LITTLE ROCK, Ark. — The problem of youth violence has been something that the Prosecuting Attorney of the sixth judicial district, Will Jones, explained he knows all too well from his first year serving Pulaski County.
He said that just this year alone 32 juveniles were either charged or were victims of a homicide.
"Those numbers are just astronomical I mean, those are children. Those kids should be in school playing basketball, football, all those kinds of things and not, you know, having their parents have to bury them," Will Jones described.
With this being an ongoing problem Jones felt a sense of urgency for his office to step up alongside the Criminal Justice Center to be proactive instead of reactive when it comes to handling youth crime.
"It is about trying to rebuild and help people and communities. People heal people not jails, not prisons. While that is, you know a necessary evil, it is not what we have to stop at," said Casey Beard, the Juvenile Division Chief.
Beard said their focus has been raising awareness by starting at the community level and then working their way up.
"You have to try to pour into families and communities and if we can do that on the school level, the community level, the law enforcement level, then we really are gonna probably be making a really big impact in the next hopefully few years but definitely over the next several years," Beard added.
Beard also explained that their office has already partnered with Jacksonville North Pulaski School District, 100 families, Mothers of Black Sons, and several other groups to address this problem head-on.
Will Jones also explained how these partnerships are important because there's often no point of return once the youth start heading down the wrong path.
"There's so many families that are heartbroken and so many children that end up either charged or as victims and it's just gut-wrenching. So we knew that we needed to step up our game and move quicker," Jones said.
Jones and Beard both admit this change won't happen overnight but that it's a start in making a difference in the community.
"While we can't individually solve and combat it on our own we can be facilitators of that, that justice and those efforts long before it ever makes it to our office to consider filing," Beard said.