The juvenile crime crisis gripping the national capital region has local leaders calling on fathers and father figures to provide the positive influence on youth that no government program or institution can replicate.
Armed robbers as young as 11 in the District and teens terrorizing drivers with carjackings in the Washington suburbs have politicians and community advocates pushing for fathers to step up — especially in the lives of young men.
“Eliminating fatherhood absence is really critical because dads can provide, particularly for their sons, that armor against the negative impacts of the world,” Mel Franklin, an at-large member of the Prince George’s County Council, told The Washington Times. “When that influence is not in the kid’s life, that protection is not there. Oftentimes the kid is going to turn to their own understanding of how to protect themselves, and oftentimes that leads to violence.”
Fatherlessness has loomed large in some of the D.C. area’s most high-profile recent criminal cases involving teen boys.
Karon Blake, the 13-year-old who was shot dead by a District resident while police said the boy was breaking into cars, was considered to be the man of his house by his mother.
The 17-year-old who tried to stick up Washington Commanders player Brian Robinson Jr. a year ago only had mom in the picture as well.
Prince George’s police suggested that 15-year-old rapper and accused gunman “Baby K” was living without either parent when officers arrested him last month for trying to shoot a student on a school bus.
There was a 20% increase in the number of juvenile arrests in the District last year when compared to 2021, according to Metropolitan Police Department data. The Times contacted Prince George’s police for data, but has yet to receive a response.
A rally for fathers organized by Mr. Franklin in Upper Marlboro last weekend zeroed in on how important a dad’s presence is for a kid — a theme amplified by Maryland Gov. Wes Moore and radio host Russ Parr, both of whom participated in the event.
The research supports the message. Children from fatherless homes are more likely to be poor, abuse drugs and drop out of school, according to the nonprofit National Center for Fathering. Boys are especially more likely to get involved in crime without their dad around.
The challenge, as Mr. Franklin acknowledged, is that “you can’t legislate great fatherhood.”
He said most dads who retreat from their kids’ lives do so because they became fathers before they were ready.
The goal of the Upper Marlboro rally was to connect fathers to housing and job resources so they can be there for their children, and to get other men to sign up for mentorship programs in the county.
But fathers and mentors today are finding themselves competing with the sense of direction — and the excitement — promised to teen boys by a life of crime, according to Tyrone Parker, the executive director of the D.C.-based Alliance of Concerned Men.
The nonprofit works with troubled youth by recruiting them into work programs and also tries to remedy feuds between rival crews in the District. Unfortunately, Mr. Parker told The Times that the wrong people have a knack for reaching teens before the right ones — and the problem is exacerbated when boys travel in a world with “more guns and less men,” where petty disputes are too often settled with violence.
“We’ve got to teach them how to deal with conflict — we’ve got to teach them how to love,” Mr. Parker said. “[But] we’ve got to think of more creative ways to get into these communities.”
One way Mr. Parker’s nonprofit does that is by paying teens to attend work programs. Once teens see they’re being compensated for their time, he said they become ambassadors to the program for other people their age.
Local artist and activist Abdur-Rahmaan Kelly believes that’s a good start. He said teens won’t take the programs seriously if they aren’t being paid, and are more likely to resort to crime as a source of income as a result.
But the 25-year-old District native pointed out that the financial incentives offered by relief organizations will struggle to rewire teens’ brains if they’re still living in a rough neighborhood.
Mr. Kelly experienced this firsthand when he moved out of his home in Petworth to run track at North Carolina State University.
He said that if someone was making sustained eye contact with you in his neighborhood, it usually meant there was trouble heading your way.
But down South, it was typically someone gearing up to say “hello.”
“The paranoia that comes from being in the ‘hood, it makes you operate in a certain way. But getting out of this environment and seeing that everyone isn’t a threat, that was something that I wasn’t used to,” Mr. Kelly told The Times. “It made me feel like I’ve got a lot of growing up to do, because a lot of the stuff we were taught growing up was based on survival, and it’s not necessarily right.”
All of those interviewed by The Times agreed that juveniles who commit serious crimes need to face judicial consequences for their actions. In some cases, they believe parents should be held accountable as well, whether that’s a civil offense or something more serious.
More importantly, all agreed that boys need their fathers. Mr. Kelly was one of 12 children in his household as a kid, but he always knew he had to come home and answer to his father if he was ever out of line.
It’s maintaining that level of integrity that defines manhood in the eyes of Mr. Parker, and it’s a value that’s contagious to the boys who are around it.
“Are you still the same man with nothing as you would be with everything?” Mr. Parker asked rhetorically “That’s what I look at — and it’s a long-distance run.”
• Matt Delaney can be reached at mdelaney@washingtontimes.com.
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