Editorial: Recycling a trashed program

Thursday, March 2, 2006 | 7:19 a.m.

Clark County officials are discussing reinstatement of a juvenile justice work program that was suspended six years ago after six teens who were picking up trash along Interstate 15 were struck and killed by a motorist who fell asleep at the wheel.

According to a Las Vegas Sun story published earlier this week, juvenile justice officials are considering the idea of putting juvenile offenders to work cleaning up graffiti and trash in public parks - well away from traffic and roadways - to help teach them community responsibility. Youths also would be able to earn money to pay restitution to their victims.

No such program has been approved or even formally proposed, but the idea has been bandied about since December after Las Vegas Mayor Oscar Goodman joked on national television - at least we think he was joking - that graffiti artists such as those responsible for tagging a $35,000 roadside desert tortoise statue should have their thumbs cut off.

The mayor's outrageous, but characteristic, remark made national headlines and prompted a meeting of local business leaders that "created a heightened sensitivity about the graffiti issue," Fritz Reese, assistant director of Clark County's Juvenile Justice Services Department, told the Sun.

The timing seems right. Cheryln Townsend, the juvenile justice department's new director, operated a similar program through Phoenix's juvenile justice system. She believes it could work in the Las Vegas Valley. And the manager of an existing graffiti abatement program for juvenile offenders who are on probation says there is plenty of such cleanup work to go around.

While we would not want to see county officials return to a roadside trash detail that could place children in harm's way, many youths could benefit from some time spent removing graffiti or plucking trash from the grounds of our local parks.