Juvenile Justice Reform

Nearly one in three youth will be arrested for a non-traffic offense by the time they are 23 years old. 
This startling statistic comes from a new report published today in Pediatrics. According to Robert Brame, a criminologist at UNC-Charlotte and principal author of the study, "arrest is a pretty common experience."
This analysis was last done in the 1960s, when researchers found that there were 100 inmates per 100,000 people in the population. Today's study found that there are now 500 inmates per 100,000 people. Researchers suggested that rates increased due to a more aggressive policy for truancy/vandalism/underage drinking/shoplifting and because transition from adolescence to adulthood has become a longer process. 
Of particular note is the authors' decision to publish the study in a medical journal instead of a journal focused on criminologists. The researchers believe that pediatricians have a role preventing violent or unsafe behaviors in their at-risk patients, explained Prof. Brame in a HealthDay article.

Jessica A. Jones to Lead Reclaiming Futures Office in North Carolina
Public-Private partnership expands proven treatment model in state juvenile courts
RALEIGH, N.C. (December 19, 2011) – Jessica A. Jones began work Thursday, December 15 at the North Carolina Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (DJJDP) as director of the new North Carolina office of Reclaiming Futures, a national organization that improves drug and alcohol treatment for young people in trouble with the law. Jones formerly served as research and evaluation director at the Down East Partnership for Children in Rocky Mount, N.C.
“We are delighted to welcome Jessica to this position,” said Secretary Linda Hayes of the Department of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention. “She brings the right set of management and data research skills to take Reclaiming Futures to statewide success and help as many teens as possible in North Carolina.”
“I am excited to join Reclaiming Futures and the North Carolina Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention to help teens caught in the cycle of drugs, alcohol and crime,” said Jones. “North Carolina’s six existing Reclaiming Futures communities have made a positive difference in the lives of our state’s youth, and I look forward to working with them to spread the Reclaiming Futures model across the state.”
Jones will lead all aspects of the project, including strategic planning and implementation in addition to developing the capacity for four additional Reclaiming Futures sites in North Carolina. Her role includes project management and the duplication of the successful services of the national program office.
The nationally evaluated six-part Reclaiming Futures model – originally created with support from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation – provides alcohol and drug screening for all teens who enter the juvenile justice system, then develops a treatment plan and connects them with employers, mentors and volunteer service projects. An evaluation by the Urban Institute and the University of Chicago's Chapin Hall Center for Children found that the 10 Reclaiming Futures pilot communities reported significant improvements in juvenile justice and drug and alcohol treatment.

Juvenile Justice Reform

• Mississippi officials say more youth rehab facilities are needed
  Government officials in Mississippi say that a growing number of youth arrested for crimes are becoming repeat offenders because rehabilitation is not available.
• Iowa Governor visits state’s largest child welfare, juvenile justice and behavioral health agencies
  Governor Terry Branstad is interested in the concept of providing children and families with treatment, utilizing a long-term, comprehensive approach, rather than the standard short-term solution.
• Detroit tackles dropout crisis by engaging students and parents
  Over the next 18 months, PBS NewsHour is examining the consequences of, and solutions for, one of this country's most pressing education issues.
• Wyoming’s Natrona County earns recognition for juvenile justice progress
  The State Advisory Council on Juvenile Justice and Gov. Matt Mead's office honored Natrona county officials for developing a system that offers alternatives to detention for low-risk offenders, cutting its use of secure detention for status offenses like underage drinking by 99%.
• Feds: Florida’s youth prisons are “dangerous”
  Florida’s youth-corrections system is so poorly administered and conditions are so severe that the U.S. Department of Justice said that they violate the Constitution.

Adolescent Substance Abuse Treatment

• Massachusetts theatre company receives federal grant to work with youth
  The Salem Theatre Company was recently awarded a grant from the Healthy People 2020 Community Innovations Project, a program of the US Department of Health and Human Services, to work with local youth. They plan to create three short plays focused on healthy choices with regards to nutrition, substance abuse and youth violence.

Earlier this month, national and local foundations in the U.S., including the Open Society Foundations, met to discuss the future of juvenile justice in the District of Columbia and the findings of a new report, Notorious to Notable. The report shows how a collaborative effort between local D.C. foundations and national funders supported the positive transformation of the District’s juvenile justice agency by closing a notorious juvenile prison for court-involved youth and redirecting resources to community-based alternatives to incarceration. As a result of the effort, Harvard University's Kennedy School named the D.C. Department of Youth Rehabilitation Services among the Top 50 Programs in its 2008 Innovations in American Government Awards competition.
The report chronicles the story with a detailed timeline of how the city in 2009 closed the Oak Hill Youth Center, a juvenile prison opened in 1967, that became the subject of a class action lawsuit, "Jerry M." over inhumane conditions of confinement. Foundations supported the creation of a new policy consensus, through the establishment of a Blue Ribbon Commission to reverse the District's over-reliance on incarceration and use of the notorious Oak Hill to warehouse over 300 youth on any given day.
With foundation support over a ten-year span, the District was able to realize the following accomplishments:

The oldest kids in the system when H. Ted Rubin was a Colorado juvenile judge are now 57 years old. But Rubin has never left the field; he has been a researcher, advocate, and most notably, reporter and author since he left the bench in 1971.
His sixth book, “Juvenile Justice: Policies, Practices, and Programs Volume II,” was just released by Civic Research Institute, for whom Rubin also serves as a regular contributor to the excellent Juvenile Justice Update.
The tome spoons out updates for readers on all aspects of juvenile justice from the front door of the system to deep-end placements, mixing citation of news and research with the author’s opinions on issues and trends. It is part reference and part editorial, a book only a guy with Rubin’s breadth of experience could write with credibility.
Youth Today sat down with Rubin, who was in Washington, D.C. for the annual conference of the John D. & Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation’s Models for Change initiative.
Youth Today: The first volume of “Policies Practices, and Programs” was written in 2003. What would say are the biggest changes to the juvenile justice landscape since you wrote it?
H. Ted Rubin: We’re in a really good time of making great progress when it comes to dealing with kids who break a law, or who cause problems at school. There’s a long way to go.”
There are two foundations, MacArthur and Casey, that have helped that along sizably.
YT: Is there any aspect in which you feel the field has regressed since your first volume?
HTR: The termination of people working with kids in the system and in private nonprofits. And where we’ve not made nearly enough headway is DMC [disproportionate minority contact]. That’s really a purpose of Casey and MacArthur. And it’s Congress that said states have to evaluate DMC and implement a plan.
YT: Do you view DMC as a reason to solve problems or a problem to solve?
HTR: “DMC is a separate thing. It’s not just a police function, but that’s some of it. [Columbia University researcher] Jeff Fagan talks about changing the reward structure of police so that they could be rewarded for steering a kid to the Boys & Girls Club. Right now, it’s making arrests. And the easiest arrests are minority youths, and schools further that.”

Over half of the youth released from Illinois state juvenile detention centers will return in three years or less. A new report released today by the Illinois Juvenile Justice Commission takes a hard look at the state's juvenile justice system and finds it severely lacking in successful rehabilitation efforts.
Not only is the state failing these kids with its feeder system into the adult criminal justice sytem, it is also failing to keep communities safe while costing taxpayers $86,000 per incarcerated youth per year.
From the press release:

"An essential measurement of any juvenile "reentry" system is whether youth returning from incarceration remain safely and successfully within their communities," according to the report. "By this fundamental measure, Illinois is failing."
The "Youth Reentry Improvement Report" found that the system does little to prepare youth and families for the youths' return home; paroled youth rarely receive needed services or school linkages and too often are returned to expensive youth prisons due to technical parole violations; and Prisoner Review Board (PRB) parole revocation proceedings are largely perfunctory hearings where the youth's due process rights are not protected.
"Our research documented that 54 percent of juveniles being sent to state youth prisons have been there before and are returning because of technical parole violations," said George W. Timberlake, who is Chair of the Illinois Juvenile Justice Commission and retired chief judge of the Second Judicial Circuit. "The system is not doing enough to rehabilitate juveniles inside and outside prison walls, and it often is too quick to return youth to expensive prisons where failure again is likely.

Several news stories across the United States last month focused on the alarming increase in the number of students arrested inside public schools—and for alarmingly minor behavior.
The Justice Policy Institute recently released a large study on the use of police officers in schools and the resulting arrest rates of students. The report discusses how reports of victimization and bullying have no correlation, positive or negative, with the presence of police officers in schools.
Further, schools with in-house police officers are funneling more kids into the juvenile justice system. A study of such schools found that five times as many students were arrested for disorderly conduct at those schools, even when controlling for economic factors.
Arresting kids for minor misbehavior that would more appropriately be addressed with standard school and parental discipline imposes a high cost on the juvenile justice system, and states are taking notice.

Juvenile Justice Reform

• U.S. Supreme Court ruling on life sentences for juveniles could overturn law
  The U.S. Supreme Court will soon decide whether juveniles age 14 or younger can be sentenced to life without the possibility of parole for homicide. A ruling that such sentences are categorically unconstitutional could upend laws in 36 states, including Wisconsin.
• Amnesty International calls on U.S. to stop jailing minors for life
  In a new report, Amnesty says sentencing juveniles to life in prison without parole is incompatible with the basic principles of juvenile justice. Currently, more than 2,500 adults are in U.S. jails for crimes committed as a child and under current rules they will never be freed.
• Bullying behind bars: Pennsylvania's juvenile detention centers fail to protect LGBT youth
  National statistics show lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered youth in juvenile detention facilities fare worse than their heterosexual peers.
• Attorney General Holder Convenes First Hearing on Children’s Exposure to Violence
  Attorney General Eric Holder recently convened the first of four public hearings of the National Task Force on Children Exposed to Violence, a part of the Defending Childhood Initiative, which is gathering expert and community testimony on children’s exposure to violence.

Adolescent Substance Abuse Treatment

• Participants Sought for Survey on Mentoring Services for High-Risk Youth

The National Mentoring Partnership, Global Youth Justice, and the National Partnership for Juvenile Services are conducting a survey to improve the design and delivery of mentoring services for youth at risk for delinquency, alcohol and drug abuse, truancy, and other problem behaviors.
• Dramatic rise in substance abuse treatment admission rates from 1999-2009
  A new SAMHSA report shows that while the overall rate of substance abuse treatment admissions among those aged 12 and older in the United States has remained nearly the same from 1999 to 2009, there has been a dramatic rise (430 %) in the rate of treatment admissions for the abuse of prescription pain relievers during this period.

Youth in the juvenile justice system are at high-risk for physical, mental and developmental health issues according to a new policy statement by the American Academy of Pediatrics’ Committee on Adolescence. Despite this, many youths don’t receive the level of health care they need, either in the system or when they get out. The report represents the first update in 10 years to the Health Care for Youth in the Juvenile Justice System.
Nationwide 11 million juveniles were arrested in 2008, according to the report. And while not all arrested youth are placed in some form of detention (either short- or long-term) the median stay in custody in 2006 was 65 days. Eighty percent remained in detention for at least 30 days and 57 percent for at least 90 days. All of those youths require healthcare of some kind.
“We wanted to advocate for these youth to have the same level and standards of care as non-incarcerated youth in the community,” the report’s lead author, Dr. Paula Braverman, Director of Community Programs at the Cincinatti Children’s Hospital Medical Center said in an email. She said the Committee on Adolescence also “outlined specific recommendations which included the training and skill of the health care providers.”
Currently, the National Commission on Correctional Health Care (NCCHC) publishes standards for care in juvenile facilities. At a minimum, the NCCHC says, youth should be screened by health care professionals immediately upon arriving at an intake facility to check for contagious conditions, urgent health needs and suicidal thoughts. Within seven days of intake, youth should be given a hands-on, comprehensive health examination by a doctor. Girls and boys are tested for sexually transmitted diseases and vaccinations are updated. A further mental health screening must be performed within 14 days. A dental examination must be performed within seven days.

In the year that I have worked as a juvenile defender, I have noticed patterns in the types of cases that land on my desk. For instance, now that the school year is in full swing, the overwhelming majority of my juvenile caseload arises from school discipline issues. It seems — at least here in southeast Georgia — as though schools are either no longer interested or no longer equipped to handle discipline in-house.
Almost every public school in my rural circuit has police presence in the form of the School Resource Officer (SRO), a uniformed police officer who maintains an office on the school campus. These officers maintain such a vigilant school presence to deter criminal activity such as drug possession/sale, weapon possession and other violent or dangerous activity. The reality is quite different.
Increasingly, local school administrators are relying on these SROs and a broad Georgia statute that criminalizes “disruption or interference with operation of public schools” to handle children with behavioral problems. What exactly are the definitions for “disruption” and “interference”? That is a great question, as the Georgia Code fails to define either term for the purposes of explaining exactly what conduct the state Legislature sought to criminalize. However, I can tell you that “disrespectful language” and “refusing to follow the commands of teacher” can land a child an invitation to juvenile court.
A child who is found to be delinquent of “disrupting or interfering with the operation of public schools” in Georgia, is subject to the punishment of a high and aggravated misdemeanor. This likely means probation for a length of time with a litany of conditions for the child to comply with, but could also result in a 30-day stay in a Regional Youth Detention Center.
When I was in school, disruptive children were punished by being assigned extra homework, given detention, in- school suspension or out- of- school suspension. The severity of the punishment varied with the severity of the actions; for example, talking back to the teacher might result in after-school detention, while getting into a playground fight would likely result in suspension.