Friends say Jonathan Lee Stephens, Joshua Curnutte and Luke Miller used alcohol or drugs by age 11. Paul Yum said he suffered physical abuse at home. Zachary Moore said his mother and father neglected him. He used drugs.

Christy Phillips lived in poverty. She stole, and tried pot.

Ascencion Gomez was expelled from school. He used methamphetamine.

John “J.P.” Procter Remsen got in trouble for being drunk at 15.

These are the “Teens Who Kill” profiled in The Sun’s weeklong series that ends today. But they have plenty of company living on the edge in San Bernardino County.

The series points out the dangers of poor parenting, drug and alcohol abuse, physical abuse, economic hardship, divorce, bullying, mental illness and missed opportunities by society to intervene.

San Bernardino Juvenile Hall is full of kids on the same path.

A recent survey at the Juvenile Hall conducted by the Children’s Network of San Bernardino County and obtained exclusively by The Sun reveals a crisis in grim detail.

The survey shows that kids in the hall may be in deeper trouble than the crimes that landed them there would indicate.

The advocacy group surveyed 329 adolescents in August as part of a $1 million federal grant to assess the needs of children and families.

“My hope is that we will be able to prevent the Jonathan Lee Stephenses of the future,” said Kent Paxton of the Children’s Network.

“Why didn’t we identify him sooner?

“We could have and should have, but we didn’t. We don’t have a lot of resources for young children, and I hope by the end of the grant, we can raise awareness and get help for them.”

The Children’s Network has teamed up with several county departments and Cal State San Bernardino to focus on early intervention in the areas of mental health and emotional development for children and their families.

This survey, for the first time, brings home some of where the issues are, Paxton said.

Drug use, including alcohol, was the most common characteristic of teens in the Juvenile Hall, even though it may not be the crime they were booked for.

“Substance abuse just jumps off the page,” Paxton said. “If you look at the admission to the hall, few are for drug crimes.”

A quarter of the wards were in for assault or attempted murder. Nine percent were serving time for drug crimes.

Almost 90 percent of the teenagers said they had used at least one type of drug, including marijuana, methamphetmaine, cocaine, PCP, ecstasy, inhalants, LSD and heroin.

Marijuana was the most popular drug, with 82 percent of the teens admitting that they used it.

Almost half the adolescents had attended the DARE program in school, but the results seem to show that it failed as an outreach program – at least for the teens who were surveyed.

A quarter of the teens had dropped out of school.

Many of the kids’ families are living a hand-to-mouth existence.

The parents of nearly 25 percent of the teens are unemployed.

Seventy percent had a family member go to jail.

When the teens were asked if they could change something in their past, nearly half of them said it would be their behavior.

Twenty percent of them said they would quit using drugs.

The survey asked the teenagers to answer the question, “If you could change something in the past that would have helped you, what would that be?”

They wrote:

“I would not have threatened to kill someone in school in front of 20 people.”

“I would have stayed out of jail and my brother would have never went to prison.”

“I would change the way my mom and dad lived. If they had a lot of money and did not use drugs, we would have had a better family.”

“My dad being in jail all my life because that makes me so sad and mad because other kids have a father.”

“I would change smoking crystal because that’s mostly the reason why I’m in the position I’m in.”

County officials are discussing the possibility of launching a juvenile dependency drug court and a juvenile delinquency drug court, Paxton said.

Adult drug courts exist now in every San Bernardino County courthouse.

The program was installed nearly 10 years ago, offering drug treatment to those convicted of drug crimes and jailing those who fail drug tests during the program. About 75 percent complete the program successfully.

Deputy Public Defender Mike Kennedy, who works in Juvenile Court in Victorville, said he has high hopes for a juvenile drug court.

“The same reason it’s valid for adults, it’s valid for children,” Kennedy said.

“A lot of these kids are not much different than the kids in my scout troop,” he said. “They need someone to educate them and yell at them when they get out of line. Kids really are victims of their upbringing, and our approach needs to be more enlightened about juveniles.”

A dependency court would require parents to clean themselves up before they could regain custody of their children.

Delinquency drug courts are designed to place teens in drug treatment programs, much like the adult drug court that exists now.

“We’ve got kids being kicked out of child-care centers for violence and inappropriate behavior,” Paxton said.

“We have to have a system where we get help for these kids before they end up in our schools.

“I am certainly convinced we are going to save some kids and save some families, but we need to look at resources we can provide for them.”

The youths in the survey had clear ideas about what’s helpful and what’s not. The things they listed as negative were death in the family, a family member in jail, substance abuse, divorce and mental illness.

In a surprising eye-opener, they identified temporary aid to needy families, welfare and food stamps as positive things in their home life, indicating a willingness to accept help when it’s offered.

Readers of “Teens Who Kill”have the opportunity to come up with ideas to provide the help they need. The Sun will continue to solicit ideas and run letters on this vital subject. E-mail teenswhokill@sbsun.com or write to Teens Who Kill, 399 N. D St., San Bernardino, CA 92401.