Blog: Juvenile Justice Reform

News - Juvenile Justice System and Alcohol and Drugs

• Teens trapped in prison: "Nearly 10 percent of the inmates in Illinois' juvenile prisons have essentially completed their sentences — in some cases more than a year ago — but are stuck behind bars because they have no place to go, state records show." (Hat tip to the Campaign for Youth Justice.)
• Are teens in the criminal and juvenile justice systems getting younger? No, according to an analysis performed by the Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice. The lead author of the study also teamed up with a professor of womens' studies at the University of Hawai'i to author an op-ed in The New York Times called "The Myth of Mean Girls." (The title says it all.)

There's plenty of chances to apply for funding for juvenile justice system work coming out of the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP) these days. Recently, OJJDP has announced monies for juvenile reentry, as well as grants to support existing juvenile mentoring programs at the community level; national-level support for mentoring for underserved populations; and support for multi-state regional mentoring programs.
Now, here's five (count 'em, five) more grants from OJJDP (and yes, two of them have to do with mentoring):

• Engaging Law Enforcement to Reduce Juvenile Crime, Victimization, and Delinquency (ddl May 19, 2010)
• Juvenile Drug Courts Mentoring and Support Services Initiative (ddl May 19, 2010)
• Mentoring Research Best Practices (ddl May 20, 2010)
• Support for Conferences on Juvenile Justice (ddl May 17, 2010)
• Youth Gang Prevention and Intervention Program (ddl May 20, 2010)

 
[The following post is by an attorney who works with the Changing Lives Through Literature (CLTL) program at the Reclaiming Futures site in Bristol County, MA. It's reposted with permission of the author and publisher from the CLTL Blog, Changing Lives, Changing Minds. You can learn more about Bristol County's experience with the program here. -Ed.]
 
A former colleague (an assistant district attorney) recently asked me if I was still involved with Judge Kane’s “bleeding heart book club.” We both laughed. In a more serious vein, he went on to ask whether I thought he might enjoy it, because he was approaching retirement and might have some time to – and it sounds like a cliché but really isn’t – “give back to the community.”

Drug use among youth is a serious concern that cannot be solved by punishment. So it’s great to see the juvenile justice field increasingly considering and involving families. For example, the New York Governor’s Task Force on Transforming Juvenile Justice recently published a report that is replete with recommendations underscoring the importance of family. The report, developed with support from my colleagues at Vera’s Center on Youth Justice, reminded me of a comment by Derek Hitchcock of the Michigan Bureau of Juvenile Justice, who said, “We so often institutionalize our kids; any way to get them linking back to the outside is great.”
Vera’s Family Justice Program shares this goal, which helps drive our work with juvenile justice agencies, guiding them as they integrate family-focused, strength-based tools and methods that benefit incarcerated youth.
 
Sometimes, facility staff resist the idea of working with families, but it usually doesn’t take long before we’re discussing the benefits. I often just have to ask, “Who is the first person to know when a young person has relapsed?” or “When kids succeed, who celebrates with them?” Even if every family member does not provide support to a young person, identifying those individuals who do is important to the youth’s recovery and well-being.

[The following post is reprinted with permission from the blog at the Pongo Teen Writing website. The author has recently posted "Poetry as Treatment for Youth in the Juvenile Justice System" and "I Feel Like Weights Have Been Lifted" on this blog. Photo by Olivander. -Ed.]
 
 
At 10 years old, the girl was always home alone while her parents were out doing drugs. I asked if she was scared at the time. No, not for herself. She was worried about her parents. Now, at age 13 and in juvenile detention, the girl has been smoking bud and doing things she isn’t supposed to do. She wants her parents to worry about her for a change. She writes about her parents: “They’re the only people who will be there.” But her poem is titled “When Nobody Was There.”

Pongo’s teen authors will often write about drug and alcohol abuse. They give multiple and contradictory reasons for their involvement. For me, as a poet working with the youth, one of the toughest knots to unravel is the role of family. Substance abuse often seems like a response to emptiness at home and also a confirmation of family connection, however flawed. Teens seem to be filling an emotional void with drugs and alcohol, but also emulating someone they love. And parents sometimes give their children drugs and alcohol, playing an active role in both distancing and dependence. Family is very important.

Here are three teen poems from this year’s Pongo project in juvenile detention, that describe substance abuse in the context of family.

 
Still Time to Register for Coalition for Juvenile Justice (CJJ) 2010 Conference

CJJ's Annual National Conference & Council of State Advisory Groups' (SAGs) Meeting, “Ensuring School Engagement and Success for Youth at Risk,” is just a month away! The conference will be held on April 10-13, in downtown Washington, D.C. Check out workshop descriptions on the draft conference agenda, and register today! (For offline registration, email Lauren Edwards or call her 202-467-0864, ext. 122.)
 
 
Conference Highlights

•  Keynote presentations by James Forman, Jr., Chair of the Maya Angelou Public Charter School Board of Directors, Washington, D.C., and George Khaldun, Chief Administra tive Officer, Harlem Children’s Zone, New York, New York.
• A federal perspectives panel with prominent representatives from the U.S. Department of Education, U.S. Department of Justice and U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

Have a youth mentoring program that's been up and running for at least a year?
You might consider applying for new mentoring grants from the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP). To "reduce juvenile delinquency, drug abuse, truancy, and other problem and high-risk behaviors," OJJDP wants to

enhance the capacity and effectiveness of established mentoring programs by: (1) augmenting the involvement of and services for the mentoring participants' parents; (2) expanding structured activities and opportunities for the mentors and mentoring participant(s); and (3) increasing the availability of ongoing mentor training and support.

Programs can use the grant to accomplish one or more of those three things.  Awards will fall between $200,000 and $500,000 for 18 to 36 months. Application deadline is April 14, 2010.
Photo by Alaska Youth for Environmental Action.

Every year, thousands of kids (disproportionately girls and youth of color) end up in the juvenile justice system not because they've committed a crime, but because they're runaways, skipping school, or are simply hard to control. While these "status offenders" and their families need services -- and it can be tempting to detain them in order to protect them -- it's important to minimze their contact with the juvenile justice system, as research has shown that contact with the juvenile justice system can increase their risk to  recidivate.
But despite the federal Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act (JJDPA), which has a core requirement focused on discouraging detention of juvenile status offenders, status offenders are handled differently by each state, and sometimes quite aggressively. Now, the American Bar Association (ABA) has published Representing Juvenile Status Offenders, an excellent resource for attorneys who represent them. 

In case you missed it, the National Reentry Resource Center hosted an excellent webinar on juvenile entry last month, featuring David M. Altschuler, Ph.D., principal research scientist at the Institute for Policy Studies at Johns Hopkins University, and Shay Bilchik, founder and director of the Center for Juvenile Justice Reform at Georgetown University Public Policy Institute.
The presentation, titled "Juvenile Reentry in Concept and Practice," defines juvenile reentry; lays out a conceptual framework for thinking about how youth should be reintegrated into the community; identifies the key risk and protective factors that services need to address; how to structure those services; and common obstacles to establishing adequate case management.
You can find a recording of the webinar and download the PowerPoint presentation at the National Reentry Resource Center's web page devoted to juveniles in the justice system.
 
Other Posts of Interest

• Dr. Altschuler on juvenile reentry
• Mr. Bilchik on addressing disproportionality in the child welfare and juvenile justice systems