LITTLE VILLAGE — Arturo still remembers the summer he spent at camp.
He didn't get arrested that year.
"This program paid for my summer camp at the YMCA for the whole summer," the 18-year-old said as he shifted in his seat and became more animated. "That entire summer I didn't get in trouble. I wasn't arrested. I didn't do anything [bad]. I enjoyed myself, and it just helped me move on."
But by the next summer, Arturo said, "they cut the program. I didn't have anything to do but be out there in the streets."
The Archer Heights native is now an inmate at Cook County's Juvenile Temporary Detention Center. He joined seven other detainees Thursday to talk violence-reduction strategies at a Near West Side summit.
To protect their privacy, the inmates were not allowed to share their full names or any details about their cases.
Arturo said things could've been different if he and his buddies had had regular access to organized activities. He dreams of a painting club that could replace graffiti with murals, or a job-training program so that teens "don't have to worry about doing other stuff in order to get money."
For 17-year-old Santino, it's all about a male role model.
The Brighton Park native was 9 years old when he first met his father. The man had been in prison, Santino said, and would die by the boy's 13th birthday. With an overworked mother, Santino soon turned to the streets because he "felt like that's what love was."
"Really," Santino said, "I need someone to get me on the right track. I just got a mentor this year. ... He used to take me to go do my homework after school and take me out to eat. [If he weren't there], that would've never been the case. I'd have been out on the streets, and something could've happened."
Santino thinks young men in violent neighborhoods could benefit from male mentors who could "show teens how to be productive citizens ... show us how real mean dress, talk in interviews and also address authority figures."
Common themes among the inmates' tales were limited family support, limited access to after-school and summer programming and not having safe places to spend time. Several said they were afraid to go to school due to violence.
"The headlines all over the world have dealt with violence in Chicago," Chief Judge Tim Evans said in opening remarks Thursday. "While we are here exchanging ideas, more violence will be conducted.
"The reasons are multifaceted: poverty, problems in the neighborhoods such as drug dealing and gangs, and access to illegal weapons," he said. "There's probably no single answer to the problems. ... What I know for sure: We cannot arrest our way out of these problems. We cannot prosecute our way out of these problems. We cannot imprison our way out of these problems. We have to work as a team and listen to the young people who are living these lives and surrounded by violence every day."
Nigel, a 17-year-old from Back of the Yards, thinks Chicago Police officers should sign up to be neighborhood mentors.
Police "just see us with out pants hanging, looking like thugs, but actually that's a style," he said with a laugh. "When they stop us or see us, they instigate, like talking trash. And I'm like: Why is that your first instinct when y'all see us? Why don't you say: How y'all doing? Are y'all safe out here?"
Nigel said friendlier relationships between young people and police could go a long way to building neighborhood trust.
Leonard, 17, said he hopes his 7-month-old son will help keep him in line once he's released from the detention center.
When Leonard was 6, he said, his father left his family "to run the streets. [My mother] tried so much to keep me off the streets, but I had older brothers, and I wanted to be like them."
"Sitting in [the juvenile correction center] with a 7-month-old son outside, I feel like I'm following in my dad's footsteps. Honestly, that's my motivation. My daddy wasn't there for me, but I'm going to be there for my son. I'm going to do something different."
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