[Editorial]  Monitor Melton’s Mentoring

June 18, 2008

Mayor Frank Melton’s eleventh-hour call this week for the city to pay $1 million for young people to work for private businesses should put a vital issue front and center for the city of Jackson: Is the mayor’s obsession with young people healthy for them, and how are his efforts to “help” them monitored by the state?

It has long been assumed by many that Melton is some sort of “folk hero” who takes in young men the rest of society doesn’t care about. He has done this in myriad ways: by moving them in his home with him (often sent by his friends and judges working in county youth detention); he has loaded up a bunch of young men and taken them to boot camps in the woods; he has promised young people jobs, with other former mentees supervising them.

This can look like Melton is willing to sacrifice to help these young people. But the city and the state need to look closer to be sure nothing is amiss.

Many of the young people Melton has “helped” have gotten into more serious trouble and spent time in prison; some have even died. He says this is par for the course with some of our society’s most troubled young men; yes, but we ask who is monitoring Melton and his methods to be sure that he is not causing more problems than he solves? He might mean well, but that’s not enough.

The Jackson Free Press has interviewed and reported on a number of young men who have lived in Melton’s home, or worked with him at the city, who are in worse trouble than they were before; some even blame him for abandoning them because they did not say or do what he wanted them to do.

Many young men who live with Melton get in trouble for selling drugs; others are caught with weapons. An MBN officer reported that Melton allowed one young man to handle weapons while he was on probation (a fact that helped get him dropped as a witness in Albert “Batman” Donelson’s trial).

Clearly, the trail of Melton’s influence over young people is complicated and filled with potholes, as well as some apparent successes. But one of the most disturbing aspects of his history of mentoring is how little oversight has been required of him, dating back to the mid-’80s. That could be because he had many friends in high places—including Col. Don Taylor, the head of the state Department of Human Services, who has publicly defended Melton, even as he has led no discernible effort to determine whether those methods are appropriate.

Col. Taylor stepped down last week, replaced by Don Thompson. We call on Mr. Thompson to take a very close look at Mr. Melton’s mentoring methods —today and over the last 25 years—and then report those findings to the public. No one is above accountability—especially when it comes to our kids.

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