TRANSCRIPT

CHILD ON STREET #1: I know we gotta die one time. But I hope to peacefully.

MALE ON STREET #1: All I saw around me was poverty.

MALE ON STREET #2: By 14, I was deep into the gang.

FEMALE ON STREET #1: We'd get in fights. We'd shoot people and stab people.

MALE ON STREET #3: No one cared. Years of violence, years of being violent.

MALE ON STREET #4: People don't think sometime. They just react.

FEMALE ON STREET #2: I'm scared. I'm not gonna lie.

MALE ON STREET #5: I don't want to be another statistics.

MALE ON STREET #6: I would like to be part of the solution.

FEMALE ON STREET #3: I wanna be somebody.

MALE ON STREET #7: I don't wanna die. I wanna live.

BILL MOYERS: I'm Bill Moyers. In this broadcast, we'll talk with two women who believe there's something you can do about crime and violence. And something we can all do together right in the communities where we live. They speak from experience. Twenty-five years ago, Stephanie Mann decided that enough's enough.

There was so much crime in her California neighborhood that she helped launched a citizen's group to combat it. Sure enough, the crime rate in the community fell by 50%. She's been an activist ever since, organizing next door neighbors to fight crime in some tough, urban communities. Her book Safe Homes, Safe Neighborhoods is a how-to guide for crime prevention on your block. Stephanie Mann is the kind of citizen who doesn't wait for the experts to tell her what can be done about violence. She figures it out herself.

BILL MOYERS: You strike me as a grassroots organizer. How — how did you come about that? How'd you get started?

STEPHANIE MANN: Well — in 1969, we had 4 burglaries in my community. And I live in Orinda, California, which is a suburb in the San Francisco Bay area. We have 17,000 residents and — we had mostly burglaries at the time. So we wanted to address that particular issue is — and that's what we did. And within two and a half years, our crime rate decreased 48%.

BILL MOYERS: Mainly from citizens?

STEPHANIE MANN: It was all citizens because what we did was we worked with our sheriff's department. But the citizens took the initiative.

BILL MOYERS: So what did — what sort of practical things did you do?

STEPHANIE MANN: Well — as a matter of fact, we got neighbors together to talk about what the problems were. Most people didn't have the faintest idea what was going on. They lived in the neighborhood and yet they didn't know each other, which is pretty typical.

They didn't have any idea that we had a crime problem. Crime is invisible. You — you can't see it so therefore it doesn't exist for a lotta people. So we brought it right into focus for them. Here's what the problem is. It's m — majority of it is caused by our kids.

And — here's what we need to do about it. We need to talk to the kids. We need to know the children more. We need to interact with them. We also gave them specifics on what is suspicious, because half the burglars were our kids coming into the houses.

So as a result of that — I think we sent a very strong message — that we cared about you. And — we weren't gonna let you just take over our community. We did hire ex — two extra police officers to investigate our burglaries. But we also — organized neighborhoods.

And we put a network of neighborhoods together. Identified neighborhood leaders. We had an overall citizen's crime prevention committee. We put on programs down at the high school. And it included drug education and it included environmental — you know, how to keep your area clean. And — so — we put on a mock jury. And — as a result of that, we also started a peer counseling group.

We took the good kids and gave them some training on how to talk to some of the younger children. And they did a super job of helping the kids understand what our crime problems were and how to be responsible. They're much better at talking to each other than — than — we are.

BILL MOYERS: But starting with — middle class, upper — upper income suburban neighborhoods, you moved on to work with low income people. How did that happen?

STEPHANIE MANN: Six of us went out into many different communities. Low income — worked with — housing authority projects. Worked in — all kinds of neighborhoods. And we were able to organize 27 different committees in our county. To give you a quick example.

In a — housing project where it looked like a bombed-out area. The neighborhood had broken mailboxes. It had — cars on blocks. It had all kinds of — debris around it. And when we first went into this housing project, we were surprised. There was so much anger toward the police.

And yet a lotta the things that were taking place, the police couldn't do anything about. You know, like the vandalism and — the stolen bikes. And — the burglaries. Well, we did a brainstorming session with the residents. And to make a long story short, it took about 45 minutes to get past the anger.

And by the time we finished, everybody — the air was clear. It was wonderful. And the manager came up to her and said, "That was the most exciting meeting," because people began to see that they were the ones that could change it. It wasn't gonna be the police. And then we came back in and did some training for — our counsel group on how to — do some active listening to get people to have input into — fixing up their own neighborhoods and their own housing project.

So what we did was go back and help them to learn how to delegate. Learn how to get people out to a meeting. Learn how to work with their neighbors. So and what we were doing is actually empowering the community themselves to take charge by strengthening their skills, actually.

We talk a lot about education. But we can have education right in the community. And — that's exactly what we started doing. And it was exciting to see the — the — transformation of some of our — some of the projects that we worked with. You're only as safe as your neighborhood is safe. You can put all the padlocks you want on your house. You can put the security system on your house. But if your neighborhood is in shambles, you are s — much more likely to be a victim. So you need to know what's happening in my neighborhood?

BILL MOYERS: A lot of citizens are listening right now, watching right now. What can you tell them about what they can do in response to the question, "What can we do about violence?"

STEPHANIE MANN: Number one, we have to get the support systems for families together. And that means pulling neighborhoods together. When we grew up — you know, if my child did something wrong, you would give me a call and say, "You know, your kid is out of control here. And I've talked to them."

And — you know, then — they come home to me and I talk to 'em. Well, that was a check and balance on behavior. And it was also a caring. It was also sending a very strong message that you cared about my child. And that — I appreciated that. So one of the first things I did, anytime moved into a new community. And I've moved in a lotta communities. I've traveled a lot.

I took my children by the hand and I took the initiative. And I went door to door and I said, "Hi, I want — meet you. I'm — I'm Stephanie Mann and these are my kids. And, you know, if there's a problem," you know, you — after you get acquainted, you know.

"If there's a problem, you know, I wanna be the first the know, not the last. So, you know, be sure to call — give me a call 'cause I'd really appreciate, you know, hearing about it." And believe me, they called me. I had a call from a neighbor one day. And — my son had — thrown mud clots at her house.

Alo — he was seven years old. Along with his — my other neighborhood boy. And she was very embarrassed about calling me. And, of course, I was a little embarrassed to hear about it. But the beauty of that was that — the boys were sent down there.

And it took 'em an hour and a half to get the mud out of the stucco building. And believe me, that was a lesson right there that, you know — this is not acceptable behavior. And, of course, we punished 'em when we got — they got home. And it — they never did that again.

But that's the kinda check and balance that you need. And what I learned from my neighbor was, I need her. I need her to help me raise my children. I need all of my neighbors. I need a sense of community. And that's one of the wonderful things about schools and — you know, the neighborhood.

Because we have — there are people in my neighborhood that correct my kids. There are people in my school that correct my children. And I can't be with 'em all the time. So I really need those kind of support systems. If children learn that they can get away with something, it sorta sends a message that, you know, not only that nobody cares. But that that kinda behavior is acceptable.

There was a interesting article written — 1982 by James Q. Wilson. And it was called Broken Windows. And Broken Windows had to do with if you break one window and nobody fixes it, then other windows get broken. Because it sends that signal that nobody cares. It's the same thing with graffiti.

If somebody puts graffiti up there and it doesn't get cleaned up. Or it — it sends a message that nobody cares. So — putting these networks together and getting people to clean up their own neighborhoods and to take pride in their own neighborhoods — is exciting to see. And it's happening.

BILL MOYERS: You'll find more of Stephanie Mann's down to earth ideas in her book Safe Homes, Safe Neighborhoods. Now let's meet Deborah Prothrow-Stith. She's a medical doctor who started thinking about how to prevent violence while she was working as a resident at Boston City Hospital.

In the mid-1980s, she launched a campaign to have us see teenage violence in particular as a disease which needs to be treated accordingly. Her book Deadly Consequences spells out the value of understanding violence as a public health problem.

She's also created a violence prevention curriculum for adolescents, which is used all over the country to help youngsters deal with anger without resorting to violence. Dr. Deborah Prothrow-Stith is assistant dean for government and community programs at the Harvard School of Public Health.

BILL MOYERS: What drew you to violence? To giving so much of your time and effort to it?

DR. DEBORAH PROTHROW-STITH: Well, I was — training to be a physician. I was in medical school. And — working in the emergency department seeing people come in who had been victims of violence. And it bothered me that we were doing only — the physical aspect of the treatment.

We were stitching them up, we were casting them, we were making sure that they were physically okay. But nobody asked — "What happened?" Nobody asked — "Are you safe? Are you planning revenge?" And one night — after I'd stitched a young man up, he told me not to go to bed.

He told me he was gonna go back outside, beat up the guy who had beat him up, send that guy into the emergency room. And I was gonna get all the practice that I needed putting (LAUGH) in stitches. And he said it in sort of a humorous way. As he left, I immediately started feeling quite inadequate and realizing that for some reason, we were treating violence as inevitable. As just a part of human nature. Not as a preventable problem. And I guess that was the challenge.

BILL MOYERS: What did you set out to do?

DR. DEBORAH PROTHROW-STITH: I set out first to understand the problem more. I learned that the United States has one of the highest homicide rates in the world. Higher than any other — other industrialized countries. I also learned that half of our homicides occurs among friends and family and people who know each other.

So I realized that more police and stiffer sentences and trying juveniles as adults and all of the ways that we debate in our public policy arena this issue of violence have very little impact on the problem of acquaintance violence. Of inter-personal violence. Of people get into an argument. Of families. Twenty percent of the homicides are among family members. So as I learned more about the problem, I then became motivated to get involved in prevention. And to stop accepting the problem.

BILL MOYERS: Have you enough experience to think that violence can be unlearned?

DR. DEBORAH PROTHROW-STITH: It can be unlearned. It's easier if we don't teach children violence in the first place. IF we teach them alternatives to handling anger and conflict. And if we celebrate different ways — aside from violence. But I'm also convinced at this point that even if a child has learned to use violence, that that can be unlearned. It's harder. It takes — a lot more time. And it's more expensive. But it can be done.

BILL MOYERS: If so much violence is learned in the home where we aren’t, where a violent parent or violent parents or fights between spouses or lovers or siblings. If — if that's happening and we're not the — we, society, are not there, what do we do about it?

DR. DEBORAH PROTHROW-STITH: Well, I think one of the things we have to do is prepare people better for the job of parenting. And for the job of being in a family. It is — work to be in a relationship. It requires — negotiation and compromise and handling anger. And it certainly, as a parent — understanding child development, having a good sense of — of your own anger.

And — being able to solve your problems without violence as an example to your children. Those are helpful things. We — there are things we could teach — in the public schools that would help parents and families inside the privacy of their homes. I also think that the cultural issues have to be addressed as well.

BILL MOYERS: What do you mean?

DR. DEBORAH PROTHROW-STITH: Well, we are a country that — that's infatuated with violence. We really like violence a lot. Some of us are in love with violence. Are addicted to it. We celebrate it. We're entertained by it. We applaud it. We — run to read about it, to see it.

We encourage our children sometimes to fight. We don't want a wimp for a child. In a lot of ways, the cultural issues — are as important — as the family issues. Because even when — a family is trying to give the right message, a child begins to learn from outside of that family — different messages.

BILL MOYERS: With violence pervading our culture so thoroughly, as you have described, I mean, what can parents do about it?

DR. DEBORAH PROTHROW-STITH: The — the role of parents — as an example, I think, is an extremely important one. Men have to be examples to boys of manhood without violence. To counter some of that superhero junk. Women have to be examples to young girls of womanhood without violence.

It's interesting to think about fundamentally the role of a parent as an example. But it's not just limited — to parents. Parents also have to talk to their children about the cultural issues. Watch television with children, explain what has just been seen.

Watch the movies, ex — sometimes when I'm watching with my children I'll say something like, "Mmmm, you know, I bet that man has to have a funeral. I wonder if he has any children?" Now, of course, this is an incidental character who was just killed in the movie. The story has just moved on. But my effort is to draw attention to the fact that violence and death have consequences.

BILL MOYERS: What about those homes where there are no parents watching with the children? The children, they're latch key. The parents are working. There may be only one parent. There may be a crack mother in the house.

DR. DEBORAH PROTHROW-STITH: Well, that's where schools have a major role to play. Churches, community agencies, adults who have contact with children in other aspects of their lives. Where there aren’t caring adults, you've got a huge problem. And the best that we can do as a society is line up the adults and the other institutions to respond as much as possible to the needs of those children. That's hard.

BILL MOYERS: You've pioneered — in violence prevention curriculum. What's the core of it? What do you aim to do with it?

DR. DEBORAH PROTHROW-STITH: The — the — the essence of the violence prevention curriculum is — a message that — that goes like this. Anger is normal. You don't outgrow getting angry. And handling anger is an important part of growing up. There's a long list of things you can do with your anger. Fighting is one of them.

The curriculum is not so much conflict resolution as it is setting the stage for conflict resolution. We try to create in the students a need or a desire to handle conflict without violence. We acknowledge the cultural pressures to fight. The pressure that comes from other kids in the classroom.

And we don't just focus on the fighters. We say, "You know, what would happen if a fight started but everybody went the other way? There was no crowd?" It's an interesting question because we're so trained to run to see the fight. And the crowd is so much a part of the fight that — it just raises an interesting question. A lot of — a lot of times the kids say, "Well, there wouldn't be a fight."

BILL MOYERS: What have you learned about these kids that you're trying to reach? What have you learned about them over the years?

DR. DEBORAH PROTHROW-STITH: Well, probably the hardest lesson and the one that I learn over and over and over again is that despite some pretty disadvantaged circumstances, these are regular kids. And they are in some ways similar to my kids. And they're not so hard to reach.

They want some pretty basic things. And one of those things is an adult to pay attention to them. I've also learned that if we don't start doing the work of prevention we're going to literally continue to watch these kids get worse and worse and worse and cost more and more and more money.

What we're doing now isn't very smart because we literally — I stitch kids up. Send them out. You know, they — they get suspended from school all the time. The police respond to calls of domestic violence. They see the kids having just watched their mother beaten.

We — we — we know these kids and they — we just watch them. We just watch them. And — and they ultimately wind up in serious and expensive trouble. We — we could spend money and time on these kids early on. I mean, if you are absent from first grade for ten days in a month, that's nothing reflecting on your character. That's saying something's going on in that family, in that neighborhood. Somebody oughta say, "Let's figure out what's going on. Maybe we need to pay somebody to get that kid to school." And to find out what that kid needs after school.

BILL MOYERS: Aren’t you flying in the face of current political and public opinion, however? We seem to have made up our mind politically that the best way to deal with violence is to lock 'em up.

DR. DEBORAH PROTHROW-STITH: In 1980, we had about a half a million people in jails and prisons. In 1990, we had about a million. We doubled in a decade the number of people in jails and prisons in the United States. And we already had one of the highest incarceration rates in the industrialized world.

In that decade, violent crime went up 12%. And we had the epidemic of youth violence that we're experiencing. So at some point it oughta dawn on us that getting tougher, putting more people in jail isn't solving the problem. Now, in a health framework it would be as if I were trying to prevent lung cancer by doing more surgery.

By doing, you know, more chemotherapy, more treatment. And not getting people to stop smoking. Or keeping people from ever starting to smoke. This — this whole movement — to prevent violence reminds me of efforts around preventing smoking. In fact, I very intentionally apply public health strategies to preventing violence. I mean, that's how I describe my work.

It took us about 30 years to actually measure a reduction in smoking in America. And it's there. In that 30 years attitudes changed. Social pressures changed. Our way of doing business around issues of smoking changed. And my guess is that in time we will see the same kind of affect around violence.

And what we're learning in public health is whether we're talking about violence or AIDS or tuberculosis or heart disease, that it boils down to attitudes and behavior. And the need to change behavior or create attitudes that cause healthier behavior is a big challenge in public health. And it one — it's one that applies to this issue of violence.

This transcript was entered on April 21, 2015.