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Tuesday, January 30, 2001 Speaker touts value of education in preventing crimeBy AUDREY PARENTE | News-Journal Staff Writer DAYTONA BEACH — Stevie Winfrey is an eager college student now, but the 17-year-old recalled Monday how she felt about the gang she had been in three years ago when she stole jewelry and beat people. "The sudden sound of breaking glass shatters the atmosphere of the home... Excitement soon replaces fear as the adrenaline begins to race... With this last fateful step, the world (I) knew... was gone. Replaced by a harsher, uglier, more violent reality," Winfrey said. But she said she got help to get back on the right track through the Practical Academic Cultural Education Center for Girls in Daytona Beach, a branch of a statewide not-for-profit organization that helps girls overcome emotional and behavioral problems to find new directions and successful futures. "Attending PACE saved me," she said, then wept when she was through talking. Her story was a compelling confirmation of the findings by national crime and delinquency expert Leslie Acoca in a report, "Educate or Incarcerate," presented to more than 100 people in attendance, including college students, PACE supporters and Volusia County Judges Stasia Warren and Hubert Grimes, at Bethune-Cookman College. Acoca, director of the Women's and Girls' Institute of the National Council on Crime and Delinquency based in San Francisco, recently completed the study with the help of PACE. She said the study should "raise an alarm bell" with legislators. Her research included reviews of state data that indicates girls are getting into trouble at a faster pace than boys. She studied 1,000 case files, including some PACE students, and conducted interviews with 100 troubled girls already in the state's Juvenile Justice system. "We must stop the commission of a statewide and national crime - what we are doing to the justice system is depraved indifference," Acoca said. She criticized the use of state resources for a girls correction facility in South Florida, "the first maximum-security youth prison exclusively for girls in the nation." Acoca demanded a "halt to further construction" of girls' prisons, which she said was "throwing all our resources at the deep end." Instead, she said, the Florida Legislature should be "funding prevention and intervention services." She labeled PACE as a "jewel" that should become the model. She encouraged individuals to "organize a march to Tallahassee to say, 'Give us our future. Give us these programs.' " She suggested a consortium should be created to devise programs for problem girls beginning at a much younger age than high school, which is PACE's current focus. Winfrey agreed with the need for programs that begin earlier than high school. "I could have used the help about two years sooner, and I probably wouldn't have put my parents through what I put them through," the PACE graduate said. HICI Special Report — Teenagers and Crime: Trends in Adolescent Aggression |
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