Chicago Teen's Violent Death Spurs Plans to Reduce Youth Violence

Education Secretary Arne Duncan and Attorney General Eric Holder traveled to the South Side of Chicago to meet with parents and students at Albert's Fenger High School. 

"Youth violence is not a Chicago problem, any more than it is a black problem, a white problem or a Hispanic problem," Holder remarked. "It is an American problem."

Secretary Duncan said that there is $25 million in the 2010 budget for crime prevention programs and the government would give $500,000 to Fenger High School for counseling programs.

Video called attention to ongoing problem

	Three teens seen in the video are in custody and have been charged with murder.

Although Albert's killing gained national attention after the video went viral on the Internet, he is the third youth to die violently in Chicago since school began this year and the 67th since the last academic year. Hundreds more have been injured in shootings or beatings in after-school violence. 

"It gets attention when someone dies, but this is every day with us," recent Fenger High graduate Kase Miles, told the Christian Science Monitor.  Miles has a scar on his cheek where someone hit him with brass knuckles at school. "It's getting worse.... But if he wouldn't have died, [the media] wouldn't be here." 

Chicago reporter Carol Marin told the NewsHour that this particular case received so much attention because people could see the violence with their own eyes. 

"It was the shot heard around the world. It was seen globally." Marin said. "And as a result, the echoes of it are louder than perhaps the other shootings, the other murders, the other stabbings that are just as painful, but the world didn't see." 

Chicago tries bold move

	Chicago schools chief Huberman, a former police officer, created the Illinois State Police intelligence gathering system.

The killing comes as Chicago's new superintendent Ron Huberman begins to implement an ambitious plan for the city's public schools, the third-largest school system in America.  

The $60 million plan aims to refocus the city's school security policy less on policing and more on preventative strategies and counseling programs. 

Huberman's plan is unusual in that it uses a special formula derived from the analysis of 500 students shot in previous years to identify behavioral patterns and risk factors that make young people more likely to be victims of violence.  

The study's analysts determined that at-risk students are likely to be black, male, come from unstable homes, and skipping school, among other things. 

Huberman hopes to identify 10,000 of the cities most at-risk adolescents and invest $30 million in mentorship programs and paid jobs. 

“We believe that if we can change the behavior of these 10,000 students,  we’ll be able to make a significant difference in the level of violence in the city," he told the New York Times. 

Critics of the new approach argue that it is unfair to invest so much money on such a small portion of the 410,000 students in Chicago public schools, where more than 80 percent live in poverty. 

Chicago and Huberman will be closely watched by school officials in other big cities who have similar problems with youth violence and gang activity in schools. 

Violence studies as disease

	Columbine High School security cameras showed two teenagers with guns in the school cafeteria.

The Center for Disease Control defines youth violence as harmful behaviors perpetrated by or against children into early adulthood.  

Both the CDC and World Health Organization consider youth violence to be a health issue because it results not only in physical but mental trauma for communities. In the United States, the CDC reports, it is the second leading cause of death for people ages 10 to 24. 

A Justice Department study released this week shows that youth violence is widespread: more than 60 percent of children were exposed to violence and nearly half were assaulted at least once in the past year.  More than one in 10 were injured. 

In recent years, school-related youth violence has garnered a lot of attention in the media, especially after the Columbine tragedy in 1999 when two high school students killed 12 classmates and a teacher before committing suicide. After the massacre, many school districts began to invest heavily in school security.