Juvenile Justice Reform

Background: On May 18 and 19, 2011, Reclaiming Futures hosted its biannual Leadership Institute for its participating sites. Held in Miami, the Institute featured presentations from leaders in the fields of youth work and juvenile justice. 

About This Archived Webcast: On Wednesday, May 18, Susan Richardson, Reclaiming Futures' new national director, gave a 30-minute presentation on her vision for Reclaiming Futures, the North Carolina experience and what to look forward to in the next six months.
 

Background: On May 18 and 19, 2011, Reclaiming Futures hosted its biannual Leadership Institute for its participating sites. Held in Miami this year, the Institute featured presentations from leaders in the fields of youth work and juvenile justice. 

About This Archived Webcast: On Thursday, May 19, Dr. Gordon Bazemore, a leading expert in restorative justice and juvenile justice, gave a three-part presentation on youth development, restorative justice, and social capital and "restorative decision-making." >>Download the presentation slides.
 

Background: On May 18 and 19, 2011, Reclaiming Futures hosted its biannual Leadership Institute for its participating sites. Held in Miami, the Institute featured presentations from leaders in the fields of youth work and juvenile justice. 

About This Video: On May 18, 2011, Karen Pittman, a national leader in youth development work, gave a one-hour presentation on positive youth development—what it is, what it means, and how it can help communities make better decisions about their young people, including those in the juvenile justice system.  It was broadcast live and then posted as an archived video. 

Part two -- about the last three minutes of Karen's speech -- is below the break:

For parents, family members, and community advocates who care about young people in the juvenile justice system:
The Community Justice Network for Youth (CJNY) and the Campaign for Youth Justice (CFYJ) are pleased to announce the application process for "Organizing 101: Community Organizing to Stop the Rail to Jail!" (See CJNY's publication, "Stopping the Rail to Jail" by clicking the image at right.)
This will be an intergenerational organizing intensive taking place August 11-15, 2011 just outside of Washington D.C. We are excited to offer change makers from across the U.S. an opportunity to gain skills and the means to be able to attend this intensive.
The goals of this organizing 101 intensive are:

• Build community with like-minded individuals
• Deepen participants' community organizing skills
• Introduce participants to effective strategies to hold their local juvenile justice systems accountable

• Filmed Proceedings from Child Welfare, Juvenile Justice to Be Offered for Research, Training
  The Institute for Juvenile Court and Corrections Research (IJCCR), a partnership of the Indiana University Research and Technology Corp. (IURTC) and Calamari Productions of Austin, Texas, plans to offer thousands of hours of film from juvenile court and child welfare proceedings to researchers -- and to train probation officers, child welfare case workers, lawyers, and judges.  The film will be made available on a subscription basis. (Calamari Productions also created the six-episode documentary, "Lockup," about youth in the juvenile justice system in Lake County, Indiana, which aired on MSNBC.)

  >>Check out sample footage of juvenile corrections, child welfare case work and more from the new institute.

• Without A Smoking Gun: Chicago Hammers Kids with Adult Court, Adult Time 
  In an attempt to get a handle on rising gun violence, Chicago cracked down on youth found possessing guns, and automatically transferring them to adult court.  But an investigation by a Chicago paper (and passed on via The Crime Report) of 90 cases from 2009 (or 57 percent of the cases) showed that about 25% of the youth were never shown to have a gun at all; and police recovered weapons less than half the time. Yet 87 percent of the teens --overwhelmingly black -- pled guilty and were sentenced to a combined total exceeding 4,606 years in prison. 

A few days ago, I posted about a framework for providing opportunities for young people in the juvenile justice system to develop important skills that build on their competencies instead of their deficits in Positive Youth Justice - a Model for Building Assets in the Juvenile Justice System. This was based on a publication authored by Jeffrey Butts, Gordon Bazemore, and Aundra Saa Meroe, and published by the Coalition for Juvenile Justice, titled, Positive Youth Justice: Framing Justice Interventions Using the Concepts of Positive Youth Development.
 
At the back of the publication, I found these inspiring "rules" for creating youth development programs: 

1. Assume that young people are competent. When you start with the assumption that youth are damaged, some of them will likely “catch” the very problem they think they are supposed to have.
2. When working with young people, make sure they are in mixed groups—youth and adults solving common community problems together, and making sure youth themselves come from a mix of the usual group labels—good/bad, quick/slow, etc.
3. Jobs and activities for youth must be important, rewarding, and meaningful to create a sense of success, contribution, and belonging.

 
The following post is reprinted with permission of the Vera Institute of Justice, which created the Adolescent Portable Therapy program, depicted in this video below, from 2006. - Ed.

 
I joined the Adolescent Portable Therapy program in 2001, just after its launch. At that time there was a total of four clients in the program. APT was created to fill a need for flexible substance abuse treatment for young people involved with the New York City juvenile justice system. Because that population is so fluid—kids moving between facilities and between city and state stakeholders—Vera’s innovation was to make the therapist portable. We began working with young people in detention shortly after their arrest, following them as they moved through the juvenile justice system and ultimately home to their families.

[The following post, by a young woman in juvenile detention in King County, Washington, is reprinted with permission from the Pongo Teen Writing website, run by Richard Gold. See also his post, "Poetry as Treatment for Youth in the Juvenile Justice System."
 
NOTE: On Saturday, May 14, 2011, Pongo is holding a workshop for teachers and counselors covering techniques on therapeutic writing in Seattle - scholarships are available. -Ed.]
 
 
Ice Cream Man
by a young woman, age 16 
 
I just thought you should know
that sometimes I'm afraid of you
I don't mind you rep'ing the gangs
but sometimes when I look into your eyes
I see violence against me
I see violence against your grandma
and it hurts me inside
 
I just thought you should know
I want to work in here someday
helping kids that went through what I went through
help them understand why I ran away from home
because my parents beat me
because the stress in my life made me do something stupid
I was the girl who stopped going to school
I was the girl who stopped listening to her parents
who started drinking and smoking

 

Want to increase your knowledge about how to reform the way the juvenile justice and child welfare systems work together to help young people who are involved in both systems?  
Want to network with other professionals working toward the same goal?
 
Then consider applying to attend the 2011 Juvenile Justice and Child Welfare: Multi-System Integration Certificate Program for Private Sector Leaders, sponsored by the Center for Juvenile Justice Reform and held November 2-8, 2011 at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C.
 
According to the program sponsors, it's "geared toward service providers that work with youth known to the juvenile justice and child welfare systems, as well as advocates, academicians, foundation staff and others whose work is closely related to improving service delivery for crossover youth and relationships between the private and public sectors."
>>More information about the curriculum for the program, the selection criteria, tuition and access the application. Applications are due July 27, 2011.
>>Questions? Email Kristina Rosinsky.
>>Apply Now

 
We often assume that teens land in the juvenile justice system because they're "villains" or victims (of trauma, circumstance, or a behavioral health issue like substance abuse).  But what if we used a different lens?
What if we assumed that teens commit crimes to meet needs typical of of all adolescents? After all, during this phase of development, teens want excitement, power, status, and a sense of belonging. (Plus, they're not strong on empathy, paving the way for criminal behavior.)