In 2010, when the Bark came out with an award-winning series highlighting the high arrest rates of teenagers in Marin, local teens were being arrested at nearly double the rate of any other teens in the Bay Area.
Today, however, the arrest rates for Marin teens are down significantly, becoming more similar to the rest of the Bay Area and the state, according to data from the State of California Department of Justice.
In 2009, juveniles accounted for 20% of arrests in Marin, compared to a rate of 11.6% in the rest of the Bay Area’s nine counties. Even though Marin made up 3.5% of the Bay Area’s population, 5.4% of all of the arrests of juveniles in the Bay Area occurred here.
In 2012, juveniles accounted for 11.8% of arrests in Marin, much closer to the Bay Area average of 10.4%.
“I think there were a couple of departments who had officers who arrested juveniles for very low level crimes and were hard core enforcement-oriented. I don’t see that happening today,” said Ross Police Chief Erik Masterson, who has also worked in the San Rafael and San Anselmo Police Departments over the past 30 years.
Even though the rate of arrests among adults has stayed relatively the same in the last four years, only about half as many teenagers in Marin were arrested in 2013 as in 2009.
In a survey run by Bark in 2010, 67% of Redwood students reported that they had been confronted by a police officer in Marin. In a recent Bark survey run this December, 45% of Redwood students reported that they had been confronted by a police officer in Marin.
From 2009 to 2012, felony arrests are down among Marin teens by 24%, misdemeanor arrests are down by 49%, and status offense arrests are down by 60%. There were 31 arrests for curfew violations in 2010, while last year there were none.
Reasons
Sergeant Toby Miller of the Central Marin Police Authority said there are a few factors that may have contributed to the decrease in the teen arrest rate, including the increasing use of the option of Youth Court.
“We have a lot of alternative situations for juveniles. Meaning, if you’re arrested for minor in possession of alcohol, it’s an arrest, you’re cited,” he said. “It gets to my juvenile officer and she has a choice at that point whether it’s going to go to juvenile probation, where it’s a record of the state, or it can go to Youth Court. Now that’s not on your record. Now that’s not something that is going to come up in the numbers.”
Don Carney, the Director of the Marin Youth Court through the YMCA, also noted that there has been a move by police towards using Youth Court in the last few years.
Carney also attributed part of the teen arrest rate decline to a new law, making it so that school administrators are not required to inform the police about crimes on campus. He said that the schools are also now referring teens straight to Youth Court instead of calling the police.
Another reason for the drop-off in juvenile arrests in Marin is that it has come at a time when the number of law enforcement officers in Marin has decreased by almost 8% in the last four years. California has seen an 4% decrease in law enforcement staff and arrests statewide are down by 16%. Local police attributed the decrease in officers to the slow economy.
“There’s less officers to make arrests,” said Detective Cheryl Paris of the CMPA.
Carney also cited the recession as a reason for cops to focus more on severe crimes.
“When the recession hit, a lot of police departments had to cut back. A lot of them had decided that they were going to triage their enforcement time on serious cases and make misdemeanors something that they didn’t pay as much attention to,” he said.
Carney noted a similar situation in Santa Rosa a few years back where there were around 1,500 citations for juveniles that the police let expire because the economic conditions had changed their enforcement priorities.
“I think what they’re doing now is not even writing the citations,” he said.
He said that the same thing is happening in Marin.
As a final reason, Miller also cited the crackdown on parties with the Social Host ordinance in 2009-10 as a possible reason for the arrest rate being so high at the time.
“We really started hammering on the Social Host, so there were a lot of violations for Social Host,” he said.
Dynamics of Marin
Paris said that it is hard to compare Marin County to the rest of the Bay Area as far as arrests because of the nature of crime committed.
“In general in Marin County, because of the place we work in, we’re able to give a higher level of service than in other places. So we can pay attention to things and combat things at a lower level before those kids get to higher levels of anything else,” she said. “If you’re talking about Oakland, they don’t have time to deal with a juvenile drinking.”
Miller estimated that 90% of their arrests for juveniles were alcohol or marijuana related.
Masterson and Miller both said that teenagers do not cause more trouble in their jurisdictions than adults. Masterson, who also works with youths in Scouts programs, said teenagers in Marin in respectful to cops, especially because of the small community sizes.
“I think it’s actually pretty decent, in smaller communities especially. The larger the town, the larger the agency gets, the more removed the officers are from interaction every day, and that breeds a certain lack of respect,” he said. “If you know somebody and have some personal interaction with them, you’re less likely to be disrespectful.”
Even though teenagers are respectful to cops, according to Masterson, and most of the crime committed by teenagers in Marin is minor possession, there are still issues with police exceeding what they are allowed to do regarding juveniles.
“Lots of police exceed the constitutional limits when they search kids on the street,” said Carney. “I’m aware of hundreds of cases where a cop stopped a kid on the street with a backpack without probable cause and convinced the kid they did have probable cause and went through the backpack.”
But even though arrests are down, Marin is still ranked above state and national averages in binge drinking, according to a study by the University of Wisconsin Population Heath Institute and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.
Education vs. Punishment
At the Central Marin Police Authority, they stressed that they value education for teenagers over punishment.
“Our perception is education, meaning if you do a crime, we try to make you understand that the crime is wrong,” Miller said. “Sometimes that’s with education and a talk, sometimes its put a citation if you need a little more firmer understanding of it.”
When the police decide to process a citation through Youth Court, it does not go on a juvenile’s record. They instead have to go in front of a jury of peers, do community service, and go through six hours of counseling with their parents.
“Now we have the capacity to respond to those in a restorative way, not a retributive way,” Carney said. “Instead of kids getting labeled and punished, they’re getting support and educated.”
The San Anselmo Police Department did not use Youth Court until their merger into the Central Marin Police Authority last year.
“We like the Youth Court,” Miller said. “We think that especially for a first time offender: why put them in the system if it’s just a bad judgment call?”
Carney believes that teenagers should be caught more for drug and alcohol use, however they should not be punished as a result, but rather educated.
“We have been encouraging the laws around underage drinking and other drug issues,” he said. “I don’t think a kid should ever have a juvenile record for minor drugs. I don’t think minor drugs is a criminal issue. I think it’s an educational issue, a health issue.”
He cited an event two weeks ago, where a party in east San Rafael was stopped by the cops. No teenagers were cited, just told to be driven home by sober drivers.
“From my point of view, not writing a citation there for every kid that was under the influence robbed that kid and that family of a teachable moment,” he said. “It’s not like they would be labeled or go to Juvenile Hall, all they would do is go to Youth Court, go in front of a peer review, get a little community service hours.”
Some police departments, such as Novato, however, have been hesitant to use diversions of arrests for juveniles because they cannot see if an arrest is a first time violation or not, according to Carney.
