Blog

Juvenile Justice Reform

• How revision of the state budget could affect San Joaquin County (Record Net) Governor Jerry Brown's revision of the California state budget could mean the Division of Juvenile Justice would continue to operate, but its budget would be cut by $24.8 million. The governor is proposing to charge counties $24,000 per year for each person committed to a state juvenile justice center.
• New Pennsylvania Bar Association chief focuses on youth (Pittsburgh Post-Gazette) Thomas G. Wilkinson Jr., the new chief of the Pennsylvania Bar Association will push three priorities, 1) training requirements for prosecutors and public defenders involved in juvenile cases; 2) civics education, so kids understand how government works and the availability of courts to resolve disputes instead of taking disputes into one's own hands; and 3) youth courts to help address the number of kids who get into the juvenile justice system.
• Tackling gang violence (The Crime Report) Toledo, Ohio builds an approach similar to Boston during the late 1990s to tackle violence. The model was developed by David Kennedy, now the director of the Center on Crime Prevention and Control at John Jay College in New York.
• Youth recovery court starts in Winnebago County (WREX) Chief Justice Janet Holmgre describes a holistic approach to providing a comprehensive network of mental health services to help the youth that are involved get out of the juvenile justice system and hopefully stay out of the adult criminal justice system.
• Portland church spearheads effort to keep youth out of justice system (The Portland Daily Sun) Restorative Justice Center in Portland, Maine has won endorsements from the law enforcement community including the Portland Police Department and the Cumberland County District Attorney's Office. "This gives us an additional tool as police officers that we didn't have," said Portland Police Chief Michael Sauschuck.
• Calling in juvenile justice cavalry (Austin American Statesman)  Gov. Rick Perry moved Jay Kimbrough from his new position as assistant director for homeland security at the Department of Public Safety to the Texas Juvenile Justice Department to bring some urgently needed safety and security to the agency's youth lockups.

Adolescent Substance Abuse Treatment

• DSM 5 could mean 40% of college students are alcoholics (TIME) Most college binge drinkers and drug users don’t develop lifelong problems. But new mental-health guidelines will label too many of them addicts and alcoholics. The DSM 5 will have just one diagnosis for addiction problems, though it will be characterized as mild, moderate or severe.
• Breaking the inter-generational cycle of substance abuse (Join Together) Children raised in a household with one or more parents struggling with a substance use disorder often use compliance as a coping mechanism—a skill that often no longer serves them well in adulthood. Compliance is one key reason so many people with substance use disorders do well while in the criminal justice system, but relapse, often only days after they are released.

Jobs, Grants, Events and Webinars

• Please share the Reclaiming Futures Opportunity Board with your colleagues in the juvenile justice, adolescent substance abuse and teen mental health areas. It's free to browse and post!

Speaking at the New Schools - Aspen Institute Summit 2012 last week, David Domenici challenged educators to embrace troubled (and often challenging) students and to keep them in school, instead of calling the police. 

(watch David's short talk at the 29:45 mark)
He listed 4 focus areas:

Actions that once sent students to the principal’s office to be handled by teachers and faculty are now getting Massachusetts students pulled from school entirely and sent to juvenile court in handcuffs, according to a recent report by Citizens for Juvenile Justice. Research shows that police officers are increasingly stepping in to handle behavior such as foul language, hallway misconduct and disrupting public assemblies, which has led to a significant spike in student arrests.
Data from Springfield, Boston and Worcester, three of Massachusetts’s largest school districts, shows children as young as 11 were subject to arrest and were faced with criminal records for minor offenses during the 2007-08, 2008-09 and 2009-10 school years. Although students should be held accountable for their actions, using police and court resources instead of existing school disciplinary practices could pose severe consequences for their future. One alarming statistic noted by the report states that, “students who are arrested at school are three times more likely to drop out than those who are not.”
Criminalizing children for these minor offenses not only limits their educational and career opportunities, but it is also costly for schools and taxpayers. Springfield schools have armed officers permanently stationed at selected schools for the entire duration of the school day, contributing to a hefty payroll percentage that could be spent on staff leadership and disciplinary training.

Juvenile Justice Reform
Youth court steers first offenders to the right path (Livingston County News)  Teenage volunteers are trained to serve as judges, attorneys, juries and other court officers empowered with determining a community service “sanction” for the young offender to complete.
Justice deptartment moves to engage public in juvenile court remedy (Tri-State Defender)  U.S. Department of Justice officials on Wednesday (May 9) confirmed plans for their own town hall meeting designed, in part, to help make sure that “people understand the next steps” in bringing Shelby County Juvenile Court up to federal standards.
Opinion: Trying youths as adults hurts families and taxpayers, but not crime (Christian Science Monitor)  Most youth cases that end up in adult court, get there automatically – a result of laws, for instance, that set the age for adult trial at 16 or 17. These youths are not afforded the benefit of any kind of judicial hearing or case review by a juvenile court judge.
Fewer Texas kids in discipline schools (Austin American-Statesman)  The number of Texas children in schools for those previously expelled because of disciplinary problems declined by nearly 40 percent over five years, a top juvenile justice official told lawmakers Monday.
Teen Court program designed to steer youths away from crime (Gazette.net)  Teen Court is a program run by the Prince George’s County state’s attorney’s office that allows first-time juvenile offenders to avoid the juvenile justice system by being granted a second chance by a “jury” of their peers.

We're spending the week in San Antonio for the Reclaiming Futures Leadership Institute (which you may already know if you're following @RFutures on Twitter). For those not on Twitter, we'll be posting updates here on the blog and on Facebook.
Here are our takeaways from Day 1:
Cora Crary, Learning Collaborative Manager, Reclaiming Futures

• "Sometimes the best treatment is cookies and milk." Day one started off with a fantastic presentation by Jerry Tello who developed the Cara y Corazon curriculum used by Reclaiming Futures Santa Cruz. His presentation reminded us that no scope of work or assessment has the power to heal the way feeling wanted and connected within a community can.
• Marcus Stubblefield reinforced Jerry Tello's work in his presentation on community involvement. He reminded us that, "people don't care how much you know until they know how much you care."
• At lunch we got a fantastic dance presentation by the local youth group, HYPE -- including a chance to see our colleagues on the dance floor.
• Laura Nissen talked about the importance of family engagements and reminded us that systems create trauma in the lives of their clients.
• To top it off we saw a number of fellows rise to our Twitter challenge. So keep track in real time to their highlights with the hashtag #rf10.

 
Liz Wu, Blog Editor, Reclaiming Futures

Like most teachers I've gotten some praise from my high school students over my 26 years of teaching -- a lesson "wasn't bad," or a particular class was "sorta interesting." I've even been told that I was a "pretty good teacher." High praise coming from teenagers.
But the truth is I wasn't a "good teacher." I was a "failure," at least according to America's "education reformers" -- that "odd coalition of corporate-friendly Democrats, right-wing Republicans, Tea Party governors, Wall Street executives, and major foundations" as Diane Ravitch aptly defines them -- because the kids I taught consistently lagged behind their peers in every measure, performing well below grade level, failing state standardized tests.
Given the present state of teacher evaluations, with a significant portion allotted to student performance on mandated tests, I'd be in big trouble if I hadn't left teaching recently. I certainly wouldn't get any bonus pay. If it were up to the Obama Administration I might not even have a job, since I would be one of those teachers who, as the president noted in his 2012 State of the Union address, "just aren't helping kids." And if I still taught in New York I'd be facing the prospect of having my name and ratings published in newspapers and on the internet if the legislature gets its way in what the New York State Union of Teachers called the "name/shame/blame game."
But I know that I wasn't a "failure," and more importantly, that the hundreds of kids I've taught weren't either. My students were mostly young people of color, living in neighborhoods and families destroyed by poverty and substance abuse, racism and violence, physical and sexual abuse. Overall, life -- shaped by their mistakes and by conditions they couldn't control -- left them little time for, or interest in education. Frequently that lack of time and interest led to trouble which led to repeated suspensions, expulsions and in some cases, incarceration. But sometimes trouble translated into being placed in a small community alternative high school or the jailhouse classroom in the county penitentiary, both places I taught in.

Juvenile Justice Reform

• Program helps juvenile offenders stay out of jail  Belleville News-Democrat A federal government official, state officials, judges and local leaders met in East St. Louis Wednesday to discuss and learn about Redeploy Illinois, a state program that works to keep juvenile offenders out of detention centers.
• Opinion: Juvenile justice reform Orlando Sentinel In Florida, Orange and Osceola counties smartly realized one bad decision shouldn't ruin a kid's life.
• Fixing juvenile court, we can't let this stand Tri-State Defender A unified response to the findings of the U.S. Justice Department’s recently released investigation of Shelby County Juvenile Court is driving the push for a town hall meeting being spearheaded by Shelby County Commissioner Henri Brooks.
• Reports underscore safety, security issues at Giddings youth lockup Chicago Tribune Confidential reports reveals that long before a state ombudsman made public an alarming report about safety and security issues at the Giddings State School, attacks on workers and reports of violence and out-of-control youth had been on an upswing.

Bart Lubow, who has been working for more than 20 years to reduce the number of youth being sent to detention centers, told a gathering of approximately 700 conference attendees last week that now “may prove to be a unique moment in juvenile justice history, a time when, as a nation, we shed some of the system’s worst baggage—including our unnecessary and often inappropriate reliance on secure confinement” of youth.
The conference attendees were in Houston for the Juvenile Detention Alternatives Initiative conference, which as its name implies is working to reduce the number of youth sent into detention and instead aims to provide community-centered alternatives. The conference is hosted by the Annie E. Casey Foundation.
Apparently the 19-year quest is working. Lubow, director of the Juvenile Justice Strategy Group at the Casey Foundation, told the gathering that “JDAI sites have reduced reliance on secure detention overall by 42 percent, with numerous jurisdictions posting reductions in excess of 50 percent.” All of this happening without compromising public safety, he said.
The quest in the end means, in Lubow’s words, “We need to detain the right kids, but only the right kids.”

Juvenile Justice Reform
Ex-Police Chief: Reform Juvenile Justice
Omaha World-Herald
Former Omaha Police Chief Thomas Warren on Wednesday called for comprehensive reform of the state juvenile justice system, in response to a new study showing widespread racial disparities in how cases are handled.

Adolescent Substance Abuse Treatment
Teen Use of Ecstasy and Speed Linked with Developing Depression
Join Together
A new study links teenagers’ use of Ecstasy and speed (methamphetamine and/or amphetamine) with a higher risk of developing depression.
Reclaiming Futures Opportunity Board.
The job listings and webinars below are from the Reclaiming Futures Opportunity Board. Please share these postings and events with your colleagues working in the juvenile justice, adolescent substance abuse and teen mental health areas. It's free to browse and post!
Jobs
Lecturer in Criminal Justice at Colorado Mesa University
Grand Junction
CO
Closes 5/4/2012
Program Officer at Open Society Institute
Baltimore
Maryland
Closes 5/4/2012
Juvenile Justice Consultant Title IV-E at Unificare, Ltd.
Dallas
TX
Closes 5/13/2012
Executive Director at Oklahoma Board of Juvenile Affairs
Oklahoma City
Oklahoma
Closes 5/25/2012
Community Justice Educational Program Coordinator at AmeriCorps
Providence
Rhode Island
Closes 6/24/2012
Juvenile Probation Officer III at Travis County
Austin
TX
Closes 8/15/2012