Blog: Juvenile Justice Reform

Juvenile Justice Reform

• Juvenile Offenders in the US Deported for Life (Al Jazeera English)
  The Campaign for Youth Justice reports that 250,000 youth under the age of 18 are processed in adult criminal courts in the US each year. Once in adult court, minors are subject to the same punishments as adults, even if they are as young as 10 years old. In the past decade, the US Supreme Court has imposed limits on the types of punishments that can be imposed on juvenile offenders.
• Texas Lawmakers Consider Bill Restricting Solitary Confinement of Youths (TheRepublic.com)
  Texas lawmakers considered a proposal Tuesday night that would restrict the use of solitary confinement in juvenile detention centers. In a hearing before the Senate Criminal Justice Committee, Sen. Leticia Van de Putte presented a bill to limit the practice to four hours except in cases of six specific types of major rule violations including assault and attempted escape.
• Department of Juvenile Justice Expanding Civil Citation Process (WearTV.com)
  Juveniles in Escambia County, Florida who commit a first time misdemeanor might be given a second chance. The Juvenile Civil Citation Expansion program will help give some a chance to keep a clean record. Juveniles with a first time misdemeanor could be given a citation and community service.

The Vera Institute of Justice recently released a handbook to help a wide range of social service practitioners, in juvenile justice and beyond. The new document, "Measuring Success: A Guide to Becoming an Evidence-Based Practice," breaks the process into three steps and offers an easy-to-follow methodology to measuring performance.
Vera offers guidance in determining who qualifies as evidence-based, which can be helpful for funding. Vera's announcement continues:

Demonstrating that a program accomplishes its stated goals is increasingly important for social service organizations—funders and clients want to see the evidence of successful outcomes. Although a full-scale evaluation can be a costly and overwhelming goal, adopting the information-gathering and self-reflective approaches that lead up to an evaluation can in themselves strengthen an agency’s focus and procedural fidelity.
Vera has worked with juvenile justice system service providers in many settings as they build and monitor their programs. It produced this handbook on the basis of experience in the field, and in collaboration with the Institute for Public Health and Justice at the Louisiana State University Health Sciences Center.
While the guide grew out of requests from juvenile justice service providers for a roadmap toward becoming an evidence-based practice, its recommendations have applications beyond juvenile justice. “We believe the systematic approach to collecting information on goals, treatment methods, and outcomes can benefit other social service providers seeking to measure the efficacy of their interventions,” said Annie Salsich, director of Vera’s Center on Youth Justice.

Juvenile Justice Reform

• Juvenile Justice Reforms Approved (PalmBeachPost.com)
  The Dream Defenders, a youth group focused on juvenile justice issues, called this week for protection from arrests at school for minor incidents. The group also called for an end to pepper spray and solitary confinement in jails run by Florida counties and to stop putting teens in the juvenile justice system for misdemeanor first offenses.
• Juvenile Detention Alternatives Gain Ground in States, DC (JJIE.org)
  “There is reason to think that we may, and I emphasize may, have reached a turning point in this era,” said Bart Lubow, director of the juvenile justice strategy group at The Annie E. Casey Foundation in Baltimore. He made the comments Wednesday at an AECF-organized three-day conference of some 800 professionals from juvenile justice and child welfare fields in Atlanta.
• Proposal Would Keep 17-Year-Old Felons in Juvenile Court (SJ-R.com)
  Youths under the age of 18 charged with non-violent felonies will be handled at the juvenile court level, rather than being tried as adults, under a proposal passed by the Illinois House Tuesday.
• Your System, Your Choices: Teaching Youth the Juvenile Justice System (StrategiesForYouth.org)
  Dr. Miner-Romanoff found that “100% had no idea” about the juvenile justice system and the potential for harsh sentencing before their arrest and incarceration. This, she says, indicates that for these young people severe sentencing did not act as a deterrent.
• Opinion: Reduce Teen Recidivism; Treat Kids Like Kids (SJ-R.com)
  "Back in 2008, The State Journal-Register used this space to urge Illinois lawmakers to approve a bill that would allow 17-year-olds accused of minor crimes to be tried in juvenile court instead of adult court."

Do you want to learn how the Reclaiming Futures model is uniting juvenile courts, probation, adolescent substance abuse treatment, and the community for cost effective juvenile justice reform?

Please register for a free webinar on Tuesday, April 30 at 10 a.m. (PDT)/1 p.m. (EDT)
What you'll learn:

• Communities have a compelling need to break the cycle of drugs, alchohol and crime 
• Reclaiming Futures is connecting young people to caring adults 
• The six-step model is pointing to better outcomes for youth

About the presenters:

Susan Richardson is national executive director for Reclaiming Futures. Formerly, she was a senior program officer in the health care division of the Kate B. Reynolds Charitable Trust in North Carolina, where she led a three-year effort involving the state's juvenile justice and treatment leaders to adopt the Reclaiming Futures model by juvenile courts in six North Carolina counties. She received her B.S. in Public Health, Health Policy and Administration, from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.
Margaret Soukup is the project director for Seattle-King County Reclaiming Futures, in Seattle, Wash., where she serves as Science to Service/Workforce Development Coordinator Project/Program Manager III, Mental Health, Chemical Abuse and Dependency Services Division (MHCADSD). Margaret has a master's degree in psychology from Antioch University Seattle and a bachelor's degree in applied science, social sciences from Washington State University. 

Al Jazeera English recently released an Inside Story 30-minute video examining the state of solitary confinement, including teens, in United States prisons. The discussion includes the following:  

Amongst those in solitary confinement today are juveniles as young as age 16, with one study suggesting that in 2012, 14 percent of adolescents in the New York City prison system had been held in isolation at least once. So, why does the United States put more people into solitary confinement than any other country in the democratic world?

We've reported in the past about the particularly harsh negative affects that solitary confinement has on teens, and while this video offers a broader look at solitary confinement, its themes are still relevant to our work in the juvenile justice system. Watch the full program below:
 

Starting next week, thousands of students incarcerated in juvenile detention and correctional centers around the country will participate in Words Unlocked, a poetry initiative designed to introduce young people to the transformational power of writing, give them hope, and inspire them to persevere in the terrifically hard work of changing their lives. Words Unlocked will remind us all of the talent and passion locked inside the hearts and minds of young people in the largest juvenile prison system in the world—ours.
Developed by the Center for Educational Excellence in Alternative Settings (CEEAS), Words Unlocked is an unprecedented effort to reach our nation’s most overlooked and underserved teens. Informed by original poems written by young men at the Maya Angelou Academy over many years, the initiative provides robust curricula and learning tools, all of which are available for public use: daily lesson plans and classroom materials, rubrics and assessments, teacher tips, and more.
Words Unlocked offers both a seven-day and a month-long poetry curriculum. Handouts and other materials are available in SMARTBoard, ActivBoard, MS Word, and PDF formats. In addition, CEEAS is sponsoring online teacher forums, weekly updates, and webcasts.
Words Unlocked includes a nationwide poetry competition open to any youth held in a secure facility. CEEAS will post student poetry on its blog, publish an online and iBook anthology, and provide training for schools on how to publish their own anthologies.

Juvenile Justice Reform

• Age-Old Issue Persists about Justice (NWHerald.com)
  Illinois treats a 17-year-old who shoplifts an iPhone as an adult criminal: held with adults in jail, tried in adult criminal court, sent to adult prison if incarcerated, and issued an employment-crushing permanent criminal record, according to a recent report by the Illinois Juvenile Justice Commission.
• Overhauling Juvenile Justice (RockdaleNews.com)
  Georgia is on the brink of the most sweeping overhaul of the juvenile justice law in three decades and Rockdale is on the leading edge of those trends. “It’s going to be a new world,” said Rockdale Juvenile Court Judge William Schneider.
• School Policies Must Adjust for Juvenile Justice System to Improve (EdWeek.org)
  Changes in school policies will go a long way to dealing with some of the problems with the juvenile justice system, new recommendations for Congress and President Barack Obama say. In particular, the National Juvenile Justice & Delinquency Prevention Coalition says schools rely too heavily on law enforcement to handle behavior problems students, resulting in arrests for behavior that doesn't threaten the safety of other students or staff. The arrests can trigger a chain of contact with the juvenile justice system with a lifetime of repercussions.
• Addressing Girls' Health Needs at Juvenile Detention Centers (Los Angeles Times)
  L.A. County health and probation officials are trying to better identify and treat problems of girls in custody that often go undiagnosed and untreated.

A new report details the early experiences of Tribal Juvenile Detention and Reentry Green Demonstration (Green Reentry) grantees in their innovative approach to community reintegration. Backed by the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP), the programs emphasize environmental and cultural activities for justice-involved youth.
In 2009, three American Indian tribes received OJJDP Green Reentry grants: the Hualapai Indian Tribe (AZ), the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians (MS), and the Rosebud Sioux Tribe (SD). The grants provide up to $700,000 for 4 years with the following purposes: to provide services to help detained youth reintegrate into the community, to help tribes implement green technologies and environmentally sustainable activities, and to support maintenance of tribal juvenile detention standards.
Grantees are also required to participate in an evaluation. The report constitutes the first round, documenting the implementation and impact of the programs 2.5 years in.
Across the three sites, green programming includes environmental education, horticultural instruction and hands-on practice at garden plots. All three grantees incorporate cultural components through activities such as traditional crafts and culturally relevant off-site excursions. These are rounded out by traditional youth reentry services like educational and vocational programming, mental health services, and substance abuse programs.

Reclaiming Futures works in 37 communities across the country to break the cycle of drugs, alcohol and crime. In about one-third of those sites, Reclaiming Futures partners with drug courts, which, according to years of research, work better than jail, prison, probation or treatment alone to significantly reduce drug use and crime.
To celebrate this, and the many lives that have been saved, please join us, and plan ahead for National Drug Court Month in May.
Here are some ideas for celebrating in your community (adapted from the National Association for Drug Court Professionals):

• Hold a commencement ceremony to recognize the accomplishments of participants.
• Schedule a meeting with your members of congress while they are home for Constituent Work Week, May 1-3 and 28-31. Have your Drug Court judge and graduate attend the meetings to educate policymakers.
• Organize a community clean up. Clean a park, street, highway or school. Invite all treatment, mental health, court, law enforcement and probation staff to join in.
• Start a local donation drive.