A small rural police department in my area is promoting a huge improvement in communications between police and young people. After a spate of illegal graffiti incidents over the summer, the chief decided to launch a community policing initiative: offer a graffiti art workshop to the youth of the town. It is a carefully considered plan. The artists hired to run these graffiti art workshops live in town and have studios in town. They are educators who believe that art can be a vehicle for building self-knowledge and a sense of community. The workshops will include learning and experimenting with graffiti techniques as well as lessons on modern art and the history of graffiti.

The idea of such a program sparked a division of opinions among the townspeople. On one side are those who feel that making graffiti on public and private property is illegal, and requires punishment from the legal system. For a young person, this carries such ominous weight as jail time, charges of misdemeanors, fines, and a juvenile detention record. Offering a graffiti workshop is seen as using taxpayer money to coddle and reward the offenders rather than punishing them for breaking the law. (No mention of what using the legal system would cost taxpayers.)

On the other side are parents who are still heavily involved in the task of raising these children. They would like to feel that the community at large will support and respectfully guide the youths in their midst. About a dozen middle schoolers expressed an interest in the workshops, which is a lot in a small town. The police want the program. They have a mission to close the generational gaps in the community. They see the workshop as one way for the youths and the police to get to know one another.

As a society, we have a long history of casting people out who don’t follow the rules or expectations. That is particularly true for the young, the poor, and people of color. The White and the wealthy have loopholes and lawyers and the benefit of gratuitous positive images when they run afoul of the law. As ivy commented on my last post, we need to think about who and what is responsible for throwing people into the abyss, and which people typically end up there.

The police chief thought about that and educated her Select Board on the importance of offering young people guidance and meaningful activities in areas of interest to them. She wrote a grant to cover the costs. She wants to expand the idea to involve many other artists in her town, the creators of many forms of art, and make the program available to all middle school students in town.

The chief is creating a local illustration of how to build a more humane society. We could all learn from her example.