A Michigan county has a plan to prevent violence among teens. By implementing government employees to monitor teens’ online activity, Wayne County law enforcement hopes to predict conflicts — and stop them before they turn deadly. And, good news if you’re on the lookout for a job — they’re hiring.
The county, which includes Detroit and the surrounding area, is looking to add a “youth intelligence specialist” to its payroll, in what officials call a first-of-its-kind county initiative to prevent youth violence by tracking concerning posts on popular platforms, including TikTok and Snapchat.
“Young people are dying and young people are losing their freedom,” said Wayne County Executive Chief of Staff Brian Rinehart. “This is something that we believe is driving violence. We want our young people to know these social media beefs have got to stop. And if you’re going to do it, understand we’re monitoring you.”
The job posting says candidates should have the ability to “create and maintain online personas,” and to “monitor and track online interactions, posts, and personal media to identify potential risks and threats.”
While violence is certainly an issue — an analysis from the Detroit Free Press found that teen gun violence deaths in Detroit alone tripled from 2019 to 2022 — there is a concern that the initiative could violate teens’ privacy. Rachel Levinson-Waldman, a managing director at the Brennan Center for Justice, told the Detroit Free Press that there is also plenty of risk for teens’ social media posts to be misinterpreted.
“Using it to make these kinds of high stakes determinations about when a youth is going to have some kind of intervention is really concerning … at least without knowing if there is extremely clear guidance and oversight in that activity,” she said.
The Brennan Center for Justice has pointed out that people of color are at particular risk for profiling and misinterpretation of posts when social media accounts are surveilled. For example, social media posts are frequently used as evidence to accuse youth of color of belonging to gangs.
Rineheart said that the youth intelligence specialist will monitor only public posts, and will be somewhat limited in what they are able to do since they will not be considered a law enforcement officer. He said the specialist can connect teens identified as participating in a conflict with community intervention programs, such as the county’s Moving Forward program, where adults who have been through the criminal justice system mentor at-risk youth.
If the specialist finds a post that they feel is cause for alarm, at that point, Rinheart says, police will intervene.
“These folks would have the ability that if there is a public safety risk, to refer to law enforcement, and they would handle it from there,” he said. “This team is designed to prevent and deter young people from making poor choices.”
