Blog: Juvenile Justice Reform

• Growth in Corrections Spending 1987-2007 Dwarfed Spending on Higher Ed (see image at right) - Curious about where your state stands? Follow the link and check the graph.  It would be interesting to see the same data comparing spending on the juvenile justice system with middle- and high-school spending.  (Hat tip to Jim Carlton.) 
• Gay Teens Are Punished More Heavily in School and in Juvenile Court - From The New York Times: A national study of 15,000 middle school and high school teens published in Pediatrics found that gay, lesbian, and bisexual teens are more likely to be expelled from school than their straight peers, and more likely to be stopped, arrested, and adjudicated.  And "it's not because they're misbehaving more," says the study's lead author, Kathryn Himmelstein. (Hat tip to Dan Merrigan.)

• From Teen Carjacker to Poetry Professor - R. Dwayne Betts was imprisoned for nine years at age 16 for participating in a carjacking. Now 30 -- and a free man -- he's published a memoir, is working on a nonfiction book on the effects of incarceration, and is a professor of poetry at the University of Maryland. He's also a spokesman for the Campaign for Youth Justice (CFYJ). Follow the link for a fascinating interview with him conducted by a blogger at The New Yorker magazine, and see this related post for information about how poetry can be therapeutic to teens in the juvenile justice system.

Do you have a brief, compelling story about youth in the justice system you've worked with? The National Juvenile Justice Network (NJJN) needs your help. 
 
Interestingly, your story doesn't have to be a positive one, though NJJN wants those, too. it's looking for stories for its new website that either "exemplify the problems with the current system, or are shining examples of how reforms can lead to wonderfully positive change in the lives of youth." (The stories should be about youth you've worked with, or whom your organization or juvenile justice coalition has served.)
 
Why would you want to do this? 

1. It's a chance for you to share these stories with a wider audience and increase NJJN's impact.
2. If you like, NJJN will include a weblink to your organization when it posts your story online. 
3. It's good practice. You're already compiling youth stories for your own work with policy makers and other audiences ... right?

[Disproportionate minority contact (DMC) remains a serious problem in many communities. But getting broad support to address it can be a problem. In response, juvenile justice advocates in Connecticut have developed JUST.START, an excellent, accessible website and campaign on the topic. How it came about is the focus the interview below, which is reposted with permission from The CJJ e-Monitor, the newsletter of The Coalition for Juvenile Justice (CJJ). --Ed.]

Earlier this month, CJJ caught up with Christine Rapillo, Esq., a member of the Connecticut Juvenile Justice Advisory Committee (JJAC, the Connecticut State Advisory Group), to discuss the launch of JUST.START, a new, JJAC-supported website and educational campaign that aims to promote racial and ethnic fairness in Connecticut’s juvenile justice system.

In addition to her SAG membership, Attorney Rapillo is Chair of the Connecticut Juvenile Training School Advisory Committee, and co-chairs the Steering Committee for the Connecticut Juvenile Justice Alliance (CTJJA), where she takes part in the efforts to raise Connecticut’s jurisdictional age from 16 to 18. She is Director of Juvenile Delinquency Defense for the Connecticut Office of the Chief Public Defender, previously served as the supervisor of the Hartford Juvenile Court Public Defender’s Office for 12 years, and has practiced in adult felony trial courts in New Haven and New Britain.

Q. What is the history of disproportionate minority contact (DMC) in Connecticut? Are there issues that are unique to the state?

A. Connecticut is a relatively small state and has a statewide juvenile justice system, as opposed to a county system, as is the case in larger states. This fact made it easier for us to identify and analyze DMC, and we also hope that it will help us more readily bring about statewide change that will eliminate DMC.

Q. What is the purpose of the JUST.START website?

A. So often, states conduct studies, find DMC and yet can’t convince anyone DMC is real. The purpose of the website and public campaign is to raise public awareness. Our goal is to explain what DMC is and what we’re doing to eliminate it in an easy-to-understand, non-jargon, non-judgmental way.

Do you have to have a brand-name evidence-based program like FFT or MST to effectively reduce recidivism in your juvenile justice system? Or can a home-grown version be just as effective, if it's based on general principles about what works? 
Researcher Mark Lipsey, of Vanderbilt University, tackled those questions as part of a recent congressional briefing hosted by The Center for Evidence-Based Crime Policy at George Mason University. You can see parts 1 and 2 of his presentation here:

Here's more poetry from teens in King County Juvenile Detention in Seattle. These youth participated in the Pongo Teen Writing program; their work appeared in a 2007 collection under the title, Love is Like All the Colors of the Doors in Juvie.
I'll start by quoting the closing stanza of a poem, "Dreams," by the Young Men's Group:
Hold on, be strong
Because if dreams die
Life is like being incarcerated
How's that for summing up the emotional and physical realities that teens in the justice system face? 
 

 
I thought the next poem was appropriate for this blog because of the insight the young writer shows into various kinds of addictions. (Follow the link in the title to see it on the Pongo site.)

Using evidence-based practices in the juvenile justice system reduces delinquency and avoids costs. Those of us in the field hear this regularly – but it can be hard to see their impact on a day-to-day basis. 
How do we know they work? Let's start at the beginning. What we commonly refer to as "evidence-based practices" in the juvenile justice field are based on over 40 years of research regarding what works to reduce juvenile crime. Unlike studies that look at single programs, this research looked at over a hundred studies and found what consistently worked to reduce crime versus what consistently made crime worse. [1]

It's been nearly 10 years since Reclaiming Futures first launched its website focused on its six-step model promoting juvenile justice reform and adolescent substance abuse treatment.
A lot has changed since then. Which is why we've revamped our website at http://www.reclaimingfutures.org/ to help you find what you're looking for more easily.
For example, you can:

Believe in juvenile justice reform? Want to lead a national initiative to disseminate a proven six-step model that allows communities to help teens break the cycle of drugs, alcohol and crime?
Now's your chance.
Back in June, Laura Burney Nissen announced that she would be stepping down as national director of Reclaiming Futures. The job opening has now been posted, and a national search is under way for a new national executive director.  >>Download the application.
P.S. Please share with friends and colleagues you think might be interested. 
 
Photo: capturingJenna.