“Milwaukee youth.” Two words that Milwaukee Judge Joe Donald said extend beyond young people in Milwaukee. They refer to the crimes occurring in neighborhoods citywide, a problem Donald and the other panelists at Monday’s “On the Issues with Mike Gousha” discussed.

“The city of Milwaukee is very good at trailing, nailing and jailing,” Donald said. “But at some point these people will get out of jail, and if we don’t do more to change the thought process and behavior, all we will be doing is spending money on (separation).”

Intervention, prevention and rebuilding a sense of community in these troubled neighborhoods dominated this “On the Issues” discussion, which was presented in conjunction with the Milwaukee Film Festival. One of the movies featured at the festival is “The Interrupters,” a documentary focusing on three former gang members who now work with CeaseFire, a program in Chicago aimed at stopping crime and violence.

Donald, along with restorative justice advocate Ron Johnson, Milwaukee Police Chief Ed Flynn, Safe & Sound Milwaukee executive director Barbara Notestein and United Community Center volunteer and Marquette sophomore Pedro Hernandez, sat before community members during the discussion. Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett and one of the volunteers featured in the film, Ameena Matthews, were in the audience.

Flynn said the problem of violent crime must be tackled at its core, in the neighborhoods themselves. He said the challenge for the police department is to disrupt the environments where these crimes occur, so as to alter the norms of people responding with violence.

“At the neighborhood level, crime causes poverty,” Flynn said. “We need these people to realize that they are not just killing each other, they are killing their neighborhoods.”

Restoring the social fabric of impoverished and crime-ridden communities is a central element of Safe & Sound Milwaukee, Notestein said. Violence is a learned behavior, she added, and the organization tries to prevent youths from receiving an education in committing violent crime.

Johnson also works with at-risk youth, but more as an interventionist. He often goes to racially diverse high schools in the area that suffer from violent gang wars. His approach to diffusing the situations is to sit the offenders in a circle and allow each person to voice their feelings. Although the method is effective, Johnson said he notices the generation gap between himself and the children.

“Sometimes, adults can preach or talk at kids rather than talk with them,” Johnson said. “The kids won’t listen to you if you don’t talk with them.”

Hernandez, who works with children primarily from the south side of Milwaukee, said the influence of someone his age is more powerful than that of an adult to children in these situations.

“I know what they’ve gone through. I’ve seen what they’ve seen,” said Hernandez, a student in the College of Arts & Sciences. “I try to uplift them by showing them not only the instrumental value of education, but also the intrinsic value as well.”

The panelists agreed that recognizing education in all its forms is necessary in reducing violent crime in the city. We live in a violent society, Johnson said, and children see violence on television, on the Internet and in the behavior of the adults around them.

But Notestein said it is important to combat the prevalence of violence by teaching the children to think of the consequences of their actions.

“We need to help them understand that their crimes harm others, their communities and ultimately themselves,” Notestein said.

“Instead of, ‘I’m going to jail,’ we need to change the mentality to ‘I’m going to miss out on all these positive opportunities in life,’” Hernandez added.

The violent crimes that occurred in the Riverwest neighborhood and at State Fair Park over the summer were discussed, and Flynn said the media is to blame for the contribution these bad situations have made to the reputation of Milwaukee as an unsafe city.

“During the time those incidents were happening, we had 18,000 kids in the Safe & Sound Milwaukee program, but there’s no film on them,” he said.

But there is the film on the CeaseFire program in Chicago, and Matthews hopes “The Interrupters” and the panel discussion will change the way people look at at-risk youths.

These children aren’t simply lost causes, Matthews said.

“They are thinking human beings who need to be given better opportunities and hope,” she said.