Blog: Public Policy

• Is Our Racial Gap Becoming a Generation Gap?
  A provocative post from PolicyLink. Nearly half of the nation's young people are of color, but over 80 percent of America's seniors are white. "For the first time," the author argues, "America's seniors, business leaders, and elected officials simply do not see themselves in the faces of today's young. For many, this signals less obligation and commitment to the kinds of programs and resources that would help provide a boost for the next generation."
• Addiction: What Gets Us Hooked?
  The title says it all. (H/t to Paul Savery.)
• OJJDP Seeks Nominations for Awards at October Conference
  The Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP) is seeking nominations for awards in four categories, to be given out at its fall conference, scheduled for October 12-14, 2011. UPDATE August 18: Deadline has been extended to August 29, 2011.

Focusing on changing youth behavior is important. However, youth success also depends on what we as adults do, particularly when it comes to youth who come in contact with the justice system. The Justice Policy Institute’s new report, “System Overload,” shows how our shortchanging of public defender systems can have significant and lasting negative affects for both youth and adults who rely on them.
The right to effective counsel, regardless of ability to pay, is guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution. This includes youth facing juvenile delinquency proceedings. However, a lack of financial resources for public defenders means that attorneys don’t have enough time for each case. Youth may not see their attorney until shortly before a hearing, or their public defender’s office might not have funding for investigators to look into the facts around the alleged offense. The following are some possible consequences of not having a robust public defender system:

Eliminating the revolving door of the criminal and juvenile justice systems is one of the Nation’s biggest challenges in reducing the devastating consequences of drug use. It deprives our youngest generations of their chance to lead healthy, safe and productive lives, and often fosters intergenerational violence. That’s why the Obama Administration is taking steps to prevent young people from becoming involved in drug use and crime, and providing intervention, treatment, alternatives to incarceration, and reentry support for those that do.
Last year, the Administration released its inaugural strategy for coordinating national drug control activities and reducing the effects of drug use and its consequences and stressed the need for effective substance abuse treatment for adolescents. The week before last, the 2011 National Drug Control Strategy built upon that foundation and expanded support for these efforts. Evidence-based, early interventions are critical tools to keep young people from cycling in and out of the juvenile justice system, or worse, entering and cycling through the adult system. Youth should not only be screened and treated for substance use problems, but also for unmet emotional, behavioral, or academic needs.

Much to our dismay, A&E Network will air a second season of "Beyond 'Scared Straight,'" its hit reality-TV show, beginning August 18, 2011. As you may know, the program exposes a group of teens who've committed offenses to a group of adult prison inmates who scream, yell, and talk tough, in an effort to convince the kids to "going straight." 
There's a lot of problems with this approach, but the chief one is this: it doesn't work. There's not a single piece of independent research that indicates it's effective, and quite a lot that shows it isn't -- in fact, an overview of nine studies shows that youth who participate are more likely to commit crimes than kids who don't.  That may make for great television, but it's not good for the kids or our communities. 
We've given a lot of coverage in the past to why "Scared Straight" is a bad idea, so I'll just link to it here:

• Beyond "Scared Straight" – Moving to Programs that Actually Work
• U.S. Department of Justice: Scared Straight is "Scary and Ineffective"
• Scared Straight: Don’t Believe the Hype (Facts from CJJ)
• Scared Straight -- or Just Scared? Judges Speak Out Against "Beyond 'Scared Straight'"
• "Scared Straight" Programs on Hold in Two States

Photo: anna gutermuth under a Creative Commons license.

How do you reduce the number of kids going into the juvenile justice system? Overhaul school disciplinary policies.
Here's a quick overview of research on the problem, a great video that puts a human face on the issue in Connecticut, and some things you can do.
Just yesterday, the Council of State Governments Justice Center released Breaking Schools’ Rules: A Statewide Study of How School Discipline Relates to Students’ Success and Juvenile Justice Involvement. The report is based on a groundbreaking study of nearly 1 million secondary school students in Texas. (Researchers were able to control for over 80 different variables because they had individual-level records from schools and juvenile court for every single youth in the study.)
Though it's methodologically very careful in its conclusions, it does show that:

• nearly 60 percent of all students in the study were suspended or expelled between 7th and 12th grades;
• African American students and children with "particular educational disabilities" were disproportionately affected -- especially for infractions where administrators had discretion over what sanctions to apply; and
• students who were suspended or expelled were more likely to end up in the juvenile justice system the following year.

But there's grounds for hope, because researchers also found that:

• suspension and expulsion rates varied widely beween schools, even among schools that were similar in terms of their students' racial compositon or economic status.

This suggests that schools can handle behavior problems differently, and with fewer negative outcomes on the youth.
[More after the jump --]

• New York Times: Rethinking Addiction’s Roots, and Treatment
  Increasingly, the medical establishment is putting its weight behind the physical diagnosis.
• Letter to the Editor Asking for Mentors in Rowan County
  Reclaiming Futures' call to action that works.
• Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP) Releases 2011 National Drug Control Strategy
  Criminal justice continues to be a focus area.

Flogging conjures up grotesque images. American slaves flogged by their overseer. Conscripted sailors flogged by their masters. Such an idea wouldn’t get any traction in a civilized society like ours, right? 
Maybe. John Jay College of Criminal Justice Professor Peter Moskos has floated a proposal to replace each year of prison with two lashes. His motives seem pure—he believes the American prison system is completely dysfunctional and that millions, maybe billions, could be saved with this simple change in punishment, with no effect on public safety.
 
Putting aside for a moment the moral baseness of the idea and that pesky Eight Amendment proscription against torture, cruel, inhuman, or degrading punishment (flogging has to be four-for-four on that one), let’s consider if it would even work.
 
There is a long and fascinating law and economics literature on the relative merits of severity versus certainty as ways to prevent crime. The idea is straightforward. The main aim of punishment is to set society's costs of incarcerating a criminal in prison equal to the benefits of keeping that person from running amuck on the streets. (Rehabilitation can also correct, but that is a separate issue).
 
Flogging, in this case, is just a different way of meting out a severe punishment that substitutes intensity for duration. The big question, then, is whether criminals will commit new crimes once back on the streets after being flogged --  new crimes that certainly would have been prevented by incarceration in an expensive prison cell.

Nathan Bootz (shown at right), superintendent of Ithaca Public Schools in Michigan, has written a public letter to Governor Rick Snyder, requesting that his school be classified as a prison. 
Why? Check out his provocative letter (reprinted with his permission):

Dear Governor Snyder,
In these tough economic times, schools are hurting. And yes, everyone in Michigan is hurting right now financially, but why aren’t we protecting schools? Schools are the one place on Earth that people look to to “fix” what is wrong with society by educating our youth and preparing them to take on the issues that society has created.
One solution I believe we must do is take a look at our corrections system in Michigan. We rank nationally at the top in the number of people we incarcerate. We also spend the most money per prisoner annually than any other state in the union. Now, I like to be at the top of lists, but this is one ranking that I don’t believe Michigan wants to be on top of.
Consider the life of a Michigan prisoner. They get three square meals a day. Access to free health care. Internet. Cable television. Access to a library. A weight room. Computer lab. They can earn a degree. A roof over their heads. Clothing. Everything we just listed we DO NOT provide to our school children.
This is why I’m proposing to make my school a prison. The State of Michigan spends annually somewhere between $30,000 and $40,000 per prisoner, yet we are struggling to provide schools with $7,000 per student. I guess we need to treat our students like they are prisoners, with equal funding. Please give my students three meals a day. Please give my children access to free health care. Please provide my school district Internet access and computers. Please put books in my library. Please give my students a weight room so we can be big and strong. We provide all of these things to prisoners because they have constitutional rights. What about the rights of youth, our future?!
Please provide for my students in my school district the same way we provide for a prisoner. It’s the least we can do to prepare our students for the future...by giving our schools the resources necessary to keep our students OUT of prison.
Respectfully submitted,
Nathan Bootz
Superintendent
Ithaca Public Schools

 
What I hope Governor Snyder will take away from this is not the false idea that prisoners have a soft life, or that the resources that go to them should be taken away and given to school children; instead, I hope he is able to find ways to act on the principle that providing adequate investments in education and prevention go a long way toward preventing delinquency and crime. 
(Hat tip: sparkaction.org.)

Beginning July 1, Georgia’s juvenile court judges will face a new, unprecedented set of challenges.  That’s the first day Georgia will no longer operate under an agreement that allows for the transfer of delinquent juveniles and runaways between the states.
Georgia is the only state in the nation that has not already adopted or is not set to adopt the Interstate Compact for Juveniles (ICJ), an update of a previous compact established in 1955.  Currently, Georgia functions under the 1955 compact.  The Interstate Commission for Juveniles, the governing body of the ICJ, gave Georgia three extensions to pass legislation so the state could enter the new compact (in 2008, 2009 and 2010).  Since the Legislature failed to enact the needed legislation in 2011, Georgia will not be given any more extensions, officials at the compact say.
The compact provides a framework that allows the seamless transition of juveniles from one state to another.  Without the compact, Georgia’s juvenile judges are left “scratching their heads,” Judge Mary Carden, a juvenile judge in the state, said.  “Nobody knows what’s going to happen.”