JOHANNESBURG, South Africa, Sept. 2, 2007 (AP) – Half a dozen teenagers are leading scruffy dogs through a slalom of orange plastic cones in the worn asphalt yard of a veterinary clinic.

The dogs have been rescued from nearby townships, the kids from South Africa’s criminal justice system. The teens started coming to the clinic run by Community Led Animal Welfare on Saturday mornings in late April after being arrested for theft, assault and other minor offenses.

Increasingly South Africa is trying to keep young offenders out of juvenile detention centers and adult prisons. Officials of Khulisa, a private group helping provide alternatives, at first thought teen offenders would spend just one day with the animal welfare project, cleaning kennels or feeding dogs to fulfill a community service obligation.

Instead, the group known as CLAW offered to host 15 teenagers every Saturday for six weeks.

“We kind of took it upon ourselves to go a little further because we saw something in those kids that was encouraging,” says Cora Bailey, CLAW’s founder and director.

Some of the kids have continued to show up — of their own accord — for more than three months now. Among them is Victor Molefe, 16, arguably CLAW’s biggest success story.

He was arrested for stealing a car part with four other boys in January. His grandmother and guardian, Lydia Molefe, says she was surprised when her grandson was arrested. But the boy confesses that he was running with the wrong crowd, often skipping classes, smoking marijuana, and staying out late which made his grandmother worry.

Now she says he is a “nice boy,” going to school, always home at a reasonable hour, and helping out with the dishes and other chores. And he has developed a deep affection for animals.

One recent Saturday, a charming wheaten Labrador named Rupert twisted through Victor’s legs. Rupert’s owner, CLAW volunteer Barbara Hammerschlag, says the dog would not trust just anyone enough to do that.

Elza Cilliers of Khulisa said about 90 percent of children who complete the regimen — which includes eight weeks of life skills training and family therapy as well as the community service — don’t commit another crime within the first year of their arrest. But she acknowledges that for many of the kids, eight weeks is not enough.

“Many kids want to attend another session. They want someone to hug them and ask them how they are,” Cilliers says.

South Africa has been trying to get children out of the formal criminal justice system since 1992, when non-governmental organizations in cooperation with public prosecutors and probation officers first piloted programs aimed at teaching juveniles to take responsibility for their actions and avoid getting into trouble. After completing programs like the one run by Khulisa, first-time offenders’ records are cleared.

Ann Skelton, a human rights lawyer who helped draft the Child Justice Bill that includes a provision to encourage getting children out of the formal justice system, said about 10 percent of juveniles who are arrested are currently diverted into programs like Khulisa’s, but that that number should be higher.

“We know that serious violent crimes make up about 30 percent of the offenses, that would give us about 70 percent that we could go at, though some you couldn’t divert because they were secondary offenses,” Skelton says.

And that could indirectly drive a continued drop in the number of children awaiting trial in adult prisons. With fewer cases for courts to deal with, those awaiting trial would move more quickly through the formal justice system. The number of children awaiting trial in prison dropped from a high of 2,934 in 1999 to 1,238 in 2005, according to the most recently available government figures.

All the teenagers spending their Saturdays at CLAW have already seen the charges filed against them withdrawn.

Bailey, CLAW’s founder and director, said her priority was to teach the kids respect for animals. She said animal abuse and neglect are still often tolerated in the townships the teens come from, where CLAW has worked exclusively since 1999.

“If you look at a home where there’s a deliberately abused animal, you will find that there are abused women or abused children. … I think if you can learn to understand an animal and learn to take responsibility and relate to something that’s helpless and that needs you, it’s good for anybody.”

So CLAW has been teaching the kids how to approach an animal and how to identify when an animal is sick. The kids were promenading the dogs around the clinic’s yard on a recent Saturday as part of their first lesson in dog training.

“The first time they came I thought this wasn’t going to work,” Bailey said. In South Africa’s townships many dogs are trained to attack, and the teens were terrified by the canines at the clinic at first.

Bailey said Rupert, the Lab, broke the ice by jumping rope and dancing to “The Locomotion” with his owner.

Rupert’s friend Victor said before coming to CLAW, he hated dogs. Now he jolts out of bed at 5 a.m. each Saturday, eager to get to the clinic and play with his furry friends, even though his ride there doesn’t arrive until 9 a.m.

“I used to kick dogs,” Molefe said. “But from now on, whenever I see a person kick a dog it’s like he’s kicking me.”

EL CERRITO, California – El Cerrito High School Junior Kenneth Thornton, 16, had switched his cell phone to vibrate and stashed it in the pocket of his baggy Rocca Wear jeans. When it went off in Jim Perrero’s Friday morning history class, he ducked under his desk.

“Who is this?” Thornton whispered, “I’m gonna call you back.”

Sliding back up into his chair, Thornton said he had to take the call.

“I didn’t know that number it could have been important.”

But answering a cell phone at El Cerrito High is now risky business. The school’s 1,250 students were greeted on the first day of school with warnings that their phones would be confiscated if they were in view at any time during school hours.

Last year, when hundreds of El Cerrito’s students flipped out their phones during lunch periods, the noise on the schools compact temporary campus could be deafening, assistant principal Jamersina Preston said. Students were often trying to hold two conversations at once: one with classmates, and another on the phone. The multitasking sometimes led to confrontation.

Preston said a student might use a profane word on the phone, but someone nearby at school would think the comment was meant for them. Fights, she said, could erupt “in seconds.”

In another incident last year, students involved in a fight used cell phones to call for back up. Friends from outside the school hopped the fence to join the fight, Preston said.

But even with the new ban, phones are ubiquitous. Students don’t carry simple calculators or wear watches anymore — they have phones for that. They use their phones like global positioning systems to find each other on campus, or to keep in touch with friends at other schools.

Senior Monet Smith, 17, didn’t hesitate to pull a charger from her backpack during Chris Silva’s English class to juice up her black Motorola.

“I’m not using (my phone), it’s off,” Smith said. “I just don’t want it to be dead when I leave school I have a doctor’s appointment and I just need to know where my daddy’s at.”

The West Contra Costa Unified School District, which includes El Cerrito High, established its cell phone policy in 2004, banning the devices from all classrooms. Principals were given discretion over whether to allow students to use them during lunch. Until now, the ban had not been enforced at El Cerrito during lunch or passing times, and it was not uniformly enforced in the classroom either.

Assistant Principal Preston said this year all the teachers at El Cerrito agreed to the crackdown. But in fact, teachers still differ in how they deal with the policy.
Silva, 28, lets students charge their phones in his classroom. The second-year teacher is sympathetic to students’ need to have cell phones for coordinating schedules or contacting their parents in an emergency.

But Silva said he will snatch cell phones when students are texting during class or chatting over lunch.

“They know this is the wrong place to screw around,” he said referring to the location of his portable at the back of the campus. “Normally the back of the school is where all the bad stuff happens, but this is the safest place on campus.”

Lawrence Pang, 23, a second-year math teacher, is more reluctant to confiscate phones.

First, he warns students, next he takes the phone and on the third offense he takes it to the office.

“I want to avoid the confrontation,” Pang said, explaining he first needs to get more credibility and experience with the students.

Pang also is trying to lead by example. On Friday, Pang confiscated his own phone.

“My (phone’s) alarm went off,” he said. “I pulled it out of my pocket, opened up my desk drawer, and dropped it in.”

Students seem to be getting the message. On the first day of school, more than 30 phones were confiscated from students, according to Assistant Principal Preston. The second day, about two dozen were taken. Now it’s down to three or four a day.
Students are using their phones less often during school hours, even if they refuse to leave them at home.

The silhouette of sophomore Kaiya Gatewood’s phone is obvious in the chest pocket of her jacket.

“I can’t live without my phone,” she said. “If I leave my phone at home and I’m at school, I go and get it.”

In the moments before the final morning bell rang last Friday, Gatewood got a half-dozen text messages wishing her a happy 16th birthday. Her friends had to rush to get their messages in before 8:15 a.m.

“I don’t get any text messages during school,” Gatewood said, “because you can’t use your phone during school.”rr