

“What puts our kids more at risk than other kids, I don’t know,” she said. 

But Crisis Support Services is working to curb self-inflicted injuries through presentations on depression and suicide at schools across the county, Salamy said, including Berkeley High and Martin Luther King and Longfellow middle schools in Berkeley. 

Alameda County fared better on the number of students who graduated prepared to attend a state university, ranking 13th of 58 counties in the state. 

“Frankly, if not for that, they’d be getting an ‘F’ [on youth safety],” said Kappe. 

Berkeley High School, according to data from the California Department of Education, did particularly well in this category last year. While 39 percent of high school graduates in Alameda County, from 1997-2000, were prepared for a state university education, the number at Berkeley High last year was 69 percent.  

In grading violence prevention efforts, the study examined how adept each county was at winning state and federal funding and targeting it at violence prevention efforts. 

Alameda County received high marks on the Choices for Youth report card by spending 100 percent of $5.1 million it received from the state’s Juvenile Justice and Crime Prevention Act on prevention efforts, rather than law enforcement. 

 

 

 

 

Contact reporter at scharfenberg@berkeleydailyplanet