Youth sex offenders must register for 25 years and more: news roundup
by LORI HOWELL

Juvenile Justice Reform

  • DOJ, MacArthur Foundation provide $2 million for juvenile justice reform
    OJJDP and the MacArthur Foundation each will provide a total of $1 million over two years to four organizations who will in turn offer states and local governments training and technical assistance to improve mental health services for youth, reduce racial and ethnic disparities in the juvenile justice system and better coordinate treatment and services for youth involved in the juvenile justice and child welfare systems.
  • Juvenile violence in Baltimore continues to decline
    Baltimore Sun:
    Violence against juveniles has declined significantly in Baltimore in recent years as juvenile arrests have dropped and student graduations increased — a trend that the city schools chief said stills lags behind perceptions of the city's young people.
  • Police to get access to juvenile probation records
    Milwaukee-Wisconsin Journal Sentinel: 
    Milwaukee police officers will now be able to quickly find out if a juvenile they are stopping is on probation under a new agreement between the city and Milwaukee County.
  • Paying a price, long after the crime
    New York Times:
    In 2010, the Chicago Public Schools declined to hire Darrell Langdon for a job as a boiler-room engineer, because he had been convicted of possessing a half-gram of cocaine in 1985, a felony for which he received probation. It didn’t matter that Mr. Langdon, a single parent of two sons, had been clean since 1988 and hadn’t run into further trouble with the law. Only after The Chicago Tribune wrote about his case did the school system reverse its decision and offer him the job.
  • Local Boys & Girls Clubs receive $600k to help juvenile offenders
    Ventura County Star:
    The Boys & Girls Clubs of Greater Oxnard and Port Hueneme aims to reduce repeat crimes among juvenile offenders in Ventura County by merging two pilot projects into a new program. The nonprofit received $609,232 from the Department of Justice to create RAMP, a Reentry Aftercare Mentoring Program, which will provide mentoring to incarcerated teens in the group’s Juvenile Justice Facility program so they are prepared to reenter the community and avoid committing further crimes.
  • Kansas juvenile inmates lack vocational training
    The Topeka Capital-Journal:
    A joint legislative committee recommended expansion of vocational training for juveniles in state custody and action to prevent mixing violent and nonviolent offenders in community residential facilities.
  • Black males need school to stay out of jail
    Hartford Courant:
    A few years ago, the national dropout rate for African American males was 70 percent. Today, the high school graduation rate for black boys is about 50 percent. Stan Simpson says, "It is no urban legend that many for-profit prison systems base their population projections on third- and fourth-grade reading scores."

Adolescent Substance Abuse Treatment

  • Bath salts linked to child abuse
    Midland Daily News: 
    The latest Kids Count in Michigan report shows a strong link between the number of child abuse and neglect cases and poverty, and a local judge points to another local factor not uncovered in the study -- the designer drug called bath salts.
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Dayton, Ohio Appoints New Reclaiming Futures Project Director
by ERIC SHAFER

Judge Nick Kuntz, Judge Anthony Capizzi and the Montgomery County Juvenile Court welcome Michelle White to the Reclaiming Futures Team in Dayton, Ohio. Michelle began her career with the Court nine years ago as a Probation Officer. Throughout her tenure with the Court, Michelle has served as a Gender Specific Probation Officer and as the Intensive Probation Supervisor. Michelle is very passionate about working with families, volunteers and the community. She has been involved with the Reclaiming Futures movement in Dayton throughout her time with the Court and is looking forward to building on earlier successes.

Michelle holds a Bachelor of Arts in Sociology from Wright State University and a Master's Degree in Justice Administration from Tiffin University. She is happily married to her husband of nine years and has a two year old son.

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New Report: Policing Chicago Public Schools
by MARIAME KABA

“Our schools have become almost like satellite police stations.” – Steve Drizin (1)

Project NIA is pleased to announce the release of a new report titled “Policing Chicago Public Schools: A Gateway to the School-to-Pipeline.” The report relies on data from the Chicago Police Department (CPD) to show (for the first time in seven years) the type of offenses and the demographics (gender, age and race) of the juveniles arrested on Chicago Public Schools properties in calendar year 2010. We were limited because CPD reports data by police district rather than by individual school.

In the 2003-2004 academic year, Chicago Public Schools (CPS) had about 1,700 security staff, nearly tripling in number in five years (2). We were unable to obtain the current number of security guards in CPS despite repeated requests. We are sure that this number exceeds the 1,700 from the 2003-2004 academic year. The presence of so many security staff and especially police officers in schools means that school discipline issues quickly turn into police records.

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New Teen Substance Abuse PSAs Focus on Parents
by LIZ WU

The Partnership at Drugfree.org recently teamed up with Energy BBDO to release a new set of PSAs warning about the harmful effects of drug and alcohol abuse by adolescents. Unlike previous campaigns, these videos focus specifically on parents' behavior and call on parents to intervene instead of enabling their child's destructive behaviors.

"Denial"

 

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Incarcerated teens in South Carolina build homes for families in need
by LIZ WU

Feel good story of the day: incarcerated teens in South Carolina recently partnered with Habitat for Humanity to build a house for a family in need. The kicker? They actually built it in a juvenile detention center and had it transferred out by a huge crane. 

Margaret Barber, the director of South Carolina's Department of Juvenile Justice, explained, "we want [the houses] to be built behind this razor wire, we want this message to continuously get out, that we build back, not just tear down."

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Cuts to juvenile justice system in Georgia won’t compromise safety, says Commissioner
by JIM WALLS

Georgia’s juvenile justice system is eliminating jobs just as many other state agencies are, but Commissioner Gale Buckner of the Department of Juvenile Justice (DJJ) promised Wednesday that none of the cuts will compromise the safety of youthful offenders.

Directed by Gov. Nathan Deal to cut spending on current programs by 2 percent, the DJJ submitted a proposed 2013 budget that trims clerical and administrative positions, four teachers and two dozen staffers in a program offering intensive community-based programs supervision.

But, Buckner told state House and Senate budgetwriters Wednesday, “no position that is safety- or security-related will be cut.” Buckner was responding to the concerns of state Rep. Quincy Murphy of Augusta, where a 19-year-old was fatally beaten two months ago in his cell at a youth development campus. A 17-year-old resident of the facility was charged with murder in the incident.

Buckner cautioned, however, that low pay and other factors contribute to a continuing struggle to keep enough juvenile correctional officers on the job. Their entry salary is $24,000 a year, she noted, “so we have problems filling those positions but also keeping those positions [filled].”

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New juvenile court guidelines help struggling students & more: news roundup
by LORI HOWELL

Juvenile Justice Reform

Adolescent Substance Abuse Treatment

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New York Governor seeks to realign juvenile justice system
by JEANETTE MOLL

Governor Andrew Cuomo of New York recently unveiled his budget plan to policymakers, and included significant juvenile justice reforms in the plan.

After previously closing some of the state’s juvenile lockups due to their ineffectiveness, Governor Cuomo is now asking lawmakers to close additional facilities and to send lower risk youths from New York City to facilities back in their hometown.

New York’s juvenile facilities are expensive and they often don’t work. Right on Crime has previously noted the extraordinary recidivism rates for youth exiting state lockup facilities in New York: over 80% return to a facility of some sort within ten years, and costs stretch over $250,000 per year.

Under Governor Cuomo’s plan, youth currently in non-secure facilities would begin receiving programming closer to home in the next biennium; in the 2014-2015 biennium, youth in limited-secure facilities would be transitioned closer to home.

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Miss America shares a story with children of incarcerated parents
by CHERIE MILLER

I’m so very proud of the new Miss America, Laura Kaeppeler. First, because she is from my hometown of Kenosha, Wis., and second, because she’s used her own experience to help a lot of hurting kids. If you don’t know Ms. Kaeppeler’s story, it begins when her father, Jeff, was arrested when she was a 14-year-old high-schooler. He went to trial and was sent to serve 18 months in federal prison for mail fraud when she was at Carthage College studying music.

This impacted Laura’s life, much like the other estimated 10 million children who will experience having a parent imprisoned. She started a mentoring nonprofit called Circles of Support to assist children living with a parent behind bars.

According to the United States Bureau of Justice Statistics, more than 3 percent of Americans live either behind bars, under parole supervision or on probation. This means that more than 7.2 million adults in 2009 lived under the shadow of a court sentence. An additional 86,927 juveniles were living in juvenile correctional facilities.

That’s a LOT of kids being impacted. And since most people who are serving time in a prison have a sentence from 3-15 years, it can take a huge chunk out of a childhood spent with a parent. How do we help children with such massive holes in their lives to keep them from following their parents into the juvenile justice or prison systems?

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Reclaiming Futures in Snohomish County, Washington: Using art to rehabilitate teens
by LIZ WU

This past fall, Washington state's Snohomish County juvenile court system ran a pilot project called Promising Artists in Recovery (PAIR), modeled after Reclaiming Futures. The program connected teens in the county's juvenile justice system with local artists who shared their craft and mentored the youth.

The Herald has a terrific feature story on PAIR, Reclaiming Futures and the teens and mentors who participated. Check out this video on the pilot:

 

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