Juvenile Justice Reform

In this short video, Wansley Walters, Florida's Department of Juvenile Justice Secretary, says that Florida is focusing on reducing recidivism and saving taxpayer money.

Their reform efforts center on Walters' "roadmap to system excellence" which includes strategies to prevent and divert at-risk youth, find alternatives to secure detention facilities and allocating resources more effectively.

Here are the top ten most read blog posts from November 2012. Did we miss your favorite? Let us know in the comments below.
10. Real-World Solutions for Crossover Youth: Coordinating Care in Practice and Policy
Georgetown Public Policy Review speaks with Shay Bilchik about a multi-systems approach to care for crossover youth and reform options.
9. How to Use Language in Court that Youth Understand: Get the New Models for Change Guide 
A new guide from TeamChild, helps courts implement colloquies to bridge the gap between what is said in court and what kids understand.
8. Why Missing School Matters
Research shows that missing school lowers outcomes for youth, says the Media Awareness Project. But why do kids miss school in the first place?
7. Crossover Youth: Intersection of Child Welfare & Juvenile Justice 
The Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice looks at how best to meet the needs of crossover youth, those who are in both the child welfare and juvenile justice systems.

Isolated from their families, the holidays can be a particularly difficult time for the tens of thousands of children behind bars. But the holidays also offer us a unique opportunity to reach out and make meaningful connections with justice-involved youth. 
Looking for ways to connect? Our friends at the Campaign for Youth Justice have a Holiday Event Toolkit that includes ideas for holiday projects, letters and events for incarcerated youth.
Check it out and let us know if you have any ideas to add!
 
 

Juvenile Justice Reform

• Viewpoint: Localizing Juvenile Justice Spurs National Reforms (American City & County)
  Across the country, jurisdictions are moving away from centralized juvenile justice systems and toward smaller, local programs. Local systems are less expensive and are proving to be highly effective.
• New Report: Minors in ‘Solitary’ Hallucinate, Harm Themselves (JJIE.org)
  A new report on solitary confinement of minors includes harrowing descriptions of the psychological and physical impact ‘solitary’ has on young people, as well as surprising revelations about why some authorities resort to isolating juveniles.
• Juvenile Courts were Created to Get Kids on Track (DesMoinesRegister.com)
  Experts believe teenage brains are not fully developed. Society knows they should not be judged and punished in the same way as adults. So like other states, Iowa created a juvenile justice system to ensure that young offenders are given the help to get their lives moving in the right direction.
• Opinion: Juvenile Justice (Tallahassee.com)
  The state Department of Juvenile Justice’s new Roadmap to System Excellence is indeed an exercise in common sense. The Roadmap, which was discussed Thursday in Tallahassee in the first of a series of town hall meetings to hear from citizens and stakeholders, has the lofty goal of making Florida a leader in juvenile justice.
• Avery D. Niles Sworn In As New Georgia Department Of Juvenile Justice Commissioner (WJBF.com)
  Avery D. Niles, of Clermont, Georgia was sworn in Friday as the new Commissioner of the Georgia Department of Juvenile Justice (DJJ).
• States Mull Ohio-Style Juvenile Justice Reform (JJIE.org)
  Georgia has room to make its juvenile justice system more regular, cheaper and better, according to preliminary suggestions from a blue-ribbon panel charged with drafting an overhaul. States including Texas and Ohio have gone down the same path, which, say experts, is not completely smooth.
• The Shocking Details of a Mississippi School-to-Prison Pipeline (COLORLINES.com)
  Cedrico Green can’t exactly remember how many times he went back and forth to juvenile. When asked to venture a guess he says, “Maybe 30.” He was put on probation by a youth court judge for getting into a fight when he was in eighth grade. Thereafter, any of Green’s school-based infractions, from being a few minutes late for class to breaking the school dress code by wearing the wrong color socks, counted as violations of his probation and led to his immediate suspension and incarceration in the local juvenile detention center.
• First Court of Appeals Hears Case Challenging Transfer of Juvenile to Adult Court (ChildrenAndTheLawBlog.com)
  Children in Texas can be tried in adult criminal court under a waiver statute that permits the transfer of a juvenile to adult court after a hearing is conducted by a juvenile judge. On October 31, 2012 the First Court of Appeals in Houston heard a case challenging the transfer of a child, C.M. The decision of the Court is pending.
• EDITORIAL: Juvenile Injustice (The New York Times)
  Step by step, the Supreme Court has been trying to reshape the way the American criminal justice system deals with those under the age of 18. In Miller v. Alabama this June, it ruled that a mandatory life sentence without parole for a juvenile is cruel and unusual punishment, even when the crime is homicide.
• Marijuana Decriminalization Law Brings Down Juvenile Arrests in California (PublicIntegrity.org)
  Marijuana — it’s one of the primary reasons why California experienced a stunning 20 percent drop in juvenile arrests in just one year, between 2010 and 2011, according to provocative new research.
• For the Newly-Elected Judge, a Different View of Juvenile Court (YouthToday.org)
  Dozens of lawyers won their first elections as judges this month, and they will soon experience the sensation of viewing the courtroom from the other side of the bench and hearing the words “your honor” directed at them.

To celebrate 10 years, Reclaiming Futures Anchorage recently hosted a reception to honor those who have worked together, improving the lives of young people in the justice system for the past decade.
They also served a delicious cake (pictured at right), which helped improve attendance! It was clear from the events that there is interest in a statewide effort to provide more treatment, better treatment and support beyond treatment for communities working to help teens overcome drugs, alcohol and crime. 
Both Fairbanks and Matanuska-Susitna County were very well-represented, but the events were also attended by a wide variety of leaders from around the state, including:

• Judicial representatives
• Treatment providers
• Community members 
• Funders
• Public health employees
• Attorneys
• Young people and parents 
• Division of Juvenile Justice staff and leadership
• Other youth-serving agency representatives

The Models for Change conference is just around the corner – and it’s not too soon to start participating online!
This year, we are especially excited to engage with conference attendees and juvenile justice practitioners online through social media.
We will live-tweet all three days of the conference and encourage you to follow along and join in by tweeting and retweeting with the hashtags #MFC7 and #Models4Change. (When you want to tell something specific about some issue or subject, you can prefix your subject with #. The more people that re‐tweet your message and/or use the same # with their own tweets, the # or subject acts like a keyword and becomes searchable and more popular.) For those not yet on Twitter (join here), this is the perfect chance to dabble in social networking to promote your organization’s issues and Models for Change. Images, graphs, quotes, workshops and photographs will be featured and we hope you share your own thoughts/tweets on this medium. And remember, when you tweet, make sure to include @models4change. Start following us there as well.

The Thelton E. Henderson Center for Social Justice at UC Berkeley published a report detailing a pilot program aimed at students of color and low-income families to shift from a zero-tolerance school discipline policy to a restorative justice policy. The report, “School-Based Restorative Justice as an Alternative to Zero-Tolerance Policies: Lessons from West Oakland,” [PDF download] draws evidence from Cole Middle School in West Oakland and finds that the restorative approach can help combat the school-to-prison pipeline and have a positive effect on disproportionate minority contact in the juvenile justice system.
The report’s executive summary has a great introduction to the major concepts included in the report (emphasis mine):

Restorative justice is an alternative to retributive zero-tolerance policies that mandate suspension or expulsion of students from school for a wide variety of misbehaviors including possession of alcohol or cigarettes, fighting, dress code violations, and cursing. Although zero-tolerance policies have resulted in substantial increases in student suspensions and expulsions for students of all races, African American and Hispanic/Latino youth are disproportionately impacted by a zero-tolerance approach.
Under zero tolerance, suspensions and expulsions can directly or indirectly result in referrals to the juvenile and adult criminal systems where African American and Hispanic/Latino youth are also disproportionately represented. This phenomenon, part of a process that criminalizes students, has been termed the school-to-prison pipeline.

As Shiloh Carter outlined in "Kid Courts Should Use Kid Friendly Language," it is no secret that when youth end up in court, they are often confused and uncertain about the purpose of the proceedings, and what's expected of them when they leave. Why? In spite of the fact that judges and other court professionals try hard to make sure youth know what’s expected of them, much of the language used in court goes right over their heads.
TeamChild®—a nonprofit law office based in Washington State—recognized this problem and developed interventions to help youth understand more of what goes on when they appear in court. With the support of Models for Change, a national juvenile justice reform initiative funded by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, we worked with the Washington State Juvenile Indigent Defense Action Network (JIDAN), to create a tool—the judicial colloquies—to train judges and other court practitioners on the use of developmentally appropriate language in court proceedings.
We decided to focus our work on the court orders issued when youth are released prior to adjudication, and when they are put on probation. At these stages of the proceedings, a youth might face detention time if they violate their court orders.

There are a few immutable functions of government—and public safety is paramount amongst them. We expect our state and local governments to use our tax dollars to keep the public peace, to punish those who do wrong, and ensure streets remain safe for prosperous economic development.
But as with all uses of taxpayer dollars, we expect Virginia to accomplish these goals effectively and efficiently.
Outdated juvenile justice systems present an excellent example of the inefficient use of taxpayer dollars. For decades, juvenile justice systems have over-relied on secure confinement of juvenile offenders in state facilities. Unfortunately, this process of seeking to rehabilitate juvenile offenders is the most expensive and, typically the least effective option.
Juvenile justice systems are unique from other public safety agencies as juveniles are treated differently than adult offenders, largely due to their age and capacity for change. Therefore, rehabilitation is an even more important goal for juveniles. The public benefit and cost savings that result from diverting a youth from a lifetime of crime, and putting them on the right track to a law abiding and productive life, are immense and should be prioritized.
Regrettably, the evidence suggests that Virginia is falling short of this goal. More than 700 youths are in state lockups on any given day. Taxpayers pay $221 per day, per juvenile, and at an average time spent in the facility of 14 months, the resulting tab is almost $100,000.

Juvenile Justice Reform

• [Video] Fresno Local Conservation Corps Re-Entry Program Highlighted by Local News (The Corps Network)
  Earlier this week several staff members from the Fresno Local Conservation Corps joined KSEE24 local news to talk about their re-entry program for formerly incarcerated youth.
• New Push to Help Juvenile Offenders (WCTV.TV)
  The Florida Department of Juvenile Justice is pushing a proposed plan it says will help keep youthful offenders out of jail and revamp the juvenile justice system.
• Juvenile Justice: Mass. Formulating New Sentencing Policies (WBUR.org)
  In June, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that mandatory life sentences without parole for juveniles convicted of murder was unconstitutional. The court declared life without parole for juveniles was “cruel and unusual punishment,” thereby in violation of the 8th Amendment.
• Elementary-Schoolers' Arrests Alarm Justice Officials (Orlando Sentinel)
  Circuit Judge Alicia Latimore, one of three judges who handles juvenile-delinquency cases in Orange, was so concerned about the kids' arrests that she visited Cherokee's campus this fall. The arrests at Cherokee outnumber the arrests of students at Orange's 121 other public elementary schools combined.