San Quentin News

Written By Incarcerated - Advancing Social Justice

Archives for May 2015

Code.7370 Certifies 12 Men As Web App Developers

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In April a dozen San Quentin prisoners graduated from an innovative technology training program where they had learned 21st Century computer coding skills. The class setting was a large space once used to store the 1930s-style printing equipment that until 2010 printed the San Quentin News.

Larry Histon concentrating on computer codes


The program, Code.7370, was developed by venture capitalists Chris Redlitz and Beverly Parenti in collaboration with the California Prison Industry Authority (CALPIA), the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) and Hack Reactor, a coding academy in San Francisco.
“The biggest challenge to teaching this course is the lack of internet access to the students,” said Shawn Drost of Hack Reactor. “It’s like teaching wood shop. You need material in class to use as examples. Most of the coding training is project-oriented where internet access is needed. We had to overcome that obstacle.”
Silicon Valley’s technology business community helped develop the course syllabus along with administering the instruction to the students.
The coding programs HTML, CSS and JavaScript are taught visually through a video conference call that the prison administers or the administration can monitor. Hack Reactor volunteers and CDCR supervising instructor Jon Gripshover are on site at the prison to guide the students through the course. An offline computer lab is available four days a week where students can work on coding projects.
“Some of the students did not even know how to use a computer,” said Gripshover. “Hack Reactor had to create a curriculum that would teach the fundamentals of coding, and then move on to the higher levels needed to produce applications.”
Chris Schuhmacher, one of the graduates who was selected to speak at the ceremony, goes before the parole board this June.
“When I first came to this class, I was at ground zero. But, I had a willingness to learn,” said Schuhmacher. “My biggest fear was what type of life I would have upon my release. Thanks to Code.7370, I have the answer.”
Schuhmacher said in six months of training he did 679 hours of coding.
“The 679 hours have changed the trajectory of my life,” he said. “It has inspired me to want to pay this gift forward. Upon my release I’d like to donate 679 hours of my time to give others the opportunity to learn what I’ve learned.”
Graduate Damon Cooke said learning coding was life-changing for him, his family and his community.
“A lot of people believe the mantra that men can’t change their lives when they are in prison,” Cooke said. “But, Coding.7370 taught me due diligence, perseverance, persistence and that the mantra isn’t true. Before coding, I couldn’t tell you the difference between a function and for loop. Now, I can deal with methods and operators.”
Graduate Jorge Heredia said, “This certificate means that I add a notch to my life’s value. It is a stepping stone that will be able to make my life and those around me better. It certifies that I am able to create something, and I’m on the right track.”

CALPIA Door


PIA General Manager Charles Pattillo emphasized that this was the first time prisoners were taught coding. The annual cost to run the program is between $60,000 and $70,000, he noted.
“The next step is to get with private companies that would take contracts that would normally go overseas and give them to these graduates,” said Pattillo.
Due to the vetting process the companies must undergo, the companies could not be named. However, Pattillo said there are five companies being vetted.
“I feel like a proud mom,” said Parenti while looking at the graduates. Referring to program supervisor Gripshover, Parenti said, “Jon is the perfect fit for this program. He leaves his home at 4 a.m. each morning to get here. He’s dedicated to this program.”
Graduate Harry Hemphill, once employed by Volvo and Yamaha, said his addiction to drugs was his gateway to prison.
“I’ll be getting out of prison going to a new world that I’m unfamiliar with. Code.7370 is my second chance in life. It gives me hope and confidence that when I return to society I can be a productive member. Jon (Gripshover) did an outstanding job getting us the resources needed for this program. He got down in the trenches and pulled us forward.”
Co-founder Redlitz said, “We want this idea to be replicated and duplicated all over. We’ve been able to navigate through a lot of challenges. But, the administration PIA, and Hack Reactor worked with us to get this program going.” Redlitz pointed to Pattillo and said, “Chuck is a can-do man.”
One of the newest volunteers to the Coding.7370 program is 27-year-old Hans Schoenburg, a software engineer.
“I found that coming here and helping puts my professional life in the present. It allows me to give back, and have gratitude,” Schoenburg said, “I have friends who teach in prison and they say that inmates are most engaged students.”
Deputy Warden Kelly Mitchell thanked Redlitz and Parenti for bringing the program to San Quentin.
Mitchell looked at the graduates and said, “You’re given the resources you need so that you don’t come back. I truly believe that this class is preparing you for that. We hope that this will give you the skills to get a job at what you like doing.”
“Everyone in the country is talking about this class,” said Brante Choate, from the Office of Correctional Education in CDCR. “It is catching worldwide attention.”
CALPIA trains approximately 8,000 offenders per year in service, manufacturing, and agricultural industries in California’s penal institutions.
CALPIA is self-supporting and does not receive an appropriation from the state budget.
CALPIA has 11 other highly skilled training programs in the Career Technical Education (CTE) programs, in addition to Coding.7370.
CTE carpentry, construction labor, modular building, computer training in Microsoft, and underwater welding programs are some of the most effective correctional rehabilitation programs in California, Pattillo told the audience. CTE graduates have a cumulative recidivism of 7.13 percent, according to CDCR.
Pattillo told the students that the best way they could repay society is getting out of prison and staying out.
More information about CalPIA can be found at www.calpia.ca.gov.
http://sanquentinnews.com/game-theory/

Death Penalty ‘Costly, Still Broken’

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The death penalty is broken in the U.S., according to a federal judge.
Judge William A. Fletcher of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals told a student audience at Cornell Law School it has been almost 40 years since the court struck down mandatory executions for certain types of murder.
Despite the fact that the death penalty is no longer mandatory, the U.S. is the “only industrialized western country” using capital punishment for these types of murders, Fletcher said.
“Even in the face of poll numbers…that favored the death penalty,” the U.S, Japan, and China are the only industrialized nations using this method of punishment, Fletcher said. Many European nations abolished capital punishment years ago.
Cost is the issue that most affects Fletcher’s attitude about the death penalty. According to Justin Pascoe, an intern writer for the Cornell Chronicle, “The death penalty is extremely expensive. It costs more to execute a person than to keep him in prison for life.”
California spent more than $4 billion prosecuting death penalty cases between 1978 and 2011, a study revealed.
California would not spend that kind of money on those cases fit had “merely imposed life in prison without the possibility of parole,” Fletcher said. Fletcher took issue with the extremely slow application of the death penalty.
“Many more death row prisoners die from natural causes or from suicide than from execution,” Fletcher said. In Fletcher’s opinion, a death sentence amounts to life in prison without parole.
 

“Many more death row prisoners die from

natural causes or from suicide than from execution”

 
The judge also asserts, “we do not know whether the death penalty actually deters homicide.”
Fletcher claims certain methods of execution are unconstitutional. He said the electric chair, “once thought more humane than hanging, has now been held unconstitutional,” and “there is currently a moratorium in California because of concerns about lethal injection.”
Fletcher recalls a number of capital punishment cases involving police mistreatment and planting of evidence, malpractice on the part of attorneys, and corporate influence over judges’ behavior, which cause clemency pleas to become useless exercises.
Up and down the judicial system, “From the police to the prosecutors to the courts to the governors, at every rung we have seen the problems that I have described. Such problems don’t occur in every case, but they occur in enough cases that we have a serious problem,” Fletcher told Pascoe.
One example occurred Dec. 11 when an Arizona appeals court dismissed murder charges against Debra Jean Milke. She had spent 22 years on Death Row in connection with the death of her son.
In South Carolina, a judge threw out the conviction of a 14-year-old Black boy who died in the electric chair in 1944 for the murder of two White girls.
Since California reinstated the death penalty in 1977, more than 1,000 people have been sentenced to die. Just 13 were actually executed, reports the Sacramento Bee in a Dec. 20 article by Gerald Uelmen, a law professor at Santa Clara University.

‘Angel’s List’ Would Review Parolee Services

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Adequate reentry support is not only critical to men and women released from prison but also to their families and communities. Evaluating the quality of reentry facilities is the goal of former prisoner Brian Ferguson.
“People are self-motivated to find the things that are going to help them out and the things that are going to get them back on their feet,” Ferguson told reporter Christopher Moraff, for the website Next City on Jan 20. “People come home and they really want to change and want to make a life for themselves but the situation is such that they often have a difficult time finding the resources they need to do it.”
Ferguson’s solution is to create a web-based clearinghouse of reentry resources, called Angel’s List, which he says has the potential to “completely revolutionize the service referral industry” for returning citizens.
The concept behind Angel’s List is to have user reviews of the reentry facilities, similar to Yelp or to Angie’s List, a guide for home repair services.
Ferguson can draw from several existing lists of reentry resources: one in Philadelphia, two in California, and one in Texas, Next City reports. Unlike Ferguson’s Angel’s List, these resource lists are not rated for quality or usefulness.
Ferguson’s idea caught the attention of Halcyon Incubator, a Washington, D.C., incubator program for social entrepreneurs that chose Ferguson as one of 10 fellows in October. Since then, he has received professional, technical support and access to potential investors, according to Next City.
Before going national, Angel’s List is scheduled to launch in the D.C. area and New York City in 2016.
“Hopefully this will create a new competitive space for these organizations,” Ferguson said to Next City. “It’s a win-win because it allows people to have an input into their own success but it also facilitates the whole industry getting better.”
–By Juan Haines

School Adopts Restorative Justice Over Punishment

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The Oakland Unified School District (OUSD) found that punishing students for fighting or breaking rules was ineffective. As a result, schools in Oakland are implementing new methods for dealing with misbehavior, reported the Rockridge Patch.
Now students involved in fights or other disciplinary infractions go into a Restorative Justice program where they work to resolve their problems. The program emphasizes that violence is never a solution to conflict.
According to the OUSD website, Restorative Justice is a set of principles and practices employed to build community and respond to student misconduct, with the goals of repairing harm and restoring relationships between those impacted. Restorative Justice promotes dialogue in order to solve indifference and to avoid violence.
The pilot program in Oakland schools uses a three-tiered model of prevention, intervention and supported reentry in response to conflict or inflicted harm.
Edna Brewer Middle School is one school in the district using the program, according to a National Public Radio post late last year.
“Instead of throwing a punch, they’re asking for a circle, they’re backing off and asking to mediate it peacefully with words,” said Ta-Biti Gibson, the school’s Restorative Justice co-director. “And that’s a great thing.”
District Superintendent Antwan Wilson and other officials at Lakeview Elementary School said the Restorative Justice programs have had a measurable impact on school behavior and educational outcomes, reported the Rockridge Patch.
According to Wilson, keeping the students in class instead of sending them home as a disciplinary measure has increased graduation rates by 60 percent and has had a 128 percent increase in reading levels for students at schools that use Restorative Justice.
NPR said that the percentage of students suspended at OUSD schools that have fully adopted the Restorative Justice program “has dropped by half, from 34 percent in 2011-12 to just 14 percent the following two years.”
“Children involved with the program have been willing to resolve their differences with words,” NPR reported.
Schools throughout the U.S. are exercising the Restorative Justice program. The cities of Chicago, Minneapolis, Palm Beach County and Denver are among several implementing their versions of such a successful program.

Former Inmate Becomes Recreation Therapist for CDCR

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In the early 1970s, poverty-stricken Compton’s murder rate was second only to Los Angeles. A young black man named David Earl White knew this all too well – it was his home.
“In Compton, people were dying and they didn’t even get an obituary in the newspaper,” he said recently from within the walls of San Quentin. “I was putting my life on the line on the streets of Compton.
White served in the Marines in Vietnam from 1973-1975. After his release, he went to college but found himself immersed in the drug culture. In the mid-1980s, he was twice convicted of felony narcotics charges. “Sitting in the county jail, I knew this wasn’t where I wanted my life to go,” he said. So he decided to do something about it.
White isn’t an inmate at the state’s oldest penitentiary – he’s an employee. White is currently a Recreation Therapist with the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, working with inmates at San Quentin. He’s worked for the department for six years.
Last Christmas Eve, Gov. Jerry Brown issued White a full and unconditional pardon for those drug offenses committed decades before.
“Mr. White is an outstanding and inspirational model of redemption and what a person can do with dedication and the will to overcome humble beginnings,” said San Quentin Associate Warden Steve Albritton.
“I was raised on welfare without a father,” White said. His single mother did the best she could for him and his siblings, but there wasn’t enough food, he said. He sold items door-to-door to help with money, but he was getting 30 cents on the dollar when he was introduced to drugs.
“I was intrigued by the fact if I sold weed, I didn’t have to share the profits,” he said. “When I joined the military, it was the first time I got three meals a day.”
White returned home as a war-time veteran and played football at Compton Community College, but kept his hand in the drug culture.
“I broke a record at Compton CC for interception returns,” he recalled.
Film from the play made its way into the hands of the coach from San Francisco State University.
“When I almost lost my life in the violence in Compton, I thought the best thing was to get to San Francisco,” he said.
“I learned to read and write in college,” he said. “I had to take certain courses to graduate, and I failed them all. I was on [college] probation for three years, and it took me almost six years to graduate.”
“Dealing drugs was still a part of my life, especially in the 1980s,” he recalled.
Finally, his double life caught up with him. White said one of his first times getting busted was for possessing drug paraphernalia. Later, it was for dealing drugs.
“When I spent time in the county jail and the work furlough program, I knew that wasn’t the place to be,” he said.
White earned a living driving tractor-trailers and used the money to attend seminary school.
“To not sell drugs, I was willing to work driving trucks,” he said. He ended up earning a master’s degree in biblical studies. Later, he started coaching high school sports, which then led him to coaching some college teams.
He started working with others in drug and alcohol treatment programs, but as a convicted felon, he always had to strive to prove himself even more.
“The pivotal part was staying in school and struggling, and learning from it,” he said.
He runs the Narcotics Anonymous meetings in the prison. He also connects inmates with opportunities for self-improvement.
“(Most) of the people are in here because of choices they made on mind-altering drugs,” he said. “They think they are strong enough to deal with their addictions, and they’re not.”
For many inmates, landing at San Quentin is the first time they have had to face their addictions and the consequences of their actions, according to White. “Mind-altering, mood-changing drugs are devastating to personal growth,” he said
Currently he helps them learn to read and write, as well as learn job skills, such as driving forklifts or trucks, or deal with issues such as anger management. He said many think of themselves as victims of their circumstances, but White’s personal story of struggle and drugs allows him to connect with the inmates.
On a personal level, White is back in school as well. “To keep this job, I had to go back to take eight courses,” he said. “I made the honor roll for the first time in my life. It’s great being sober. … I’m in school now to get my certification as a counselor for alcohol and drugs.”
He said the pardon from the governor helps validate the path his life has taken and what he’s doing to help others. He said while he’s now turning 60 years old, he knows there is much more in store for him.
“It’s a miracle for me to be here,” he said. “But, I would like to further my career and do more.”
Associate Warden, Steve Albritton says: Mr. White you are an outstanding and inspirational model of redemption and what a person can do with dedication and the will to overcome humble beginnings. You have come to the right place – San Quentin – with its rehabilitative fertile grounds. The men here, in various stages of changing their lives, can really benefit from your example.

Report: Criminal Justice System Plagued With Racism

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America’s criminal justice system is loaded with latent institutional racism, a new study concludes.
“Disparities in police stops, in prosecutorial charging, and in bail and sentencing decisions reveal that implicit racial bias has penetrated all corners of the criminal justice system,” The Sentencing Project study reported.
“White Americans who associate crime with Blacks and Latinos are more likely to support punitive policies – including capital punishment and mandatory minimum sentencing – than Whites with weaker racial associations of crime,” it was reported.
The September 2014 report points to many factors that contribute to what it calls “the severity and selectivity of punishment in the United States.”
Some factors, according to the study, are racial prejudice, conservatism, and crimes that stand out such as high profile, public interest crimes.
“These factors reduce empathetic concern about the hardships of punishment,” the study said.
The study was released in the wake of last year’s coast-to-coast protests and civil disobedience condemning the killing of unarmed Black men by police.
“Whites are more punitive than Blacks and Hispanics even though they (Whites) experience less crime. White Americans overestimate the proportion of crime committed by people of color, and associate people of color with criminality,” the report said.
“When individuals believe that those who commit crime are similar to them, they more readily reflect on the underlying circumstances of the crime and respond with empathy and mercy,” the report said.
Imputing crime to a particular race, infused with other factors, is a leading cause for the disparate punishment of people of color in the U.S., the study said.
African-Americans and Latinos combined are 30 percent of the general population, it was reported. However, these groups account for 58 percent of the U.S. prison population.
“By increasing the scale of criminal sanctions and disproportionately directing penalties toward people of color, racial perceptions of crime have been counterproductive for public safety,” the report said.
Some studies show that Whites are more likely to break the law when they see that enforcement of the law is racially biased, it was reported.
“Although Black Americans continue to be overrepresented among arrestees, the degree of overrepresentation has been falling for a quarter century,” the report said. “Yet the profile of prisoners has been slow to adjust.”
 

“By increasing the scale of criminal sanctions toward people of color,

racial perceptions of crime have been counterproductive for public safety”

 
This type of racial bias in the criminal justice system “may foster White Americans’ sense of legal immunity,” the report stated. This creates a system where White Americans are more likely to uphold the use of punitive criminal justice measures, as opposed to other social policy tools, to deal with crime.
The study said the killing of racial minorities by police officers and armed civilians is due to their distorted assessments of them as threats.
Unwarranted deaths can sometimes be attributed to unjustified perceptions of a threat, the study suggested.
It cited these examples of “all-too-common flashpoints of the racialization of crime”: the deaths of Amadou Diallo, an unarmed Guinean immigrant killed by New York City police officers in 1999; Trayvon Martin, an unarmed African-American teenager killed by a neighborhood watch coordinator in 2012; and Michael Brown, an unarmed African-American teenager killed by a police officer in Ferguson, Mo.
According to the report, racial minorities have different perceptions of the level of unfairness in the criminal justice system. This dampens community involvement with police and impedes criminal trials.
“In 2013, over two-thirds of African-Americans saw the criminal justice system as biased against Blacks, in contrast to one-quarter of Whites,” it was reported.
The Sentencing Project study said the mass media’s use of the “if it bleeds, it leads” approach to reporting crime contributes to negative racial perceptions about who commits crime. “Media representations of crime draw on, and contribute to, racial stereotypes.”
The report said the media reinforces public misconceptions about race and crime by portraying African-Americans and Latinos in a different light than Whites. It points to newspapers and television programs over-representing racial minorities as crime suspects, whereas Whites are typically depicted as crime victims.
“This includes a tendency…to exaggerate rates of Black offending and White victimization and to depict Black suspects in a less favorable light than Whites. Given that the public widely relies on mass media as its source of knowledge about crime and crime policy, these disparities have important consequences,” the report said.
“The media, policymakers, and criminal justice practitioners can implement several proven interventions to sever associations of crime with race, and temper their impact,” The Sentencing Project reported. “Policymakers can curb excessive incarceration and develop policies to reduce disparities in sentencing and crime rates.”
All stakeholders, including the mass media, researchers, policymakers, and criminal justice practitioners, can use proven methods to reduce negative racial perceptions of crime, the report concluded. Policymakers, it was recommended, should identify and modify race neutral policies that have been shown to have a disparate racial impact.
“Policymakers are increasingly aware that branding people…harms public safety and wastes public funds.”

FBI: Police Kill More Blacks Than Other Races

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A majority of the youngest people killed by police between 2005 and 2012 were Black males, according to statistics reported to the FBI.
“Nearly two times a week in the United States, a White police officer killed a Black person during a seven-year period ending in 2012,” USA Today reported.
The article said of the 17,000 U.S. law enforcement agencies, roughly 750 are contributors to the database that tracks police shootings that result in the death of civilians.
“The killings are self-reported by law enforcement, and not all police departments participate, so the database undercounts the actual number of deaths,” USA Today said.
The investigative report found that there is no audit of the numbers sent to the FBI, and “the statistics on ‘justifiable’ homicides have conflicted with independent measures of fatalities at the hands of police.”
It was noted that the recent shooting death of 18-year-old Michael Brown, who was Black, “was not an isolated event in American policing.”
According to Geoff Alpert, a criminologist at the University of South Carolina who studies police use of deadly force, the limited FBI database underscores a “gaping hole” in the nation’s understanding of the frequency in which police take the lives of Americans.
“There is no national database for this type of information, and that is so crazy,” said Alpert. “We’ve been trying for years, but nobody wanted to fund it and the (police) departments didn’t want it. They were concerned with their image and liability.”
Alpert said he has researched hundreds of police department records and seldom found that someone will admit, “Oh, gosh, we used excessive force.” He said, “In 98.9 percent of the cases, they are stamped as justified and sent along.”
The USA Today report on the FBI’s Supplemental Homicide Report (2005-2012) detailing police shooting victims by age reveals:
Black males make up 56 percent of those killed under 20, compared to 41 percent Whites.
Black males make up 42 percent of those killed aged 20 to 29, compared to 54 percent White.
Black males make up 32 percent of those killed aged 30 to 39, compared to 65 percent White.
Black males make up 25 percent of those killed aged 40 to 49, compared to 71 percent White.
Black males make up 22 percent of those killed aged 50 to 59, compared to 76 percent Whites.
Black males make up 16 percent of those killed over age 60, compared to 81 percent White.
According to research, these “numbers are likely undercounted due to missing records.”
Christal Kennerson, whose nephew was shot and killed by an Albuquerque police officer in 2012, told USA Today, “I’ll be the first one to say that they put their life on the line every day, but they’re killing innocent people and kids.”
–By Kevin D. Sawyer

Billionaire Conservative Political Activist Puts His Sights on Reforming Criminal Justice System

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Billionaire Charles Koch says he’s planning to campaign for criminal justice reform, according to news reports.
“Over the next year, we are going to be pushing the issues key to this, which need a lot of work in this country,” Koch was quoted as saying in a Dec. 26 CNN report. “And that would be freedom of speech, cronyism and how that relates to opportunities for the disadvantaged.”
Koch has a history of financially supporting Republican causes.
His chief attorney, Mark Holden, told the Wichita Eagle that the old tough-on-crime effort by lawmakers over the recent decades has disproportionately affected minorities.
“It definitely appears to have a racial angle, intended or not,” Holden said.
The newspaper said Koch’s interest in criminal justice reform started from a lengthy and expensive case defending his company, Koch Petroleum Group. The firm was charged with 97 felony violations of environmental laws in the 1990s. All but six of the charges were ultimately dropped, and the company paid a $10 million settlement, the newspaper reported.
Holden said Koch wants to address voting rights for former offenders and make it easier for nonviolent offenders to find employment once they complete their sentences.
“Koch’s comments might come as good news to Sen. Rand Paul (R-Okla.), who’s made sentencing reform a major part of his agenda while he tries to appeal to nontraditional GOP voters ahead of a likely presidential bid,” said the paper.
Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey supports bail reform. Former governors Rick Perry of Texas, Jeb Bush of Florida and Mike Huckabee of Arkansas have been supportive of sentencing reform for nonviolent drug offenders.

In the U.S. Firearms Involved Many More Suicides Than Homicides

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Most firearm deaths are suicides, not homicides, according to the 2015 Annual Review of Public Health.
Suicides accounted on average for 60.5 percent of firearm deaths over the decade ending in 2012, a university report says.
In the United States, “The mortality rate from firearm violence has remained essentially unchanged since just before the turn of the 21st century,” wrote Professor Garen J. Wintemute of the University of California at Davis’ Violence Prevention Research Program.
Since 2006, firearm homicides have decreased, but firearm suicides have increased by a like amount, he said.
“Alcohol and controlled substance abuse are important predictors of future risk for violence, including firearm violence, whether directed at others or at oneself and whether or not mental illness is also present,” Wintemute wrote.
The review, titled “The Epidemiology of Firearm Violence in the 21st Century United States,” presents the following data:
In 2012, there were 32,288 deaths from firearm violence: 11,622 homicides and 20,666 suicides.
 

“Firearm violence is among the leading

causes of death for teenagers and young adults”

 
The societal costs of firearm suicides and homicides were about $164.6 billion in 2010, roughly 1.1 percent of the U.S. gross domestic product that year.
During the decade ending in 2012, there were on average 82.3 deaths from firearm violence every day: 32.5 homicides and 49.8 suicides.
Mass public killings accounted for a very small percentage of deaths from firearm violence. The four high-fatality events in this century resulted in 84 homicides.
Firearm ownership is probably the most widespread factor associated with risk of death from firearm violence.
Compared with other industrialized nations, the United States has uniquely high mortality rates from firearm homicide and suicide.
Contrary to popular belief, mental illness by itself is not a leading contributor to interpersonal firearm violence, though depression is a major factor for firearm suicide.
Firearm violence is among the leading causes of death for teenagers and young adults.
Firearm homicides are concentrated among Black males through much of the life span. Firearm suicides, on the other hand, are concentrated among White males, increasing sharply after age 70.
The mortality rates from firearm violence varied greatly among the states, with essentially no correlation between the rates of homicide and suicide.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention now treats firearm-related deaths and injuries as a public health problem; it collects such data and publishes them via its Web-based Injury Statistics Query and Reporting System.

Curbing Youth Gun Violence

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The solution to youth gun violence requires curbing access to firearms and providing mental illness treatment when needed, a recent scientific study reports.

“Viewing gun violence prevention primarily

through the lens of mental health is inadequate”

 
“Gun violence in American schools and communities has and continues to be a serious public health concern. Each year, nearly 3,000 youth are killed and approximately 16,000 are injured by guns,” according to the report published in November on the Public Library of Science web site.
The solution requires closing background check loopholes, reducing civilian access to high-capacity weapons and normalizing safe gun storage practices, the report adds.
“Additionally, current research confirms that stricter gun control efforts are effective in curbing gun violence and substantially reducing the number of firearm-related injuries and deaths,” the report states.
It is politically difficult and complex to regulate gun control legislation. On the other hand, the mental health “angle” seems to be the easier pathway for clinicians, researchers and educators who want to prevent gun violence, according to the report.
The study was authored by Kelly V. Ruggles of New York University and Sonali Rejan of Columbia University.
“Viewing gun violence prevention primarily through the lens of mental health is inadequate in providing us with a complete understanding of the factors that are associated with gun violence among youth,” the study says.
The author’s list of six behavioral clusters that contribute to youth gun violence are:
Physical activity and nutrition
Disordered eating, suicide and sexual violence
Weapon carrying and physical safety
Alcohol, marijuana and cigarette use
Drug use on school property
Overall drug use
This study found 40 patterns between gun violence and youth. Behavioral factors consistently linked include heroin use, having been injured in a fight (bullying) and or having been a sexual victim.

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