The Real Cost of Prisons Weblog

July 15, 2010

NY: Federal Oversight for Youth Prisons Imposed. Advocates Say Most Young People Can Be Treated in Their Communities.

"... advocates for youths in state custody said they would continue to seek a far-reaching transformation in the juvenile justice system in New York, which they say merely warehouses youths who in most cases need intensive psychiatric care and counseling rather than being locked up. --“The changes will only affect those kids who have mental health needs who are already incarcerated,” said Gabrielle Prisco, director of the Juvenile Justice Project at the Correctional Association of New York. “It doesn’t get to the fact that any of those young people could be safely treated in their communities without ever seeing the inside of a prison cell.”

Federal Oversight for Troubled N.Y. Youth Prisons
By NICHOLAS CONFESSORE
Published: July 14, 2010- NY Times

Four of New York’s most dangerous and troubled youth prisons will be placed under federal oversight, strict new limits will be imposed on the use of physical force by guards, and dozens of psychiatrists, counselors and investigators will be hired under a sweeping agreement finalized on Wednesday between state and federal officials.

The agreement will usher in the most significant expansion of mental health services in years for youths in custody, the vast majority of whom suffer from drug or alcohol problems, developmental disabilities or mental health problems.

Currently, the state does not have a single full-time psychiatrist on staff to treat young offenders.

Guards at the youth prisons, known as youth counselors, will be barred from physically restraining youths except when a person’s physical safety is threatened or a youth is trying to escape from the institution.

Guards will be allowed to use the most controversial method — in which a youth is forced to the ground and held face-down — for at most three minutes, with evaluation by a doctor to follow within four hours.

The accord comes almost a year after the Justice Department threatened to take over New York’s juvenile justice system unless the state took significant steps to rectify problems at the four prisons, where physical abuse was rampant and mental health counseling was scant or nonexistent.

“It is New York’s fundamental responsibility to protect juveniles in its custody from harm and to uphold their constitutional rights,” Thomas E. Perez, assistant attorney general for the Justice Department’s civil rights division, said in a statement. “We have worked cooperatively with New York officials to craft an agreement to ensure that the constitutional rights of juveniles at the four facilities are protected, and we commend New York and the New York State Office of Children and Families for their willingness to work aggressively to remedy these problems.”

Federal investigators found that staff members at the four institutions — the Lansing Residential Center and the Louis Gossett Jr. Residential Center, in Lansing, and two residences, one for boys and one for girls, at Tryon Residential Center in Johnstown — routinely used physical force to discipline the youths, resulting in broken bones, shattered teeth, concussions and dozens of other serious injuries in a period of less than two years.

Gov. David A. Paterson said in a statement, “With this historic settlement agreement, New York takes another step towards achieving true transformation of our juvenile justice system.”

Mr. Paterson, who has been trying to address problems plaguing the juvenile system, introduced legislation in June to let judges sentence youths to juvenile prisons only if they had been found guilty of a violent crime or a sex crime or were deemed to be a serious threat to themselves or others. Juvenile prisons house those convicted of criminal acts, from truancy to murder, who are too young to serve in adult jails and prisons.

The federal inquiry began in 2007 after a spate of episodes, including the 2006 death of a disturbed 15-year-old after two employees at the Tryon center pinned him down on the ground.

Two monitors, jointly chosen by federal and state officials, will oversee the state’s efforts to carry out the accord over the next two years, making regular progress reports to a federal judge, who must approve the agreement before it goes into effect.

Money for the new staffing — including a full-time psychiatrist at each of the four prisons, five licensed psychologists and more than a dozen social workers and nurse practitioners — was included in parts of the state budget already approved in Albany.

The state-federal accord, filed in United States District Court in Albany, echoes recommendations issued in December by a state task force, which found major shortcomings throughout the youth prison system. The task force recommended substantially expanding mental health care and replacing most residential youth prisons with smaller centers closer to communities where most young offenders and their families are from.

While the accord officially applies just to the four institutions cited, state officials said they hoped to use it as a springboard to seek broad changes through the juvenile system, which now houses 667 youths in 26 facilities around the state.

“It continues to move us in the right direction,” said Gladys Carrión, commissioner of the Office of Children and Family Services, which oversees the juvenile justice system. “It’s an affirmation of the work we have done already and of the recommendations of the governor’s task force.”

Ms. Carrión, who has moved aggressively in recent months to cut the number of youths in state custody and to limit the use of force by guards, said she would require all youth prisons in New York to abide by the restrictions on physical restraint. She said the state also planned to hire a chief psychiatrist in the near future to oversee drug regimens and mental health counseling at all of the state’s youth prisons.

But advocates for youths in state custody said they would continue to seek a far-reaching transformation in the juvenile justice system in New York, which they say merely warehouses youths who in most cases need intensive psychiatric care and counseling rather than being locked up.

“The changes will only affect those kids who have mental health needs who are already incarcerated,” said Gabrielle Prisco, director of the Juvenile Justice Project at the Correctional Association of New York. “It doesn’t get to the fact that any of those young people could be safely treated in their communities without ever seeing the inside of a prison cell.”
A version of this article appeared in print on July 15, 2010, on page A1 of the New York edition.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/15/nyregion/15juvenile.html?_r=1

Posted by lois at 09:35 AM | Comments (0)

June 22, 2010

'I Was Scared to Sleep': LGBT Youth Face Violence Behind Bars

'I Was Scared to Sleep': LGBT Youth Face Violence Behind Bars
By Daniel Redman
June 21, 2010
The Nation

Over the phone, Krystal has a calm and lilting Southern accent. She identifies as a woman now, but when she entered Louisiana's juvenile justice system at 12 years of age, she presented herself as a boy and used male pronouns. Today, she's 18 and was just recently released from the system. Being closeted about her gender identity was never an option for her. "It's very obvious with me because of how I walk, talk, the way I do things," she says. And while her sentencing judge had told her that she wouldn't be in prison for long, it was five years before a sympathetic counselor made a formal request for her release. In her letter to the judge, the counselor mentioned in passing that Krystal had confided in her that she was probably transgender, and that she was in a romantic relationship with another boy at the facility. On the voicemail he left in response to the counselor's report, the judge openly laughed and called the recommendation a joke. He said that based on those facts, he would absolutely deny the request for a release hearing. "Many judges in rural Louisiana still conflate sex offenses with sexual orientation and gender identity," says Wesley Ware of the Juvenile Justice Project of Louisiana. It was months before Krystal was finally set free.

Across the United States, the brutal and dysfunctional juvenile justice system sends queer youth to prison in disproportionate numbers, fails to protect them from violence and discrimination while they're inside and to this day condones attempts to turn them straight. Antigay policies aren't just a problem in the Deep South or rural regions. According to Jody Marksamer of the National Center for Lesbian Rights, one of co-authors of a recent report on LGBT youth in the juvenile justice system, "These things happen in every state."

The road to incarceration begins in pretrial detention, before the youth even meets a judge. Laws and professional standards state that it's appropriate to detain a child before trial only if she might run away or harm someone. Yet for queer youth, these standards are frequently ignored. According to UC Santa Cruz researcher Dr. Angela Irvine, LGBT youth are two times more likely than straight youth to land in a prison cell before adjudication for nonviolent offenses like truancy, running away and prostitution. According to Ilona Picou, executive director of Juvenile Regional Services, Inc., in Louisiana, 50 percent of the gay youth picked up for nonviolent offenses in Louisiana in 2009 were sent to jail to await trial, while less than 10 percent of straight kids were. "Once a child is detained, the judge assumes there's a reason you can't go home," says Dr. Marty Beyer, a juvenile justice specialist. "A kid coming into court wearing handcuffs and shackles versus a kid coming in with his parents—it makes a very different impression."

Once adjudicated and sent to secure care, LGBT youth often face abusive peers. "I was scared to sleep at night because I didn't know if I was going to wake up in the morning," writes one incarcerated youth at Louisiana's Swanson Center for Youth. One 15-year-old who was shuttled back and forth from group homes and secure facilities in Shreveport, New Orleans and Baton Rouge reports that staff did nothing when he reported a rape because he "reported it too late," that he was "whipped with a clothes hanger" for rule violations and that the abuse from staff and other youth was so bad that he tried to kill himself. Two of Krystal's gay friends were raped in prison by other youths. One of them was assaulted so viciously that the injuries required internal stitches. Staff put Krystal's other friend in isolation to protect him from further assault.

Krystal reports that she was physically attacked by other youth nearly every day that she was in the system. Shortly after arriving, Krystal found her shoes in the trash, covered in urine and spit. Frequently, youths attacked Krystal for refusing to perform sex acts. Other queer youth in the facility had similar experiences. "We're all in the same category," she says. And there was nowhere to hide. "It was basically like a big dorm—one big room where everybody sleeps, that's what's going on," Krystal says. "Sometimes you would get sent to lockdown for fighting back, but there's nothing else you can do." Krystal reported the abuse to staff, but "they would just wait till things happened. Sometimes the staff would tell the other youth to stop. Sometimes they wouldn't."

When Krystal was 13 or 14, the bullying and violence became so bad that staff placed her in protective custody, where she remained for a month. But even after what she had experienced, lockdown was so painful that she requested to be returned to the dorm. Sending LGBT victims of violence into isolation, instead of punishing their attackers, is common practice across the country, even though a federal court has held the practice to be unconstitutional and the American Psychological Association opposes it. And once the youth are put on lockdown—whether to punish or to protect—they miss out on crucial educational opportunities. In 2006, a bisexual youth in California petitioned the court to be removed from his facility because staff members had kept him in isolation for twenty-three hours a day. At 20 years old, he had missed so much schooling that he was only halfway to his high school diploma.

Besides using isolation to purportedly protect queer youth, guards also use lockdown as punishment. "We had one kid who wouldn't go to school because he was afraid" of the other youth in the facility, says Wesley Ware. And because he was on the mental health unit, a certain amount of social interaction was required as part of his rehabilitation program. For refusing to leave his cell, he was put on lockdown for noncompliance, and his chances for release diminished yet again.

Often, queer youth face as much hostility from prison guards as they do from peers. When a youth faces bullying or violence from another kid, staff can be reluctant to intervene. "The staff views it as [the kid] deserves it, or he's asking for it—so they don't intervene or they'll egg it on," Ware says. They view it as "good for the kid—gotta teach him and have it beat out of him. Then when the gay kid finally breaks, then he faces the disciplinary consequences."

Guards are often bullies themselves. Krystal reports that staff called her "a disgrace to mankind," a "punk" or "fucking faggot" on a daily basis and threatened her, saying, "I'll beat your fucking ass." When staff called Krystal "faggot" or other names, sometimes she talked back. "Sometimes I would even say, I'm proud to be that," Krystal says. She would receive more tickets for talking back.

There are even reports of staff members sending youths to attack other kids. "When it happened, it was something all the youth knew," Krystal says. "Basically, someone would be left out there in the open." This is not unique to Louisiana. A 16-year-old gay man in Los Angeles interviewed in 2008 reported that staff members used other youth to intimidate him. Another child in the California system reported that "a female staff member set up a bisexual youth and let straight guys into his room to beat him up. I woke up and saw blood on the walls and on the ground."

LGBT kids are often targeted for sexual assault. A 2009 Department of Justice report shows that across the country, LGBT youth are twelve times more likely than straight youth to report being sexually assaulted by a fellow inmate. In Louisiana alone, 10 percent of all youth—gay and straight—reported abuse by a staff member. Krystal reports that she was propositioned twice by guards when she was 14. When she refused, she was verbally abused and called a "bitch."

An LGBT youth's problems with the law frequently begin at home. "LGBT youth are more likely to be arrested than straight youth because they're more likely to be pushed out of their homes," says Dr. Beyer. And "family rejection is a direct pipeline to the juvenile justice system," says San Francisco State University researcher Caitlin Ryan of the Family Acceptance Project. While only 3-10 percent of Americans are lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender, LGBT youth make up 15 percent of the prison population. Indeed, one-quarter of all LGBT youth are kicked out of their homes or run away. Compared to their heterosexual peers, incarcerated LGBT youth are twice as likely to report abuse at the hands of family members, homelessness or state-ordered foster placement. A shocking estimated 20-40 percent of homeless youth identify as LGBT.

Courts and law enforcement officials often fail to recognize the factors that drive LGBT youth into the system. Of a 16-year-old client who was a runaway, Picou says, "Everybody refused to allow him to be in a group home or foster care home. He was in super-custody like he's a terrorist. Nobody asked him why he ran away or whether he was prostituting to stay alive." And while a toxic home life leads LGBT youth to live on the street, an unwelcoming school system leads many to avoid school altogether, leading to truancy.

Until 2007, gay and gender non-conforming youth in Louisiana's juvenile justice system were regularly subjected to "sexual identity confusion" counseling. At 14, Krystal went through this process herself. Though she emphasized again and again that she was not confused and had no desire to change her sexuality or gender identity, counselors grilled her for five sessions. Remarks ranged from emotional appeals ("This is not who you are; I don't want you to be like that") to psychobabble ("Maybe you like boys because you're around them so much") to veiled threats ("You're making a distraction in the unit; while you're here, this is how you need to act because it's drawing attention to you"). For other kids, these threats translated into consequences. One feminine gay youth was sent to lockdown for having his hair up. When a male-to-female transgender youth wished to use a female name and pronouns, the counselors refused and advised staff to force her to wear male clothing.

More blatant and brutal antigay conversion efforts have taken place across the country. In an East Coast state that's the subject of an ongoing investigation, prison authorities permit religious volunteers to enter a youth facility to lead explicitly antigay Bible classes. Lesbian youths who refuse to attend the programs have had their sentences extended from nine to upwards of thirteen months. In Mississippi, a judge—with parental approval—sent a lesbian youth to a private hospital for two weeks to cure her homosexuality. In Pennsylvania, a counselor handed out antigay religious tracts to youth in her facility. In Georgia, when a child who had never committed a sexual offense came out as transgender, she was sent to a facility for youth likely to commit sexual offenses against children. Every major mental health, pediatrics or child welfare organization strongly condemns these practices.

The courts have not been silent on this issue. In 2006, in a stunning, first-of-its-kind decision, a federal court in Hawaii held that the facility's "relentless campaign of violence, physical and sexual assault, imposed social isolation and near constant use of homophobic slurs" was unconstitutional. The children who were plaintiffs in that case faced discriminatory and cruel treatment very similar to what Krystal and others have faced. This decision spurred advocates in California, New York, New Jersey and elsewhere to push for reform—with some success.

In the aftermath of the ruling, the Hawaii Youth Correctional Facility implemented mandatory training for the entire staff. The experience is instructive for other juvenile justice systems. "There were certain individuals sitting there with arms folded and steam coming out of their ears. They weren't about to have their opinions changed on the okayness of being LGBT," says Dr. Robert Bidwell, a pediatrician who assisted with the training and works at HYCF. The crucial difference, says Bidwell, is that "the training empowered the people who never felt comfortable with that prejudice to hear loud and clear from the director of youth services that this will not be tolerated."

To be sure, even in the worst facilities, gay youth can often find some allies. Krystal told me how in the midst of the terror she experienced, the women who taught school in the facility "were basically another momma to me." One staff member who physically attacked Krystal was ultimately investigated and fired. But at the root of this problem, says Jody Marksamer, is a cold truth. "In the juvenile justice world, even when staff members believe something poses a litigation risk, they'll keep doing it until somebody inside tells them we have to stop doing it, or they get sued."

Daniel Redman is an attorney at the National Center for Lesbian Rights. His work has previously appeared in Slate.

http://www.thenation.com/article/36488/i-was-scared-sleep-lgbt-youth-face-violence-behind-bars

Posted by lois at 08:22 PM | Comments (0)

June 18, 2010

MD: Activists wage late attempt to stop youth jail. Project in the works for five years; some call it poor use of precious dollars.

Activists wage late attempt to stop youth jail.
Project in the works for five years; some call it poor use of precious dollars

By Julie Bykowicz
The Baltimore Sun
June 17, 2010

Activists have launched a last-minute attempt to halt construction of a $100 million jail for Baltimore teenagers facing adult charges, saying the state needs to have a broader conversation about how to deal with young criminals.

Groundbreaking for the 180-bed facility, at the state-owned complex that includes a dozen other prison buildings just east of downtown Baltimore, is scheduled for this fall.

"This is a building that nobody wants and barely anybody knows about," said Terry Hickey, director of the Community Law in Action Center, which tutors jailed teens. "It's a myth that the state is 'doing this for the kids.' Building it is a choice, not a mandate."

Officials say the state desperately needs a youth detention center.
Currently, juveniles facing adult charges ‹ often, violent offenders charged with murder or serious assaults ‹ are crammed into a wing of the antiquated Baltimore City Detention Center. The U.S. Department of Justice has long criticized the facility's inability to separate teens from their adult counterparts.

"The state does not have the capacity to meet federal guidelines," prison spokesman Rick Binetti said. "We think this is the best solution."

The project has been in the works for five years, and the state has spent $12 million on planning, demolition and site preparation. But activists and some public officials say the project has not been well publicized. Eric Solomon of the Campaign for Youth Justice called the jail a "hidden secret."

In a letter delivered this week to Gov. Martin O'Malley, a coalition of groups including the Annie E. Casey Foundation, the Public Justice Center and the Campaign for Youth Justice, asked for the state to press "pause."

About 50 activists gathered outside City Hall on Thursday, shouting "books, not bars" and "education, not incarceration." They're planning a briefing next week, which prison system officials have agreed to attend, and are attempting to spread their concerns about the jail through e-mail, letters and word of mouth.

"It's never too late to make a better decision, one with better outcomes for less money," said Hathaway Ferebee, director of Baltimore's Safe and Sound Campaign, which recently organized the jail opposition. She said she learned of the project only this spring, when state lawmakers approved construction funds.

Activists worry that because the project has twice the capacity now needed for teens charged in adult cases, it will inevitably lead to more young people behind bars. "Guess what? If they build it, they fill it," Hickey said.

Prosecutors, guided by law, determine whether to charge a teen as a juvenile or an adult. The allegations are then weighed by judges, who consider public safety risks when deciding whether defendants should be detained before trial.

Baltimore City Council President Bernard C. "Jack" Young said he opposes the youth jail both for its location in an already prison-saturated area and for the "chilling" message it sends. A second $100 million jail project on those grounds, for women, is in development.

"It says to our kids, the only thing we're interested in building for you is facilities that lock you up," Young said. He said the money should instead be pumped into "proactive" anti-gang, education and jobs programs.

Advocates say the most dangerous youths need to be behind bars. But Ferebee argues that many could be monitored safely on the streets and that most juveniles charged as adults ultimately end up being prosecuted in the juvenile court system. A locked 120-bed facility for pretrial juveniles onGay Street downtown is routinely at or above capacity.

Of the 100 young men behind bars at the city detention center's "youth wing," 30 are charged with robbery with a deadly weapon, two dozen are charged with attempted murder and another dozen are charged with murder, according to prison officials.

That detention center, parts of which date to the early 1800s, is
dangerously crowded and unfit for juveniles, state officials argue. They say that retrofitting a building that old has proved nearly impossible. Although most counties run their own jails, the state oversees Baltimore pretrial services and jailing.

The layout also poses operational hurdles. The teens are required by federal law to attend school; they do so in trailers that they can reach only after walking through the men's lockup. All movement of the adult prisoners must cease as the youths walk through. And there's no space for any youth programming, such as counseling.

The Justice Department underlined concerns about the city's handling of juvenile detainees in a scathing 2002 report that was more broadly critical of the Baltimore City Detention Center.

"Failing to sight-and-sound separate youth from adults in their living areas places them at serious risk of harm, by subjecting them to the undue influence and harassing behavior of adult inmates," the Justice Department said.
www.baltimoresun.com/mobile/maryland/baltimore-city/bs-md-juvenile-pr
otest-20100617,0,7363048.story

Posted by lois at 09:38 AM | Comments (0)

June 11, 2010

NY: Juvenile Prison stays open with 155 workers and 6 young men and a NY Times Editorial: "Real Justice for Juveniles"

June 8, 2010
155 Workers, 6 Young Men, 1 Fiscal Mess
By JIM DWYER
NY Times
Every day brings dreadful news of some worthy cause that is going to be cut because government budgets are being hit with cannonballs.

Today, for a change, we present some causes worthy of being cut.

Take, for instance, a place called the Tryon Residential Center, run by the state agency in charge of juvenile justice. It is a place for children who get into trouble.

State records show that 155 public employees are assigned to the boys section at Tryon. They oversee a total of six young men, lodged in a place that few people believe should exist anymore, and that is scheduled to be shut down by the end of the year.

Yet Tryon will remain completely staffed because the state is tied in a knot: two governors ago, the state promised public employee unions that it would give one year’s notice before shutting down juvenile detention centers or adult prisons.

So as of Tuesday, with six young people living there, here are some of the jobs still budgeted at Tryon: 11 cooks, 1 food manager, 6 keyboard specialists, 5 nurses, 1 motor mechanic, 7 teachers, 1 teaching assistant, 4 vocational instructors, 3 recreation specialists, 81 youth division aides and 2 calculations clerks.

Also, one “principal accounting clerk.”

“You would think common sense would say you don’t need this facility, so close it,” said Gladys Carrion, commissioner of the state’s Office of Children and Family Services. “I’m faced with the reality of having four or six kids in a facility and a full complement of staff. I have similar situations in other facilities. These beds cost $240,000 a year.”

New York could change the state seal to an empty bed. One of the great successes of modern times has been the decline in crime, but in upstate New York, the prison economy depends on a steady supply of criminals.

Although thousands of adult cells are empty, it is hard to know if the state will be able to shut even the single medium-security prison that the Department of Correctional Services has said it no longer needs.

That prison, at Ogdensburg, has 287 employees on its roster, and 419 inmates, all of whom could be dispatched to empty cells elsewhere. But the number that weighs heaviest is not how many people are in the prison: it is how many people work there. And this prison is in a district represented by a Democratic senator, who naturally sees despair, locusts and Republicans overrunning the land should it be closed. There are 32 Democrats in the Senate, and 32 votes are needed to pass any legislation there. Every last one of them can be king or queen.

Both the State Senate and the Assembly have stated they want Ogdensburg to stay open, even though the governor says it should be closed in January.

“With all the state’s fiscal problems,” said Robert Gangi, the executive director of the Correctional Association of New York, “this extraordinary waste should not be tolerated because of the usual reasons — that these are important jobs in these communities, and because of the political pushback.”

THAT pushback has taken grotesque forms. The juvenile detention system is run not by the corrections department, but by Commissioner Carrion’s agency. She has been closing places like Tryon, which was cited last year for its brutality by the United States Justice Department.

In response, the unions representing workers in the detention centers, and various Republican legislators, have called for the commissioner to be fired. One senator accused her of permitting a near-orgy at a detention center in Goshen. Yet the evidence suggests that she has solid grounds for saying that such places are beyond reform.

In the Goshen case, four young men were permitted to invite four women to a social event at the center, a reward for having met goals. These eight young people were supervised by seven adults. Nevertheless, video footage shows that they were permitted to engage in intimate contact, according to a senior state official.

Gov. David A. Paterson has proposed legislation that would revamp how the state treats young people who get into trouble. For decades, they have been shipped far from home, into detention centers that often became a passageway to adult criminal life. A task force appointed by the governor said that under the existing system, the state was “harming its children, wasting money and endangering its public.”

“This,” the task force said, perhaps optimistically, “cannot continue.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/09/nyregion/09about.html

NY Times Editorial
Real Justice for Juveniles
Published: June 10, 2010

Gov. David Paterson of New York has sent the Legislature a juvenile justice bill that would achieve two urgently important goals. It would improve the quality of the leadership and care in the state’s often dangerous and inhumane juvenile facilities. And it would ensure that only children who need to be institutionalized — because they present a risk to the public — end up in the facilities.

Albany’s lawmakers must finally stand up to unions that are more interested in preserving jobs than in doing what is best for children.

The argument for closing down the worst facilities and treating low-risk children in their home communities is irrefutable. In a report last year, the Justice Department found that young people in state detention facilities were frequently hit and abused; emotionally disturbed children rarely got the help they needed. Governor Paterson’s juvenile justice task force found that more than half the children sent to these facilities were guilty of minor, nonviolent infractions.

In addition to the emotional toll on young people, the cost of institutionalization is prohibitive: as much as $200,000 per child, per year. That is more than 10 times the cost of successful local programs that provide monitoring, guidance and help to troubled families.

Governor Paterson’s bill seeks to fix this broken system. It would create an independent office to investigate the state’s facilities and recommend ways to improve residential care. It would allow the state to seek out and hire the best qualified directors for juvenile facilities. Current law requires that they be chosen from the ranks of people who already work within the system.

Perhaps most important, it would seek to limit the number of children who are sent away. It would bar family court judges from placing young people in state facilities unless they have been convicted of violent felonies, sex offenses or are found to present a public safety risk.

Gladys Carrión, Governor Paterson’s, commissioner of the Office of Children and Family Services, is rightly committed to closing empty, unneeded facilities and is a strong advocate of community-based programs. More than a dozen have been closed in the last three years, for an estimated savings of about $30 million. There are still another 26 facilities that hold about 730 young people. They employ around 1,900 people at an estimated annual cost of about $190 million.

By rights, the state should have used the $30 million it has already saved by closing facilities to help finance new community-based programs. It passed on only about $5 million, while the rest went into the general fund. It will have to put a lot more money into community programs for this new system to work.

The unions are already fighting the Carrión effort and will fight this bill, too. Governor Paterson and legislative leaders will need to push back even harder. New York cannot keep paying for a juvenile justice system that is so clearly failing.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/11/opinion/11fri3.html?ref=opinion

Posted by lois at 08:50 PM | Comments (0)

June 06, 2010

Review- The Real Cost of Prisons Comix in Culture Magazine-So. Cal's Medical Marijuana Lifesytyle Magazine

The Real Cost of Prisons Comix
Thu, Jun 3, 2010

Entertainment Reviews, Reviews
The Real Cost of Prisons Comix

The Real Cost of Prisons Project (RCPP) director Lois Ahrens created the organization in 2000 to shine a spotlight on the more than 2 million people currently incarcerated in the U.S. Ahrens and her team are not interested in relieving convicts of personal responsibility, but instead focus on why so many people in our country are currently locked up—or mass-incarcerated. One of her goals was to create educational materials that could communicate complex ideas in real terms and make them interesting to people who had little use for data sheets and political talk. That led to 2008’s The Real Cost of Prisons Comix, a three-chapter graphic book illustrated by a host of talented artists and writers and filled with easy-to-understand histories of who really pays for the prison system, the “builders of the drug prison boom,” and the cycle of incarceration via government agencies such as multiple foster homes, low-paying jobs and the shame of circumstances. The book has been hailed by a dozen social activists, A People’s History of the United States author Howard Zinn among them. An innovative book, RCPP’s book is a harsh reality check for anyone who thinks every broken law deserves the maximum penalty, and should be a welcome resource for government agencies and drug law reformation advocates alike. The book retails for $12.95. For more information, visit www.realcostofprisons.org. (Stacy Davies)

Posted by lois at 09:33 PM | Comments (0)

June 03, 2010

NY: Paterson Proposes Juvenile Justice Overhaul

City Room - Blogging From the Five Boroughs
June 2, 2010, 12:00 pm
Paterson Proposes Juvenile Justice Overhaul
By NICHOLAS CONFESSORE
NY Times
Gov. David A. Paterson introduced legislation on Wednesday to begin overhauling New York’s troubled juvenile prison system, in what aides described at a first step toward broader changes long sought by critics of the system.

The legislation would prohibit judges from placing youths in state juvenile prisons unless they had been found guilty of a violent felony or a sex crime or a judge had determined that a youth posed a significant risk to themselves or others. Such a move would set the stage to significantly shrink the number of youths in state custody.

The bill would also establish an independent office to monitor and, where necessary, investigate problems at the state’s youth prisons, which are run by the state’s Office of Children and Family Services.

“We have a responsibility to provide the highest level of care to the children in the custody of the state,” Governor Paterson said in a statement. “This bill will create a mechanism for ensuring that systemwide issues are evaluated by an independent body and that only youth who have committed certain crimes or who are deemed to be a significant risk to public safety are placed with O.C.F.S.”

Both are steps recommended last year by a task force appointed by Mr. Paterson and led by Jeremy Travis, president of the John Jay College of Criminal Justice.

The task force found that New York’s juvenile prisons were broken almost beyond repair, with young people battling mental illness or addiction held alongside violent offenders in abysmal facilities where they received little counseling or schooling and sometimes faced physical abuse at the hands of guards.

The problems are so severe that the United States Department of Justice threatened last year to take over the entire state system unless New York officials moved to fix them. Negotiations to avert a takeover are ongoing.
http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/06/02/paterson-proposes-juvenile-justice-overhaul/

Posted by lois at 12:30 PM | Comments (0)

May 29, 2010

IN: Twelve And Fifteen-Year-Old Charged With Murder As Adults

Twelve And Fifteen-Year-Old Charged With Murder As Adults
(for a photo of the two boys entering the courtroom in prison stripes go the URL below)
WARSAW, Ind. (Indiana’s NewsCenter) - The 15 and 12-year-old Kosciusko County boys charged with murder appeared in adult court for the first time, Thursday morning.

Police say the boys murdered Lundy’s stepfather, 49-year-old Phillip Danner, last month while their 12-year-old friend stood watch outside.

The prosecutor wants to try 15-year-old Colt Lundy and 12-year-old Paul Gingerich together. But their attorneys are arguing to separate the cases.

“I represent the step-son,” Colt Lundy’s attorney David Kolbe said. “He was a very unique situation in that home. We have a substantial amount of evidence that will come as to what that home life was like. I know nothing about Paul Gingerich's home life, I suppose I'll learn about it, but his life is going to be very different than Lundy's. To pack those two boys before the same jury deprives them of a fair trial."

Kolbe says combining the cases would take away their constitutional right to a fair trial.

But the prosecutor showed there is a precedent allowing two murder defendants to be tried together.

Thursday each boy's attorney argued they should be tried separately, saying the 12- and 15-year olds have different mental capacities, and that since each boy had a different relationship with the victim, their cases should not be combined.

The judge is expected to rule on that issue next month.

Twelve-year-old Chase Williams who stood watch outside for Lundy and Gingerich allegedly is the only boy legally considered a juvenile.

The judge for Williams ruled he spend the next six-years in a juvenile detention center and to be released when he's 18.

The judge is expected to rule on separating the cases of Lundy and Gingerich on June 3rd. Until then they will remain in custody at the Kosciosko County Jail and could face up to 65-years in prison.

http://www.indianasnewscenter.com/news/local/95024504.html

Posted by lois at 10:46 PM | Comments (0)

May 19, 2010

IN: Scathing Report Details Abuse At Juvenile Prison Report: Female Inmates Assaulted By Guards, Living In Filth

Scathing Report Details Abuse At Juvenile Prison
Report: Female Inmates Assaulted By Guards, Living In Filth
POSTED: 10:10 am EDT May 17, 2010
UPDATED: 7:44 pm EDT May 17, 2010

INDIANAPOLIS -- Federal authorities are calling on Indiana to address
abuses within its juvenile correction facilities after reports of
young inmates sexually assaulted by guards and living in filth.
A Jan. 29 letter and report from U.S. Assistant Attorney General
Thomas Perez to Gov. Mitch Daniels details troubles within the former
Indianapolis Juvenile Correctional Facility, including a mentally ill
inmate left dirty and pulling out her hair and male guards having sex
with and performing strip searches on young female inmates, 6News'
Joanna Massee reported.

"The sexualized environment at the facility appears rampant," the letter read.

The letter follows a civil rights investigation launched by the U.S.
Department of Justice in 2008 that documented inadequate abuse
investigations, excessive use of force and isolation, inadequate
mental health care and inadequate special education services.
In January, a study commissioned by the department found that 36
percent of inmates at the Pendleton Juvenile Correctional Facility
reported being sexually abused, while 23 percent of inmates at the
Indianapolis Juvenile Correctional Facility said they had been the
victim of sexual abuse.

Two former Department of Correction employees who taught at the
Indianapolis Juvenile Facility during the Department of Justice's 2008 site visits spoke to 6News on a condition of anonymity about what they witnessed.
"(There were) vermin everywhere, cockroaches. The girls made pets of
the mice," one former teacher said. "They would talk about that, and I have been in the cottages and seen mice."

Another teacher, who called the system broken, said that in addition
to having sexual contact with guards, girls appeared to have sexual
contact with each other.

"That was part of the culture of this facility, that they accepted
homosexual relationships between the girls as normal," the teacher
said.

Both teachers left the facility in August of 2009 and are now involved in legal proceedings against the facility.
Gail Eckert's 15-year-old daughter was locked up at the Indianapolis
Juvenile Correctional Facility, where she was sexually assaulted by a
guard, Jon Furman, who was later convicted of sexual misconduct with a minor. Eckert said she tried to warn officials about Furman's inappropriate behavior with young female inmates but got nowhere.
"That's what makes me so mad, because I tried to help my daughter, and it just went in deaf ears," she said. "It's just a mother's worst
nightmare."

The Indianapolis Juvenile Facility has since been closed and relocated to Madison, Ind.

More: Share your experiences with the state's juvenile justice system
The Department of Justice started investigating Indiana's juvenile
centers six years ago.
Daniels subsequently volunteered to make improvements at all the
facilities and to provide reports resulting from a partnership with
the Indiana Juvenile Justice Task Force, an agency charged with
monitoring the expected improvements.

Task force director William Glick said members of his organization
found improvements at the Indianapolis Juvenile Correctional Facility
after the feds went in.

"That's a long, difficult process of change," he told Massee.
The Department of Correction said in a statement that officials found
fewer incidents of sexual abuse than what federal authorities
recorded, and pointed out that the Indianapolis Juvenile Facility has
been closed.

"The IDOC sincerely regrets that any juvenile entrusted to our care
was subjected to sexual victimization or mistreatment by employees who violated their public trust, or by other offenders, and we have
re-doubled our efforts to provide a safe and effective rehabilitative
environment for the youth in our custody," the statement read.
6News was not allowed inside the new facility in Madison.
Both Daniels and Correction Commissioner Edwin Buss declined to be interviewed.
http://www.theindychannel.com/news/23577752/detail.html

Posted by lois at 10:51 AM | Comments (0)

May 06, 2010

Mass. fails in commitment to juvenile justice

May 5, 2010
The Boston Globe
RE “JURY convicts Odgren of murder’’ (Page A1, April 30): In the murder conviction of a youth who happens to be diagnosed with all sorts of mental disabilities, the real crime is that states like Massachusetts no longer consider the fact that adolescents are not adults. For certain crimes, juvenile status is all too simply ignored. It is ignored because of the politically inspired belief that juveniles are just as competent as adults. We know that they are not. A modern, civilized society such as ours requires proof of age-graded responsibilities in all sorts of spheres of life, from marriage to employment.

Massachusetts once was a leader in recognizing adolescence as a distinct period of life by creating its separate system of juvenile justice, which became a model for many states. But today many states including Massachusetts bypass juvenile justice in favor of adult criminal justice. States all too often assume that the unfortunate loss of one life requires the life of another no matter how young the offender may be. But a life sentence for a juvenile, when contrasted with that for an adult, means that a larger proportion of a juvenile’s life will be wasted away in prison.

The constitutionality of this kind of state-sponsored cruelty is being considered by the US Supreme Court. Massachusetts should begin to recognize the injustice of punishing its juveniles as if they are adults, and once more become the leader that it once was in creating an age-appropriate system of juvenile justice.

Simon I. Singer
Brookline
The writer is a professor of criminal justice at Northeastern University.
© Copyright 2010 Globe Newspaper Company.
http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/editorial_opinion/letters/articles/2010/05/05/mass_fails_in_commitment_to_juvenile_justice/

Posted by lois at 08:26 PM | Comments (0)

April 26, 2010

"A Better Chance" justice reinvestment for youth and communities in NY but Gov. Paterson Vetoes Funds for Programs

"A Better Chance"

NY Times EDITORIAL April 25, 2010

Gov. David Paterson's juvenile justice task force was on the mark when it advised him to stop sending low-risk young offenders to faraway lockups and place more of them in lower-cost community-based programs.

These programs closely monitor and mentor troubled children with curfew checks, reviews of their school performance, and after-school activities. They have been shown to get low-risk young offenders back on track without institutionalizing them. Instead of taking that advice, the governor's budget virtually guts an already underfinanced effort intended to encourage localities to develop high-quality alternatives to detention programs.

Senator Velmanette Montgomery, Democrat of Brooklyn, is trying to fix that. She has introduced a bill that would require the state to begin reimbursing localities that keep children in effective local programs.

The current system encourages officials to do exactly the wrong thing. For example, the state reimburses localities for about 50 percent of the cost of operating centers for pretrial detention. And it pays 50 percent of the cost (which can go as high as $200,000 per child per year) for incarcerating children sent to far-flung juvenile facilities. The state gives localities nothing when they place children in community-based programs that can cost as little as $5,000 per year.

The Montgomery bill realigns state priorities. In addition to preserving about $12 million to encourage more community-based programs, it would require the state to provide a 65 percent reimbursement for community-based, alternative-to-detention programs. This proposal has already been included in the Senate budget. The Assembly should embrace it and so should Governor Paterson. It makes good sense for the children and for New York's taxpayers.

A version of this article appeared in print on April 26, 2010, on page A22 of the New York edition.

And a message from Robert Gangi of the Correctional Assoc. of NY on contacting Gov. Paterson...

His own juvenile justice task force advised him to stop sending low-risk, young offenders to faraway lockups and place more of them in lower-cost community-based programs.

Nonetheless, Governor Paterson has proposed cutting $16 million for juvenile alternatives to detention and alternatives to incarceration.

Demand Restoration of Funds for Alternatives to Detention and Alternatives to Incarceration for Juveniles

Governor Paterson’s proposed budget for 2010-2011 cuts $16 million for juvenile alternatives to detention and alternatives to incarceration. However, these programs produce better outcomes for youth; create safer communities by reducing juvenile re-arrest rates; and cost much less than detention and incarceration.

Please send an email today and tell Governor Paterson and members of the Human Services Budget Committee (legislators from both houses currently negotiating the state budget) to restore the funds for these programs; these cuts are unacceptable, hurt youth and communities, and will cost the state much more in the long term. We must also urge state leaders to enact three landmark bills that will move the state and counties away from their current reliance on ineffective and damaging juvenile justice practices. Here is the link: http://org2.democracyinaction.org/o/5765/p/dia/action/public/?action_KEY=2480

Tell Governor Paterson and New York legislators to restore the funds for alternative programs for youth and enact the following proposals:

* Enact ReDirect NY: This legislation creates a 65% reimbursement for counties that use alternatives to detention and alternatives incarceration. Currently the state reimburses counties 50% of the costs of juvenile detention and incarceration. There is no similar reimbursement for counties diverting youth into alternative programs. (S6711/A10253 - Sen. Montgomery/Assem. Scarborough)
* Enact Reinvest NY: This bill requires the state to reinvest savings realized from closing under-utilized and abusive juvenile prisons into community-based alternative programs. (S6710/A10253 - Sen. Montgomery/Assem. Scarborough)
* Enact the bill for Alternatives to Residential Placement: This bill requires Family Court judges to place youth in alternatives to residential programs unless the judge finds that a youth poses a threat to public safety. (S6709/A10449 - Sen. Montgomery/Assem. Lentol)

Posted by lois at 06:33 PM | Comments (0)

April 21, 2010

Crime Prediction Software Is Here and It's a Very Bad Idea- FL Dept of Juvenile Justice will use software to predict crime by youth involved in the juv. justice system

Crime Prediction Software Is Here and It's a Very Bad Idea
Gizmodo
Crime Prediction Software Is Here and It's a Very Bad IdeaThere are no naked pre-cogs inside glowing jacuzzis yet, but the Florida State Department of Juvenile Justice will use analysis software to predict crime by young delinquents, putting potential offenders under specific prevention and education programs. Goodbye, human rights!

They will use this software on juvenile delinquents, using a series of variables to determine the potential for these people to commit another crime. Depending on this probability, they will put them under specific re-education programs. Deepak Advani—vice president of predictive analytics at IBM—says the system gives "reliable projections" so governments can take "action in real time" to "prevent criminal activities?"

Really? "Reliable projections"? "Action in real time"? "Preventing criminal activities"? I don't know about how reliable your system is, IBM, but have you ever heard of the 5th, the 6th, and the 14th Amendments to the United States Constitution? What about article 11 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights? No? Let's make this easy then: Didn't you watch that scientology nutcase in Minority Report?

Sure. Some will argue that these juvenile delinquents were already convicted for other crimes, so hey, there's no harm. This software will help prevent further crimes. It will make all of us safer? But would it? Where's the guarantee of that? Why does the state have to assume that criminal behavior is a given? And why should the government decide who goes to an specific prevention program or who doesn't based on what a computer says? The fact is that, even if the software was 99.99% accurate, there will be always an innocent person who will be fucked. And that is exactly why we have something called due process and the presumption of innocence. That's why those things are not only in the United States Constitution, but in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights too.

Other people will say that government officials already makes these decisions based on reports and their own judgement. True. It seems that a computer program may be fairer than a human, right? Maybe. But at the end the interpretation of the data is always in the hands of humans (and the program itself is written by humans).

But what really worries me is that this is a first big step towards something larger and darker. Actually, it's the second: IBM says that the Ministry of Justice in the United Kingdom—which has an impeccable record on not pre-judging its citizens—already uses this system to prevent criminal activities. Actually, it may be the third big step, because there's already software in place to blacklist people as potential terrorist, although most probably not as sophisticated as this.

IBM clearly wants this to go big. They have spent a whooping $12 billion beefing up its analytics division. Again, here's the full quote from Deepak Advani:

Predictive analytics gives government organizations worldwide a highly-sophisticated and intelligent source to create safer communities by identifying, predicting, responding to and preventing criminal activities. It gives the criminal justice system the ability to draw upon the wealth of data available to detect patterns, make reliable projections and then take the appropriate action in real time to combat crime and protect citizens.

If that sounds scary to you, that's because it is. First it's the convicted-but-potentially-recidivistic criminals. Then it's the potential terrorists. Then it's everyone of us, in a big database, getting flagged because some combination of factors—travel patterns, credit card activity, relationships, messaging, social activity and everything else—indicate that we may be thinking about doing something against the law. Potentially, a crime prediction system can avoid murder, robbery, or a terrorist act.

It actually sounds like a good idea. For example, there are certain patterns that can identify psychopaths and potential killers or child abusers or wife beaters. It only makes sense to put a future system in place that can prevent identify potential criminals, then put them under surveillance.

The reality is that it's not such a good idea: While everything may seem driven by the desire to achieve better security, one single false positive would make the whole system unfair. And that's not even getting into the potential abuse of such a system. Like the last time IBM got into a vaguely similar business for a good cause, during the 1930s. They shipped a lot of cataloguing machines to certain government in Europe, to put together an advanced census. That was good. Census can improve societies by identifying needs and problems that the government can solve. At the end, however, that didn't end well for more than 11 million people.

And yes, this comparison is an extreme exaggeration. But one thing is clear: No matter how you look at it, cataloguing people—any kind of people—based on statistical predictive software, and then taking pre-empetive actions against them based on the results, is the wrong way to improve our society. Agreeing with this course of action will inevitably take us into a potentially fatal path. [Yahoo!]
http://gizmodo.com/5517231/crime-prediction-software-is-here-and-its-a-very-bad-idea

Here's the announcement from IBM
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Florida-Department-of-bw-1587995596.html?x=0&.v=1

CHICAGO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--SPSS, an IBM (NYSE: IBM) Company, today announced that the Florida State Department of Juvenile Justice selected IBM predictive analytics software to reduce recidivism by determining which juveniles are likely to reoffend. Identified at-risk youth can then be placed in programs specific to the best course of treatment to ensure offenders do not re-enter the juvenile justice system.

IBM recently also announced that the Ministry of Justice in the United Kingdom uses predictive analytics to assess the likelihood
of prisoners reoffending upon their release to help improve public safety. With predictive technology from IBM, the Ministry of Justice is analyzing hidden trends and patterns within the data. IBM SPSS predictive analytics has helped identify whether offenders with specific problems such as drug and alcohol misuse are more likely to reoffend than other prisoners.
...
Deepak Advani, vice president of predictive analytics at IBM, said, Predictive analytics gives government organizations worldwide a highly-sophisticated and intelligent source to create safer communities by identifying, predicting, responding to and preventing criminal activities. It gives the criminal justice system the ability to draw upon the wealth of data available to detect patterns, make reliable projections and then take the appropriate action in real time to combat crime and protect citizens.

Posted by lois at 09:28 PM | Comments (0)

April 01, 2010

Texas, more liberal than Mass.? Yes!

Texas, more liberal than Mass.? (Will MA ever stop patting itself on the back for some weird illusion about being liberal?-Lois)
Posted by James Alan Fox, Crime and Punishment March 25, 2010

What a shocker! And for Massachusetts liberals like me who are proud of our state's tradition of social progressiveness, what an embarrassment! When it comes to punishing juveniles, Texas is apparently more enlightened than Massachusetts--Austin more liberal than Boston.

In case you missed it--and I admit that I did as well--the Lone Star State legislature voted last year to abolish life without parole (LWOP) for juveniles. Actually, the legislation passed with little attention, as Texas had rarely sentenced juvenile offenders in this way. Prior to the change in criminal code, only four Texas inmates were serving LWOP for offenses committed while under age 18.

By comparison, Massachusetts, according to latest count, has as many as 57 prisoners behind bars for life without parole eligibility for crimes committed while they were juveniles, ranking us 10th among states in absolute number.

The Massachusetts cohort translates to just over 2% of the 2,500 convicts serving juvenile LWOP sentences nationally. Although this may may seem like a small share of the pool, it compares unfavorably to our 1% share of the country's juvenile homicides.

How did we get to this place? I will be tracing our recent history of legislative over-response to high profile cases in an upcoming posting.

Fortunately, there is some glimmer of hope that this deplorable practice--one that places our country far apart from other developed nations around the globe--will soon be abandoned outright, thereby giving thousands of inmates incarcerated since their adolescence some glimmer of hope for a future chance at freedom. The U.S. Supreme Court will rule before the end of this term on the constitutionality of sentencing juvenile offenders to life without parole.

Despite its conservative leaning, the High Court may very well find juvenile LWOP to be in violation of the 8th Amendment protection against cruel and unusual punishment. Five years ago, in Roper v. Simmons, a 5-4 majority stuck down the death penalty for offenders under age 18 by noting that:

"The reality that juveniles still struggle to define their identity means it is less supportable to conclude that even a heinous crime committed by a juvenile is evidence of irretrievably depraved character. From a moral standpoint it would be misguided to equate the failings of a minor with those of an adult, for a greater possibility exists that a minor's character deficiencies will be reformed."

It became popular in recent years to voice the slogan, "adult time for adult crime." Though definitely snappy, this principle is contrary to scientific evidence. Teenagers may look like adults, dress like adults, and even kill like adults, but they think and reason like children. Adolescents tend to be impulsive, impatient, and imprudent, often acting without fully considering the repercussions of their choices. In fact, recent neurological studies suggest that the portion of the brain responsible for rational decision-making doesn't fully develop until adulthood, and sometimes not until the age of 25. So when a youngster says, "Gee, I didn't think it would turn out that way," it reflect the lack of foresight common among in this age group.

But why wait until the Supreme Court rules? I urge the Massachusetts Legislature to take the bold step of joining with the short but growing list of states (as many as 8 at this juncture) that have reconsidered their approach to punishing juvenile offenders, including young killers. Youth and immaturity does not excuse violent crime, of course, but certainly should limit the extent of criminal responsibility and thus punishability.

------------------

Author's note: Unlike the usual definition of majority status at age 18, Massachusetts has long used 17 as the threshold for prosecution in criminal court. Thus, some of the 57 prisoners who committed murder as "juveniles" were 17 years old at the time of the offense and considered adults in the eyes of the law, as Massachusetts law sees it. However, as of 1996, the law pertaining to juvenile homicide was changed drastically so that 14 became the minimum age for automatic prosecution and sentencing as an adult.
http://boston.com/community/blogs/crime_punishment/2010/03/texas_outclasses_masschusetts.html

Posted by lois at 05:22 PM | Comments (0)

March 25, 2010

RI and PA: RI sends troubled teenage boys to "facility" 300 miles away

(Teenagers) Offenders referred to Pa. school
Sunday, March 21, 2010
By Lynn Arditi

Providence Journal Staff Writer

Deep in rural Pennsylvania, some 300 miles from Providence, The Glen Mills Schools appears to offer much to troubled teenaged boys. The school’s glossy brochure depicts a lush, green campus with neat athletic fields, a football stadium and an Olympic-sized swimming pool. Vocational programs range from auto body repair and landscaping to dentistry and golf course management.

Glen Mills has so impressed Chief Family Court Judge Jeremiah S. Jeremiah Jr. that he recently referred a dozen delinquent boys there.

But state child welfare officials say no matter how good the school may be, troubled teens generally do better when they stay close to their families and communities. More than a decade ago, officials at the state Department of Children, Youth and Families concluded that juveniles with behavioral or emotional problems could be helped more cheaply, and with better results, closer to home.

Now, state child welfare officials and the Family Court’s highest judge are at odds over how best to treat juvenile delinquents in state care.

“If there’s nothing in the state, fine, we look outside of Rhode Island,” Patricia Martinez, director of the state Department of Children, Youth and Families, said. “The question is: What is [the child] going to get out of state that he’s not going to get in Rhode Island?”

Glen Mills has been recruiting juvenile offenders from Rhode Island at least since the late 1990s, when Jeremiah and then-director of the DCYF, Jay G. Lindgren Jr., climbed into a borrowed Department of Corrections van and drove 300 miles to visit the school.

“They toured us around, spent a lot of time talking with us,” Lindgren recalled. “It all looked very good.”

Back then, the courtship produced only a handful of enrollments for the school. The distance was a big reason, Lindgren said. Glen Mills is so remote, he said, it was hard for teenagers to maintain family and community ties. And keeping in touch with youths so far away is time consuming and expensive.

“Too often,” Lindgren said, “the kids were kind of out of sight, out of mind.”

Then, in late January of this year, Jeremiah suggested that Andrew J. Johnson, a lawyer and director of the Rhode Island Court Appointed Special Advocate’s office, visit Glen Mills to see what their program has to offer. Johnson flew to Philadelphia, at the school’s expense, where a school van drove him the 22 miles to the school in Concordville, Pa. He met with admissions officials, toured the campus and talked to students.

“It’s a remarkable place,” Johnson said after he returned. “Step on the campus and it’s like a prep school or a university ... .”

Glen Mills houses up to 900 juvenile offenders, ages 14 to 18. The school does not admit fire setters, sex offenders or children who take psychotropic medication for behavioral or mental health problems. (The school is not licensed to provide mental health services.) Students live in unlocked, dormitory-style housing and move freely around the campus; behavior is managed through a system of “peer pressure” and “group confrontation,” a promotional booklet states.

Graduates with good grades can qualify for college scholarships of up to $3,000 per semester.

It costs Rhode Island about $134 per day to send one teenager to Glen Mills. (Last year, it sent seven.) That’s substantially less than the roughly $370 per diem cost of operating the state training school, a high-security facility with mandated staffing levels. It’s also about $20 to $80 per day less than three of the four residential programs — all of which are staffed with licensed mental health counselors — for delinquent boys in Rhode Island.

The DCYF also normally does not pay travel expenses for parents to visit their children in out-of-state facilities. But last year, Jeremiah ordered the DCYF to reimburse four family members who couldn’t afford the travel expense; the air fare cost the state just under $1,700.

Glen Mills will cover families’ travel expenses for an additional per diem cost of $20, though state officials here have not agreed to the higher rate.

The DCYF is required to visit juveniles placed out of state “at least once per month, or more frequently as needed” to ensure their safety and well-being. But since last December, neither DCYF staff nor anyone from the agency’s private contractor, which visits youths in out-of-state programs, has been monitoring the teenagers at Glen Mills.

“Obviously we should be doing this,” Jorge E. Garcia, the DCYF’s deputy director, said. However, he said, the policy covers only treatment facilities, not schools. And he acknowledged visits “will be another cost…”

In Rhode Island, as in other states, child welfare agencies have been trying to reduce their reliance on residential programs.

A 2003 report commissioned by former Gov. Lincoln Almond said that Rhode Island had become dependent on “expensive out-of-state” residential treatment programs at the expense of more effective –– and less costly –– community-based programs. Keeping children with families, whether biological, adopted or foster parents, is far preferable, the report said, than placing them in group homes, residential programs, or other institutions.

Their findings echoed a U.S. Surgeon General’s report released in 1999, which concluded that there was “weak evidence” that residential treatment programs helped improve the well-being of young people — and growing evidence that they actually do the opposite.

“All the research tells us that one of the drivers of delinquent behavior is association with delinquent peers,” Patrick McCarthy, president-elect of the Annie E. Casey Foundation, a private, nonprofit agency, said. “So the notion that the best way to respond to delinquency is to put the child with other children with delinquent behavior challenges everything we know about delinquent behavior.”

Nationally, the average rate of juvenile offenders living in publicly and privately operated facilities between 1997 and 2008 declined 26 percent, according to a report from the U.S. Department of Justice’s Office of Juvenile Delinquency Prevention. During that same period in Rhode Island, the rate fell 31 percent.

The population of Rhode Island juveniles in private and public residential facilities, including out-of-state programs, averaged 312 in 2007, the report said.

Rhode Island also is sending fewer juveniles out of state. The number of Rhode Island juveniles in out-of-state programs in fiscal 2009 averaged 108 per day, compared with 160 per day in fiscal 2008, according to the DCYF. The decline in out-of-state placements last year saved Rhode Island about $3.8 million.

Almost all of those juveniles, with the exception of those placed at Glen Mills, were diagnosed with complex behavioral or mental health conditions, Garcia said, and needed care not available in Rhode Island.

Efforts by child welfare agencies around the country to reduce their reliance on residential programs, coupled with a weak national economy, have heightened competition among private providers to fill beds.

Until last year, for example, Ocean Tides, which operates a residential treatment program for male juvenile offenders in Narragansett, had a three-year contract with the DCYF, which guaranteed a steady stream of revenue. If a bed was empty for a few nights it didn’t matter, because the state was still paying for it. (Jeremiah joked that he has referred so many teenage boys to Ocean Tides that the staff has dubbed him “Director of Admissions.”)

But last year, to save money, the DCYF switched to paying some of its providers per day, per bed.

Ocean Tides wound up with empty beds that nobody was paying for. So it closed some of its units and reduced its available beds from 65 to 57 beds, said Ocean Tides’ president, Brother Brendan Gerrity.

“You’ve got to make sure you keep the beds filled,” he said, “Right now, we have a waiting list with about seven boys on it.”

At Glen Mills, just under half of the beds are occupied by juveniles from Pennsylvania; the rest come from outside the state, said the school’s admissions coordinator, Andy Shirlow. Glen Mills’ enrollment in February was down to about 740 students, leaving 160 beds empty.

In February two admissions officers from the school came to Rhode Island at the request of Jeremiah. They interviewed more than a dozen teenage boys at the state training school for possible admission to Glen Mills.

The waiting lists at local programs, such as Ocean Tides, are one reason why Jeremiah says he turned to the school in Pennsylvania.

“If they don’t go to Glen Mills,” he said, “they stay at the training school.”

Jeremiah said the DCYF officials have a “Rhode Island mentality” that 300 miles is too far away to send these teenage boys. “Kids grow up and they go away to college, right?”

The Rhode Island Training School’s intake center is where teenagers who have run afoul of the law eat, sleep, and attend classes while the adults –– lawyers, judges, probation officers, case workers –– decide where they go next. Each week, admissions officers from residential providers from around the state, and sometimes beyond, visit the intake center to interview young offenders for their programs. They show the teenagers brochures with photographs of ocean surf and kids canoeing on pine-rimmed lakes. “Teaching minds, touching hearts, changing lives,” reads one brochure from Ocean Tides.

Of the 12 teenage boys Jeremiah referred to Glen Mills, only three teens (ages 14, 15 and 16) have been admitted to the Pennsylvania school, according to the DCYF. Glen Mills rejected four teens who were taking prescription medications. Of the five others, one was accepted into a local residential program, one is on home confinement awaiting trial and the two others have been sentenced to the training school until they turn 19.

Though the average length of stay in the intake center is 30 days, 70 percent of the juveniles leave within two weeks, most of them for home, the Training School’s acting superintendent, Kevin Aucoin, said.

Michael Gingras, a clinical social worker at the intake center, said some providers spend a half-hour or more talking with the juveniles at the intake center and showing them brochures.

“It’s not unusual for kids to get interviewed at lunchtime and say, ‘I want to go there!’ Gingras said. “Then they get interviewed [by someone again] at dinner time and say, ‘I want to go here!’ ”

larditi@projo.com
http://www.projo.com/news/content/JUDGE_GLEN_MILLS_03-21-10_NGHQE57_v330.3a54761.html

Posted by lois at 11:27 AM | Comments (0)

March 17, 2010

Canada: Proposed Youth Criminal Justice Act would give judges power to consider non-criminal behavior when sentencing youth

Youth sentencing changes proposed
Amendment named for Quebec teen who died in 2004
March 16, 2010 | 4:11 PM ET \
The Canadian Press

The Conservative government hopes changes proposed Tuesday will make "protection of society a primary goal" of the Youth Criminal Justice Act.

Justice Minister Rob Nicholson said he wants to give judges the power to consider non-criminal behaviour when sentencing Canadians under age 18.

Such behaviour would include a "casual attitude to the law [and] complete lack of empathy for the victim," said Nicholson, flanked by the mothers of two youths who were killed by young offenders.

The changes would also permit sentencing judges to take into account evidence of previous brushes with the law that did not result in charges or convictions.

The amendments are dubbed "Sebastien's Law" in memory of Sebastien Lacasse, a 19-year-old Quebecer stabbed to death by a group of youths after making racially charged comments about his ex-girlfriend's new boyfriend at a house party in 2004.

The 17-year-old ringleader pleaded guilty and was sentenced as an adult.

The proposed changes come as youth crime is on the decline in Canada. In 2006-2007, the most recent year for which statistics are available, 56,463 young offenders committed offences across Canada, according to Statistics Canada.

That represented a slight rise — 0.34 per cent — over 2005-2006 but was a 26 per cent drop from 2002-2003, when 76,153 young offenders committed offences.

The Conservatives vowed in 2008 to reduce protections under the Youth Criminal Justice Act for young people convicted of serious crimes.

Read more: http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2010/03/16/justice-youth-act.html#ixzz0iRb2L5NT

Posted by lois at 10:33 AM | Comments (0)

March 09, 2010

FL: Lawmakers to consider: Is it time to close the Dozier School for Boys?

Lawmakers to consider: Is it time to close the Dozier School for Boys?

By Ben Montgomery, Waveney Ann Moore and John Frank, Times Staff Writers
Tuesday, March 9, 2010

TALLAHASSEE — Florida's oldest reform school has survived a century of failure and scandal. Now lawmakers once again are confronted with an uncomfortable question: Is it time to shut the place down?

At the start of another legislative session, Arthur G. Dozier School for Boys in Marianna is again struggling to keep kids safe. The school notorious for decades-old abuse has failed its state evaluation two years in a row. In the past five years, the Times has learned, boys have been beaten by guards, denied medical care and prevented from reporting abuse. The school has employed a mentally challenged man, a man who came to work high on cocaine and a man who broke his wife's shoulder. The Department of Juvenile Justice last year forced out its sixth superintendent in eight years.

Now comes a new batch of calls to close the school. Lawmakers this week will consider the future of Dozier, which houses 103 boys at a cost of $10 million, or about $100,000 per boy. But the Legislature has failed for 100 years to offer more than temporary relief for Dozier's problems.

"Dozier exists because of history," Roy Miller, president of the Children's Campaign, an advocacy and watchdog group, said of the politically protected facility. "It doesn't exist because there is any compelling reason to keep it open.''

Budget woes may provide incentive to shut the school.

In January, Sen. Victor Crist, R-Tampa, chairman of the Senate committee that recommends funding for corrections institutions, asked DJJ to come up with a plan to absorb the closure. "We have to make some very serious decisions, and this looks like a no-brainer," he said.

Closing the school would mean lost jobs in Jackson County. The school is one of the top 18 employers there, with 192 full-time staff and salaries amounting to $7 million, the report said.

"Most of these employees would become unemployed in a very difficult job market,'' it said.

Crist acknowledged last week that Dozier's troubled past figures into the equation.

"It causes us to pause and look more closely at how are they operating," he said. "Have they overcome the problems that have plagued it in the past? And is it functioning at the high levels and standards that we require today?"

The school has been protected for decades by North Florida politicians citing job loss and economic impact.

There were calls for closure in 1915, when fire swept through a locked dorm and killed eight boys. There were calls in 1918, when boys were found starving and dying of influenza.

"How long will the intelligent and God-fearing people of Florida stand for a thing of this kind?" said an editorial that year in the Tampa Tribune.

Floridians were outraged in the 1950s and '60s, when word spread that guards were beating boys bloody with a leather strap.

"It is time that we quit being shocked every time an outsider visits Marianna," wrote an Evening Independent editor in 1969. "It is time we found out why such conditions continue to exist and who is responsible for them."

There were more calls for closure in the '80s, when boys were hogtied and held in isolation for weeks. In 1988, a consultant recommended the school be closed. His proposal was swiftly denied.

"It's a hard thing to do politically for some people," said the chairman of the committee that controlled appropriations at the time.

Each shut-it-down surge was met with promises. After guards were fired for beating a boy in 2007, the agency boss said Dozier would get better.

"There are systemic operational problems at our Dozier facility that span the chain of command," he said. "We have to act decisively to change the culture of our Dozier facility."

Three years and two failed reviews later, the department is still talking about that change.

Rep. Darryl Rouson, D-St. Petersburg, says he has been assured by the Juvenile Justice department that Dozier is improving. "They've said that safety of the kids is paramount and that we would be pleased with what they have done there,'' he said.

Rep. Marti Coley, R-Marianna, is lobbying the governor and other lawmakers to keep the facility open, sparing jobs in her district.

"If there are issues at Dozier, then let's help them correct them and move forward," she said.

Miller, the children's advocate, said he is sympathetic to people losing their jobs but believes the situation could be offset by turning the Dozier property over to the Department of Corrections for low security prisoners.

"I don't believe that economic impact should be used for subjecting children to inferior care," he said.

Jobs are important, but not the only consideration, said Rep. Sandy Adams, R-Orlando and the House criminal justice budget chairwoman.

"But at the end of the day, we have to consider — seriously consider — what's in the best interest of the children," she said.

Times staff writer Lee Logan contributed to this report.

Posted by lois at 08:21 PM | Comments (0)

March 06, 2010

Most House Republicans Vote to Let Schoolchildren Be Held Down, Tied Up, and Put in Solitary Confinement

Most House Republicans Vote to Let Schoolchildren Be Held Down, Tied Up, and Put in Solitary Confinement
By James Ridgeway and Jean Casella | March 5, 2010
Solitary Watch

On Wednesday afternoon, the United States House of Representatives passed H.R. 4247, the Preventing Harmful Restraint and Seclusion in Schools Act (now being called the Keeping All Students Safe Act), by a vote of 242-153. In the final vote count, 238 Democrats and just 24 Republicans voted for the bill, while 8 Democrats and 145 Republicans voted against it.

H.R. 4247 was introduced in December by Education and Labor Committee chair George Miller (D-CA) and Committee member Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-WA) and bill passed out of committee with bipartisan support. Their goal, Miller and Rodgers wrote in a joint op-ed for CNN, was simply to "outlaw child abuse in schools." The bill's stated purposes include the following:

(1) prevent and reduce the use of physical restraint and seclusion in schools;

(2) ensure the safety of all students and school personnel in schools and promote a positive school culture and climate;

(3) protect students from—

(A) physical or mental abuse;

(B) aversive behavioral interventions that compromise health and safety; and

(C) any physical restraint or seclusion imposed solely for purposes of discipline or convenience;

(4) ensure that physical restraint and seclusion are imposed in school only when a student’s behavior poses an imminent danger of physical injury to the student, school personnel, or others....

It's hard to decide which is more shocking: the fact that 153 members of the United States Congress would see fit to vote against such a bill, or the fact that it was needed in the first place.

In fact, the bill's findings state that "physical restraint and seclusion have resulted in physical injury, psychological trauma, and death to children in public and private schools." The House Education and Labor Committee conducted hearings on the subject last spring, after the Government Accountability Office published a report that began with the following statement:

Although GAO could not determine whether allegations were widespread, GAO did find hundreds of cases of alleged abuse and death related to the use of these methods on school children during the past two decades. Examples of these cases include a 7 year old purportedly dying after being held face down for hours by school staff, 5 year olds allegedly being tied to chairs with bungee cords and duct tape by their teacher and suffering broken arms and bloody noses, and a 13 year old reportedly hanging himself in a seclusion room after prolonged confinement.

Special education students were especially vulnerable to this kind of treatment, the report found:

For example, teachers restrained a 4 year old with cerebral palsy in a device that resembled a miniature electric chair because she was reportedly being “uncooperative.”....Teachers confined [a 9 year old with learning disabilities] to a small, dirty room 75 times over the course of 6 months for offenses such as whistling, slouching, and hand waving....In another case, a residential day school implemented a behavior plan, without parental consent, that included confining an 11-year-old autistic child to his room for extended periods of time, restricting his food, and using physical restraints. The child was diagnosed with post traumatic stress disorder as a result of this treatment.

A report published earlier last year by the National Disability Rights Network (NDRN) provided additional examples, including one in which a 7-year-old Wisconsin girl, who was diagnosed with an emotional disturbance and ADHD, died of suffocation after several adult staff pinned her to the floor in a "prone restraint" because she was blowing bubbles in her milk.

A handful of earlier accounts also exposed the widespread use in schools of "seclusion rooms" or "time-out rooms"--basically, solitary confinement cells for difficult-to-control children. Mary Hallowell wrote about one such case in her 2009 book Forgotten Rooms. According to an article the Atlanta Journal-Constitution:

Education researcher Mary Hollowell spent months chronicling an alternative high school in rural Georgia before she discovered the awful secret that continues to haunt her today. Walking with the principal down a hall, Hollowell heard a loud pounding. She followed the principal into a room and then through a connecting doorway that led to a solitary confinement cell double bolted from the outside.

“The cell was dark inside and had a small, square window,” she said. “It was the kind of set-up you saw in a mental institution, not a school.” Inside the cell was a boy Hollowell recognized; she had tutored him in reading and even had artwork from him. “I felt like I had been punched in the stomach when I realized what I was seeing,” she says. “The principal’s comment to me was that most people didn’t know this room was there.”

The "seclusion room" at a Georgia school, where a 13-year-old hanged himself.

As the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported: “Seclusion rooms are allowed in Georgia public schools provided they are big enough for children to lie down, have good visibility and have locks that spring open in case of an emergency such as a fire. In 2004, Jonathan King, 13, hanged himself in one such room, a stark, 8-foot-by-8-foot 'timeout' room in a Gainesville public school.” Jonathan was also a special ed student, who had ADHD and depression. He had talked about suicide to the school psychologist, but she concluded it was "an escape or attention-getting technique," according to the Gainesville Times. A civil rights lawsuit brought by his parents was thrown out of federal court.

These are the sorts of abuses that H.R. 4247 seeks to address. And the pressing need for federal legislation is clear from the GAO report: "GAO found no federal laws restricting the use of seclusion and restraints in public and private schools and widely divergent laws at the state level," it said. In addition, "GAO could not find a single Web site, federal agency, or other entity that collects information on the use of these methods or the extent of their alleged abuse."

Yet 153 members of Congress chose to vote against a law that would expose and limit what can in some cases only be described as the torture of schoolchildren.

Perhaps not so shocking after all: In a country that condones torture not only in its military detention centers, but in its state and federal prisons, immigration jails, and juvenile detention centers, it was only a matter of time before it trickled down, even into our schools.

http://solitarywatch.wordpress.com/2010/03/05/most-house-republicans-vote-to-let-schoolchildren-be-held-down-tied-up-and-put-in-solitary-confinement/

Posted by lois at 02:18 PM | Comments (0)

February 22, 2010

Justice Policy Institute: Fact Sheet on The Obama Administration’s 2011 Budget: More Policing, Prisons, and Punitive Policies

Fact Sheet on The Obama Administration’s 2011 Budget: More Policing, Prisons, and Punitive Policies

02-17-10
Author(s): Justice Policy Institute
Topic(s): Public Safety, Juvenile Justice, Adult Corrections, Books vs. Bars, Drug Policy

The President’s proposed FY2011 Department of Justice (DOJ) budget asks for $29.2 billion. This is on top of $4 billion provided to DOJ through the American Reinvestment and Recovery Act (ARRA), much of which will continue to fund activities through 2011 and beyond. Although the budget has some specific allocations for juvenile justice that it had removed last year, it still reduces spending on juvenile justice programs, while allocating hundreds of millions to hire or retain police officers through the Byrne Justice Assistance Grants or Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS) and increasing federal prison spending.

This continued funding pattern will likely result in increased costs to states for incarceration that will outweigh the increased revenue for law enforcement, with marginal public safety benefits. While “re-entry” programs such as the Second Chance Act will help reduce recidivism, too little funding is targeted towards “no-entry” programs that keep people from ending up in the criminal justice system in the first place. As states struggle with tough economic times and burgeoning prison populations, research shows that the most cost-effective ways to increase public safety, reduce prison populations, and save money are to invest in community-based programs and policies that positively impact youth and more substance use and mental health treatment services in the community.
The 8 page report breaks down where the money requested will go and its consequences.
http://www.justicepolicy.org/images/upload/10-02_FAC_FY2011Budget_PS-JJ-AC-BB-DP.pdf

Posted by lois at 09:49 AM | Comments (0)

February 10, 2010

NY: For Detained Youths, No Mental Health Overseer

For Detained Youths, No Mental Health Overseer
By JULIE BOSMAN
New York Times: February 10, 2010

Edwina G. Richardson-Mendelson has been the administrative judge of the New York City Family Courts for nine months, in charge of the judges responsible for the detention of dozens of young people charged with crimes, the vast majority of whom suffer from some form of mental illness.

But it was not until last September that she was informed of what struck her as a startling fact: The State of New York does not have a single full-time staff psychiatrist charged with overseeing the treatment of the 800 or so young people who are detained in state facilities at any given time.

“There wasn’t one human being on-site overseeing all the mental health needs of the population,” Judge Richardson-Mendelson said in an interview. “When we place these children in these facilities, we expect their needs to be met, especially their mental health needs.”

Yet all 17 psychiatrists at the detention facilities in the state’s deeply troubled juvenile justice system work on contract and part time. Weeks often pass between their visits with each troubled youth, and state officials say their turnover rate is very high.

“Those people turn over so quickly that there are often huge chunks of time when there is not even a contracted psychiatrist available to evaluate the youngster or provide needed follow-up services,” said Judge Monica Drinane, the supervising judge in Family Court in the Bronx.

Gladys Carrión, the commissioner of the Office of Children and Family Services, the state agency that administers the juvenile prisons, declined to be interviewed.

Edward Borges, an agency spokesman, said, “The commissioner has said that we need more mental health professionals, that we need psychiatric help, and it’s something that she’s recognized.” Ms. Carrión is in the process of hiring a “chief psychiatrist,” who will work on salary or on contract, Mr. Borges said.

For now, then, the oversight of the mental health treatment of the young people in state facilities falls to several dozen psychologists who visit them for consultations, and staff members at the jails who run group therapy sessions despite often having no qualifications beyond a high school degree.

Aspects of the lack of mental health services throughout New York’s juvenile prison system were described last August in a withering report from the federal Department of Justice that examined conditions at four notorious state juvenile prisons.

The report criticized the state for failing to properly diagnose juveniles’ mental health problems, administering medication inappropriately and making inadequate treatment plans. Young people are frequently assigned several different diagnoses at the same institution, resulting in confused and ineffective treatment.

“One psychiatrist described his role as ‘an outsider’ and expressed frustration because, ‘I have to beg, borrow and steal information,’ ” the report said.

The proposed state budget released by Gov. David A. Paterson in January included an additional $18.2 million to improve services in the juvenile prisons, particularly mental health care. And officials from the Office of Children and Family Services said they had begun more consistent screening of children for mental health issues, reducing the use of physical restraints in the facilities and hiring an additional 37 mental health professionals to work in state-run juvenile residential centers.

But Commissioner Carrión recently told a number of Family Court judges, who decide which children should be sent to prisons, that the conditions at many isolated facilities upstate made it hard to recruit psychiatrists to work there.

Lawyers for the Legal Aid Society said they had many examples of mentally ill children who had been mistreated while in prisons.

One 16-year-old boy received a diagnosis of moderate mental retardation, took powerful psychotropic medication and functioned on a first-grade educational level. Last July he was placed in a state residential facility by a Family Court judge who had ordered that he receive mental health services.

However, he was not placed in a mental health unit until five months later, after being harassed, taunted and restrained at least five times by the prison staff, according to the Legal Aid lawyers.

A 15-year-old girl with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, conduct disorder and adjustment disorder was sent to a juvenile prison last February. Since then, she has not received proper mental health treatment, and has been restrained by the staff more than 15 times, her lawyers said.

Surveys of youth prisons indicate that about two-thirds of the nation’s juvenile inmates — about 92,800 in 2006 — have at least one mental illness.

“The system just isn’t equipped to deal with children with serious mental health issues,” said Tamara A. Steckler, the lawyer in charge of the Juvenile Rights Practice of Legal Aid. “We need to find another mechanism to treat those children.”

A task force led by Jeremy Travis, the president of the John Jay College of Criminal Justice, recently examined conditions at state juvenile prisons.

“I think it’s clear that for these young people to succeed while they’re in these facilities and for them to succeed when they’re coming home, many of them need extensive mental health services,” Mr. Travis said. “And it’s clear that the current services fall far short of professional standards.”

The problem of ineffective psychiatric care in juvenile prisons stretches back decades. Michael A. Corriero, a recently retired judge who spent 16 years as an acting State Supreme Court justice presiding over Manhattan’s courts that dealt with youth offenders, recalled sentencing a 15-year-old who had sodomized an 11-year-old boy.

He placed the teenager in a juvenile prison, sentenced him to a term of two to six years, and recommended that he receive intensive counseling.

“I said, ‘You’re going to have to get this kid appropriate psychiatric care, and it has to be one-on-one,” Mr. Corriero said. “And the answer was, ‘We don’t have a psychiatrist.’ ”
A version of this article appeared in print on February 11, 2010, on page A1 of the New York edition.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/11/nyregion/11youth.html?hp

Posted by lois at 11:17 PM | Comments (0)

February 06, 2010

Washington Post Editorial "Va. legislators should embrace bills to protect juveniles in prison"

Editorial: Va. legislators should embrace bills to protect juveniles in prison
Washington Post
Friday, February 5, 2010

THERE IS NO safer political bet than supporting legislation to protect children from harm. That bet is tougher when the children in question are juvenile offenders, but it is no less worthy. Virginia lawmakers should muster the courage to endorse two bills that would enhance protections for juvenile offenders.

Housing minors in adult prisons is a bad idea. It raises the risk of physical and sexual abuse of the younger inmates while denying them educational, vocational and psychological services available in juvenile-only programs. Senate Bill 259, sponsored by Sen. L. Louise Lucas (D-Portsmouth), requires that even underage offenders charged as adults must be detained in juvenile facilities; judges may order a transfer to an adult facility if they conclude that an offender poses a danger to other juveniles in detention. This proposal, unanimously passed in the Senate, should be endorsed by lawmakers in the House.

Senate Bill 585 calls for the state to make lawyers available for periodic consultations with incarcerated juveniles. Minors who are charged with a crime are entitled to state-funded lawyers at trial. But they lose access to these lawyers once they are convicted. The bill proposed by Sen. David W. Marsden (D-Fairfax) would require juvenile court judges "to appoint one or more 'diligent and competent' attorneys" to assist juveniles. These would not be full-time assignments; lawyers in private practice would be tapped by the court and would be paid by the hour to visit designated facilities roughly once a week. These lawyers would also serve as confidential sounding boards about conditions of confinement.

Two Virginia juvenile facilities were recently slammed by the Justice Department for their high rates of sexual abuse; the periodic presence of outside lawyers could encourage youths to report and ultimately deter abuses. The cost of these roving lawyers for the entire state is roughly $50,000 a year -- a remarkably modest sum for a potentially important program.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/02/04/AR2010020404418.html

Posted by lois at 10:28 AM | Comments (0)

February 03, 2010

Youth prison system under pressure- proposed Senate bill would require states to track use of restraints in juvenile detention

"A bill before the U.S. Senate would require states to track the use of restraints in juvenile detention, which some states do voluntarily."The research tells us unequivocally" restraint "can result in a child's death," says Tara Andrews of the Coalition for Juvenile Justice, which is lobbying for the bill's passage."

Youth prison system under pressure
February 3, 2010
By Martha T. Moore, USA TODAY
NEW YORK — Three years after a 15-year-old boy died in restraints, the youth prison where he was pinned to the floor is set to be closed.

The shuttering of Tryon Boys Residential Center is due to budget gaps that plague states across the USA — but also is a sign of the intense pressure on New York to improve its deeply troubled juvenile detention system.

In August, a U.S. Department of Justice investigation found that the state uses excessive force on youths in custody; the federal department says it will sue the state if changes are not made. In December, a state-appointed task force said use of force and lack of mental health care are acute problems for the 1,600 children held in New York's juvenile facilities each year. Two weeks later, the Legal Aid Society sued the state Office of Children and Family Services (OCFS) on behalf of youths in custody.

Federal investigators found youths in four facilities, including Tryon, were routinely pinned to the ground and handcuffed for infractions as minor as laughing loudly, sneaking a cookie or refusing to get out of bed. The restraints caused concussions, broken teeth and broken bones.

"At this point, it's pretty clear that the change needs to happen, it needs to be pervasive and it needs to happen now," says Legal Aid Society lawyer Tamara Steckler.

In his budget proposal last month, Gov. David Paterson, a Democrat, announced plans to close two facilities named by the Justice Department. That includes Tryon, where Darryl Thompson died in November 2006. In the incident, cited in the federal investigation, aides pinned him facedown and handcuffed him after he repeatedly asked for recreation time.

The economic crunch is forcing New York, like other states, to scrutinize a system that costs it $210,000 per child annually.

"One of the great ironies is that the economic crisis may be accomplishing what advocates like me have been saying for 30 years," says Mark Soler of the Center for Children's Law and Policy, an advocacy group. "It's just too expensive to lock up the kids."

New York's juvenile system, which has 31 residential facilities, is one of the nation's largest, even though New York is one of only two states that charge youths 16 or older as adults. More than half of youths in detention are there because of misdemeanors. More than 80% are black or Hispanic.

The reports and lawsuit have "focused public attention on an area of the juvenile justice system that has gone without scrutiny for years," says Jeremy Travis, head of the task force Paterson formed in 2008.

Common problems

Since 2000, the Justice Department has conducted at least 11 investigations into juvenile facilities in states including California, Indiana, Ohio, Maryland and Oklahoma. Its findings illustrate that the same problems persist: overreliance on physical restraint and insufficient mental health services.

A bill before the U.S. Senate would require states to track the use of restraints in juvenile detention, which some states do voluntarily.

"The research tells us unequivocally" restraint "can result in a child's death," says Tara Andrews of the Coalition for Juvenile Justice, which is lobbying for the bill's passage.

Without reporting requirements, "very often abusive situations do not come to light," Soler says. Though some kids need to be incarcerated "so they don't hurt other people and don't hurt themselves," he says, use of restraints is "excessive."

Other states that have come under federal investigation, including Louisiana, have adopted practices pioneered in Missouri. There, the juvenile system converted to small facilities more like treatment centers than prisons, focused on counseling and stopped the use of restraints. Only 8.6% of youths released from custody are recommitted within three years, the Missouri Department of Youth Services says. In New York, the figure is 45%, the task force says.

"In looking at the national picture, the old model is under serious change," Travis says. "You have places like New York saying, we want to follow (Missouri's) lead and recognizing we're very much stuck in an old corrective punitive model."

'No tolerance'

One of the severest critics of New York's juvenile system is in charge of it. "I don't think that, objectively, anybody who looks at our system and systems across the country can say we are really doing a good job," says Gladys Carrion, OCFS commissioner.

Carrion, appointed in 2007, has installed video cameras in juvenile facilities and reinstituted the office of the ombudsman, which inspects youth prisons. She requires staff to track the use of restraints.

"I personally get a weekly report," she says. "We have no tolerance for this." The harsh reports, she says, are "levers for change."

Carrion has been criticized by juvenile prison employees, who say the facilities are understaffed, they haven't received necessary training, and the agency risks public safety by closing facilities without having adequate community-based programs to accommodate youths.

"You can't just simply do this by fiat, say we're going to have a different model and have it happen," says Stephen Madarasz of the Civil Service Employee Association, which represents youth prison staff.

Travis, the task force head, is "optimistic that there will be some pretty significant change, but it will take a decade," he says. "It took a decade in Missouri; it'll take a decade in New York."

Legal Aid's Steckler says Carrion has made progress, but not enough. "The video cameras and the data reporting has decreased restraints, but it obviously hasn't stopped them." What's needed, she says, is to end the notion that youths in custody are prisoners. "Until that shift occurs ... we're still talking about grown men restraining children."
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2010-02-02-youth-prison-juvenile_N.htm

Posted by lois at 09:29 AM | Comments (0)

February 02, 2010

2nd National Prisoner's Families Conference, Feb 25 & 26th in Orlando, FL

For info go to the URL below
2nd National Prisoner's Families Conference, Feb 25 & 26th in Orlando, FL
http://solutionsforelpaso.org/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/conference-listing-of-workshops.pdf

Posted by lois at 04:35 PM | Comments (0)

January 28, 2010

NY: City Signals Intent to Put Fewer Teenagers in Jail and Nick Kristof column on "Kids in Crisis (Behind Bars)"

City Signals Intent to Put Fewer Teenagers in Jail
Richard Perry/The New York Times

By JULIE BOSMAN
Published: January 20, 2010

The Bloomberg administration plans to merge the city’s Department of Juvenile Justice into its child welfare agency, signaling a more therapeutic approach toward delinquency that will send fewer of the city’s troubled teenagers to jail.

A juvenile center in the Bronx. The system currently uses 28 complexes throughout the state to house about 900 young people.

The integration of the agencies is effective immediately, and was announced by Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg in his State of the City speech Wednesday afternoon.

City officials said that under the new arrangement, youths who commit crimes but are not considered dangerous will have easier access to an expanding assortment of in-home programs managed by the Administration for Children’s Services, the child welfare agency. This will allow them to stay in their neighborhoods with their families while following a strict set of rules requiring them to stay out of trouble, keep curfews and meet educational goals, officials said.

Seeking to dispel the notion that the city was turning soft on crime, Linda I. Gibbs, the deputy mayor of health and human services, said “the merger will not compromise public safety and will help to keep streets safe.” Youth offenders who are considered a high risk to the public will continue to be sent to detention centers, officials said.

Juvenile offenders, usually between the ages of 11 and 16, are typically in the custody of the Department of Juvenile Justice before trial and sentencing. The department, which handles about 5,500 offenders a year, places them in group homes or in one of three detention centers. A judge’s typical options at sentencing are to release offenders on probation or send them to one of the state’s juvenile prisons or residential facilities run by nonprofit organizations.

Under the new plan, city officials will more frequently recommend to a judge that a young person be allowed to return home, provided the family submits to intensive visits by therapists and social workers supervised by the Administration for Children’s Services.

That type of community-based therapy, meant to set young offenders on more productive paths in life, is a growing alternative to sending youths to notorious state-run juvenile prisons, which a state task force recently described as broken, ineffective and dangerous. The prisons are also expensive, costing the state and city $215,000 per youth annually. The system uses 28 complexes throughout the state to house about 900 young people, many of whom have committed only misdemeanor crimes like theft.

“Our No. 1 recommendation was that the state system of juvenile prisons be downsized,” said Jeremy Travis, the president of the John Jay College of Criminal Justice, who led the task force, “and the key element of success in meeting that goal is to provide effective community-based strategies for young people so judges don’t have to send them off to juvenile detention.”

Ms. Gibbs said the administration had worked for years to reduce the number of youths who are sent to juvenile prisons, while increasing the capacity for community-based programs with family intervention and therapy. Since 2002, the city has reduced placements in state juvenile facilities by 56 percent.

In the last several years, Ms. Gibbs said, the administration has developed a more finely tuned process to determine the level of risk juvenile offenders pose to the public, and whether youths should return home or be sent to detention centers.

“We’re detaining fewer kids over all, and now we’re detaining the right kids, the high-risk kids,” Ms. Gibbs said.

Michael Jacobson, the director of the Vera Institute for Justice, said he thought the combination of agencies was a natural move, given the numbers of children who commit crimes and have also previously had contact with child-welfare agencies. Studies have shown that nearly 20 percent of prisoners under age 30 have spent time in foster care, according to data from the Center for Family Representation, an organization that provides legal help to parents involved in Family Court.

“The overlap between the two populations is huge,” Mr. Jacobson said. “It just makes sense to have the city’s children’s agency deal with children across the spectrum.”

John B. Mattingly, the child welfare commissioner since 2004, will add the title of commissioner of the Department of Juvenile Justice to his duties and oversee both agencies. Neil Hernandez, the commissioner of the Department of Juvenile Justice, has resigned, Ms. Gibbs said.

The focus on community-based treatment for juvenile offenders is an extension of the belief that children are better off with their families than in isolation from them. Ms. Gibbs, a former deputy commissioner of the Administration for Children’s Services, said there had been a dearth of therapeutic programs that keep youth in the home, where counselors and social workers can address the problems of the entire family and help parents provide structure and guidance for their children. Those programs will be expanded and new ones developed under the integrated agencies, she said.

“My experience at A.C.S. taught me very clearly that if child protective workers have community-based services at their disposal, to bring services and support into the home, and they feel that the children will be safe, they will use those services,” Ms. Gibbs said.

Edwina G. Richardson-Mendelson, an administrative judge of the New York City Family Courts, said she welcomed more options for Family Court judges, who must decide either to return offenders to their families or send them to detention centers.

“The judges of the Family Court are really concerned about the lack of community-based alternatives for youth offenders,” she said. “The bottom line is that judges would, of course, prefer to have more options.”

Mr. Travis, of John Jay, said that many of the young people who were sent to juvenile prisons had committed only minor offenses and should not have been in prisons in the first place.

“It may sound counterintuitive, but it is a public safety interest to keep young people closer to home in programs that help them become productive citizens,” he said.

In 2007, the Administration for Children’s Services and nonprofit providers began the Juvenile Justice Initiative, a handful of programs that send juvenile offenders back to their families and provide intensive therapy. Officials at the agency said the programs reduced recidivism rates for chronic juvenile delinquents by at least 30 percent.

At juvenile prisons, the recidivism rates are high: three-quarters of the young people released from detention are arrested again within three years.

“That’s just an outrageous number,” Ms. Gibbs said. “Our goal is to improve the entire system so that we break that cycle, and improve public safety, and improve the lives of these young people who are moving down the wrong path.”

City officials said the increased use of in-home treatment programs would save money. By one city estimate, each Juvenile Justice Initiative treatment costs $17,000, a fraction of the cost of state detention facilities.

The city could also reduce costs by combining the administrative duties of the Administration for Children’s Services and the Department of Juvenile Justice. Ms. Gibbs said it was too early to tell what those savings might be, or whether the merging of the agencies would result in layoffs.

While some advocates and nonprofit providers said they were concerned about how the Administration for Children’s Services, which has recently seen cuts to its budget, will handle the disruption, several said that they were generally enthusiastic about the plan.

“Over all, change that helps see young people and families as a whole is positive,” said Susan Jacobs, the executive director of the Center for Family Representation. “As an advocate, I would applaud a change which recognizes the complexity that children are part of a family.”

A version of this article appeared in print on January 21, 2010, on page A31 of the New York edition.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/21/nyregion/21juvenile.html?scp=1&sq=Juvenile%20justice%20in%20New%20York%20City&st=cse

and.....
Op-Ed Columnist- NY Times
Kids in Crisis (Behind Bars)
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF
Published: January 27, 2010

We all have blind spots, and I think one of mine — shared by many other Americans, perhaps including you — has to do with prisons.

Over the years, I’ve written many columns about Guantánamo Bay, Abu Ghraib and torture, not to mention the abuses that go on in Chinese and North Korean prisons. But I’ve never written about the horrors that unfold in American prisons — especially juvenile correctional facilities — on a far larger scale than at Guantánamo.

Consider Rodney Hulin Jr., who was a 16-year-old when he was convicted of arson. A first-time offender and a slight figure at 5 feet 2 inches tall and some 125 pounds, he was sent to a men’s prison. There, he was the smallest person around. Within a week, he was raped, according to an account by Human Rights Watch, an advocacy group. The prison doctor ordered an H.I.V. test, since up to one-third of the inmates were H.I.V.-positive.

Rodney asked to be placed in protective custody, but he was denied. His father, Rodney Hulin Sr., picks up the story: “For the next several months, my son was repeatedly beaten by the older inmates, forced to perform oral sex, robbed, and beaten again. ... He could no longer stand to live in continual terror.”

Rodney Jr. hanged himself.

Maybe Rodney would have been safer in a juvenile correctional facility, but then again maybe not. A stunning new Justice Department special report, released just this month, underscores how widespread rape is in youth correctional facilities. It found that almost one youth in eight reported being sexually assaulted while behind bars in the last year.

That means that a child in custody is about twice as likely to be raped as an adult behind bars, based on similar surveys of adult prisoners. As The New York Review of Books wrote on its blog, we face a “crisis of juvenile prison rape.”

The National Prison Rape Elimination Commission, a blue-ribbon panel that issued its final report last year, described how a 14-year-old boy weighing 98 pounds was assaulted after he was made to share a cell with two older teenagers. Both were 6 feet 2 inches, and one weighed 160 pounds and the other 195 pounds.

Surprisingly, the new survey suggests that the biggest predators are not other inmates but prison staff — and female staff members offend as much as the males do. More than 10 percent of boys in juvenile correctional facilities said that they had had sex with staff, most of whom were women.

Among girls, almost 5 percent said that they had engaged in sexual activity with staff, most of whom were men.

Reggie Walton, a federal judge in the District of Columbia who led the prison rape commission, said that the figures may even be an undercount because of the stigma of rape. “I was shocked at the level of abuse,” he said.

One lesson from the surveys is that we should rethink the way male guards are sometimes assigned to female inmates, and female guards to male inmates, without sufficient respect for inmates’ privacy or dignity. That won’t stop same-sex violence or inmate-on-inmate abuses, but it would address one important component of the abuse problem.

By some accounts, the majority of guards at women’s prisons are now men. Investigators at one juvenile correctional facility found that a male guard watched as girls showered, while a woman watched over boys showering.

Jamie Fellner of Human Rights Watch, also a member of the prison rape commission, described a Virginia prison where men were stripped naked and asked to spread their buttocks in front of a female officer. When a male inmate asked to be searched in front of a man instead, Ms. Fellner said he was Tasered.

In the last few years, a growing number of states have limited the ability of guards to strip-search members of the opposite sex or watch them showering. And a landmark law, the Prison Rape Elimination Act, created Judge Walton’s commission, which has made excellent recommendations to reduce violence and abuse behind bars. The Obama administration should quickly implement those recommendations.

Surveys have found that well-managed prisons and correctional facilities with strong accountability have almost no rape, by guards or inmates. Others have astonishingly high levels. If we want to rehabilitate young offenders and help them get their lives in order, a starting point is to end the criminal abuse of them.

The legacy of Rodney Hulin Jr. should be a concerted drive to end the way inmates are raped with impunity behind bars. The survey results indicating the ubiquity of sexual assault behind bars, often by guards, should be an awakening — and an end to this blind spot that so many of us have shown. We need to be as alert to human rights abuses in our youth correctional facilities as to those at Guantánamo.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/28/opinion/28kristof.html?ref=opinion

Posted by lois at 04:51 PM | Comments (0)

January 27, 2010

NY: Judge Bars Youth Prisons From Routine Shackling

Judge Bars Youth Prisons From Routine Shackling

By NICHOLAS CONFESSORE
Published: January 26, 2010

ALBANY — The agency that runs the state’s juvenile prison system routinely violates the law by shackling youthful offenders when taking them to court even when the youth poses no obvious threat, a state judge ruled on Tuesday.

The case was brought on behalf of a teenager identified as John F., who was kept in shackles — his hands and feet handcuffed, with a belly chain linked to the handcuffs — for about 15 hours one day while being taken to court. He was 14 and had no record of violent crime, said the lawyers who represented him.

The ruling, by Justice Milton A. Tingling Jr. of State Supreme Court in Manhattan, would repeal a policy of the state’s youth correctional system that has been in place since at least 1996. It is the latest controversy for a system that has been widely faulted for doing what critics say is an abysmal job of meeting the needs of juvenile offenders.

The case, a class-action lawsuit on behalf of about 500 youths held in residential centers run by the state’s Office of Children and Family Services, was brought by the Legal Aid Society. Justice Tingling issued his decision as a summary judgment against state officials, who did not contest the facts of the case, meaning that it is unlikely that they would win an appeal.

“The court’s recognition that O.C.F.S. cannot treat children this way is part and parcel of a culture of abusive practices that is not rehabilitative and does not recognize that these are children who are in the care of the state,” said Nancy Rosenbloom, the Legal Aid lawyer leading the case.

A spokesman for the agency said officials could not comment until they had reviewed the decision.

The agency’s current policy requires any child in custody to be shackled while being taken between state juvenile centers or from a center to anywhere else, like a courthouse. While most of the prison units are far upstate, most of the youths are from New York City and must be taken hundreds of miles to Family Court.

The shackling policy even applied to youths being held at what are known as nonsecure facilities. Nearly all of the youths in nonsecure facilities have been placed there for the equivalent of nonviolent misdemeanor offenses, like truancy, graffiti or petty theft, and most are under 16 years old.

“We had evidence of kids not being able to drink their milk on the way to court because of the chains,” Ms. Rosenbloom said.

A judge had placed John F. at the Tryon Residential Center in Johnstown, N.Y., roughly 200 miles north of Manhattan. On Nov. 1, 2007, he was awakened early to travel to court.

According to Justice Tingling’s ruling: “At 4 a.m. that day, Plaintiff was placed in handcuffs, footcuffs and a belly restraint. A metal restraint box was placed over the chain linking his handcuffs to one another, which prevented Plaintiff from separating his hands farther than the width of the metal box. Prior to him being shackled and transported, Plaintiff was not assessed for mood or mental state.”

The shackles were not removed until 6:15 p.m., after he returned to Tryon.

Justice Tingling found that the agency’s policy violated the state’s own law on shackling youths in custody, which states that shackles should be used only as a last resort, for youths who are dangerous and uncontrollable by any other means, and then only for half an hour. And shackles can be used during transport only when the youths pose a physical threat, the judge found.

“It’s not that you can’t ever restrain somebody. But every time it is used, there has to be determination right then that the child is out of control, dangerous, and cannot be controlled any other way,” Ms. Rosenbloom said, adding that the agency “makes no such determination.”
A version of this article appeared in print on January 27, 2010, on page A21 of the New York edition.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/27/nyregion/27juvenile.html

Posted by lois at 08:44 AM | Comments (0)

January 15, 2010

Editorial: Sentenced to Abuse

Editorial: Sentenced to Abuse
Published: January 14, 2010
NY Times

The Justice Department needs to act swiftly and decisively to protect young people who are being battered and raped in juvenile corrections facilities all across the country. A shocking new study by the Justice Department’s Bureau of Justice Statistics surveyed more than 9,000 young people in custody and found that 12 percent reported being sexually abused one or more times, mainly by staff members.

Particularly alarming, the study found several juvenile facilities where 30 percent or more of the young people reported being raped. Some of the institutions with high rates of victimization were in Indiana, Maryland, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Texas.

These latest findings are consistent with those reported in June by a federal commission created by Congress under the 2003 Prison Rape Elimination Act. The commission, which examined the problem for five years, also outlined a list of sensible policy changes, which the Justice Department has the power to make mandatory for all corrections institutions that accept federal money.

The commission said that corrections facilities must make it easier for victims to report abuse without fear of reprisal and promptly and thoroughly investigate all rape claims. It said that prison employees must be better screened before they are hired, and they must be better trained in how to deal with vulnerable young people.

The commission also called on state corrections agencies to develop written zero-tolerance rules for employees of adult and juvenile facilities — and write those rules into union contracts. Employees must be put on notice that they will be held accountable if they participate in sexual assaults or look the other way when they occur.

The 2003 law gave the United States attorney general until June of this year to evaluate the commission’s findings and issue new rape-prevention standards. But juvenile justice advocates worry that the Justice Department will allow state corrections officials to water down those requirements, partly by arguing that they will be too expensive to implement. The department should not allow that to happen. If it does, Congress will have to strengthen the legislation. Zero tolerance for abuse in prisons or juvenile facilities must be the law of the land.

A version of this article appeared in print on January 15, 2010, on page A26 of the New York edition.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/15/opinion/15fri3.html

Posted by lois at 11:06 AM | Comments (0)

January 08, 2010

Justice Department Study: Youths Sexually Abused in Juvenile Prisons

Study: Youths sexually abused in juvenile prisons
USA Today 1-8-10
By Martha T. Moore, USA TODAY

More than 12% of youths in juvenile prisons are sexually abused while in custody there, according to a Justice Department study out Thursday, and the vast majority of cases involve female staff and boys under their supervision.

In the worst facilities surveyed — in Indiana, Maryland, North Carolina and Texas — more than 30% of youths reported they had been sexually victimized. The study, the first of its kind, shows a rate of sexual assault more than seven times higher than that indicated by a 2008 Justice Department report that collected sexual abuse claims to juvenile facility administrators. It is also higher than a similar study of adult prisons because of the "very high rate of staff sexual misconduct," said Allen Beck, who directed the survey for the Bureau of Justice Statistics.

The survey of 9,198 youths ages 13 to 21 — all in custody by order of a juvenile court — included methods to eliminate interviews considered unreliable. The survey covered 195 facilities, at least one in each state. Approximately 26,550 juveniles — 91% of them boys — are held in more than 500 such facilities around the country.

The survey showed that 10.3% of youths reported the sexual contact was with staff, compared with 2.6% who reported sexual victimization by other youths. In nearly half the incidents with staff, youths reported having sexual contact as a result of force.

The study sets a wider definition of sexual contact than rape, Beck said. Nonetheless, "these are all things that in the outside world would be considered violent or, by definition in law, they are illegal," he said.

Sexual victimization of youths in custody "is one of those hidden closets of the system," said Bart Lubow, director of the juvenile justice and strategy group for the Annie E. Casey Foundation, which advocates for children. The rates at the worst facilities are "so high they're stunning," he said. "I am, on the other hand, never surprised as people peel the layers of the youth corrections onion and expose more and more things that make you cry."

Linda McFarlane of Just Detention International, an advocacy group focused on eliminating sexual abuse in prison, called the highest rates of abuse "shocking beyond belief."

"The incredibly high rates of staff misconduct is shocking and disturbing," McFarlane said. "We just need to do a better job with training and recruitment and hiring and supervision."

The survey showed that gay youths reported higher levels of sexual abuse from other juveniles, and so did youths who had been abused before coming to the facility.

That makes the survey valuable for juvenile facilities other than the type covered in the survey, she said. "While we can't say we know what's happening in, say, the smaller group-home settings … we can look at the information in this report and use it to protect those (particularly vulnerable) kids."

In Maryland, where 36% of youths surveyed at Backbone Mountain Youth Center said they had been victimized, the state Department of Juvenile Services said in a statement Thursday there will be an independent investigation by the state human resources and health agencies.

At Pendleton Juvenile Correctional Facility in Indiana, which also had among the highest rates of abuse in the study, four female guards were suspended a month ago after a report of sexual abuse, said Edwin Buss, state corrections commissioner.

Indiana officials say their own surveys show a much lower rate of sexual victimization.

"We're not denying that this happens," said Amanda Copeland, executive director of research and technology for the state Corrections Department. "We would be foolish to say that it never happens. We're just questioning the extent to which it's being reported" by the Justice Department. But the survey "gives us something to work with. Whether we agree with the percentages or the ratings or not, we recognize that we have issues and we need to address them, and we're taking steps to do so."

MAP of JUVENILE FACILITIES WITH HIGH RATES OF SEXUAL VICTIMIZATION at this URL
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2010-01-07-juvenile-prison-sexual-abuse_N.htm

Posted by lois at 10:02 AM | Comments (0)

January 06, 2010

NY Times Editorial: Juvenile Injustice and comment

"....the Legislature will finally have to put the needs of the state’s children ahead of the politically powerful unions and upstate lawmakers who want to preserve jobs — and the disastrous status quo — at all costs."

Editorial: Juvenile Injustice
Published: January 5, 2010
NY Times

Gladys Carrión, New York’s reform-minded commissioner of the Office of Children and Family Services, has been calling on the state to close many of its remote, prison-style juvenile facilities and shift resources and children to therapeutic programs located in their communities. Her efforts have met fierce and predictably self-interested resistance from the unions representing workers in juvenile prisons and their allies in Albany.

A recent series of damning reports have underscored the flaws in New York’s juvenile justice system and the urgent need to shut down these facilities. The governor and the State Legislature need to pay attention.

A report by a task force appointed by Gov. David Paterson describes a failing system that damages young people, fails to curb recidivism and eats up millions of tax dollars. Children should be confined only when they present a clear threat to public safety. But the most recent statistics show that 53 percent of the youths admitted to New York’s institutional facilities were placed there for minor nonviolent infractions.

The report also says that judges often send children to these facilities because local communities are unable to help them with mental problems or family issues. But once they are locked up, these young people rarely get the psychiatric care or special education they need because the institutions lack trained staff.

A report from the Justice Department, which has threatened to sue the state, documents the use of excessive and injury-causing force against children in juvenile facilities, often for minor offenses such as laughing too loudly or refusing to get dressed. And last week, the Legal Aid Society of New York City filed a class-action suit on behalf of youths in confinement, arguing that conditions in the system violate their constitutional rights.

Not surprisingly, these institutions do a terrible job of rehabilitation. According to a study of children released from custody between 1991 and 1995, 89 percent of the boys and 81 percent of the girls were eventually rearrested. New York’s facilities are so disastrous and inhumane that state officials recently asked the courts to refrain from sending children to them, except in cases in which they presented a clear danger to the public.

Mr. Paterson’s task force was rightly impressed with Missouri’s juvenile justice system. It has adopted smaller regional facilities that focus on rehabilitation and house troubled youths as close to home as possible in order to involve parents and community groups in the therapeutic process. Missouri also has cut recidivisim rates by smoothing re-entry and helping young people with drug treatment, education or job placement.

New York clearly needs to follow Ms. Carrión’s advice and adopt a Missouri-style system. That means the Legislature will finally have to put the needs of the state’s children ahead of the politically powerful unions and upstate lawmakers who want to preserve jobs — and the disastrous status quo — at all costs.

A version of this article appeared in print on January 6, 2010, on page A22 of the New York edition.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/06/opinion/06wed2.html

-------------------
http://blog.simplejustice.us/2010/01/06/children-v-unions.aspx
Simple Justice Blog
Children v. Unions
Posted by SHG at 1/6/2010 7:16 AM

The New York Times editorial contrasts the clash of two sacred cows,
children and unions. As hard as it may be to imagine, the most significant force against the reform of failed criminal justice programs have been the unions, and the politicians who depend on them for financing, representing
prison guards.

It was a brilliant idea to build prisons in depressed upstate locations, where there was land aplenty and rampant unemployment. It took the bad guys away from the masses, and made for a pretty good local economy when people needed it. But along the way, people forget that it wasn't about their having jobs, but about the people they were holding. These people included children.

A report by a task force appointed by Gov. David Paterson describes a
failing system that damages young people, fails to curb recidivism and eats up millions of tax dollars. Children should be confined only when they present a clear threat to public safety. But the most recent statistics show that 53 percent of the youths admitted to New York's institutional facilities were placed there for minor nonviolent infractions.

Not surprisingly, these institutions do a terrible job of rehabilitation. According to a study of children released from custody between 1991 and 1995, 89 percent of the boys and 81 percent of the girls were eventually rearrested. New York's facilities are so disastrous and inhumane that state officials recently asked the courts to refrain from sending children to them, except in cases in which they presented a clear danger to the public. The reports showed that these children were in need of mental health services and education, but they were unable to get the help they needed
within their communities because all the cash flowed upstate to prisons. If you've got prisons, you need to fill them up or all that money is wasted. No one likes to see money wasted.

In the face of these reports, the unions are up in arms. The upstate
politicians are up in arms too, as they don't want to lose their financing or invoke the wrath of their constituents who will lose their jobs.Frankly, it's understandable. It's just not acceptable.

At the extreme end, we have the two Pennsylvania judges, Mark A. Ciavarella Jr. and Michael T. Conahan, who were placing kids in confinement for a kickback. Trading off the lives of children for upstate jobs isn't entirely different, except that the cash flow is spread out a little broader and it's done in the name of government.

There are some who have given up hope on children, who buy into the
child-predator myth and believe that kids are beyond redemption. If so, then prison is the way to go, keep those nasty children away from good, law-abiding folk. But this clearly doesn't apply to a child who presents no threat of harm to anyone. And even the ones who do are still children. Children, for crying out loud. No one is arguing that they don't do harm and aren't in need of incarceration at times, but that they are not unsalvageable and beyond help.

While there may be argument about what to do with the most violent, the most dangerous, there should be no argument that the vast majority of children who find themselves in some form of juvenile justice scrutiny have the capacity to be helped and to go on to lead happy, productive lives. Unless we warehouse them in upstate prisons, where all hope is lost and no help is found, so that union members can continue to have gainful employment.

It's not that I don't appreciate that prison guards have families and
children of their own to support. It's not that I take lightly the loss of jobs in otherwise depressed counties. It's not that these people don't have legitimate needs of their own. But when the choice is between children and unions, the children must win out. Children cannot be traded for jobs.
Sorry, unions. Sorry, prison guards.

Posted by lois at 09:58 AM | Comments (0)

December 31, 2009

Treatment of Youths in New York Prisons Spurs Suit

Treatment of Youths in New York Prisons Spurs Suit
By NICHOLAS CONFESSORE
Published: December 30, 2009
NY Times

ALBANY — Youths detained in some of New York’s juvenile prisons have suffered bruises, cuts and a host of other injuries from aggressive physical restraining practices that violate their legal and constitutional rights, according to a federal lawsuit filed on Wednesday.

The class-action suit, filed in federal court in Manhattan on behalf of roughly 500 youths in 10 of the prisons, also accuses the Office of Children and Family Services, the state agency that runs the facilities, of failing to provide adequate mental health services

The legal claim follows two withering reports from the United States Department of Justice and a state task force that portrayed the state’s juvenile justice system as so riddled with problems that it needed a complete overhaul.

The suit seeks an injunction that would sharply limit the use of force by youth counselors and require the state to provide the youths with more treatment for mental health problems, which affect a vast majority of those in custody.

The lawyers are also seeking unspecified monetary damages from employees who, the suit alleges, abused or mistreated eight youths currently in the custody of the Office of Children and Family Services.

The employees are identified only as John Does Nos. 1 through 47 and the eight youngsters by their initials. The suit charges that at least some of the children were threatened with retaliation if they made any complaints to the workers’ superiors.

The lawsuit was filed by the Legal Aid Society of New York City, which provides legal representation to a vast majority of juveniles who end up in the state’s youth prisons. Besides the employees, the suit names Gladys Carrión, the agency’s commissioner.

“Once sent to an O.C.F.S. facility, these children find themselves far from their families, behind barbed wire,” said Tamara A. Steckler, a Legal Aid lawyer working on the lawsuit. “They need a helping hand to meet their mental health and other service needs, but instead they get the back of the hand when they are subjected to the excessive use of force or are denied mental health services.”

The state youth prisons are already operating under the threat of a federal takeover as state officials negotiate with the Department of Justice over a plan to fix the system’s worst problems: the overuse of physical force, inadequate psychological and drug abuse counseling, and substandard education.

Ms. Carrión issued new rules limiting the use of force against youths soon after she took office in 2007, and has since pushed to shut many of the prisons where violence had been a significant problem. But she has faced resistance — and sometimes sharp criticism — from public employees’ unions, which say that she has understated the risks those policies pose to workers.

A spokesman for Ms. Carrión said the agency had not yet received a copy of the lawsuit and could not comment.

A report issued by federal investigators in August found that youths in four facilities were routinely subjected to inappropriate force in violation of state rules, resulting in dozens of serious injuries. This month, a state task force appointed by Gov. David A. Paterson reported that similar problems were rife throughout the system, which houses roughly 1,000 youths in 28 prisons, and recommended a far-reaching overhaul.

The new lawsuit focuses on two intake centers for all youths placed in O.C.F.S. custody, one residential center for girls and seven “limited secure” facilities, the youth equivalent of a medium-security prison.

Legal Aid lawyers said they had filed the suit in part because the state had not moved quickly enough to change the system and because they were concerned that any settlement with the Department of Justice would remedy conditions only at the four worst prisons. “The lawsuit is always our last resort,” Ms. Steckler said. “But children are being imminently harmed, and the relief is needed now.”
A version of this article appeared in print on December 31, 2009, on page A23 of the New York edition.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/31/nyregion/31juvenile.html?_r=1

Posted by lois at 09:20 AM | Comments (0)

December 18, 2009

De-Criminalizing Children & Legislative Update

Update: The Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Reauthorization Act of 2009, S. 678, has been introduced and was approved by the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee by a vote of 12-7 on December 17th, 2009. Now all Senators need to be contacted.

Editorial- De-Criminalizing Children
NY Times
Published: December 16, 2009

As many as 150,000 children are sent to adult jails in this country every year — often in connection with nonviolent offenses or arrests that do not lead to conviction. That places them at risk of being raped or battered and increases the chance they will end up as career criminals.

To fix this problem, Congress needs to properly reauthorize the Juvenile Justice Delinquency and Prevention Act of 1974, under which states agreed to humanize juvenile justice policies in exchange for more federal aid. This act was largely bypassed in the 1990s when unfounded fears of an adolescent crime wave reached hysterical levels.

When it reauthorizes the law — it is already three years late — Congress should make it illegal for states to place children in adult prisons, perhaps with the exception of truly heinous criminals.

The House has yet to introduce a new bill; in the Senate, an updated version has yet to be voted out of the Judiciary Committee. The Senate bill is less than ideal, but it does encourage the states to de-emphasize the practice of detaining children in adult jails before trial and requires them to better protect young people who end up there. Several states have begun to reform their systems: housing young people in juvenile facilities — where they are better protected and can get mental health treatment — even if they have been convicted in adult courts. The current version of the law threatens states with loss of federal aid if they make that decision. The Senate bill would do away with that language.

The bill also would require states to phase out policies under which children are detained in either juvenile or adult facilities for offenses like violating curfew or smoking. These children should be dealt with through community-based counseling or family intervention programs, which are better for the child and for taxpayers.

In addition, the bill increases financing for mentoring, drug treatment, mental health care and other programs that have been shown to keep children out of custody in the first place. And it would require states to closely monitor — and address — racial inequities in their system. Studies show that black and Hispanic children get harsher treatment at all levels of the juvenile justice system than white children.

The Senate bill is not perfect. But it represents a welcome step away from the cruel and self-defeating policies that subject children to irreparable harm at the hands of the state and puts them on a path that too often leads to a lifetime spent behind bars.
A version of this article appeared in print on December 17, 2009, on page A46 of the New York edition.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/17/opinion/17thu3.html?_r=1&th&emc=th
-----------------------

Tell the Senate: Pass Juvenile Justice Reform Now!
Targeting: The U.S. Senate

Sponsored by: Campaign for Youth Justice

The Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Reauthorization Act of 2009, S. 678, has been introduced and is awaiting action in the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee. This year marks the 35th anniversary of the Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act (JJDPA), which provides federal funding to states that comply with a set of best practices aimed at avoiding the detention and incarceration of young people in juvenile and adult facilities.

It's a good law, and is needed now more than ever to end the over-incarceration of young people of color in the justice system and stop the inappropriate use of adult jails for warehousing children charged as adults.

Unfortunately, the Senate may adjourn for the holidays before the Judiciary Committee or the full Senate updates and passes this critical legislation. While the Senate goes "home for the holidays", thousands of youth will be miles away from their families and communities in adult jails, prisons and juvenile detention and correctional facilities.

If you believe that it is urgent to stop putting youth in adult jails and prisons, to end the over-incarceration of youth of color in the justice system, and instead to devote more resources to effective juvenile justice programs such as alternatives to detention and incarceration, contact the Senate now and urge them to move the bill in the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee and the full Senate now!
Link to website to contact your senator.
http://www.change.org/actions/view/tell_the_senate_pass_juvenile_justice_reform_now

Posted by lois at 10:44 AM | Comments (0)

December 16, 2009

Campaign for Youth Justice: Reauthorization of S.678...Juvenile Justice Act. Contact your sentator now.

Tell the Senate: Pass Juvenile Justice Reform Now!
Targeting: The U.S. Senate

Sponsored by: Campaign for Youth Justice

The Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Reauthorization Act of 2009, S. 678, has been introduced and is awaiting action in the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee. This year marks the 35th anniversary of the Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act (JJDPA), which provides federal funding to states that comply with a set of best practices aimed at avoiding the detention and incarceration of young people in juvenile and adult facilities.

It's a good law, and is needed now more than ever to end the over-incarceration of young people of color in the justice system and stop the inappropriate use of adult jails for warehousing children charged as adults.

Unfortunately, the Senate may adjourn for the holidays before the Judiciary Committee or the full Senate updates and passes this critical legislation. While the Senate goes "home for the holidays", thousands of youth will be miles away from their families and communities in adult jails, prisons and juvenile detention and correctional facilities.

If you believe that it is urgent to stop putting youth in adult jails and prisons, to end the over-incarceration of youth of color in the justice system, and instead to devote more resources to effective juvenile justice programs such as alternatives to detention and incarceration, contact the Senate now and urge them to move the bill in the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee and the full Senate now!
Link to website to contact your senator.
http://www.change.org/actions/view/tell_the_senate_pass_juvenile_justice_reform_now

Posted by lois at 08:29 PM | Comments (0)

December 15, 2009

NY: Juvenile Jails: Official Hopes Prison Crisis May Spur Change

“I have people on staff that have two, three, four, five cases of abuse or inappropriate restraint, and I can’t get rid of them because of civil service rules", Ms. Carrion said."

Official Hopes Prison Crisis May Spur Change

By NICHOLAS CONFESSORE
Published: December 15, 2009
NY Times
ALBANY— After a state task force delivered a withering indictment of New York’s juvenile prisons, the head of the agency responsible for the prisons reacted by going on a publicity blitz — not to challenge the findings but to promote them.

“It is a lever, and I think that is important,” Gladys Carrión, the commissioner of the state Office of Children and Family Services, said on Monday in between an interview with a radio station and a meeting with the chairman of the task force. “Usually the lever is the death of a child, and I don’t want to see that. If it takes this report to push through change, then good.”ivil-service rules, Ms. Carrión said.

When Ms. Carrión, a lawyer and a former executive at the United Way, took over the department in 2007, her track record as a no-nonsense leader raised hopes that she could overhaul what was widely considered a broken system.

But after almost three years, progress has been halting and the task force, which was appointed by Gov. David A. Paterson last year, described a system rife with problems. Many of the youths at the state’s 28 facilities have mental illnesses or drug addictions for which they get inadequate treatment, the report found. Many of those released from state custody are arrested and incarcerated again within a few years. And despite stringent rules imposed by Ms. Carrión dictating when staff can use physical force, abuse complaints are still common.

The United States Department of Justice, which highlighted serious physical abuse at four prisons in a separate report last summer, has threatened to take over the entire system if the problems are not fixed.

Ms. Carrión and her supporters — including juvenile justice experts and child welfare advocates — blame a combination of bureaucratic inertia, scarce state dollars, and resistance from unions and elected officials to closing or reducing the size of the prisons, many of which are in struggling upstate communities that need the jobs.

Ms. Carrión, 58, a blunt yet cheerful Bronx native who previously was a city community development official and worked as an executive at the United Way of New York City, said she embraced the task force report’s findings in part because they revealed the magnitude of the work that remains.

“I have people on staff that have two, three, four, five cases of abuse or inappropriate restraint, and I can’t get rid of them” because of civil-service rules, Ms. Carrión said. “I’m also the commissioner of child welfare. If you as a parent abuse your child, I take them away from you. Why is there a different standard for children that are in juvenile justice?”

But her critics, including the unions that represent agency workers, seized on the task force’s findings on Monday to argue that Ms. Carrión is the problem.

“If things haven’t improved in the three years she’s been in this position, the governor should decide what’s in the best interests of these kids,” said Ken Brynien, the president of New York State Public Employees Federation.

Some advocates believe there needs to be a greater sense of urgency because the future of many young people in the agency’s care is at stake. “The system is turning in a new direction,” the task force’s report said, “but there is still much more to be done.”

Ms. Carrión acknowledged that she needed to do better.

Still, she has aggressively downsized the system of state-run youth prisons and diverted resources to community-based care: smaller group facilities located closer to a youth’s family that emphasize psychological counseling and rehabilitation, with longer-term residential prisons reserved for the truly dangerous.

“She believes, and I am a proponent as well, that in New York State we have historically overvalued institutional care for the juvenile delinquent population,” said Bill Baccaglini, executive director of the New York Foundling, a private child welfare agency, and a former senior official at the Office of Children and Family Services.

Ms. Carrión has closed 11 facilities and has cut the population in the detention facilities by about 50 percent. Cameras have been installed to protect the workers and the youths in custody, Ms. Carrión said.

Workers are required to report every instance in which they are forced to use physical restraint, and Ms. Carrión receives a weekly summary. “I read them, and I think everybody holds their breath,” she said. “Because if it goes up, they hear from me.”

But many workers have resisted the changes, arguing that limits on physical force have put them at risk, pointing to a rise in workplace injuries among agency employees. They also argue that Ms. Carrión underestimates the danger that many youths in custody pose to themselves and others, and that community-based programs are not equipped to handle them.

“The youth are there because they have committed crimes,” Mr. Brynien said. “Many of them pled down from violent crimes. Some of them are larger than the staff, some are involved in gangs. To portray them as children who are locked away and shouldn’t be is a very oversimplified view.”

Despite the harsh spotlight on her agency, Ms. Carrión still seems to have the support of her boss, Mr. Paterson, who praised the task force’s report as well as Ms. Carrión, saying she “has done everything possible to provide better care for the mentally disabled."

Ms. Carrión’s efforts may get a boost when the state finishes negotiating a plan to address the problems in its juvenile justice system with the Department of Justice, which could compel the agency to institute a more aggressive overhaul.

“This is like a huge ship,” Ms. Carrión said. “Trying to turn it around is very difficult.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/16/nyregion/16carrion.html

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December 14, 2009

New York Finds Extreme Crisis in Youth Prisons: problems are so acute that the state agency overseeing the prisons has asked New York’s Family Court judges not to send youths to any of them unless they are a significant risk to public safety

New York Finds Extreme Crisis in Youth Prisons

By NICHOLAS CONFESSORE
Published: December 13, 2009
NY Times

ALBANY — New York’s system of juvenile prisons is broken, with young people battling mental illness or addiction held alongside violent offenders in abysmal facilities where they receive little counseling, can be physically abused and rarely get even a basic education, according to a report by a state panel.

The problems are so acute that the state agency overseeing the prisons has asked New York’s Family Court judges not to send youths to any of them unless they are a significant risk to public safety, recommending alternatives, like therapeutic foster care.

“New York State’s current approach fails the young people who are drawn into the system, the public whose safety it is intended to protect, and the principles of good governance that demand effective use of scarce state resources,” said the confidential draft report, which was obtained by The New York Times.

The report, prepared by a task force appointed by Gov. David A. Paterson and led by Jeremy Travis, president of the John Jay College of Criminal Justice, comes three months after a federal investigation found that excessive force was routinely used at four prisons, resulting in injuries as severe as broken bones and shattered teeth.

The situation was so serious the Department of Justice, which made the investigation, threatened to take over the system.

But according to the task force, the problems uncovered at the four prisons are endemic to the entire system, which houses about 900 young people at 28 facilities around the state.

While some prisons for violent and dangerous offenders should be preserved, the report calls for most to be replaced with a system of smaller centers closer to the communities where most of the families of the youths in custody live.

The task force was convened in 2008 after years of complaints about the prisons, punctuated by the death in 2006 of an emotionally disturbed 15-year-old boy at one center after two workers pinned him to the ground. The task force’s recommendations are likely to help shape the state’s response to the federal findings.

“I was not proud of my state when I saw some of these facilities,” Mr. Travis said in an interview on Friday. “New York is no longer the leader it once was in the juvenile justice field.”

New York’s juvenile prisons are both extremely expensive and extraordinarily ineffective, according to the report, which will be given to Mr. Paterson on Monday. The state spends roughly $210,000 per youth annually, but three-quarters of those released from detention are arrested again within three years. And though the median age of those admitted to juvenile facilities is almost 16, one-third of those held read at a third-grade level.

The prisons are meant to house youths considered dangerous to themselves or others, but there is no standardized statewide system for assessing such risks, the report found.

In 2007, more than half of the youths who entered detention centers were sent there for the equivalent of misdemeanor offenses, in many cases theft, drug possession or even truancy. More than 80 percent were black or Latino, even though blacks and Latinos make up less than half the state’s total youth population — a racial disparity that has never been explained, the report said.

Many of those detained have addictions or psychological illnesses for which less restrictive treatment programs were not available. Three-quarters of children entering the juvenile justice system have drug or alcohol problems, more than half have had a diagnosis of mental health problems and one-third have developmental disabilities.

Yet there are only 55 psychologists and clinical social workers assigned to the prisons, according to the task force. And none of the facilities employ psychiatrists, who have the authority to prescribe the drugs many mentally ill teenagers require.

While 76 percent of youths in custody are from the New York City area, nearly all the prisons are upstate, and the youths’ relatives, many of them poor, cannot afford frequent visits, cutting them off from support networks.

“These institutions are often sorely underresourced, and some fail to keep their young people safe and secure, let alone meet their myriad service and treatment needs,” according to the report, which was based on interviews with workers and youths in custody, visits to prisons and advice from experts. “In some facilities, youth are subjected to shocking violence and abuse.”

Even before the task force’s report is released, the Paterson administration is moving to reduce the number of youths held in juvenile prisons.

Gladys Carrión, the commissioner of the Office of Children and Family Services, the agency that oversees the juvenile justice system, has recommended that judges find alternative placements for most young offenders, according to an internal memorandum issued Oct. 28 by the state’s deputy chief administrative judge.

Ms. Carrión also advised court officials that New York would not contest the Justice Department findings, according to the memo, and that officials were negotiating a settlement agreement to remedy the system.

Peter E. Kauffmann, a spokesman for Mr. Paterson, said the governor “looks forward to receiving the recommendations of the task force as we continue our efforts to transform the state’s juvenile justice system from a correctional-punitive model to a therapeutic model.”

The report contends that smaller facilities would place less strain on workers, helping reduce the use of physical force, and would be better able to tailor rehabilitation programs.

New York is not unique in using its juvenile prisons to house mentally ill teenagers, particularly as many states confront huge budget shortfalls that have resulted in significant cuts to mental health programs. Still, some states are trying to shift to smaller, community-based programs.

The report by New York’s task force does not say how much money would be needed to overhaul the system, but as Mr. Paterson and state lawmakers try to close a $3.2 billion deficit, cost could become a major hurdle.

Ms. Carrión has faced resistance from some prison workers, who accuse her of making them scapegoats for the system’s problems and minimizing the dangerous conditions they face. State records show a significant spike in on-the-job injuries, for which some workers blame Ms. Carrión’s efforts to limit the use of force.

“We embrace the idea of moving towards a more therapeutic model of care, but you can’t do that without more training and more staff,” said Stephen A. Madarasz, a spokesman for the Civil Service Employees Association, the union that represents prison workers. “You’re not dealing with wayward youth. In the more secure facilities, you’re dealing with individuals who have been involved in pretty serious crimes.”

Advocates have credited Ms. Carrión, who was appointed in 2007 by former Gov. Eliot Spitzer, with instituting significant reforms, including installing cameras in some of the more troubled prisons and providing more counseling.

But the state has a long way to go, many advocates say.

“Even the kids that are not considered dangerous are shackled when they are being transferred from their homes to the centers upstate — hands and feet, sometimes even belly chains,” said Clara Hemphill, a researcher and author of a report on the state’s youth prisons published in October by the Center for New York City Affairs at the New School.

“It really is barbaric,” she added, “the way they treat these kids.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/14/nyregion/14juvenile.html?_r=1&hp
A version of this article appeared in print on December 14, 2009, on page A1 of the New York edition.
Draft Report: Here: http://documents.nytimes.com/14juvenile#p=1

Posted by lois at 05:02 PM | Comments (0)

December 13, 2009

Poor Children Likelier to Get Antipsychotics

Poor Children Likelier to Get Antipsychotics

By DUFF WILSON
Published: December 11, 2009: NY Times

New federally financed drug research reveals a stark disparity: children covered by Medicaid are given powerful antipsychotic medicines at a rate four times higher than children whose parents have private insurance. And the Medicaid children are more likely to receive the drugs for less severe conditions than their middle-class counterparts, the data shows.

Those findings, by a team from Rutgers and Columbia, are almost certain to add fuel to a long-running debate. Do too many children from poor families receive powerful psychiatric drugs not because they actually need them — but because it is deemed the most efficient and cost-effective way to control problems that may be handled much differently for middle-class children?

The questions go beyond the psychological impact on Medicaid children, serious as that may be. Antipsychotic drugs can also have severe physical side effects, causing drastic weight gain and metabolic changes resulting in lifelong physical problems.

On Tuesday, a pediatric advisory committee to the Food and Drug Administration met to discuss the health risks for all children who take antipsychotics. The panel will consider recommending new label warnings for the drugs, which are now used by an estimated 300,000 people under age 18 in this country, counting both Medicaid patients and those with private insurance.

Meanwhile, a group of Medicaid medical directors from 16 states, under a project they call Too Many, Too Much, Too Young, has been experimenting with ways to reduce prescriptions of antipsychotic drugs among Medicaid children.

They plan to publish a report early next year.

The Rutgers-Columbia study will also be published early next year, in the peer-reviewed journal Health Affairs. But the findings have already been posted on the Web, setting off discussion among experts who treat and study troubled young people.

Some experts say they are stunned by the disparity in prescribing patterns. But others say it reinforces previous indications, and their own experience, that children with diagnoses of mental or emotional problems in low-income families are more likely to be given drugs than receive family counseling or psychotherapy.

Part of the reason is insurance reimbursements, as Medicaid often pays much less for counseling and therapy than private insurers do. Part of it may have to do with the challenges that families in poverty may have in consistently attending counseling or therapy sessions, even when such help is available.

“It’s easier for patients, and it’s easier for docs,” said Dr. Derek H. Suite, a psychiatrist in the Bronx whose pediatric cases include children and adolescents covered by Medicaid and who sometimes prescribes antipsychotics. “But the question is, ‘What are you prescribing it for?’ That’s where it gets a little fuzzy.”

Too often, Dr. Suite said, he sees young Medicaid patients to whom other doctors have given antipsychotics that the patients do not seem to need. Recently, for example, he met with a 15-year-old girl. She had stopped taking the antipsychotic medication that had been prescribed for her after a single examination, paid for by Medicaid, at a clinic where she received a diagnosis of bipolar disorder.

Why did she stop? Dr. Suite asked. “I can control my moods,” the girl said softly.

After evaluating her, Dr. Suite decided she was right. The girl had arguments with her mother and stepfather and some insomnia. But she was a good student and certainly not bipolar, in Dr. Suite’s opinion.

“Normal teenager,” Dr. Suite said, nodding. “No scrips for you.”

Because there can be long waits to see the psychiatrists accepting Medicaid, it is often a pediatrician or family doctor who prescribes an antipsychotic to a Medicaid patient — whether because the parent wants it or the doctor believes there are few other options.

Some experts even say Medicaid may provide better care for children than many covered by private insurance because the drugs — which can cost $400 a month — are provided free to patients, and families do not have to worry about the co-payments and other insurance restrictions.

“Maybe Medicaid kids are getting better treatment,” said Dr. Gabrielle Carlson, a child psychiatrist and professor at the Stony Brook School of Medicine. “If it helps keep them in school, maybe it’s not so bad.”

In any case, as Congress works on health care legislation that could expand the nation’s Medicaid rolls by 15 million people — a 43 percent increase — the scope of the antipsychotics problem, and the expense, could grow in coming years.

Even though the drugs are typically cheaper than long-term therapy, they are the single biggest drug expenditure for Medicaid, costing the program $7.9 billion in 2006, the most recent year for which the data is available.

The Rutgers-Columbia research, based on millions of Medicaid and private insurance claims, is the most extensive analysis of its type yet on children’s antipsychotic drug use. It examined records for children in seven big states — including New York, Texas and California — selected to be representative of the nation’s Medicaid population, for the years 2001 and 2004.

The data indicated that more than 4 percent of patients ages 6 to 17 in Medicaid fee-for-service programs received antipsychotic drugs, compared with less than 1 percent of privately insured children and adolescents. More recent data through 2007 indicates that the disparity has remained, said Stephen Crystal, a Rutgers professor who led the study. Experts generally agree that some characteristics of the Medicaid population may contribute to psychological problems or psychiatric disorders. They include the stresses of poverty, single-parent homes, poorer schools, lack of access to preventive care and the fact that the Medicaid rolls include many adults who are themselves mentally ill.

As a result, studies have found that children in low-income families may have a higher rate of mental health problems — perhaps two to one — compared with children in better-off families. But that still does not explain the four-to-one disparity in prescribing antipsychotics.

Professor Crystal, who is the director of the Center for Pharmacotherapy at Rutgers, says his team’s data also indicates that poorer children are more likely to receive antipsychotics for less serious conditions than would typically prompt a prescription for a middle-class child.

But Professor Crystal said he did not have clear evidence to form an opinion on whether or not children on Medicaid were being overtreated.

“Medicaid kids are subject to a lot of stresses that lead to behavior issues which can be hard to distinguish from more serious psychiatric conditions,” he said. “It’s very hard to pin down.”

And yet Dr. Mark Olfson, a psychiatry professor at Columbia and a co-author of the study, said at least one thing was clear: “A lot of these kids are not getting other mental health services.”

The F.D.A. has approved antipsychotic drugs for children specifically to treat schizophrenia, autism and bipolar disorder. But they are more frequently prescribed to children for other, less extreme conditions, including attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, aggression, persistent defiance or other so-called conduct disorders — especially when the children are covered by Medicaid, the new study shows.

Although doctors may legally prescribe the drugs for these “off label” uses, there have been no long-term studies of their effects when used for such conditions.

The Rutgers-Columbia study found that Medicaid children were more likely than those with private insurance to be given the drugs for off-label uses like A.D.H.D. and conduct disorders. The privately insured children, in turn, were more likely than their Medicaid counterparts to receive the drugs for F.D.A.-approved uses like bipolar disorder.

Even if parents enrolled in Medicaid may be reluctant to put their children on drugs, some come to rely on them as the only thing that helps.

“They say it’s impossible to stop now,” Evelyn Torres, 48, of the Bronx, said of her son’s use of antipsychotics since he received a diagnosis of bipolar disorder at age 3. Seven years later, the boy is now also afflicted with weight and heart problems. But Ms. Torres credits Medicaid for making the boy’s mental and physical conditions manageable. “They’re helping with everything,” she said.
A version of this article appeared in print on December 12, 2009, on page A1 of the New York edition.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/12/health/12medicaid.html?_r=1&em

Posted by lois at 04:49 PM | Comments (0)

December 09, 2009

American Youth in the 21st Century: Pathologized, Criminalized and Disposable

American Youth in the 21st Century: Pathologized, Criminalized and Disposable
By Henry A. Giroux, AlterNet. Posted November 16, 2009.

Young people today face imprisonment, the prescription of psychotropic drugs, psychiatric confinement, and zero tolerance policies that model schools after prisons.

Editor's note: the following is an excerpt from Henry Giroux' new book, Youth in a Suspect Society: Democracy or Disposability? (Palgrave MacMillan).

Punishment and fear have replaced compassion and social responsibility as the most important modalities mediating the relationship of youth to the larger social order. Youth within the last two decades have come to be seen as a source of trouble rather than as a resource for investing in the future, and in the case of poor black and Hispanic youth are increasingly treated as either a disposable population, cannon fodder for barbaric wars abroad, or the source of most of society’s problems. Hence, young people now constitute a crisis that has less to do with improving the future than with denying it. As Larry Grossberg points out, “It has become common to think of kids as a threat to the existing social order and for kids to be blamed for the problems they experience. We slide from kids in trouble, kids have problems, and kids are threatened, to kids as trouble, kids as problems, and kids as threatening.” This was exemplified when the columnist Bob Herbert reported in the New York Times that “parts of New York City are like a police state for young men, women, and children who happen to be black or Hispanic. They are routinely stopped, searched, harassed, intimidated, humiliated and, in many cases, arrested for no good reason.” No longer “viewed as a privileged sign and embodiment of the future,” youth are now increasingly demonized by the popular media and derided by politicians looking for quick-fix solutions to crime and other social ills. While youth have always had to bear the misplaced fear and distrust of adults, how youth are represented, talked about, and treated has changed dramatically in the last two decades.

Under the reign of neoliberal politics with its hyped-up social Darwinism and theater of cruelty, the popular demonization and “dangerousation” of the young now justifies responses to youth that were unthinkable 20 years ago, including criminalization and imprisonment, the prescription of psychotropic drugs, psychiatric confinement, and zero tolerance policies that model schools after prisons. School has become a model for a punishing society in which children who commit a rule violation as minor as a dress code infraction or slightly act out in class can be handcuffed, booked, and put in a jail cell. Racism, inequality, and poverty are on full display in the growing resegregation of public schools in the United States. Now more than ever, many schools either simply warehouse young black males or put them on the fast track to prison incarceration or a future of control under the criminal justice system. All across America, black and brown youth are being suspended or expelled at rates much higher than their white counterparts who commit similar behavioral infractions. For example, as Howard Witt writes in the Chicago Tribune, “In the average New Jersey public school, African-American students are almost 60 times as likely as white students to be expelled for serious disciplinary infractions. In Minnesota, black students are suspended 6 times as often as whites [and ] in Iowa, blacks make up just 5 percent of the statewide public school enrollment but account for 22 percent of the students who get suspended. . . . And on average across the nation, black students are suspended and expelled at nearly three times the rate of white students.” As schools become increasingly militarized, drug-sniffing dogs, metal detectors, and cameras have become common features in schools, and administrators appear more willing if not eager “to criminalize many school infractions, saddling tens of thousands of students with misdemeanor criminal records for offenses such as swearing[,] disrupting class,” or pushing another student. Trust and respect now give way to fear, disdain, and suspicion, creating an environment in which critical pedagogical practices wither, while pedagogies of surveillance and testing flourish. If young people were once defined as part of the vocabulary of innocence and compassion, they are now largely understood through the discourse of fear, guilt, and punishment.

Clearly, there is more at stake under the current regime of neoliberal politics than an attack on children largely characterized by “negative labels and characterizations of youth [that] are falsely totalizing” and punitive laws and public policies. Youth have also become collateral damage for conservatives and neoliberal advocates who want to dismantle the social state and in doing so justify themselves by pointing to an alleged rise of a generation of disorderly and dangerous youth dependent upon government entitlements. Within this discourse, government support for young people is both undermined and inappropriately blamed for creating a generation of kids labeled as psychologically damaged, narcissistic, violent, and out of control. Scapegoating youth as both a generation of suspects and a threat to the social order allows conservatives and neoliberals to further privatize those public spheres that youth need, such as education and health care, while developing policies that move away from social investment to matters of punishment and containment. In this instance, the punishing state combines with the logic of the market to produce priorities and policies that disinvest in the future of children and assert a ruthlessness that largely treats them as reified commodities or disposable populations. Both childhood and the state are now being reimagined in ways that reveal the priorities of a society that has fully embraced the reckless abandon of casino capitalism, where the only rules that matter are made to order by powerful corporations and rich investors. How else to interpret neoliberal-inspired government programs that in the midst of deepening inequality, rising levels of poverty, catastrophic increases in failed mortgages, and growing unemployment invest more in prisons than in public and higher education?

It is more necessary than ever to register youth as a theoretical, moral, and political center of concern, even as it is increasingly evident that youth are one of our lowest national priorities. It is crucial to connect the current crisis in democracy to the war against young people. Doing so will remind adults of their ethical and political responsibility to invest in youth as a symbol for not only securing a democratic future but also keeping alive those elements of civic imagination, culture, and education that subordinate economic principles to democratic values. The category of youth may be one of the most important referents for beginning a critical examination about the pernicious consequences of a society driven by market values, one that not only abstracts young people from the future but shapes the present in a theater of war in which youth become the most innocent victims. Youth provide a powerful touchstone for a critical discussion about the long-term consequences of neoliberal policies, which undermine any viable notion of justice, equality, and freedom, while also gesturing toward those conditions that make a democratic future possible. Many young people are part of social movements that not only address these crucial issues but also provide a politics, modes of resistance, and connective relations that adults should take seriously as part of their own civic and political formation at the beginning of the new millennium.

Henry A. Giroux currently holds the Global TV Network Chair Professorship at McMaster University in the English and Cultural Studies Department. His most recent books include "The University in Chains: Confronting the Military-Industrial-Academic Complex" (2007) and "Against the Terror of Neoliberalism" (2008).
http://www.alternet.org/story/143875/?page=entire

Posted by lois at 05:07 PM | Comments (0)

December 01, 2009

Vinny Schiraldi Juvenile Justice Chief in DC & founder of the Justice Policy Institute to Head NYC Probation Department

Juvenile justice chief in D.C. is leaving post
Schiraldi will lead New York City's probation department
By Nikita Stewart
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, December 1, 2009

Vincent N. Schiraldi, whose advocacy of less restrictive detention for juvenile offenders was both commended and condemned, is leaving his post as director of the D.C. Department of Youth Rehabilitation Services to head New York City's probation department.

New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg announced the appointment Monday. The news drew mixed reaction in the District, where Schiraldi led the juvenile justice agency for almost five years and most recently oversaw the closing of the Oak Hill Youth Center.

Youth advocates praised Schiraldi's nurturing tendencies and the outlets the agency provided, such as acting in a Shakespeare troupe and providing free lawn service for elderly residents. Leaders in the Fraternal Order of Police questioned whether Schiraldi was too lenient.

"D.C. is now safer, and New York is a little less safe," said Kristopher Baumann, chairman of the union. "He was absolutely open about his belief that juvenile offenders and violent juvenile offenders needed to be coddled."

Liz Ryan, president and chief executive of the Campaign for Youth Justice in Washington, said that lower recidivism rates prove critics wrong. Schiraldi "has brought credibility" to the city's juvenile detention system. "He really turned it around. . . . He brought strong accountability."

Before Schiraldi took over the department in 2005, he was well known as founder and executive director of the Justice Policy Institute in Washington.

Mayor Adrian M. Fenty (D) has not announced his choice for interim director. Schiraldi, who is from New York City, is expected to begin his new job in February.

D.C. Council member Tommy Wells (D-Ward 6), chairman of the Committee on Human Services, credited Schiraldi with transforming the troubled agency, calling him a "reformer."

Wells said Schiraldi's work in Washington may be done. "Reformers tend not to focus on management," he said. "The challenge now is bringing in someone to focus on quality management of the reform . . . that Schiraldi brought."

In the spring, Schiraldi managed the closing of Oak Hill, the city's juvenile detention center in Laurel. It had long carried a reputation from a 1989 investigation that found that inmates had been severely beaten.

A half-mile away, the city opened the $46 million New Beginnings Youth Center, which Schiraldi called the "anti-prison."

On May 30, the day after Schiraldi, Fenty and others opened the new facility, an inmate scaled a fence and escaped.

In July, six inmates fled by breaking a window and making their way to an area of the campus not enclosed by a fence.

Last year, a 17-year-old participating in the Shakespeare troupe escaped from custody while at a cookout at Schiraldi's Columbia Heights home, where the efforts of the aspiring thespians were being celebrated.

Schiraldi's supporters, including the mayor, acknowledged the missteps but said they believed in the approach.

Schiraldi was appointed to his post in 2005 by Mayor Anthony A. Williams (D), Fenty's predecessor. Schiraldi was one of the few high-level holdovers from Williams's administration.

"He's created and implemented innovative programs that will serve as national best practice models for years to come," Fenty said in a statement. "Some of the District's most troubled youth have greatly benefited from his work and commitment during my Administration as well as the previous Williams Administration."

Schiraldi said in a statement that he was thankful for "the chance to come home to New York and make a difference in the lives of New Yorkers who have gotten in trouble with the law."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/11/30/AR2009113003966.html

Posted by lois at 10:03 PM | Comments (0)

November 12, 2009

Florida leads nation in locking up kids in adult jails

"In five of the six counties, burglary was the most common ticket to the adult system."

Florida leads nation in locking up kids in adult jails
By Colleen Jenkins, St Petersburg Tims Staff Writer
Thursday, November 12, 2009

TAMPA — This week, as the U.S. Supreme Court heard appeals in two Florida juvenile cases, scholars took note that the state leads the nation in locking up kids for life who committed crimes in which no one died.

That isn't Florida's only distinction.

The state sends more children to adult jails and prisons, period. Laws make it easy for prosecutors to pluck young people out of the juvenile justice system before they turn 18.

And in sheer numbers, Hillsborough County transferred more juvenile cases to the adult system than any other county in fiscal year 2007-08, a St. Petersburg Times review of Florida Department of Juvenile Justice data shows. Percentage-wise, Palm Beach County ranked No. 1, with Pinellas following as a close second among the state's largest counties.

Six Tampa Bay area counties — Hillsborough, Pinellas, Pasco, Hernando, Citrus and Manatee — deemed juveniles in 1,410 cases bad enough to be charged as adults. On the other end of the spectrum, seven counties in Florida didn't send any young people to the adult system.

Local prosecutors say the numbers reflect an aggressive stance against juvenile crime, but they stress that the decision to charge teens as adults isn't made lightly. Kids who wind up in felony court can still walk away with juvenile sanctions.

"It gives them one more bite at the apple, but we have a much bigger hammer over their head," Hillsborough Assistant State Attorney Pam Bondi said.

Advocates for juvenile justice reform argue that the statutes Florida enacted in the 1990s response to a surge in juvenile crime need updating. Researchers say the laws fail to consider that adolescents, less developed than adults, are often capable of change. Or that, all things equal, juveniles are more likely to re-offend if convicted in adult court.

The stain of an adult conviction, they say, threatens a young person's ability to join the military, get a job or enroll in school.

"You essentially pull the rug out from under these kids, and it's no wonder that they end up back in the system," said Liz Ryan, chief executive officer of the Campaign for Youth Justice in Washington, D.C., an organization dedicated to keeping youth out of the adult criminal justice system.

Statewide during the 2007-08 fiscal year, the number of juveniles transferred to adult court increased to 3,592. That's a 45 percent jump since 2003-04, but only about half as many transfers as the state had at its peak in the mid 1990s.

Hillsborough County prosecutors sent 660 juvenile cases to adult court in 2007-08, the most in the state. Hillsborough also had the most juvenile arrests in 2007 and 2008, according to data from the Florida Department of Law Enforcement.

Pinellas prosecutors transferred 517 cases, up from 271 cases four years earlier. Pasco County transferred 84 cases, down from previous years; Hernando had 46, Citrus had 33 and Manatee had 70.

In five of the six counties, burglary was the most common ticket to the adult system.

Researchers say the majority of juvenile cases land in adult court through "direct file," meaning at the discretion of prosecutors. Florida is one of just 15 states that give prosecutors that power.

Some juvenile advocates contend that the decision to transfer juveniles to adult court should be left up to judges because they are neutral parties in the criminal justice system. Pinellas-Pasco Chief Assistant State Attorney Bruce Bartlett counters that the current arrangement includes sufficient checks and balances, allowing judges to give young offenders juvenile sanctions or youthful offender sentences if they don't feel the cases merit adult punishment.

Florida statutes require prosecutors to direct file or seek indictment for certain violent crimes — such as murder — in adult court no matter the offender's age. Beyond that, prosecutors say their filing decisions are dictated by each offender's individual circumstances rather than strict guidelines.

Some crimes are so heinous that the public interest requires adult charges, prosecutors say. That was the rationale they used to pursue adult charges against 13-year-old Jose Guadalupe Walle, who was suspected in a string of rapes and robberies at restaurants in St. Petersburg and Apollo Beach and a Gibsonton home.

"He was 13 going on 25," Bartlett said this week. Some young offenders are "behaving as adults, and the crime itself warrants them to be charged as adults."

Prosecutors also turn to the adult system to deal with repeat offenders.

"Frankly, there are some of the kids we have in juvenile court who have not been amenable to any sanctions we can impose," said Pinellas Judge Raymond Gross. "You run out of options."

The charging decision isn't always clear cut. Defense attorneys and prosecutors spent weeks wrestling over whether Davis Islands teen Jordan Valdez should be charged in juvenile or adult court with fleeing the scene of a fatal crash when she was 16. The teen's attorneys said she was a good kid who made a mistake, and they worried that a felony charge would dash her college scholarship hopes.

Prosecutors ultimately filed an adult charge, saying only that they based the decision on the nature of the crime. Valdez is expected to plead guilty and be sentenced Nov. 24.

In Pinellas, Bartlett admits he struggled with the decision to charge five teenagers as adults after they terrorized neighborhoods over two nights in January and February with firebombs, slashed tires and shattered windows. Though the young men were good students, Bartlett said the amount of property damage and the repeated offenses tipped the scale for him to adult charges.

"I was pretty comfortable in my mind that those kids would never reoffend," he said. "But there's a certain level of punishment that has to be attached to it."

Last month, a judge sentenced the teens as youthful offenders to varying combinations of prison and probation.

Advocates acknowledge that young offenders need to be punished, but they lament that the state's tough stance on juvenile crime has shifted the focus, and funding, away from rehabilitation and prevention.

There are bright spots. After terrible crime rates in the 1990s, Miami-Dade is now considered a national model for effective juvenile justice. The county puts special emphasis on getting services for first-time offenders based on their needs rather than their crimes, a model Hillsborough and Pinellas counties have watched with interest.

Taking a holistic view with juvenile offenders is the only approach that makes sense, said Hillsborough Public Defender Julianne Holt.

"If you don't modify the behavior of the child and you don't create a values system," Holt said, "there's no doubt that the community suffers at a later time and so does that child."
http://www.tampabay.com/news/courts/florida-leads-nation-in-locking-up-kids-in-adult-jails/1051218
This and other news about youth and mass incarceration can be found at www.realcostofprisons.org/glbo/

Posted by lois at 03:17 PM | Comments (0)

October 30, 2009

PA Supreme Court Overturns Thousands Convictions By Judge Who Received $2.6 million in Kickbacks Who Sent Teenagers to Private Youth Jails

Pennsylvania Overturns Many Youths’ Convictions
By IAN URBINA - NY Times
Published: October 29, 2009

The Pennsylvania Supreme Court on Thursday overturned thousands of juvenile-offender convictions handed down by a judge now charged in a corruption scandal.

The judge, Mark A. Ciavarella Jr. of the Luzerne County Court of Common Pleas, and Michael T. Conahan, a fellow judge who for a time was the chief of that court, are charged with taking more than $2.6 million in kickbacks from the owner of two privately run youth detention centers in exchange for their sending teenagers there.

The Supreme Court said the conviction of any juvenile who appeared before Judge Ciavarella after Jan. 1, 2003, was invalid. The justices barred the retrial of all but an estimated 100 of those cases.

The decision followed advice the court received from Arthur Grim, a Berks County judge whom it appointed in February to review juvenile cases involving Judges Ciavarella and Conahan.

Judge Ciavarella, who along with Judge Conahan awaits federal trial on charges of income-tax and wire fraud, routinely held juvenile hearings that lasted just minutes, failing to ask the youths before him whether they understood the consequences of waiving their right to a lawyer and pleading guilty.

“We concluded,” the justices wrote Thursday, “that the record supports Judge Grim’s determination that Ciavarella knew he was violating both the law and the procedural rules promulgated by this court applicable when adjudicating the merits of juvenile cases without the knowing, intelligent and voluntary waiver of counsel by the juveniles.”

Under the justices’ ruling, the only cases that will be eligible for retrial are those in which youths are still under court supervision. The district attorney’s office has been directed to notify Judge Grim of those cases it wishes to prosecute again. He will then make a determination on each case.
A version of this article appeared in print on October 30, 2009, on page A18 of the New York edition.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/30/us/30judges.html?_r=1&ref=us

Posted by lois at 05:41 PM | Comments (0)

October 27, 2009

A sentence too cruel for kids By Alan K. Simpson

opinion
A sentence too cruel for kids
By Alan K. Simpson
Special to The Washington Post
Posted: 10/24/2009 01:00:00 AM MDT

Rather than serving in the U.S. Senate for almost 20 years, or having so many other wonderful life experiences, I could have served a longer sentence in prison for some of the stupid, reckless things I did as a teenager. I am grateful to have gotten a second chance — and I believe our society should make a sustained investment in offering second chances to our youth.

When I was a teen, we rode aimlessly around town, shot things up, started fires and generally raised hell. It was only dumb luck that we never really hurt anyone. At 17, I was caught destroying federal property and was put on probation. For two years, my probation officer visited me and my friends at home, in the pool hall, at school and on the basketball court. He was a wonderful guy who listened and really cared. I did pretty well on probation. At 21, though, I got into a fight in a tough part of town and ended up in jail for hitting a police officer.

I spent only one night in jail, but that was enough. I remember thinking, "I don't need too much more of this."

I had a chance to turn my life around, and I took it. This term, the U.S. Supreme Court will decide whether other young people get that same chance.

On Nov. 9, the court will hold oral argument in Sullivan vs. Florida and Graham vs. Florida, two cases that will determine whether it is constitutional to sentence a teenager to life in prison without parole for a crime that did not involve the taking of a life. There is a simple reason the criminal justice system should treat juveniles and adults differently: Kids are a helluva lot dumber than adults. They do stupid things — as I did — and some even commit serious crimes, but youths don't really ever think through the consequences. It's for this reason that every state restricts children from such consequential actions as voting, serving on juries, purchasing alcohol or marrying without parental consent.

The Supreme Court recognized the differences between teenagers and adults when it held a few years ago, in Roper vs. Simmons, that it was unconstitutional to impose the death penalty on defendants younger than 18. Locking up a youth for the rest of his life, with no hope for parole, is surely unconstitutional for the same reasons. The person you are at 13 or 17 is not the person you are at 30.

Everyone old enough to look back on his or her teenage years knows this.

Peer pressure is a huge part of youth behavior, whether one grows up in Washington, D.C., or Cody, Wyo. The guys will say, "Go get the gun. We'll pick up just enough money for tonight." And almost unthinkingly, you'll do it. There is simply no way to know at the time of sentencing whether a young person will turn out "good" or "bad." The only option is to bring him or her before a parole board — after some number of years — and give the person the chance to declare, "I'm a different person today" — and then prove it.

Parole boards can examine how youth offenders spent their time in prison. Did they read books or work in the library? Did they make furniture? Get a college degree? Those are critical questions for review.

We all know youths who have changed for the better. When I was a lawyer in Cody, the court sometimes appointed me to represent juvenile offenders, and parents who knew of my history often asked for help with their children. I once helped an 18-year-old who stole a car and drove it to Seattle. I later hired him as chief of staff for my Senate office.

I was lucky that the bullets I stole from a hardware store as a teenager and fired from my .22-caliber rifle never struck anyone. I was fortunate that the fires I set never hurt anyone. I heard my wake-up call and listened — and I went on to have many opportunities to serve my country and my community.

When a young person is sent "up the river," we need to remember that all rivers can change course.

Alan K. Simpson, a Republican, was a U.S. senator from Wyoming from 1977 to 1996.
http://www.denverpost.com/search/ci_13629190?source=email

Posted by lois at 12:27 PM | Comments (0)

October 22, 2009

CT: "DETENTION CENTER FOR GIRLS" Rell Announces Plan For $15 million Juvenile Detention For Girls In Bridgeport

DETENTION CENTER FOR GIRLS
Rell Announces Plan For Juvenile Detention For Girls In Bridgeport

By CHRISTOPHER KEATING and JON LENDER
Hartford Courant
October 21, 2009

The state will build a $15 million juvenile detention center for girls in Bridgeport so it can keep them out of adult prisons and other facilities scattered around the state, Gov. M. Jodi Rell announced Tuesday.

Finding space for juveniles has been a problem since the controversial closure of the Long Lane School in Middletown in 2003 under Gov. John G. Rowland. Since then, some teenage girls have been confined at the state's York Correctional Institution for adult women in Niantic, provoking sharp criticism from child-welfare officials.

In a related development Tuesday, Attorney General Richard Blumenthal issued a legal opinion that Rell's administration cannot shut down the High Meadows residential treatment center for troubled boys in Hamden because the legislature specifically allocated money for the program this year. Rell's budget office said Blumenthal's opinion "represents a fundamental misreading" of the state budget and subverts the governor's constitutional powers.

The new detention center for girls at 115 Virginia Ave. in Bridgeport is expected to be approved when the 10-member State Bond Commission meets Oct. 30. Rell chairs the commission and controls the agenda, virtually guaranteeing approval for any project that she proposes.

The state's child advocate, Jeanne Milstein, said the Bridgeport center is "long overdue." Long Lane closed in early 2003, and "it's now 2010, practically, and there hasn't been a facility for girls," she said.

However, Milstein said, "it does not solve the larger problem of DCF's poor planning, insufficient services, and a lack of understanding about the underlying needs of the girls and not just the behavior that led them" into DCF's supervision.

In the meantime, teenage girls who normally would have been sent to Long Lane, or to a new facility such as the one planned in Bridgeport, have had to go to the state's York prison for women in Niantic. There are now 12 girls at York under 18, some of whom would be eligible for the planned Bridgeport center, Milstein said. In addition, a small number of other girls in private treatment facilities, under contract with the state, could be moved to the new center.

State officials object to the use of the term "jail" or "prison" to describe the new treatment center, but a section of 16 beds that would be locked and secured will be reserved for girls who have been convicted of an offense. They will receive counseling and education at the center.

The center will hold 24 girls, including 16 in the locked setting and eight more in a non-locked area for "respite care" if they are having trouble in a community program, said Department of Children and Families spokesman Gary Kleeblatt. Construction is expected to be completed by June 2011, and the facility should open by September 2011.

The empty lot became available on Virginia Avenue in Bridgeport after crews knocked down an asbestos-contaminated, state-owned building that had been vacant for the past nine years. The building had been used as the southwestern regional office of the Department of Mental Retardation, and then was used as an office for addiction services. The building is easily accessible to Routes 8 and 15, making it easier for families to visit the girls, officials said.The annual cost of running the center was not available Tuesday.

High Meadows Opinion
Milstein welcomed the opinion by Blumenthal that Rell's administration cannot shut down the High Meadows facility because the legislature specifically allocated money for it this year. Blumenthal cited statements made on the House floor by state Rep. John Geragosian, a New Britain Democrat who co-chairs the budget-writing appropriations committee.

Milstein said the delay in closing High Meadows, or perhaps reconsideration of that decision, would give officials time to address the needs of the 12 children remaining in the center instead of discharging them to wherever there is space — whether it is in a state-run facility or in a community-based program.

"We need to stop, take a deep breath, focus — and be guided by the needs of these children and not by pressure to close the facility," Milstein said. "There's a larger, systemic issue here," Milstein said, and that is "poor planning by DCF."

She said poor planning is evident in the "hasty" manner in which the agency has gone about emptying High Meadows — from 36 boys in February to 12 now. Milstein noted that the state has spent about $2 million in recent years on improvements at High Meadows, including more than $200,000 on a pool and $1.1 million on dormitories.

But Kleeblatt said the Bridgeport detention center is the result of the sort of planning that Milstein is calling for.

"This program for girls was designed along with a lot of input from members of the advocacy community," he said. "And the whole idea was to design a facility, and more importantly a program, that was going to specifically meet the girls' needs."

Copyright © 2009, The Hartford Courant
courant.com/news/connecticut/hc-prison-juvenile-girls-1021.artoct21,0,349716.story

Posted by lois at 03:38 PM | Comments (0)

October 20, 2009

“Criminalizing” Poverty, How Public Policies Result in the Over-Incarceration of Low-Income Communities in America"

“Criminalizing” Poverty, How Public Policies Result in the Over-Incarceration of Low-Income Communities in America"
By Tracy Velázquez, Executive Director, Justice Policy Institute
October 13, 2009:

One of the early lessons in school civics is that “justice is blind”—that is, all citizens get equal treatment in the eyes of the law. Unfortunately, this ideal has become an American myth. First, people living in poverty get swept into the criminal justice system more often than their better-off counterparts. Once there, they are at a real disadvantage in a court system where money can buy freedom through quality representation. And after they are incarcerated, they are relegated to poverty once again because of the punitive barriers society has set up to prevent their success.

This system is not only unfair, it’s counterproductive to our country’s overall well-being. Unless we as a nation take ownership of this flaw in our current system, we will continue to be the world’s biggest jailor, with the social and economic costs that accompany that shameful moniker.

Policing the poor

Recently, I was visiting my friend Rachel, who lives and teaches in the Washington Heights neighborhood of New York City. Having started as a Teach for America participant who chose to stay on after her two-year stint, she is well connected with her predominantly Dominican neighborhood’s assets and challenges. In commenting on her experience taking classes at Columbia’s Teachers College on the Upper West Side, Rachel said, “You know, I finally get why people in this neighborhood end up in trouble more. Compared to down by Columbia, the cops are everywhere here in the Heights, all the time. And judging by the warnings I get from campus, it doesn’t look like there’s any more crime up where I live.”

Rachel had, on her own, come to see what those who advocate for low-income communities have known for a long time: America over-polices the poor. It makes sense that places with more crime would have a stronger police presence than communities with less. However, more policing in low-income areas results in more arrests and incarceration for offenses that would likely be handled informally or not at all in another neighborhood. For example, someone smoking a marijuana joint on a bench or their front porch in a more affluent neighborhood is unlikely to be observed by a police officer who would arrest them. More police can also mean more encounters with police – what some might consider “hassling” – which also can result in arrests that just wouldn’t occur otherwise.

Many have asserted that a significant component of over-policing is race. For instance, between January 2006 and September 2007, “random” frisks by New York City police included 453,042 blacks and only 94,530 whites. However, with race and income so closely intertwined, it is often difficult to separate the two. And the result is still that low-income individuals are more often the target of police attention, which means more are arrested and move deeper into the criminal justice system.

“When the lawyer you choose matters most”

The above phrase shocked me as I listened to public radio on my way to work recently. It was the tagline for a law firm that was underwriting the program, and it was impossible for me not to think about it in terms of what it means for people in poverty that have been arrested.

In this day and age of complex proceedings, a multitude of laws, and serious and lasting consequences of a criminal record, the idea of not having a lawyer represent you in court seems almost unfathomable. In fact, in 1963’s Gideon v. Wainwright, the Supreme Court stated that “reason and reflection require us to recognize that, in our adversary system of justice, any person hauled into court, who is too poor to hire a lawyer, cannot be assured a fair trial unless counsel is provided for him.” However, individuals of lower income generally don’t choose their lawyer; one is assigned by the court. Or one should be, anyway; unfortunately, over one in four people in jail charged with misdemeanor offenses reported not having been represented by counsel.

The vast majority of public defenders are qualified, dedicated attorneys, but many work in conditions they describe as “assembly line justice.” Small budgets – which are now shrinking during this economic downturn – mean many public defenders have barely met their client before they have to go into court and defend them. Of people in prison with court-appointed counsel, only 37 percent in state facilities and 54 percent in federal facilities spoke with their attorneys within the first week after arrest. In contrast, of people with hired counsel, three in five in state facilities and three-fourths in federal facilities had been in contact with their attorneys about their charges within a week of arrest. In an effort to manage their caseloads, public defenders are under pressure to resolve cases quickly, with little time to investigate leads that might have resulted in the case being dismissed or the charges lessened.

What is the result? State defendants with a public defender are sentenced to prison or jail more often than those with private attorneys. People who can afford a private attorney are less likely to go to state prison.

In addition, about half of individuals using a public defender or assigned counsel were released from jail prior to trial, compared to over three in four with a private attorney. Part of this may be a result of differences in representation; it is likely also because people who use public defenders are generally the same people who can’t afford to post bond. With courts demanding higher bail amounts, fewer and fewer people are able to post bond and be released from jail while awaiting trial. Currently, more than 60 percent of people in jails across the country have not been convicted of any offense. The inability to post bond not only makes it harder for people accused of crimes to meet with their lawyer and talk to people who might be able to aid in their defense, it also makes it harder to hold down their job and maintain custody of their children—even though they are still considered innocent.

Substituting corrections for treatment

Adult and juvenile correctional facilities are now among the country’s largest providers of mental health care: this is true both in large, urban areas (the Los Angeles County Jail is now the largest mental health facility in the country) and smaller, more rural ones (the largest provider of mental health care in Alabama is the prison). A key driver of this is lack of access to community mental health services. According to the Kaiser Family Foundation, over a third of the poor and 30 percent of the near-poor (incomes ranging from the poverty line to twice the poverty line) lack health coverage. And according to the National Survey of Drug Use and Mental Health, 42 percent of those who needed mental health treatment but didn’t get it said the primary reason was that they couldn’t afford it. Underinsurance is also a problem: 34 percent of insured people who had unmet mental health needs indicated that cost was a barrier to seeking treatment.

The manifestations of untreated mental illness often lead to behaviors that draw the attention of police—public order offenses that often accompany homelessness, crises that cause law enforcement to intervene, and “self-medicating” with alcohol and illegal drugs. According to the U.S. Department of Justice, nearly a quarter of the people in state prisons experienced mental health issues in the year preceding incarceration, and nearly two-thirds of people in jails live with mental illness. Some parents of children with serious emotional disturbances who are uninsured or underinsured turn their own children over to the police, in an effort to get at least minimum treatment through the juvenile justice system.

People with no access to health care are also likely to return to prison after being released. In a visit I made to a state prison, an individual with a serious mental illness told me that earlier that year he had been released from prison with 10 days worth of medicine and $100 in cash. He was left on his own to figure out how to manage his illness. He relied on a local clinic for pharmaceutical “samples” for a time, but ended up homeless and self-medicating with alcohol and other drugs. This eventually led to his being re-incarcerated.

A large percentage of incarcerated people also have a substance abuse disorder. Over half of people in state prisons meet the criteria for drug dependence or abuse. Once again, low-income people with a substance abuse addiction are disproportionately incarcerated as they cannot access treatment. The National Survey on Drug Use and Health indicated that 37.4 percent of people who sought substance abuse treatment indicated they didn’t receive it because they had no health coverage and couldn’t afford the cost of treatment. This lack of access, combined with the criminalization of addiction, mean thousands of people end up in prison or jail for drug possession or distribution or other offenses that would support an addiction.

Continuing barriers to opportunity

Currently, one in 31 people in the United States is under correctional supervision—whether in prison or jail, or on parole or probation. And millions more have a felony record that will never be erased, creating hardships for those trying to regain their lives and be a productive member of their community.

Adding to these difficulties is the fact that the correctional population is already largely made up of lower-income people. According to the U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics, in 2002, eighty-three percent of people in jail reported income of less than $2,000 in the month prior to arrest, one-third lower than the average monthly wage of the general public.

Many people who have been incarcerated face obstacles when attempting to find a job and housing. In a report for the Brookings Institution, Richard Freedman found that jail time reduced the probability of employment by between 15 and 30 percentage points. In addition, people leaving prison, regardless of their pre-incarceration status, are especially vulnerable to homelessness, often banned from federal housing, face challenges reconnecting with family and friends, and lack the funds to afford available housing. Often, the obligations of parole fees and years of child support that went unpaid during their period of incarceration make it almost impossible to become economically successful.

Conclusion

The impact of the criminal justice system on low-income communities can’t be ignored. At every stage of the process – from who is arrested to who is convicted and who eventually loses out on their rights – the poor are disproportionately affected. Policymakers continue to incarcerate millions of people, most of whom would not be in the system if there were more adequate resources in their communities. How can this situation be addressed, so that poverty and prison aren’t inevitably intertwined?

The U.S. should provide meaningful access – regardless of ability to pay -- to community-based treatment that would ensure that people get the mental health and substance abuse treatment they need before they collide with the justice system; this would improve both public safety and individual life outcomes. A healthcare “safety net” that will cover formerly incarcerated individuals also will save states millions in reduced rates of recidivism and re-incarceration.

Instead of overfunding incarceration and policing, we should make investments in resources for low-income communities that are already at a disadvantage due to their socioeconomic status. This means better schools, more job development, and more programs that can help people – and particularly youth – succeed. These types of investments will create healthier, safer communities and reduce the use of prisons as an answer to poverty and other social problems.

Tracy Velázquez is Executive Director of the Justice Policy Institute, a nonprofit working to promote effective solutions to social problems and dedicated to ending society’s reliance on incarceration

http://www.spotlightonpoverty.org/ExclusiveCommentary.aspx?id=5f13e0fe-a47d-4ce4-a945-187fc331e81d

Posted by lois at 09:28 PM | Comments (0)

October 09, 2009

Study Finds High Rate of Imprisonment Among High School Dropouts: including jail or juvenile detention for 1 in 4 African American young men who drop out of school.

"The report puts the collective cost to the nation over the working life of each high school dropout at $292,000. Mr. Sum said that figure took into account lost tax revenues, since dropouts earn less and therefore pay less in taxes than high school graduates. It also includes the costs of providing food stamps and other aid to dropouts and of incarcerating those who turn to crime."

"The picture is even bleaker for African-Americans, with nearly one in four young black male dropouts incarcerated or otherwise institutionalized on an average day, the study said. That compares with about one in 14 young, male, white, Asian or Hispanic dropouts."

Study Finds High Rate of Imprisonment Among Dropouts
By SAM DILLON
Published NY Times: October 8, 2009

On any given day, about one in every 10 young male high school dropouts is in jail or juvenile detention, compared with one in 35 young male high school graduates, according to a new study of the effects of dropping out of school in an America where demand for low-skill workers is plunging.

The picture is even bleaker for African-Americans, with nearly one in four young black male dropouts incarcerated or otherwise institutionalized on an average day, the study said. That compares with about one in 14 young, male, white, Asian or Hispanic dropouts.

Researchers at Northeastern University used census and other government data to carry out the study, which tracks the employment, workplace, parenting and criminal justice experiences of young high school dropouts.

“We’re trying to show what it means to be a dropout in the 21st century United States,” said Andrew Sum, director of the Center for Labor Market Studies at Northeastern, who headed a team of researchers that prepared the report. “It’s one of the country’s costliest problems. The unemployment, the incarceration rates — it’s scary.”

A coalition of civil rights and public education advocacy groups and a network of alternative schools in Chicago commissioned the report as part of a push for new educational opportunities for the nation’s 6.2 million high school dropouts.

“The dropout rate is driving the nation’s increasing prison population, and it’s a drag on America’s economic competitiveness,” said Marc H. Morial, the former New Orleans mayor who is president of the National Urban League, one of the groups in the coalition that commissioned the report. “This report makes it clear that every American pays a cost when a young person leaves school without a diploma.”

The report puts the collective cost to the nation over the working life of each high school dropout at $292,000. Mr. Sum said that figure took into account lost tax revenues, since dropouts earn less and therefore pay less in taxes than high school graduates. It also includes the costs of providing food stamps and other aid to dropouts and of incarcerating those who turn to crime.

Daniel J. Losen, a senior associate at the Civil Rights Project at the University of California, Los Angeles, said the study was consistent with other economic studies of the dropout crisis, though he said the methodology of its cost-benefit analysis “lacked transparency.”

“The report’s strength is that it reveals in clear terms that there’s a real crisis with the high numbers of young, especially minority males, who drop out of school and wind up incarcerated,” Mr. Losen said.

Previous studies have come up with estimates of the same order of magnitude on the social cost of low graduation rates. A 2007 study by Teachers College, Princeton and City University of New York researchers, for instance, estimated that society could save $209,000 in prison and other costs for every potential dropout who could be helped to complete high school.

The new report, in its analysis of 2008 unemployment rates, found that 54 percent of dropouts ages 16 to 24 were jobless, compared with 32 percent for high school graduates of the same age, and 13 percent for those with a college degree.

Again, the statistics were worse for young African-American dropouts, whose unemployment rate last year was 69 percent, compared with 54 percent for whites and 47 percent for Hispanics. The unemployment rate among young Hispanics was lower, the report said, because included in that category were many illegal immigrants, who compete successfully for jobs with native-born youths.

The unemployment rates cited for all groups have climbed several points in 2009 because of the recession, Mr. Sum said.

Young female dropouts were nine times more likely to have become single mothers than young women who went on to earn college degrees, the report said, citing census data for 2006 and 2007.

The number of unmarried young women having children has increased sharply in some communities in part, Mr. Sum said, because large numbers of young men have dropped out of school and are jobless year round. As a result, young women do not view them as having the wherewithal to support a family.

“None of these guys can afford to own a home, they just don’t have any money,” he said. “And as a result, any time they father a child it’s out of wedlock. It wasn’t like this 30 years ago.”

He cited his hometown, Gary, Ind., as an example. “Back in the 1970s, my friends in Gary would quit school in senior year and go to work at U.S. Steel and make a good living, and young guys in Michigan would go to work in an auto plant,” he said. “You just can’t do that anymore. Today, you have a lot of dropouts who are jobless year round.”

Link to the study: http://www.clms.neu.edu/publication/documents/The_Consequences_of_Dropping_Out_of_High_School.pdf

A version of this article appeared in print on October 9, 2009, on page A12 of the New York edition.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/09/education/09dropout.html?_r=1&ref=us

Posted by lois at 12:30 PM | Comments (0)

October 01, 2009

MA: uvenile life-without-parole sentence too harsh, reports says Advocates seek Mass. law change

Juvenile life-without-parole sentence too harsh, reports says
Advocates seek Mass. law change
By Jonathan Saltzman
Globe Staff / September 30, 2009

Despite its liberal reputation, Massachusetts has one of the harshest laws in the country for sentencing murderers as young as 14 to life in prison without parole, and many of the 57 people serving such mandatory sentences are first-time offenders, according to an advocacy group that wants them to become eligible for parole.

The Children’s Law Center of Massachusetts, in what it said was the first comprehensive study of the 1996 law that resulted in such sentences for first-degree murder, found that a disproportionate percentage of the children locked up for the rest of their lives are black. Many of the offenders were convicted with adult codefendants, some of whom got milder sentences and have been freed.

The report, which is scheduled to be released today, followed a two-year review of most of the cases in which children ages 14, 15, and 16 were tried in adult court and sentenced to life. The study says that penalties for juvenile murderers were inadequate in the 1980s but that the Legislature went too far when it passed the current law in response to what the center describes as overblown fears of young super predators.

The group wants Governor Deval Patrick and the Legislature to change the law to at least make juveniles convicted of first-degree murder eligible for parole after 15 years, as is true for people convicted of second-degree murder.

“Life-without-parole sentences may be an appropriate response to some adult crimes, especially in a state like Massachusetts that does not impose the death penalty,’’ the 33-page report said. “But the current law treats youths as young as 14 exactly like adults, regardless of their age, past conduct, level of participation in the crime, personal background, and potential for rehabilitation.’’

Geline W. Williams, executive director of the Massachusetts District Attorneys Association, said yesterday she could not comment on the report until she reads it. But, “There’s no question that there are some juveniles who commit absolutely horrific crimes and have absolutely horrific records before they commit the ultimate crime of murder,’’ she said.

The two state lawmakers who chair the joint Committee on the Judiciary, Representative Eugene L. O’Flaherty and Senator Cynthia Stone Creem, said they were willing to reexamine the 1996 law.

O’Flaherty said a few notorious crimes can often result in “legislative overreaction, and usually it takes a few years to see the unforeseen consequences of getting too tough, too quickly, and not being smart about getting tough.’’

Massachusetts is one of at least 39 states with youths serving sentences of life without parole; about 2,500 inmates around the country serve such sentences. But only Massachusetts and Connecticut give adult courts exclusive jurisdiction over murder cases against children as young as 14 and then impose a mandatory life-without-parole sentence for all first-degree murder convictions, regardless of the circumstances, the report said.

Several states are considering changing their laws to give youth offenders an opportunity to earn parole, in part because scientific research into the difference between the adolescent and adult brain shows that teenagers often cannot appreciate the consequences of their actions.

Last year, after citing similar neuroscientific evidence, Human Rights Watch called sentences of life without parole for juveniles “cruel, unfair, and unnecessary.’’

Massachusetts enacted the current law, partly in response to insufficient juvenile court sentences in the 1980s, when the harshest punishment for a juvenile who was not transferred to an adult court - even for murder - was incarceration until 21.

In the 1990s, a number of widely publicized juvenile murder cases prompted the Legislature to mandate that all juveniles charged with first- or second-degree murder be tried in adult court and that conviction for first-degree murder result in an automatic sentence of life without parole.

One of those cases involved Edward S. O’Brien, the 15-year-old who stabbed his best friend’s mother 98 times across the street from his Somerville home in 1995. After two years of hearings and intervention by the state’s highest court, O’Brien was tried as an adult and sentenced to life without parole.

The Children’s Law Center contends that crime rates do not justify such harsh sentences. Homicide rates for Massachusetts youth under 18 peaked in 1992.

Since 1998, the homicide rate among adolescents has been lower than it was 30 years ago.

The center, which reviewed in detail 46 of the 57 juvenile murderers serving life sentences without parole, said 41 percent had no prior record. Forty percent of the offenders had been convicted along with adult defendants, but many of the adults got lighter sentences.

“Frequently, the adults who are actually the primary actors [in the murders] and are in possession of the knowledge that matters are in a better position to offer information in exchange for better treatment from prosecutors,’’ said Lia Monahon, the lawyer for the center who wrote the report.

Blacks make up 47 percent of the juveniles sentenced to life without parole but account for less than 7 percent of children under 18 in Massachusetts, said the report. Monahon said the disparity could reflect bias in the criminal justice system.
http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2009/09/30/juvenile_life_without_parole_sentence_too_harsh_reports_says/?page=full
© Copyright 2009 Globe Newspaper Company.

Posted by lois at 09:11 AM | Comments (0)

September 28, 2009

Interview with Young Women's Empowerment Project on their research "Girls Do What they Do In Order to Survive"

An interview with the Young Women's Empowerment Project on their research study of girls involved in the sex trade.
Participatory Action Research emphasizes the involvement of those being studied in the actual research process. It’s a technique the Young Women's Empowerment Project has used to fill in the gaps of previous research on the sex trade and street economy. YWEP assists young women ages 12-23 who are either currently working in the sex trade and street economy, or have in the past. The group is also entirely run by peers with experience in the sex trade and street economy. Today, YWEP releases their findings in a new report entitled, “Girls do what they have to do to survive: Illuminating Methods used by Girls in the Sex Trade and Street Economy to Fight Back and Heal.” Alison Cuddy sat down with the study’s research coordinator Jazeera Iman, and Shira Hassan, co-director for the Young Women’s Empowerment Project.
http://www.chicagopublicradio.org/Content.aspx?audioID=37026

Posted by lois at 10:06 AM | Comments (0)

Supreme Court to consider life without parole for juveniles sentenced for non-murder convictions?

Supreme Court to consider juvenile 'lifers'
Does life without parole for minors who didn't kill constitute cruel and unusual punishment?
By David G. Savage
September 28, 2009

Reporting from Washington - Joe Sullivan was 13 years old when he and two older boys broke into a home, where they robbed and raped an elderly woman. After a one-day trial in 1989, Sullivan was sentenced to life in prison with no chance for parole.

Terrance Graham was 16 when he and two others robbed a restaurant. When he was arrested again a year later for a home break-in, a Florida judge said he was incorrigible. In 2005, Graham received a life term with no parole.

The two young convicts represent an American phenomenon, one the Supreme Court is set to reconsider in the fall term that opens Oct. 5. At issue is whether it is cruel and unusual punishment to imprison a minor until he or she dies when the crime does not involve murder.

According to Amnesty International, "The United States is the only country in the world that does not comply with the norm against imposing life-without-parole sentences on juveniles."

Nearly all of the estimated 2,500 U.S. prisoners serving life terms for juvenile crimes, the group said, were guilty either of murder or of participating in a crime that led to a homicide. But 109 inmates are serving life sentences for other crimes committed when they were younger than 18.

Sullivan's and Graham's lawyers do not claim the young men deserve to go free.

"We are not asking for Mr. Graham to be released any time soon," attorney Bryan Gowdy said. "We are asking the court to declare unconstitutional a sentence of life without parole for these crimes. It would be entirely different if Mr. Graham had a meaningful opportunity for parole."

The question will be an early test of whether Justice Sonia Sotomayor, a former prosecutor, will align herself with the court's tough-on-crime conservatives or join with its liberals to strike down prison policies perceived as going too far.

Sullivan’s and Graham’s cases will be heard in November. Many lawyers and prosecutors said that until the Supreme Court agreed this year to take up the issue, they were unaware of juveniles receiving such sentences.

Sullivan, now 33, has been in prison for 20 years. The Florida appeals court and the state Supreme Court refused to review his sentence. When his case reached the U.S. Supreme Court, Florida Atty. Gen. Bill McCollum said the appeal should be dismissed on the grounds that it was too late to raise the issue of cruel and unusual punishment.

A lawyer for Graham has called his client's life sentence freakish and unfair. A second youth who participated in the restaurant robbery hit an employee with a club. He was later arrested for robbing a gas station and sentenced to three years in prison. He has since been released.

Florida leads the nation in sending teenagers to prison for life with no possible parole for crimes such as burglary, assault or rape. It has at least 77 such inmates. California and six other states also have at least one.

"This is a hidden group. They don't get a lot of attention because there was no homicide," said Paolo Annino, a law professor at Florida State University who has compiled national data on these prisoners.

California officials said they were unaware of having four such inmates until they checked their database at Annino's request. Two years ago, California joined many other states in prohibiting the sentencing of young offenders to life in prison.

But that measure did not affect inmates who had already been sentenced.

Annino and others point to two trends in the 1980s that led to juveniles serving life terms. First was the national move to abolish parole, reflecting fears that violent criminals could not be safely released. Second was the increased prosecution of young criminals as adults.

In defense of its life-in-prison policy, Florida's lawyers have pointed to several deadly attacks on European visitors carried out by young criminals.

These violent incidents were "threatening the state's bedrock tourism industry," Florida's lawyers said in the opening paragraph of their brief to the Supreme Court in the Graham case.

Pie chart on states imprisoning juveniles for crimes other than murder:
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-court-preview28-2009sep28,0,1454652.story

Posted by lois at 09:29 AM | Comments (0)

September 12, 2009

Prison Comix by Jim Ridgeway

Prison Comix
September 5, 2009

With more and more older people going to prison there is a growing demand for educational materials to keep their minds alive and well amid the deadening atmosphere of the American correctional system—created in large part by government and supervised and informed by the judiciary. Not to mention the thousands upon thousands of young and middle-aged people whose “rehabilitation” has been cut short by the cruel sentencing laws.

There are all sorts of projects afoot in this area, but one is of special interest. It is called the Real Cost of Prisons, and is run by Lois Ahrens of Northampton, Mass., on a shoestring. You can get a feel for her work by obtaining the Real Cost of Prisons Comix book which includes three comics: Prison Town about the financing and placement of prisons and their effect on rural communities; Prisoners of the war on Drugs, a history of the war on drugs; and Prisoners of a hard Life,which includes stories of women trapped by mandatory sentencing. To me, this last book is the most telling. PM Press publishes the book at $12.95 a copy.

Ahrens got the idea of doing comic books,partly because she wanted to find a way of communicating with prisoners in a simple,direct way providing them especially up to date information and new research. She hit on the idea,in part from years of going to Mexico, and watching women engrossed in photo novellas while tending market stalls or sitting on park benches. Then trade unionists from South Africa gave her publications chock full of graphics, pictures and text that they were using to educate people in their campaign to stop privatization and in the fight against globalization. She also got ideas from “A Field Guide to the US Economy” by James Heintz and Nancy Foibre which also uses graphs, cartoons and ordinary language to explain the economy.

Because prisoners can’t ordinarily take advantage of the information that currently proliferates on the internet, comic books which speak to their lives and needs, are available and free, she says.

Comic books have been received by prisoners in every state prison system,every federal prison and numerous jails. Thousands more have been sent to prisoners through 13 Books through Bars organizations. We know that comic books are passed hand to hand by prisoners,since as soon as a set is sent to one prisoner,not a week passes before we begin receiving requests from other prisoners at that prison..One prisoner wrotethat he found one on a pew in the prison

Ahrens web site is an up to date resource on prison news.

http://unsilentgeneration.com/category/prisons-criminal-justice/

Posted by lois at 11:51 AM | Comments (0)

August 28, 2009

CA to close largest youth prison at Chino and convert it into an prison for men

California to close its largest juvenile prison
The Heman G. Stark Youth Correctional Facility in Chino will be converted into an adult prison. The move is part of a plan to 'right-size' staff at the Division of Juvenile Justice.
By Michael Rothfeld
August 28, 2009

Reporting from Sacramento - The state is closing California's largest youth prison as the population of juvenile offenders in state custody continues to decline, corrections officials announced Thursday.

The Heman G. Stark Youth Correctional Facility in Chino will be converted into an adult prison, state officials said. The move is part of a plan to "right-size" staff at the Division of Juvenile Justice, which is reducing its workforce by 400 employees by the end of this year to save the state up to $40 million, said Bernard Warner, the chief deputy secretary for the division.

The plan also is geared toward reducing the annual cost of incarcerating and caring for each ward from $252,000 to $175,000, state officials said.

California's youth prisons have been troubled for years. The state five years ago settled a lawsuit brought on behalf of the juveniles, who said they were locked up for long periods in dirty, dim cells without the education, rehabilitation, healthcare and other treatment the state was supposed to provide. Last year, lawyers for the juveniles mounted an unsuccessful effort to have the system put under court control.

Sue Burrell, a staff attorney at the Youth Law Center in San Francisco, said Stark had been "an especially horrible place" since the slaying of Ineasie Baker, a female officer there, in 1996. An inmate was convicted of her murder.

"That sort of ushered in this repressive era," Burrell said. "It really never got better. The past [13] years have been filled with lockdowns, beatings and various sorts of cages."

With the closure, the state will have five youth prisons, down from 11 in 2003. Three minimum-security fire camps for juveniles have also been closed.

The number of juvenile offenders in state custody has declined to 1,700 over the last decade from a peak of nearly 10,000, the result of legislation that now puts most of the youths in county facilities where they can be closer to their families.

The Chino facility opened in 1959 and now houses fewer than 400 juvenile inmates. They will be redirected to other youth prisons. An exact closure date has not yet been determined.

Currently, the state has been using the youth prison, which has a capacity of 1,200, to house about 600 adult inmates displaced after a prison riot this month at the nearby California Institution for Men. To convert it into a full-time prison, it would have to be retrofitted to make it more secure, subject to approval from state lawmakers, prison officials said. Warner said the retrofitting would be cheaper -- about a third as much -- than the $500-million price tag for a new prison.

An adult prison on the site could house sick or mentally ill inmates, said Scott Kernan, the state's undersecretary for operations. That could relieve some pressure from a panel of federal judges who have ordered the state to reduce the number of inmates in its overcrowded prisons by 40,000.

A statewide coalition of human rights groups Thursday urged state Atty. Gen. Jerry Brown to devise a plan to comply with the court order rather than appeal it.

"California's correctional system is in a tailspin that threatens public safety and raises the risk of fiscal disaster," said activists from the group Californians United for a Responsible Budget.

Brown and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger have said they plan to appeal.
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-prisons28-2009aug28,0,3563078.story

Posted by lois at 09:20 AM | Comments (0)

August 24, 2009

DOJ publishes a report condemning treatment of youth at four of the New York's Juvenile Prisons

Report Cites Abuse at State Juvenile Prison Centers
By NICHOLAS CONFESSORE
Published: August 24, 2009- NY Times

ALBANY — Children at four juvenile detention centers in New York were so severely abused by workers that it constituted a violation of their constitutional rights, according to a report by the United States Department of Justice made public on Monday.

The findings raise the possibility of a federal takeover of the state’s entire youth detention system if the problems are not addressed.

The report caps a nearly two-year investigation by the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division into claims of excessive physical force at some of the state’s 28 juvenile residential centers, which house children who were convicted of criminal acts but are too young to serve in adult jails and prisons.

Federal investigators found that workers at the four locations — the Lansing Residential Center and the Louis Gossett Jr. Residential Center in Lansing, N.Y., and two facilities, one for boys and one for girls, at Tryon Residential Center in Johnstown, N.Y. — routinely used physical force to restrain residents, despite rules allowing force only as a last resort.

The report documented dozens of episodes at the four centers in a period of less than two years that resulted in serious injuries, including broken teeth and bones. It found that physical force was often the first response to any act of insubordination by residents, who are all under 16.

“Staff at the facilities routinely used uncontrolled, unsafe applications of force, departing from generally accepted standards,” says the report, which was given to Gov. David A. Paterson on Aug. 14. “Anything from sneaking an extra cookie to initiating a fistfight may result in a full prone restraint with handcuffs,” the report continued. “This one-size-fits-all approach has not surprisingly led to an alarming number of serious injuries to youth, including concussions, broken or knocked-out teeth, and spiral fractures” (bone fractures caused by twisting).

The investigation is the latest blow to New York’s troubled juvenile justice system, which currently detains about 1,000 youths.

In a report by Human Rights Watch and the American Civil Liberties Union issued in September 2006, New York’s juvenile residential centers were rated among the worst in the world.

Later that year, an emotionally disturbed teenager, Darryl Thompson, died after two employees at the Tryon center pinned him down on the ground. The death was ruled a homicide, but a grand jury declined to indict the workers. The boy’s mother is suing the state.

During the same period, a separate joint investigation by the state inspector general and the Tompkins County district attorney found that the independent ombudsman’s office charged with overseeing juvenile detention centers had virtually ceased to function.

In a statement on Monday, after the report became public, Gladys Carrión, the commissioner of the Office of Children and Family Services, said that the administration had inherited a juvenile justice system “rife with substantial systemic problems” but acknowledged that efforts so far to overhaul it had fallen short.

“We have made great strides," said Ms. Carrión, "but much more still needs to be done.”

The previous scandals had spurred a major effort within Ms. Carrión’s department, which oversees juvenile residential centers, to overhaul the system. It reconstituted the ombudsman’s office and issued clearer policies on the use of physical force, leading to a sharp drop in instances where restraints were applied. The department has also required new training for the staffs at juvenile detention centers.

Officials have also sought to close down centers that were underused and redirect resources to counseling and other services, as other states have done, though they have faced fierce resistance from public employees’ unions and their allies in the Legislature. Last year, Mr. Paterson appointed a commission to recommend further changes.

The report by federal investigators revealed that despite those changes, problems at some of the centers remain severe. Under federal law, New York has 49 days to respond with a plan of action to comply with the report’s recommendations. If the state does not meet the deadline, the Justice Department can initiate a lawsuit that could result in a federal takeover of the state’s juvenile residential centers.

In one case described in the report, a youth was forcibly restrained and handcuffed after refusing to stop laughing when ordered to; the youth sustained a cut lip and injuries to the wrists and elbows. One boy, after glaring at a staff member, was forced into a sitting position and his arms were secured behind his back with such force that his collarbone was broken.

Another youth was restrained eight times in three months despite signs that she might have been contemplating suicide. “In nearly every one of the eight incidents,” the report found, “the youth was engaged in behaviors such as head banging, putting paper clips in her mouth, tying a string around her neck, etc.”

Officials at the centers also routinely failed to follow state rules requiring that instances in which force is used be reviewed after the fact. In some cases, the same staff member involved in an episode conducted the review. And even when a review determined that excessive force had been used, the staff members responsible sometimes faced no punishment.

In one case, it was recommended that a youth counselor with a documented record of using excessive force should be fired after throwing a youth to the ground with such force that the youth’s chin required stitches. But after the counselor’s union intervened, the punishment was downgraded to a letter of reprimand, an $800 fine and a two-week suspension that was itself suspended.

The report also found that state officials failed to provide youths in detention with adequate counseling and mental health treatment, something the vast majority of residents require. Three-quarters of residents enter New York’s juvenile justice system with drug or alcohol problems, more than half have diagnosed psychological problems and a third have developmental disabilities, according to figures published by Office of Children and Family Services.

“The majority of psychiatric evaluations at the four facilities did not come close to meeting” professional standards, investigators determined, and “typically lacked basic, necessary information.”

In many instances, a single resident received several different or conflicting diagnoses — and correspondingly different regimens of psychotropic drugs — from different psychiatrists or counselors. The medications were dispensed without rigorous monitoring. Typically, parents were not offered an opportunity to give their informed consent for the treatment.

One 15-year-old, according to the report, was on six medications at once, with no record of an agreed-upon diagnosis or description of the symptoms the drugs were intended to target. Another resident, a boy who was mentally ill, told a doctor that he thought he might be pregnant.

“Despite this significant incident,” the report noted, “it appears that the youth’s belief that he was pregnant and the possibility that he was delusional was not communicated to the treating psychiatrist. It is unknown whether this was addressed in the youth’s individual therapy.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/25/nyregion/25juvenile.html?_r=1&hp

Posted by lois at 05:02 PM | Comments (0)

August 10, 2009

Mentally Ill Youth Strain Juvenile System

Mentally Ill Offenders Strain Juvenile System
By SOLOMON MOORE
Published: August 9, 2009
NY Times

FRANKLIN FURNACE, Ohio — The teenager in the padded smock sat in his solitary confinement cell here in this state’s most secure juvenile prison and screamed obscenities.

The youth, Donald, a 16-year-old, his eyes glassy from lack of sleep and a daily regimen of mood stabilizers, was serving a minimum of six months for breaking and entering. Although he had received diagnoses for psychiatric illnesses, including bipolar disorder, a judge decided that Donald would get better care in the state correctional system than he could get anywhere in his county.

That was two years ago.

Donald’s confinement has been repeatedly extended because of his violent outbursts. This year he assaulted a guard here at the prison, the Ohio River Valley Juvenile Correctional Facility, and was charged anew, with assault. His fists and forearms are striped with scars where he gouged himself with pencils and the bones of a bird he caught and dismembered.

As cash-starved states slash mental health programs in communities and schools, they are increasingly relying on the juvenile corrections system to handle a generation of young offenders with psychiatric disorders. About two-thirds of the nation’s juvenile inmates — who numbered 92,854 in 2006, down from 107,000 in 1999 — have at least one mental illness, according to surveys of youth prisons, and are more in need of therapy than punishment.

“We’re seeing more and more mentally ill kids who couldn’t find community programs that were intensive enough to treat them,” said Joseph Penn, a child psychiatrist at the Texas Youth Commission. “Jails and juvenile justice facilities are the new asylums.”

At least 32 states cut their community mental health programs by an average of 5 percent this year and plan to double those budget reductions by 2010, according to a recent survey of state mental health offices.

Juvenile prisons have been the caretaker of last resort for troubled children since the 1980s, but mental health experts say the system is in crisis, facing a soaring number of inmates reliant on multiple — and powerful — psychotropic drugs and a shortage of therapists.

In California’s state system, one of the most violent and poorly managed juvenile systems in the country, according to federal investigators, three dozen youth offenders seriously injured themselves or attempted suicide in the last year — a sign, state juvenile justice experts say, of neglect and poor safety protocols.

In Ohio, where Gov. Ted Strickland, a former prison psychologist, approved a 34 percent reduction in community-based mental health services to reduce a budget deficit, Thomas J. Stickrath, the director of the Department of Youth Services, said continuing cuts would swell his youth offender population.

“I’m hearing from a lot of judges saying, ‘I’m sorry I’m sending so-and-so to you, but at least I know that he’ll get the treatment he can’t get in his community,’ ” Mr. Stickrath said.

But youths are often subjected to neglect and violence in juvenile prisons, and studies show that mental illnesses can become worse there.

George, 17, an inmate at Ohio River Valley, detailed his daily cocktail of psychiatric medications, including Abilify and Seroquel. In addition to having bipolar disorder, he is a sex offender and is H.I.V. positive — severe stigmas in prison.

“I be getting punked,” he said, using prison slang to describe how gang youths routinely humiliate him. He blinked, and his leg shook uncontrollably. “They take my food, they hit me, they make me do things.”

Demetrius, 16, another inmate there, said he had received a diagnosis of bipolar disorder. Officials said he has psychotic episodes and attacks other inmates. In an interview in June, he said he was receiving no mental health counseling or medications. Andrea Kruse, a spokeswoman for Mr. Stickrath, said that since July 1, he has had more than 20 counseling sessions.

According to a Government Accountability Office report, in 2001, families relinquished custody of 9,000 children to juvenile justice systems so they could receive mental health services.

Donald has been in and out of mental health programs since he attacked a schoolteacher at age 5. As he grew older, he became more violent until he was eventually committed to the Department of Youth Services.

“I’ve begged D.Y.S. to get him into a mental facility where they’re trained to deal with people like him,” said his grandmother, who asked not to be identified because of the stigma of having a grandson who is mentally ill. “I don’t think a lockup situation is where he should be, although I don’t think he should be on the street either.”

Lawsuits and federal civil rights investigations in Indiana, Maryland, Ohio and Texas have criticized juvenile corrections systems for failing to meet their obligation to prohibit cruel and unusual punishment of prisoners.

Despite downsizing to about 1,650 juvenile inmates from about 10,000 youth offenders in 1996, California’s state system remains under a 2004 federal mandate to improve conditions, including mental health services — the result of a class-action lawsuit that documented the systematic physical and sexual abuse of wards.

Under a plan to reduce the state juvenile inmate population, many youths who once would have been held by the state are now detained by the Los Angeles County juvenile detention system. Los Angeles County is also under a federal mandate to improve psychiatric services for juvenile inmates, especially at the six camps at its Challenger Memorial Youth Center, which holds most of the county’s medium- and high-risk offenders and most of its mentally ill ones.

“We were told that the Challenger camps are, paradoxically, the only camps at which staff are authorized to carry O.C. spray,” wrote federal civil rights investigators in a 2008 report to county authorities, referring to oleoresin capsicum, known as pepper spray. “One supervisor told us that he believed that allowing staff to carry and use O.C. spray made sense given the ‘mental health population.’ ”

The investigators also recounted how staff members body slammed unruly juveniles, often breaking their bones.

In May, a reporter toured the Los Angeles County Central Juvenile Hall with Eric Trupin, a consultant hired by the Department of Justice to monitor mental health services in California’s juvenile justice system. Dr. Trupin, a psychologist, said some detainees appeared to be held there for no reason other than that they were mentally ill and the county had no other institution capable of treating them.

One inmate at the county’s juvenile hall, Eric, 18, was given a diagnosis of bipolar disorder and prescribed Risperdal, a powerful antipsychotic, to help him avoid violent flashes of temper.

A public defender who specializes in juvenile mental health issues, said Eric had been arrested more than 20 times near his South Los Angeles home. Dr. Trupin worried that if Eric is released and arrested again, he will be charged as an adult and enter the Los Angeles County jail, the nation’s largest residential mental institution, with 1,400 mentally ill inmates.

In the 1960s and ’70s, the increasing availability of antipsychotic medications coincided with a national movement to close public mental hospitals. Many private hospitals barred psychotic patients, including juveniles. By the 1980s, juvenile justice systems had become the primary providers of residential psychiatric care for mentally ill youths.

But as cutbacks have worsened, the debate has intensified over what constitutes adequate mental health care. Often juvenile justice systems have very little to go on when attempting a diagnosis.

“Often Daddy is nowhere to be found, Mommy might be in jail,” said Daniel Connor, a psychiatrist for the Connecticut juvenile corrections system. “The home phone is cut off. The parent speaks another language, so it’s often hard to figure out exactly what’s going on with each kid.”

School records often do not arrive with arrested youths, nor do files often come from other corrections institutions. The lack of information is particularly problematic when psychiatrists try to prescribe medications. Joseph Parks, medical director for the Missouri Department of Mental Health and a national expert on pharmaceutical drug use in corrections facilities, said many juvenile offenders are prescribed multiple psychiatric drugs as they move from mental health clinics to detention halls to juvenile prisons.

A decade ago, it was rare to find juvenile offenders on two psychotropic drugs at once, Dr. Parks said. Now, many take three or four at a time, often for nonprescribed uses like helping the youths sleep.

“If you just give a kid a pill, the prison administration doesn’t have to do anything differently,” he said. “The staff doesn’t have to do anything differently. The guards don’t have to get more training.”

Census studies of child mental health professionals show chronic shortages. A 2006 study estimated that for every 100,000 youths, there were fewer than nine child psychiatrists. Dr. Penn of Texas said the state youth prison system there recently instituted a system of telepsychiatry sessions, conducting videoconferences between mental health professionals and youths being detained hundreds of miles away.

Inadequate mental health services increases recidivism. In a February report on psychiatric services at the Ohio River Valley center, Dr. Cheryl Wills, an independent mental health expert, found that officials were unnecessarily extending incarceration for youths who acted out because of their mental illnesses.

Mr. Stickrath, the director of the Ohio Department of Youth Services, said that one challenge in dealing with large numbers of psychologically ill youths is determining who is “mad versus bad.” He mentioned Donald, whose file he knew by heart.

“He’s been in 130 fights since he’s been with us, and there were no resources in the small county he’s from to deal with him,” Mr. Stickrath said. “Our staff worked to get him in a sophisticated psychiatric residential program, but they said he had to leave because he was attacking staff.”

Mr. Stickrath shook his head. “He just wears you out.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/10/us/10juvenile.html?_r=1&hpw

Posted by lois at 02:23 PM | Comments (0)

August 07, 2009

Video: Children Given One Strike: A Lifetime Without Redemption

Link to a documentary about Juvenile Life Without Parole produced by a group of University of Pennsylvania Law Students which featured interviews with Anita Colon and Bradley Bridges from the Defender's Association.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsZ1gpPZEIU

Posted by lois at 05:57 PM | Comments (0)

July 28, 2009

NY Times Editorial: 12 and in Prison

Editorial
12 and in Prison
Published: July 27, 2009- NY Times

The Supreme Court sent an important message when it ruled in Roper v. Simmons in 2005 that children under the age of 18 when their crimes were committed were not eligible for the death penalty. Justice Anthony Kennedy drew on compassion, common sense and the science of the youthful brain when he wrote that it was morally wrong to equate the offenses of emotionally undeveloped adolescents with the offenses of fully formed adults.

The states have followed this logic in death penalty cases. But they have continued to mete out barbaric treatment — including life sentences — to children whose cases should rightly be handled through the juvenile courts.

Congress can help to correct these practices by amending the Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act of 1974, which is up for Congressional reauthorization this year. To get a share of delinquency prevention money, the law requires the states and localities to meet minimum federal protections for youths in the justice system. These protections are intended to keep as many youths as possible out of adult jails and prisons, and to segregate those that are sent to those places from the adult criminal population.

The case for tougher legislative action is laid out in an alarming new study of children 13 and under in the adult criminal justice system, the lead author of which is the juvenile justice scholar, Michele Deitch, of the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas at Austin. According to the study, every state allows juveniles to be tried as adults, and more than 20 states permit preadolescent children as young as 7 to be tried in adult courts.

This is terrible public policy. Children who are convicted and sentenced as adults are much more likely to become violent offenders — and to return to an adult jail later on — than children tried in the juvenile justice system.

Despite these well-known risks, policy makers across the country do not have reliable data on just how many children are being shunted into the adult system by state statutes or prosecutors, who have the discretion to file cases in the adult courts.

But there is reasonably reliable data showing juvenile court judges send about 80 children ages 13 and under into the adult courts each year. These statistics explode the myth that those children have committed especially heinous acts.

The data suggest, for example, that children 13 and under who commit crimes like burglary and theft are just as likely to be sent to adult courts as children who commit serious acts of violence against people. As has been shown in previous studies, minority defendants are more likely to get adult treatment than their white counterparts who commit comparable offenses.

The study’s authors rightly call on lawmakers to enact laws that discourage harsh sentencing for preadolescent children and that enable them to be transferred back into the juvenile system. Beyond that, Congress should amend the juvenile justice act to require the states to simply end these inhumane practices to be eligible for federal juvenile justice funds.
A version of this article appeared in print on July 28, 2009, on page A24 of the New York edition.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/28/opinion/28tue1.html?_r=1&hpw

Posted by lois at 11:10 AM | Comments (0)

July 19, 2009

OK: The Board of Juvenile Affairs began initial discussions Friday about a possible private prison for juveniles in the state.

By BARBARA HOBEROCK World Capitol Bureau
Published: 7/18/2009
OKLAHOMA CITY — The Board of Juvenile Affairs began initial discussions Friday about a possible private prison for juveniles in the state.

The board is expected to vote in September on whether to solicit proposals to build and/or manage a private lockup.

Such a move would require closing at least one of the agency's three prisons, the L.E. Rader Center in Sand Springs and two others in Manitou and Tecumseh.

Office of Juvenile Affairs Director Gene Christian told the board at its monthly meeting that two pieces of 2008 legislation authorized the board to consider such moves.

The agency initially sought designs for a 64-bed prison to house youthful offenders, Christian said.

The projected cost in 2007 was $24 million, a figure that rose to $27 million in 2009.

The OJA asked the Legislature for a bond issue to provide funding, but that request was not granted, Christian said.

A decline in state revenue expected in the current fiscal year likely means that no additional funding will be provided to OJA for a private prison.

Christian said the decision about whether to move forward once the information about costs is obtained needs to come during the legislative session, which begins in February.

The state's three juvenile prisons are poorly designed, are aging and have capital needs, he said. In addition, the poor designs contribute to staffing problems, he said.

Christian said it is his recommendation to consider a request for proposals to build and/or manage a private juvenile prison.

Discussions about privatization create employee morale issues, said Sterling Zearley, executive director of the Oklahoma Public Employees Association.

He said private entities are in the business to make money and often cut programs, nutrition and other areas to do so.

Some employees from the Rader Center attended the OJA meeting wearing shirts that read, "Keep it professional. Keep it public."

http://www.tulsaworld.com/news/article.aspx?subjectid=11&articleid=20090718_16_A16_OKLAHO463816

Posted by lois at 11:11 AM | Comments (0)

July 10, 2009

Review of The Real Cost of Prisons Comix in Feminist Review

Thursday, July 9, 2009
The Real Cost of Prisons Comix
Edited by Lois Ahrens
PM Press

As activists know all too well, crafting a political message and effectively mobilizing an audience is an elusive task. In The Real Cost Of Prisons, Lois Ahrens and her contributors beautifully stage a difficult dialogue—about mass incarceration, mandatory sentencing, and the “war on drugs”—with comics. Comics are an accessible, popular form of education, and most importantly, addictive, and hence become a subversive way to raise awareness. The Real Cost of Prisons Project has distributed 115,000 comics to the incarcerated, affected families, and social justice organizations free of charge. Comics are just one part of the organization’s mission to end mass incarceration; since Lois Ahrens founded organization in 2000 a coalition of artists, activists, and researchers has produced and distributed educational materials about the costs—material and affective—of the prison industrial complex and it’s devastating impact on family preservation, women’s reproductive rights, rural economies, and much more.

“What does it cost to lock up 2.3 million people each day in the world’s biggest prison system?” ask Ruth Wilson Gilmore and Craig Gilmore in the introduction to The Real Cost Of Prisons. In addition to the staggering economic costs (the U.S. spends $60 billion per year on prisons) that could otherwise be directed at health care, public education, and other social services, the human costs are immeasurable. In the comic “Prisoners of a Hard Life: Women and Their Children,” illustrated by Susan Willmarth, we learn about the cost of incarceration for women and their children:

*One out of every 109 women in American is incarcerated, on parole, or on probation.
*Half of all women in prison are incarcerated more than 100 miles from their families.
*Seven million children have a parent in prison, on probation, or on parole.
*Seventy-nine percent of all women in New York State’s prisons are Black or Hispanic.

The Real Cost Of Prisons documents the vital efforts of the movement to end mass incarceration, and is an exceptional resource for all activists seeking creative ways to build and sustain a political movement.

Review by Jeanne Vaccaro

Posted by lois at 04:14 PM | Comments (0)

June 17, 2009

FL: 3rd new juvenile prison to open in one county--privately run

3rd juvie prison to open
Old detention center to become facility for high-risk youth
By CHAD SMITH Thursday, June 11, 2009 ; Updated: 5:59 AM on Thursday, June 11, 2009

St. Augustine's juvenile detention center will close at the end of the month and will be replaced with a penitentiary for youthful offenders from around the state, meaning local youths will be held in Jacksonville while they await trial.

The state-run St. Johns Regional Juvenile Detention Center, on Avenue D near the county jail, is being shuttered to cut costs in the Department of Juvenile Justice and to make room for Florida's growing population of juvenile convicts, department spokeswoman Samadhi Jones said Wednesday.

It will become the county's third juvenile prison, ranking St. Johns among 14 other counties with three or more.

As of July 1, the 50-bed detention center will be divvied up between the St. Johns Youth Academy, designed for "moderate-risk" youth, and the St. Johns Juvenile Correctional Facility, a privately run prison for "high-risk" youth that is in the same complex as the current detention center.

The youth academy will get 34 beds, and the correctional facility, which currently can hold 32 inmates, will get the other 16.

Jones said the St. Augustine detention center was selected for conversion into a youth academy because it is relatively new and has "state-of-the-art" equipment.

"We're going to use it now for what we really need in the state of Florida, which is a high-risk residential facility," she said.

The St. Johns Youth Academy will serve as a replacement for the Santa Rosa Youth Academy, a 25-bed facility in the Panhandle that is being closed.

John A. Alexander, St. Johns County's chief administrative judge, said he was "irate" about the way the Department of Juvenile Justice has handled the transition.

Before the change goes into effect, Alexander and other judges, along with the St. Johns County Sheriff's Office, will need to coordinate with the Duval County detention center to sort out how the suspects will be booked, transported and monitored.

But, he said, very little of that has been discussed.

"Certainly nobody from Tallahassee has contacted the judicial system," the judge said. "We run a good program here. And I'm not a Pollyanna. I understand that you're going to cut programs. But let's coordinate the cuts."

Jerry Cameron, the county's assistant administrator, said the Sheriff's Office is looking into the possibility of setting up its own detention facility on the site.

While there is an average of about 35 youth in the detention center on a given day, about a third of them live in St. Johns County, and the majority come from Jacksonville or Putnam County.

What the county is proposing to do, Cameron said, is establish and operate a 12-bed facility where it could house its own youth and easily transport them between court appearances and the jail.

But, he said, it still isn't clear whether the county can legally run its own facility or whether the state would want to give up the money the county pays DJJ to house its youth, which amounts to between $700,000 and $800,000 annually.

"That takes care of the legal problem, and that takes care of the money problem," Cameron said.

Counties with three or more juvenile prisons:

Brevard - 3 (1 low, 2 moderate)

DeSoto - 3 (1 low, 2 moderate)

Duval - 3 (2 moderate, 1 high)

Hillsborough - 6 (5 moderate, 1 high)

Jackson - 4 (2 moderate, 1 high, 1 high/maximum)

Madison - 4 (4 moderate)

Manatee - 3 (2 moderate, 1 high)

Miami-Dade - 5 (1 low, 4 moderate)

Okaloosa - 5 (3 moderate, 2 high)

Okeechobee - 5 (2 low/moderate, 1 moderate, 1 high, 1 high/maximum)

Pasco - 5 (moderate)

Polk - 3 (moderate)

Santa Rosa* - 3 (1 low/moderate, 2 moderate)

St. Johns* - 3 (2 moderate, 1 high)

Volusia - 3 (2 moderate, 1 moderate/high)

* The figures for Santa Rosa and St. Johns counties will be current after the St. Johns juvenile detention center is converted into a residential facility, replacing the one in Santa Rosa.

Source: Florida Department of Juvenile Justice.

Posted by lois at 09:07 PM | Comments (0)

May 29, 2009

Interfaith group seeks second chance for youths sentenced to life The coalition delivers a message of redemption in sermons at some 200 California churches, synagogues and mosques.

Interfaith group seeks second chance for youths sentenced to life
The coalition delivers a message of redemption in sermons at some 200 California churches, synagogues and mosques.
By Dana Parsons
May 25, 2009
The major faith traditions teach that the young are special in the eyes of the Almighty. So what does God do when one of them commits a horrible crime and is consigned to a life in prison?

He cries.

That was the message delivered over Memorial Day weekend at some 200 churches, synagogues and mosques around the state by an interfaith coalition trying to change people's attitudes about long sentences for juveniles -- especially those facing life without the possibility of parole.

"When children commit certain actions, we stop thinking of them as children," Javier Stauring, director of Faith Communities for Families and Children, told a group of about 90 people Sunday at All Saints Episcopal Church in Pasadena. "We start fearing them, we start demonizing them."

The Bible virtually sanctifies children. That doesn't change, Stauring suggested, when the legal system tries a young teenager as an adult. While not condoning their crimes, Stauring said a society with redemption in mind would not foreclose a second chance to someone so young.

"It's a lot easier to lock up a problem and throw away the key and not have to think about it, and to think that's going to make us safer," he said. What will make society safer from young criminals, Stauring said, is going after the "layers of woundedness" that often afflict them -- wounds that may stem from violence or abuse.

In an interview before he spoke Sunday, the 47-year-old Stauring said he met his first juvenile inmate 18 years ago while volunteering through his church. Now a lay chaplain, Stauring said he wasn't particularly religious when he volunteered.

"I now consider that a blessing," he said of the experience. "I formed my vision of God. We find him in the fringes. That's where, if we look at Jesus as a model, that's who he hung around with."

Stauring shared the microphone Sunday with Elias Elizondo, who took a plea bargain 16 years ago on a murder charge that got him a sentence of 15 years to life instead of life without parole. Now 32 and living in Sun Valley, Elizondo was paroled four months ago and said he's a different person than he was at 16.

"I don't justify my actions," he said, without explaining the details of the crime. He told the group that he not only deserved prison but that, at the time, he wasn't sure he ever should be released. Only when he matured, he said, did he realize that he could change course. Instead of blaming other people or his education, which stopped at sixth grade, he set out to improve himself.

"I started thinking, 'Is it possible I could turn my life around?' "

The answer, Elizondo said, was yes. "The parole board gave me a chance when it didn't have to," he said. "I was redeemable."

Elizondo is the kind of person Stauring's group wants to reach. The coalition is advocating for state Senate Bill 399, which would permit anyone under 18 sentenced to life without parole to ask for resentencing after serving 10 years. If the inmate met certain conditions, he or she could be eligible for a new sentence of 25 years to life.

Even that seemingly small window, Stauring said, would give hope to the still-young person.

The coalition's efforts are aligned with Human Rights Watch, an international organization that has called on Congress to end life-without-parole sentencing for young offenders. "Sentencing juveniles to die in prison is cruel, costly and unnecessary," the organization's U.S. program director said this month.

The group reported that at least 2,574 inmates in the United States were sentenced to life without parole for crimes committed before the age of 18. California has 250 of them. The United States is the only country that imposes such harsh sentences on juveniles.

Stauring knows the statistics but said the holy books of Christianity, Judaism and Islam are his references on the subject.

"This comes from our faith convictions," he said, "that we should never ever give up on a child -- children are always changing -- and that we should not look at them and declare that the worst thing they did as a child is how we're going to label them for the rest of their lives."
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-juvenile-justice25-2009may25,0,7391881.story

Posted by lois at 05:04 PM | Comments (0)

May 26, 2009

More calls for California to shut down its youth prison system

More calls for California to shut down its youth prison system
By Karen de Sá
Mercury News
Posted: 05/25/2009

With California mired in near-catastrophic budget woes, a growing number of researchers are calling for the state to shut down its youth prison system, which they say has become too expensive, too mired in abusive practices, and too ineffective in enhancing public safety.

There are just six remaining prisons for the state's most serious juvenile offenders, and they house the lowest number of inmates ever recorded in modern history. That has left taxpayers in an era of deep cuts to education and social services footing a bill of a quarter-million dollars each year for each of the 1,600 youthful offenders now left in state custody.

In a report headed this week to legislators wrestling with a $21.3 billion budget shortfall, the San Francisco-based Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice describes a way out: Shut down the state prison system for youthful offenders, and turn the population back to county probation departments that are sitting on empty beds in new and refurbished juvenile halls. The report echoes similar findings of the state's own Little Hoover Commission and Legislative Analyst's Office, which have also concluded that given adequate time and resources, counties could house even the most troubled juvenile offenders in far cheaper and more effective institutions.

"These wards are going to get out. They're coming back to every one of their communities," said Stuart Drown, executive director of the bipartisan Little Hoover Commission,
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which advises the state on improving efficiency. "Why not get them the programs they need to stay out of jail and not go back? They're not getting that at the state."

Bernie Warner, head of California's Division of Juvenile Justice, argues there must always be a state system for the most serious, violent, gang-involved youth offenders, the majority of whom need specialized treatment for crimes as serious as murder and sexual assault.

"The counties do a great job in managing over 99 percent of all those in the juvenile justice system in California," Warner said, but "given who's left in the state system — the highest-risk, highest-need youth — I don't think it's in the best interest of public safety to have those youth in local detention facilities."

Burden to counties

Expanding on Warner's position, the president of the Chief Probation Officers of California says counties facing deep budget cuts simply cannot assume more responsibility. "This is probably one of those things where the state needs to stay in the business of corrections," said Don Meyer, Yolo County's probation chief. "There isn't any other place for them."

Yet in a report released late last year, the Little Hoover Commission advised the state to get out of the juvenile justice business by 2011, stating: "It is untenable to continue to invest money into a system that has failed for many years." The commission advised that Californians deserve an accounting for a poor investment by the state, given that 74 percent of youth offenders leaving the state system end up back in trouble with the law. The problems don't end there: The state also has done little to meet the requirements of a 4-year-old court order to improve conditions, according to an Alameda County Superior Court judge monitoring the case.

Now, Dan Macallair of the Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice, has issued a report going one step further.

Using figures from the state's Corrections Standards Authority, his report states there are a sufficient number of beds in California's 58 county-based juvenile justice systems to absorb the entire state population of 1,637, "and still have nearly 600 empty beds remaining."

Even given the additional costs of creating treatment units within juvenile halls that are traditionally simply holding pens, the report says a shift to counties could result in significant savings: Counties spend about $25,000 a year on youth offenders — 10 times less than the state spends.

Counties up and down the state — including Santa Clara County — expanded their juvenile hall capacity in recent years following a mini-building boom. Now many of these facilities, including state-of-the-art high-security juvenile halls, remain partially empty. Santa Clara County has 390 beds in its juvenile hall, with a current population of about 300. Macallair's report identifies the county as one of the least-reliant on state institutions; there are now just 33 county youths in state custody, down from 328 in 2000.

Santa Clara County Probation Chief Sheila Mitchell said her department has worked hard to keep kids out of state prisons. She would not comment on the recommendation to shut down the state system, other than noting that the county's newly expanded juvenile hall — designed as a short-term detention facility — would be ill-suited for those serving years-long sentences and requiring intensive treatment.

Rehabilitation

Reformers say using surplus county beds for juvenile offenders in state custody would improve the prospects of rehabilitation, a notion many parents echo. Sharon James, a Merced transit worker, said she can only visit her 18-year-old son in a Central Valley prison twice a month, which has caused his condition — in a massive institution mired in violence — to worsen.

"I can look at him and see that he's given up on himself," James said of her son, charged with a robbery and fighting while on probation. The teen landed in a Stockton youth prison with the credits of a high school senior, but after almost two years in custody has not graduated.

"If he were closer, I could visit him every day, or as often as visits are allowed," James said. "I just don't want him to come home totally broken down — that's my biggest concern."
http://www.mercurynews.com/breakingnews/ci_12431880

Posted by lois at 01:43 PM | Comments (0)

May 20, 2009

Key Findings from America's Invisible Children: Latino Youth and the Failure of Justice

Key Findings from America's Invisible Children: Latino Youth and the Failure of Justice:

On any given day, close to 18,000 Latino youth are incarcerated in America. The majority of these youth are incarcerated for nonviolent offenses. Most Latino youth are held in juvenile detention facilities (41%) and juvenile long-term secure facilities (34%). However, one out of every four (24%) incarcerated Latino children is held in an adult prison or jail even though youth in adult facilities are in significant danger of suicide and rape.

Latino youth are overrepresented in the U.S. justice system and receive harsher treatment than white youth. In order of rising disparities, Latino youth are 4% more likely than white youth to be petitioned, 16% more likely than white youth to be adjudicated delinquent, 28% more likely than white youth to be detained, 41% more likely than white youth to receive an out-of-home placement, 43% more likely than white youth to be waived to the adult system, and 40% more likely to be admitted to adult prison. States with the highest levels of disparity of Latino youth in adult prison (rates over 5 times that for white youth) were California, Minnesota, North Dakota, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin.

Nine out of ten (90%) Latino youth ages 10 to 17 live in states that permit pre-trial detention in adult jails for youth prosecuted in the adult system. According to a study of 40 large urban jurisdictions, Latino youth prosecuted in the adult system are routinely incarcerated in adult jails. Overall, a higher proportion of white youth are released pretrial (60%) than any other racial or ethnic categories. Most (54%) of Latino youth prosecuted in the adult system were detained pretrial; of the Latino youth detained pretrial, 72% were held in adult jails.

Recommendations for Congress and the Administration:

Reauthorize the Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act (JJDPA) this year with strengthening provisions such as updating the "Disproportionate Minority Contact" (DMC) core requirement to give states specific guidance on action steps to reduce both racial and ethnic disparities and by closing the loophole that allows youth to be placed in adult jails.

Substantially increase federal investments to improve culturally and linguistically appropriate, community-based programs and alternatives to incarceration for Latino youth.

Oppose legislation that increases the transfer of youth to the adult criminal system or expands mandatory minimum sentences such as gang enhancements.

State and Local Policymakers should:

Immediately stop housing young people in adult jails and prisons.

Redirect resources from incarceration to culturally and linguistically competent in-home and community-based services for at-risk youth and youth already in the juvenile or adult justice systems, such as the programs profiled in this brief.

Reduce the transfer of youth to adult court by repealing statutory exclusion and prosecutorial discretion laws.

The National Council of La Raza is the largest national Latino civil rights and advocacy organization in the U.S., working to improve opportunities for Hispanic Americans.
The entire report can be viewed at:
http://campaignforyouthjustice.org/documents/Latino_Brief.pdf.
May 20, 2009

Posted by lois at 07:19 PM | Comments (0)

May 07, 2009

Girls on Our Streets

Op-Ed Columnist
Girls on Our Streets
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF
Published: May 6, 2009- NY Times

Jasmine Caldwell was 14 and selling sex on the streets when an opportunity arose to escape her pimp: an undercover policeman picked her up.

The cop could have rescued her from the pimp, who ran a string of 13 girls and took every cent they earned. If the cop had taken Jasmine to a shelter, she could have resumed her education and tried to put her life back in order.

Instead, the policeman showed her his handcuffs and threatened to send her to prison. Terrified, she cried and pleaded not to be jailed. Then, she said, he offered to release her in exchange for sex.

Afterward, the policeman returned her to the street. Then her pimp beat her up for failing to collect any money.

“That happens a lot,” said Jasmine, who is now 21. “The cops sometimes just want to blackmail you into having sex.”

I’ve often reported on sex trafficking in other countries, and that has made me curious about the situation here in the United States. Prostitution in America isn’t as brutal as it is in, say, India, Nepal, Pakistan, Cambodia and Malaysia (where young girls are routinely kidnapped, imprisoned and tortured by brothel owners, occasionally even killed). But the scene on American streets is still appalling — and it continues largely because neither the authorities nor society as a whole show much interest in 14-year-old girls pimped on the streets.

Americans tend to think of forced prostitution as the plight of Mexican or Asian women trafficked into the United States and locked up in brothels. Such trafficking is indeed a problem, but the far greater scandal and the worst violence involves American teenage girls.

If a middle-class white girl goes missing, radio stations broadcast amber alerts, and cable TV fills the air with “missing beauty” updates. But 13-year-old black or Latina girls from poor neighborhoods vanish all the time, and the pimps are among the few people who show any interest.

These domestic girls are often runaways or those called “throwaways” by social workers: teenagers who fight with their parents and are then kicked out of the home. These girls tend to be much younger than the women trafficked from abroad and, as best I can tell, are more likely to be controlled by force.

Pimps are not the business partners they purport to be. They typically take every penny the girls earn. They work the girls seven nights a week. They sometimes tattoo their girls the way ranchers brand their cattle, and they back up their business model with fists and threats.

“If you don’t earn enough money, you get beat,” said Jasmine, an African-American who has turned her life around with the help of Covenant House, an organization that works with children on the street. “If you say something you’re not supposed to, you get beat. If you stay too long with a customer, you get beat. And if you try to leave the pimp, you get beat.”

The business model of pimping is remarkably similar whether in Atlanta or Calcutta: take vulnerable, disposable girls whom nobody cares about, use a mix of “friendship,” humiliation, beatings, narcotics and threats to break the girls and induce 100 percent compliance, and then rent out their body parts.

It’s not solely violence that keeps the girls working for their pimps. Jasmine fled an abusive home at age 13, and she said she — like most girls — stayed with the pimp mostly because of his emotional manipulation. “I thought he loved me, so I wanted to be around him,” she said.

That’s common. Girls who are starved of self-esteem finally meet a man who showers them with gifts, drugs and dollops of affection. That, and a lack of alternatives, keeps them working for him — and if that isn’t enough, he shoves a gun in the girl’s mouth and threatens to kill her.

Solutions are complicated and involve broader efforts to overcome urban poverty, including improving schools and attempting to shore up the family structure. But a first step is to stop treating these teenagers as criminals and focusing instead on arresting the pimps and the customers — and the corrupt cops.

“The problem isn’t the girls in the streets; it’s the men in the pews,” notes Stephanie Davis, who has worked with Mayor Shirley Franklin to help coordinate a campaign to get teenage prostitutes off the streets.

Two amiable teenage prostitutes, working without a pimp for the “fast money,” told me that there will always be women and girls selling sex voluntarily. They’re probably right. But we can significantly reduce the number of 14-year-old girls who are terrorized by pimps and raped by many men seven nights a week. That’s doable, if it’s a national priority, if we’re willing to create the equivalent of a nationwide amber alert.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/07/opinion/07kristof.html?ref=opinion

Posted by lois at 02:58 PM | Comments (0)

May 05, 2009

Justices Agree to Take Up Life Without Parole for Youth

Justices Agree to Take Up Sentencing for Young Offenders
By ADAM LIPTAK
Published: May 4, 2009- NY Times

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court agreed on Monday to consider whether the reasoning that led it to strike down the death penalty for juvenile offenders four years ago should also apply to sentences of life without the possibility of parole.

The court accepted two cases on the issue, both from Florida and neither involving a killing. In one, Joe Sullivan was sentenced to life without the possibility of release for raping a 72-year-old woman in 1989, when he was 13. In the other, Terrance Graham received the same sentence for participating in a home invasion robbery in 2004, when he was 17 and on probation for other crimes.

In the majority opinion in the death penalty case, Roper v. Simmons, Justice Anthony M. Kennedy wrote that teenagers were immature, unformed, irresponsible and susceptible to negative influences, including peer pressure.

“Even a heinous crime committed by a juvenile,” Justice Kennedy concluded, is not “evidence of irretrievably depraved character.”

Outside the context of the death penalty, however, the Supreme Court has not shown much interest in cases from prisoners claiming that the sentences they received were too harsh. But Douglas A. Berman, an authority on sentencing law at Ohio State University, said the factors cited by Justice Kennedy concerning juveniles might well apply in noncapital cases.

“The principles driving Roper,” Professor Berman said, “would seem to suggest that its impact does not stop at the execution chamber.”

The United States is alone in the world in making routine use of life-without-parole sentences for juvenile offenders. Human rights groups say more than 2,000 prisoners in the United States are serving such sentences for crimes they committed when they were 17 or younger. A vast majority of those crimes involved a killing by the defendant or an accomplice.

At the argument of the Roper case in 2004, Justice Antonin Scalia said the rationales offered against the juvenile death penalty applied just as forcefully to sentences of life without the possibility of parole.

“I don’t see where there’s a logical line,” said Justice Scalia, who voted in dissent to retain the juvenile death penalty.

But Justice Kennedy wrote that life sentences would continue to deter young criminals after the death penalty became unavailable.

“The punishment of life imprisonment without the possibility of parole,” Justice Kennedy wrote, “is itself a severe sanction, in particular for a young person.”

Lawyers for the two Florida inmates cited international law, including the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, which prohibits sentences of life without parole for juveniles. Justice Kennedy’s invoking foreign and international law in the Roper decision was controversial, and the new cases will reopen the question of how much attention the Supreme Court should pay to international law.

Bryan S. Gowdy, a lawyer for Mr. Graham, said in an interview that his client had never been convicted of the robbery that sent him to prison for the rest of his life. Though evidence was presented concerning the robbery, the trial judge found only that Mr. Graham had violated the terms of his probation after an earlier conviction for armed burglary and attempted armed robbery when he was 16.

“When our children make mistakes, are we going to lock them up and throw away the key for life?” Mr. Gowdy said. “If you follow the rationale of Roper, that’s not appropriate.”

In rejecting a challenge to Mr. Graham’s sentence last year, a Florida appeals court acknowledged that “a true life sentence is typically reserved for juveniles guilty of more heinous crimes such as homicide.” But the court added that Mr. Graham “rejected his second chance” in violating the terms of his probation “and chose to continue committing crimes at an escalating pace.”

A ruling in favor of the prisoners in the two cases — Graham v. Florida, No. 08-7412, and Sullivan v. Florida, No. 08-7621 — could be quite narrow. The Supreme Court may leave for another day, for instance, the question of how murders committed by juveniles may be punished.

Last year, drawing a similar distinction, the court said in Kennedy v. Louisiana that crimes against individuals that do not involve killing, including the rape of a child by an adult, cannot be punished by death.
A version of this article appeared in print on May 5, 2009, on page A16 of the New York edition.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/05/us/05scotus.html?scp=1&sq=Justices%20Agree%20to%20Take%20Up%20Life-Without%20Parole&st=cse

Posted by lois at 06:54 PM | Comments (0)

April 18, 2009

Senators Support Access To Mental Health Treatment For Children And Adolescents In Juvenile Justice System

Senators Support Access To Mental Health Treatment For Children And Adolescents In Juvenile Justice System
14 Apr 2009

The American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry (AACAP) commends Senate Judiciary Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-VT), Ranking Member Arlen Specter (R-PA), and Senator Herb Kohl (D-WI) for reintroducing the Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Reauthorization Act (JJDPA). The prevalence of mental illnesses is higher in children and adolescents in the juvenile justice system than in the general population1 with more than 70 percent of children and adolescents in the juvenile justice system having a diagnosable mental illness2.

"The reintroduction of JJDPA legislation will allow us to continue to focus treatment and intervention for the most vulnerable and underserved. These kids have higher rates of mental health diagnoses including learning disabilities and substance abuse compared to their peers," said Louis Kraus, M.D., chief of child and adolescent psychiatry at Rush University and co-chair of the AACAP's Juvenile Justice Committee. "Early education and intervention programs that target at-risk children and adolescents and work with them before, during, and after the adjudication process will reduce recidivism."

The Act includes funding for increasing training for juvenile justice personnel and focuses attention on prevention programs to keep children from entering the criminal justice system altogether. Additionally, the Act states the need to support a continuum of programs that include delinquency prevention, intervention, substance abuse treatments, and aftercare. The JJDPA states that children should be treated in facilities dedicated to children and adolescents.

"A prevention component that targets children and youth at risk is long overdue," said William Arroyo, M.D., co-chair of the Juvenile Justice committee. "It not only aborts a trajectory of suffering and antisocial behavior, but it avoids enormous costs incurred by public systems when youth enter the juvenile justice system. Research supports this strategy."

The AACAP is a non-profit medical association representing more than 7,400 child and adolescent psychiatrists. The AACAP educates community leaders, policymakers, government agencies, legislators, service providers, professional organizations, and child advocates on the critical need of making mental health services more accessible to the thousands of children involved in the juvenile justice system.

References:

1. Bazelon Center for Mental Health Law. 2004. Thousands of Children with Mental Illness Warehoused in Juvenile Detention Centers Awaiting Mental Health Services. Washington, D.C.

2. National Center for Mental Health and Juvenile Justice. 2006. Youth With Mental Health Disorders in the Juvenile Justice System: Results from a Multi-State Prevalence Study. Delmar, New York.

Source
American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry

Article URL: http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/145910.php

Posted by lois at 10:35 AM | Comments (0)

CT: Raise the Age supporters cheer Democrats' alternative budget

Raise the Age supporters cheer Democrats' alternative budget
Hour Staff Writer

Supporters of the Raise the Age campaign and other youth-focused legislation announced their support of the Democrats alternative proposed budget Monday, saying it preserves Connecticut's "commitments to children and families while being fiscally responsible."

The "Raise the Age" legislation, signed into law in 2007 by Gov. M. Jodi Rell, changes the default mechanism in Connecticut that automatically sends youthful offenders to adult court at the age of 16 and, instead, allow 16- and 17-year-olds to go through the juvenile court system.

Earlier this year as part of Gov. M. Jodi Rell's response to the budget crisis the governor said the state would delay the implementation of Raise the Age to 2012 -- the original implementation was supposed to be 2010.

Connecticut is only one of three states that allows 16- and 17-year-olds to be processed in adult court.

As part of their proposal, the Democrats are proposing allowing the 16-year-olds to system as intended in 2010, delaying only the 17-year-olds.

Abby Anderson, executive director of the Connecticut Juvenile Justice Alliance, said the Democrats' proposal showed that including 16-year-olds in the juvenile justice system can be done with minimal impact on the state's budget.

"We're thrilled the Democrats understand the importance of continuing these efforts instead of not doing anything and then having to do a more costly intervention down the line," Anderson said. "We'd love to have both the 16- and 17-year- olds out of the adult system because the longer we wait, the more kids we lose to the system, but at least we might get part of what we were promised, so we're thrilled for that."

In addition to Raise the Age, the Dems budget also supports Family Support Centers which deliver preventive services to struggling families. Anderson said the centers are very successful at helping youth before they need more costly interventions or become involved in the juvenile justice system.

Anderson said she thinks the Democrats' proposed legislation has a fair amount of support behind it.

"It does have a good amount of support because I feel that legislators feel it's important to do something to move forward in a positive way and do what was promised," she said.

State Sen. Bob Duff, D-25, a big supporter of the Raise the Age campaign, and said he continues to support its implementation.

"While I didn't vote for the spending plan, I do support Raise the Age as a long-term investment for our state to cut down on the rate of recidivism among our youth," Duff said.
http://www.thehour.com/story/467880

Posted by lois at 10:30 AM | Comments (0)

April 10, 2009

WA: Closing prisons, slashing sentences eyed to balance budget

Closing prisons, slashing sentences eyed to balance budget
By Jennifer Sullivan
Seattle Times staff reporter
April 9, 2009

OLYMPIA — Tough-on-crime legislation that has long filled courtrooms, prisons and parole offices across the country has apparently met its match — the economy.

In Washington and other states, lawmakers are considering budget cuts that would close prisons, loosen sentencing guidelines and slash probation terms.

With lawmakers in Olympia looking for nearly $4 billion in spending cuts, several high-ranking Democrats say the recession gives them an opportunity to add compassion to a criminal-justice system they believe has grown too large, too expensive and too harsh for some of the crimes.

"We need a massive re-look at what we're doing and what the focus is," said Senate Ways and Means Chairwoman Margarita Prentice, D-Renton.

Prentice is backing a plan in the Senate's proposed state budget to close the McNeil Island Correctional Complex, a 1,300-inmate, medium-security island prison in Pierce County.

The state has never closed a major prison before. The move would save about $16 million over the next two years, legislative budget staff said.

The Senate budget also would close Green Hill School, the state lockup for violent and gang-entrenched juveniles; downsize the state prison population by 1,900 inmates; and drop people convicted of low-level felonies and misdemeanors from probation.

The House, in its proposed budget, would cut probation time for violent felons and sex offenders; allow for home detention instead of incarceration in some cases; close the medium-security Naselle Youth Camp; and eliminate parole for nearly a third of all juvenile offenders.

6% of states' budgets

One in every 31 adults is incarcerated or on parole in the U.S. — a total of 7.3 million people, the Pew Center on the States reported last month.

Nationally, the prison inmate population has grown each year since 1972, said Jeremy Travis, president of John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York City.

But due to the recession, nearly every state is scrambling to find ways to cut criminal-justice costs, which eat up nearly 6 percent of state budgets, said Alison Lawrence, a policy specialist with the National Conference of State Legislatures.

States are releasing inmates early and are letting offenders trade incarceration for treatment programs, she said. Some, like Washington, Michigan and New York, are considering prison closures.

In Olympia, the Senate would cut $152 million from corrections and criminal justice in the 2009-11 state budget, while the House would cut more than $160 million.

Last year, Washington spent nearly $1.1 billion on criminal justice, which includes the Department of Corrections, the State Patrol, the Criminal Justice Training Commission, the courts system and the Juvenile Rehabilitation Administration, according to the state Office of Financial Management.

Nearly 18,000 people are housed in the state's 15 prisons. Still, Washington is far from a leader in incarceration rates nationally. According to the Pew study, Washington ranks 44th for the number of people per capita in prison or jail.

King County Prosecutor Dan Satterberg attributes Washington's lower prison population to a 2002 law that allows prosecutors to steer many drug offenders to state-funded treatment instead of incarceration.

Last year, drug offenders totaled about 13 percent of the prison population, down from 22 percent in 2005, Satterberg said.

Some urge caution

Crime-victim advocate Jenny Wieland Ward says the state should study how to reduce the cost of corrections before closing prisons.

"There's smarter ways of dealing with budget cuts than closing McNeil," said Ward, executive director of Everett-based Families & Friends of Missing Persons & Violent Crime Victims. "There has got to be a more thoughtful process."

State Corrections Chief Eldon Vail agrees the state shouldn't rush into closing institutions. He suggests cutting costs by placing fewer offenders on probation — a strategy both the House and Senate propose, along with closing institutions.

Currently, the state supervises about 27,000 offenders on probation, Vail said. The House proposal would remove about 11,000 people from supervision while the Senate would cut 7,100, Vail said.

Sen. Jim Hargrove, D-Hoquiam, worries the budget shortfall could cut into programs that provide drug, alcohol and mental-health treatment to adult and juvenile offenders. Hargrove, who chairs the Senate Human Services and Corrections Committee, said he would rather close expensive facilities like McNeil Island than put treatment programs on the chopping block.

Attorney General Rob McKenna, a Republican, said the state should look for new ways to pay for criminal justice.

"This state needs to have a serious conversation about public safety, how we're paying for it and how the public is suffering from inadequate law-enforcement resources," McKenna said.

When the economy is flush, lawmakers want to devote more money to public safety, he said. But when times are bad, criminal justice gets whacked.

"This is not the first time the state has balanced the budget by letting people out of prison early," McKenna added.

Sen. Mike Carrell, R-Lakewood, vehemently opposes any move to close prisons. He believes criminal-justice funding should be a higher priority this legislative session.

"Public safety has to be the first call," Carrell said. "What good does it do to have great schools if our children are raped, murdered and assaulted to and from school?"

"It's desperate times"

At Green Hill, news of the potential closure of the state's oldest and toughest juvenile-detention center was circulating though the population last week.

The facility in Chehalis holds about 200 medium- and maximum-security offenders ranging in age from 17 to 20.

Dan Robertson, deputy assistant secretary of the Juvenile Rehabilitation Administration, says closing Green Hill would be a mistake. Senate budget writers say the move would save nearly $14 million a year in operating costs.

But Robertson says it would cost more than $35 million to construct new facilities at Maple Lane School, a juvenile lockup near Centralia where Green Hill's offenders would be moved. Maple Lane primarily houses youth who have substance-abuse problems or mental illness or are incarcerated for sex offenses.

Instead of closing Green Hill, Robertson said his agency suggested closing Naselle Youth Camp, a medium-security facility that serves both boys and girls. That would save $10 million over the next two years.

Marybeth Queral, superintendent at Green Hill, doubts the state could re-create Green Hill's vocational programs for fiber-optic networking, welding, auto repair, embroidery and sign printing.

She's also concerned about the two offender populations mixing — many of Green Hill's offenders are known gang members serving time for violent felonies. Queral fears that Maple Lane's population could be preyed upon and manipulated by the older and more sophisticated offenders.

"I think it's desperate times. I think decisions are being made looking at the bottom-line dollar, not the potential impact," she said. "It could be very dangerous.
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/politics/2009010460_criminaljusticecut
s09m.html

Copyright © 2009 The Seattle Times Company

Posted by lois at 06:07 PM | Comments (0)

Delinquency and Prevention

Delinquency and Prevention
Editorial- New York Times
Published: April 9, 2009

The Juvenile Justice and Delinquency and Prevention Act of 1974, now up for Congressional reauthorization, provided states and localities with money, training and technical assistance for badly needed delinquency prevention programs and greatly expanded protections for children who ended up in custody.

Unfortunately, those protections have been seriously eroded since the early 1990s, when states began sentencing more and more children to adult jails. Those young people are at high risk of being raped, battered or pushed to suicide. The numbers show that once they are jailed with adults, they are much more likely to commit violent crimes as adults and become career criminals.

The Senate version of the reauthorized act (the House has yet to move) marks a welcome departure from policies that have increasingly criminalized the nation’s children. It strengthens protections for young people who end up in adult lockups, and it would stop penalizing states that wisely house in juvenile facilities some children convicted in adult courts.

The new bill also fixes some problems that were supposed to be eliminated in 1974, when states were to have ended the all-too-common practice of locking up children who committed noncriminal “status offenses” — like truancy, running away or smoking cigarettes.

For such children, the bill encourages states to use community-based counseling and family intervention programs, which are cheaper and more effective than detention. It also calls for better screening and treatment of children with mental health needs. Those children are over-represented among those in custody.

The bill deserves the full support of Congress, which needs to back up the new policies with money enough to make them work.

Posted by lois at 06:03 PM | Comments (0)

April 01, 2009

Lock 'Em Up Jailing kids is a proud American tradition.

Lock 'Em Up
Jailing kids is a proud American tradition.
By THOMAS FRANK
Wall Street Journal On-line
April 1, 2009

At first glance, the news from Luzerne County, in northeastern Pennsylvania, is not good. In what is known locally as the "kids for cash" scandal, two judges have pleaded guilty to accepting $2.6 million in kickbacks from a for-profit juvenile correctional facility -- a privately owned jail for kids, essentially.

And here is what the judges delivered, according to the charges of the U.S. Attorney overseeing the case: In 2003 one of them, Judge Michael Conahan, who had authority over such expenses, defunded the county-owned detention center, channeling kids sentenced to detention to the private jail -- along with the public's money.

For good measure, the feds charge, Mr. Conahan also agreed to send the private facility $1.3 million per year in public funds. Over the succeeding years, the private jail, along with a second lockup-for-profit that had opened in another part of the state, won tens of millions of dollars in Luzerne County contracts, allegedly with the two judges' help.

What has drawn the media's attention, though, is the remarkable strictness of the judges' judging. Mr. Conahan's alleged partner in the scheme, Judge Mark Ciavarella Jr., reportedly sent kids to the private detention centers when probation officers didn't think it was a good idea; he sent kids there when their crimes were nonviolent; he sent kids there when their crimes were insignificant. It was as though he was determined to keep those private prisons filled with children at all times. According to news stories, offenses as small as swiping a jar of nutmeg or throwing a piece of steak at an adult were enough to merit a trip to the hoosegow.

Over the years Mr. Ciavarella racked up a truly awesome score: He sent kids to detention instead of other options at twice the state average, according to the New York Times. He tried a prodigious number of cases in which the accused child had no lawyer -- here, says the Times, the judge's numbers were fully 10 times the state average. And he did it fast, sometimes rendering a verdict "in the neighborhood of a minute-and-a-half to three minutes," according to the judge tasked with reconsidering Mr. Ciavarella's work.

My question is, what have the Luzerne County judges done that deviates in the least from our American political traditions? These jurists have merely taken to heart the unvarying message of 40 years' worth of election results -- that more people, many more, need to go to jail -- and have come up with an entrepreneurial solution to the problem.

We the people say it loud and clear every Election Day, in high-crime periods as well as peaceful stretches: More of our population needs to be behind bars. We love retribution so much we make hits of TV shows in which society's ne'er-do-wells come in for lectures not only by stern, righteous judges, but by tattooed, mulletted bounty hunters as well.

And over the years we have embraced all sorts of instruments ensuring that more people got locked up for longer and longer stretches: Three strikes laws, mandatory sentencing laws, zero-tolerance policies. Maybe they aren't "fair," but they've helped to make the U.S. number one in percentage of population in the clink -- in fact, as Virginia Democratic Sen. Jim Webb pointed out in Parade magazine on Sunday, America has an amazing 25% of the world's prisoners.

Taking this path has not always been easy. In the 1990s, when we started to realize that child crooks were "superpredators" who needed to go to prison along with everyone else, some were unwilling to act. Others stepped up. "We've got to quit coddling these violent kids like nothing is going on," said Sen. Orrin Hatch (R., Utah) in 1996. "Getting some of these do-gooder liberals to do what is right is real tough. We'd all like to rehabilitate these kids, but by gosh we are in a different age."

But taking law and order to the next level in this different age required money, by gosh. Privatizing bits of the prison industry was a step in the right direction, but what we didn't have -- until recently -- were proper instruments for incentivizing the judiciary. That's what the "kids for cash" judges were apparently experimenting with.

Today the do-gooders revile those efforts as "kickbacks," but before long we will see them as legitimate tools of justice. Our laws governing lobbying and campaign contributions have struck the right balance between the wishes of the people and those of private industry, so why are we so quick to doubt that the same great results can be achieved by putting the government's justice-dealing branch on the same market-based course?

The public will get to see their neighbors' kids go to jail, the judge who sends them there will be able to afford a nice condo in Florida, and the company that satisfies the public's desire for punishment will make a handsome profit. It will be a win-win result for everyone.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123854010220075533.html#

Posted by lois at 05:31 PM | Comments (0)

March 31, 2009

Jail a Child, Get a Job: America Hates Kids

Jail a Child, Get a Job: America Hates Kids
Chris Norwood
Huffington Post, March 30, 2009

Two judges in Western Pennsylvania, recently sentenced to seven years in prison for purposely inflating the sentences of juvenile offenders to benefit the income and profits of privately run "youth detention" centers, draw our attention to the over-riding economic impulse for the vast criminalization of American youth.

The judges got bribes of $2.6 million. Thousands of teens were jailed for little or no reason. The young woman "offender" featured in the New York Times story about this debacle, for example, was 17, had two parents and the pleasant teen look often described as "perky." She had been sentenced to a juvenile center for 3 months for making fun of an assistant principal on MySpace. (One of the disgraced judges, ironically enough, had found her guilty of "harassment.").

Yet, with thousands of Pennsylvania kids being sentenced on such skimpy charges----teens routinely received jail-time even against the recommendations of local prosecutors---this scheme maintained itself for at least five years until finally ended by a serious investigation. Western Pennsylvania---coal country---is largely white and working class. The fact that even there, children aren't safe from runaway criminalization only underscores how commonplace it is in the criminal "justice" system to see children as a meal ticket---and the striking extent to which the resulting criminalization is accepted throughout the United States.

In fact, jailing young people specifically and clearly for the sole purpose of creating jobs for adults---usually adults linked to political organizations and their allied unions---is commonplace across much the nation. And, it doesn't matter whether the "facilities" youth "offenders" are sent to are privately or publicly run. Youth incarceration is a very well-studied field. Over and over, it has been shown that, for the nonviolent youth who constitute most of the young people in American jails, being sent to a "facility", as distinct from being assigned to counseling and supervision in their own community, is a terrible choice which launches even nonviolent youth toward repeated jailings.

In New York State, for instance, where most youth in the "criminal justice" system are black or Hispanic, it costs $200,000 a year to keep kids in state facilities and 80% are re-arrested after getting out; it costs $17,000 for community-based counseling and supervision, with only 35% of these youth being re-arrested.

However, jailing kids to keep selected adults in paychecks is now so much a part of American culture that even statistics like that can barely nudge change. Gladys Carrion, New York's current Commissioner of Families and Children Services, has made it her top mission in the year since she took office is to start closing New York's dismal youth facilities. Judges, indeed, are directing more and more young offenders to the community-based counseling that is their best chance. However, getting juvenile beds closed so that the state treasury, and youth programs, can benefit from the savings has proven difficult indeed. Currently, New York State, which is effectively bankrupt, is holding open hundreds of empty beds and keeping unused facilities fully staffed at a cost of $14 million a year.

Proof that juvenile facilities, themselves, can both operate both more cheaply for the public purse and with better results for children fares as badly, or worse. In the two decades since Missouri reformed its juvenile detention system into the nation's most admired program, it has reduced its "re-incarceration" rate for the young in its system to a breathtaking low of 9%. The core of this system centers on forming the young inmates into 12-kid units, where they learn to be responsible for one another---for both the benefits of improved behavior and the consequences of bad behavior---on a level that gives them an entirely new social context. As Marion Wright Edleman, head of the Children's Defense Fund, writes, the result is both rehabilitation and low costs.
Much of the rehabilitation involves working through youth peer groups and does away with the mode of adults preaching down to them. The youth are taught leadership skills and how to facilitate group sessions. Staff members are trained to facilitate teams of 12 and are prepared to meet the needs of each youth, making referrals to family therapy and substance abuse counseling generally unnecessary.
The Missouri Division of Youth Services also has created a seamless case management system so that once a youth is adjudicated, one case worker follows him and his family throughout his entire stay in the system facilitating the eventual reentry of the youth into his community. Significantly, this system comes with a considerable cost savings. The annual cost for detaining a youth in Missouri is less than half of what other states pay.
This reform probably only blossomed and persevered because Missouri had one Director of Youth Services, Mark Steward, for 17 years; this gave him the needed time to insist and insist on reform until it was institutionalized---that is, until kids succeeding while they were jailed became the new norm.

But saying that Missouri has the nation's most admired youth offender program means--when you get down to it---almost nothing in the United States because there is no understood or promoted civic value in stopping the useless jailing of youth. Since 2005, Steward has headed a foundation-funded consulting service to help other states reform their juvenile services on the Missouri model. So far he is only working with the city of Washington, D.C., and 3 states which he feels are actually committed at the top levels---including the governorship---necessary to see this kind of reform succeed against internal opposition, especially from unions.

So, instead of spreading success, what we have, in the succinct definition of the Children's Defense Fund, is a "cradle to prison pipeline." This pipeline works at multiple levels to criminalize ordinary youthful hi-jinks and misbehavior (How was it a crime in the first place for a 17-year old to lampoon an assistant principal on MySpace?) and then assures that those declared to be young criminals on one flimsy charge after another actually do get jailed in a way that makes them into criminals.

What we finally see are startling incarceration rates. Overall, one in 31 Americans are in prison or under criminal justice "supervision" such as parole; 1 in 11 young black men between the ages of 20 and 34 are out-rightly imprisoned at any one time, and over their life, one of three will be.

It's striking that this relentless criminalization of youth, a phenomenon of the past twenty years, happened while the baby boomers---historically, the nation's freest, most drug using, and full of hi-jinks and protest generation---were actually the adults administering the United States. I don't have any real explanation for that, but I have often thought about the contrast: the generation in charge had the most fun and freedom of anybody while the most vulnerable young in their care---the poor, the minority, the parentless---ended up as the most literally shackled American young since slavery.

Maybe we were just too involved in our own causes---women's rights, gay rights, "choice"---and, of course, out vast consumerism, to undertake the hard, daily civic work of controlling bureaucracies which control others. With rare exception, prominently Marion Wright Edelman, even minority leaders have not made it a true cause to combat youth criminalization.

Now as the baby boomers (I'm one myself) head toward retirement, perhaps we'll finally have time to look at what we are leaving behind in the terrible sadness these children have been assigned for their portion of the United States. Or maybe the realization that spending so much to jail these youth interferes with paying for things we now need---like Social Security and Medicare---will cause us at last to see them as a cause for concern.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/chris-norwood/jail-a-child-get-a-job-am_b_180988.html

Posted by lois at 09:51 AM | Comments (0)

March 30, 2009

Real Cost of Prisons Comix wins National Council on Crime and Delinquency PASS Award

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
The National Council on Crime and Delinquency
Announces
The 2008 PASS Award Winners
Oakland, CA, March 20, 2009

The National Council on Crime and Delinquency is pleased to announce the 2008 Winners of its respected PASS Awards (Prevention for a Safer Society). NCCD honors the media’s success and vital role in illuminating the people and programs that uncover the root causes of crime and those that promise to protect our most precious resource—our youth—against involvement in crime.

A critical link in successful policies related to youth and justice is the education of the public. The media is uniquely positioned to be this link, and we gratefully acknowledge their efforts to fulfill that responsibility. Each year the PASS Awards honor media professionals in the fields of print, literature, broadcast media, television, and film in recognition of thoughtful and factual coverage of the issues. Special consideration is given to those stories that highlight solutions to criminal and juvenile justice and child welfare problems.

NCCD is the nation's oldest private organization working to attain responsive and effective criminal justice, juvenile justice, and child welfare systems. For over 100 years, NCCD has been committed to promoting criminal justice strategies that are fair, humane, cost-effective, and uncompromising in public safety. The issues that have defined NCCD since its inception are the need for a separate and humane justice system for children, alternatives to incarceration, and the fundamental connection between social justice and public safety.

For more information on NCCD, please visit our website at www.nccd-crc.org

FILM
Ice T Presents “25 to Life” Deloss Pickett, Michael Dallum
“At the Death House Door” Steve James, Peter Gilbert

LITERATURE
American Furies: Crime, Punishment, and Vengeance in the Age of Mass Imprisonment by Sasha Abramsky

Chasing Justice by Kerry Max Cook, Sandra Kaye Pressey, Kerry Justice Cook, Peter Hubbard

From the Bottom of the Heap: The Autobiography of Black Panther Robert Hillary King by Robert Hillary King and Andrea Gibbons

I’ll Fly Away: Further Testimonies from the Women of York Prison by Walley Lamb

Letters From the Dhamma Brothers by Jenny Phillips, Pariyatti Press, Ron Cavanaugh

Maximum Security: The True Meaning of Freedom by Alan Gompers

Prison Profiteers: Who Makes Money from Mass Incarceration by Paul Wright, Tara Herivel and Dianne Wachtel

Stanley Tookie Williams Street Peace Series by Stanley Tookie Williams and Barbara Becnel

The Real Cost of Prisons Comix by Lois Ahrens, Kevin Pyle, Sabrina Jones, Susan Willmarth, Ellen Miller-Mack and Craig Gilmore

MAGAZINE
San Jose Mercury News
“A Painful Choice for Moms in Prison” Edwin Garcia, Karen Borchers, Miller-McCune
“Is This the Future of the War on Drugs?” by Vince Beiser,John Mecklin

NEWSPAPER
East Valley Tribune “Reasonable Doubt” by Ryan Gabrielson, Paul Giblin, Patti Epler
Long Beach Press-Telegram “Lots of Answers, but No Easy Fixes” byWendy Thomas Russell andTracy Manzer
Seattle Weekly “Neverminded” by Laura Onstot and Mike Seely
The Daily Review “Educate to Break Cradle-to-Prison Pipeline” by Tammerlin Drummond
The Sacramento Bee “Unprotected” Marjie Lundstrom, Sam Stanton, Autumn Cruz, Mitchell Brooks
The Village Voice “Teen Murders at Rikers Jail” by Graham Rayman, Tony Ortega
The Washington Post “Rehabilitating Juvenile Offenders” by Robert Pierre, Carol Morello Westword
“Stand and Deliver” byAdam Cayton-Holland, Patricia Calhoun, Anthony Camera

RADIO
American Radioworks -“Gangster Confidential" Michael Montgomery and Catherine Winter
KALW Radio “Prisons in Crisis: A State of Emergency in California” JoAnn Mar, Alyne Ellis
KQED/Forum “Prisoner Health” by Scott Shafer, Nick Vidinsky andDan Zoll

TELEVISION/ VIDEO
HBO - “The Wire, Season 5” by David Simon, Nina Kostroff Noble, Ed Burns, Joe Chappelle.Karen L.Thorson
SoCal Connected/KCET -“Inside Locke High” Angela Shelley andAlexandria Gales, Brett Wood, Michael Bloecher,Bret Marcus
NBC/Wolf Films “Law and Order: SVU - Confession” Dick Wolf, Neal Baer, Ted Kotcheff, Peter Jankowski, Arthur Forney, Judith McCreary

WEB
AlterNet -“Meet Gus Puryear” by Silja J.A. Talvi and Jan Frel
City Limits -“A Ballot’s Breadth Away from Rejoining Society” by Karen Loew, Curtis Stephen, Rosie McCobb
City Limits “Debating How to Police a Challenging Population” Karen Loew, Tram Whitehurst

Posted by lois at 09:30 PM | Comments (0)

MT: Stimulus funds to build juvenile jail

"Freudenthal recently toured the existing juvenile facility. He said in a news conference Friday that using stimulus funding to build a juvenile center would be justified because it's a clearly identifiable need and would put people to work."

Published on Monday, March 30, 2009.
Stimulus funds could go to juvenile center
By Gazette News Services
CASPER - Gov. Dave Freudenthal says it might be possible to use federal economic stimulus funding to build a new juvenile detention center in Casper.

Casper's existing juvenile facility has been criticized for lacking natural light and because youths aren't able to go outside for exercise. Also, several violent crimes have occurred there.

The Natrona County Commission has saved about $3 million for a new facility. Estimates put the cost of such a building at more than $13 million. Freudenthal recently toured the existing juvenile facility. He said in a news conference Friday that using stimulus funding to build a juvenile center would be justified because it's a clearly identifiable need and would put people to work.

He said the stimulus funding would come from a governor's discretionary fund for state and local government stabilization funds. Wyoming's share would be about $15.5 million, he said.
"I think people want to see something done with regards to these questions of a juvenile treatment and detention facility. So we'll take a run at it," Freudenthal said.

Natrona County Commissioner Rob Hendry said Freudenthal apparently was impressed by concerns about the juvenile detention center and asked about the county's commitment. "Freudenthal's main question was, 'Is it shovel ready?"' Hendry said. Hendry said the county could begin earthwork near the existing adult jail this summer and probably begin some foundation work.

Story available at http://www.billingsgazette.net/articles/2009/03/30/news/wyoming/64-stimulus.txt

Posted by lois at 02:34 PM | Comments (0)

Getting the Juvenile-Justice System to Grow Up

Tuesday, Mar. 24, 2009
Getting the Juvenile-Justice System to Grow Up
By Ken Stier
Time Magazine

If it's not the biggest scandal in American legal history, many are calling it at least the darkest day for the country's troubled juvenile-justice system. For more than four years earlier this decade, two senior county juvenile-court judges in northeastern Pennsylvania took kickbacks of $2.6 million in exchange for packing thousands of kids off to privately owned detention centers. Many of the kids had committed minor offenses and didn't have the benefit of a lawyer. A 14-year-old from Wilkes-Barre, for instance, spent a year in a Glen Mills detention facility for the offense of stealing loose change from unlocked cars to buy a bag of chips; he was only set free after public-interest lawyers challenged the constitutionality of the punishment. (

The miscarriage of justice goes beyond the judges, Mark A. Ciavarella Jr. and Michael T. Conahan, who pleaded guilty on Feb. 12 to federal charges of wire and income tax fraud and face the prospect of more than seven years in prison. State and federal authorities are still investigating the case, and the owners of the detention center, PA Child Care, have not yet been charged. (The owner, Greg Zappala, says he didn't know anything improper was going on, while a former co-owner claims he was a victim of extortion by the judges.) What's more, many prosecutors, public defenders and other court officials apparently turned a blind eye to the abuses, shocking parents who had expected a fine or probation and instead watched their children be dragged off into custody. When the mother of the 14-year-old arrested for stealing the loose change asked to hire an attorney, she was told by one defense counsel it would be a "waste of money" because the judges would not listen. Now that the scheme has been unearthed, some 5,000 kids have grounds for suing, and many have already joined a class action against the two judges, the center's owner and other defendants. In addition, many are attempting to have their records expunged, though their bad memories of the experience will never be erased.

As egregious as the case is, experts say it is all too indicative of a juvenile-justice system racked with abuses yet subject to far less scrutiny than the adult system it increasingly mirrors. The entire Texas juvenile-justice system had to be overhauled two years ago after it was discovered that kids were arbitrarily held years beyond their original sentence and that many were sexually abused. Recent studies have shown high recidivism rates from graduates of the private boot camps that were in vogue under then President Bill Clinton after he endorsed the experience as Governor of Arkansas.

Nationwide, the system, which sends kids to a mix of large public "kiddie" prisons and smaller (but far more numerous) privately owned ones, handles more than 1.6 million juvenile cases a year; detentions have increased 44% from 1985 to 2002, the most recent year for which data are available. And that doesn't include the number of young offenders who bypass the juvenile system altogether. Every year, some 200,000 youths are tried, sentenced or incarcerated as adults, and on the first instance of trouble, often for relatively minor crimes, according to the Campaign for Youth Justice; those kids are 34% more likely to get into trouble again by committing new crimes, according to a government study.

Many advocates and academics argue that juveniles are not being given enough of a chance to turn their lives around after committing minor offenses. And officials at both the state and federal levels seem to be getting the message. Last summer, after reviewing a large swath of research literature, the Department of Justice concluded that "to best achieve reduction in recidivism, the overall number of juvenile offenders transferred to the criminal-justice system should be minimized." That came three years after the U.S. stopped executing minors, following a Supreme Court decision, Roper v. Simmons, that was largely based on new brain research showing that the full development of the frontal lobe, where rational judgments are made, does not occur until the early- to mid-20s. At the state level, Missouri is leading the country by phasing out its large juvenile-detention institutions in favor of smaller facilities, closer to kids' homes, that offer more specialized services, like mental-health and drug counseling and education. In the process, the state claims to have reduced recidivism rates for juvenile offenders to 10%, compared with a national rate of 40% to 50%. "We cannot incarcerate our way out of this problem of juvenile crime," says Shay Bilchik, director of Georgetown University's Center for Juvenile Justice Reform, who served as Clinton's point person on juvenile issues at the Justice Department.

Occasionally the widespread problems at juvenile facilities erupt in scandals, as in the aforementioned Texas, or in Mississippi, where minor offenders were hog-tied in facilities that sometimes had only dirt floors, run by guards with barely a high school education. Federal officials occasionally intervene against egregious facilities where there have even been some deaths along with thousands of allegations of abuses. But experts say simply trying to weed out the bad actors is not a viable solution. At a congressional hearing in October 2007, Jan Moss, executive director of the National Association of Therapeutic Schools and Programs, said the industry wanted stronger regulation. "Among our goals is the complete elimination of the abuses and neglectful practices we have heard about today," she said. "Clearly, we have a long way to go."

Her sentiments are echoed by advocates who are working to clean up the system. "We are closing Guantánamo, [but] we need an equal amount of attention to the abuses of restraints and excessive use of isolation in the facilities where our nation's children are being held," says Mark Soler, executive director of the Center for Children's Law and Policy, who has spent 30 years litigating against such abuses. Soler argues that only the most violent juvenile offenders really need to be detained — roughly 5% of the more than 90,000 who are currently institutionalized in juvenile correctional facilities. (See pictures of crime in Middle America.)

Surveys have determined that while as many as 75% of kids sentenced to some kind of facility need support for mental-health issues or drug counseling, only about a third are actually getting help. But Georgetown's Bilchik says there is a national movement to create more "wraparound support programs" — for mental health, education, drug counseling — to give prosecutors and judges more options than choosing between institutionalization and probation, which generally provide few services the kids need. "When you see additional services being offered, you see judges opting for them," he says.

As the Pennsylvania scandal showed, keeping kids out of institutions requires at the very least zealous legal representation. The Supreme Court extended the right to legal counsel to juveniles in 1967. But in practice the requirement still goes largely unfulfilled, in part because in some jurisdictions, it does not apply to the initial detention hearings at which judges decide whether the minor can stay at home or must be held by authorities. In addition, the confidentiality measures in place to protect the identities of minors can sometimes prevent much needed transparency.

But a responsive and responsible system also requires oversight throughout the justice system, something that appears to have been sorely lacking in Pennsylvania. No one has accused prosecutors of being part of the scheme, but many observers argue that they were in a position where they should have known of the problem but chose not to speak out. Instead, it took the work of the Philadelphia-based Juvenile Law Center to uncover the abuses. After discovering that more than 50% of kids in Luzerne County Juvenile Court had been without legal counsel, the organization in April 2008 petitioned the Pennsylvania supreme court to step in. (

Even then, there was no action taken initially; eight months elapsed before the court declined to act, without explanation, even though the application was supported by the state's attorney general. But the day after federal charges were leveled against the two judges — the result of a long-running probe into links between the court and the youth-detention centers — the state supreme court reversed itself and appointed someone to clean up the mess.

That shaky performance may or may not have been influenced by the fact that Zappala, the owner of the two private detention centers receiving a guaranteed annual rent ($1.3 million) from Luzerne County, is the son of a former chief of the same court. Or maybe it was what State Chief Justice Ron Castile told a local columnist, in a sad commentary on the entire system: the judges found the state's figures on the unusually high rates of kids being sentenced to detention and getting no legal representation simply too hard to believe.

* Find this article at:
* http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1887182,00.html

Posted by lois at 02:29 PM | Comments (0)

March 27, 2009

MO: System Treats Juvenile Offenders With Lighter Hand

Missouri System Treats Juvenile Offenders With Lighter Hand

By SOLOMON MOORE
Published: March 26, 2009
NY Times

ST. LOUIS, Mo. — VonErrick celebrated his 14th birthday last year by committing a daylight carjacking, beating the driver to the ground. With a long record of truancy, assault, and breaking and entering, he was sent to a state group home — the same home that his two older brothers passed through after their own scrapes with the law.

Both of those brothers are out now. Tory, 16, has A grades and plans to attend college. Terry, 20, has a job and has had a clean record for four years. VonErrick was recently released and immediately started high school.

The brothers say they benefited from confinement in the Missouri juvenile system, which emphasizes rehabilitation in small groups, constant therapeutic interventions and minimal force.

Juvenile justice experts across the nation say that the approach, known as the Missouri Model, is one of several promising reform movements that strapped states are trying to reduce the costly confinement of youths. California, which spends more than $200,000 a year on each incarcerated juvenile, reallocated $93 million in prison expenses by reducing state confinement.

There is no barbed wire around facilities like Missouri Hills, on the outskirts of St. Louis. No more than 10 youths and 2 adults called facilitators live in cottage-style dormitories in a wooded setting, a far cry from the quasi penitentiaries in other states. When someone becomes unruly, the other youths are trained to talk him down. Perhaps most impressive, Missouri has one of the lowest recidivism rates in the country.

Other states, including Florida, Illinois and Louisiana, have moved in a similar direction, focusing on improving conditions at state facilities to keep young offenders from returning.

Some states have worked at the county level to avoid confinement altogether, keeping youths in their communities while they receive rehabilitative services, which advocates say is a cheaper alternative to residential care.

The two largest state systems, Texas and California, cut long-term youth confinement by requiring counties to house low-level offenders in detention halls. Texas cut its 5,000-youth population by half within two years, while California reduced its population to 2,500, from more than 10,000 in 1997. But critics say that city and county detention programs are uneven and point out that states often do a poor job of monitoring them.

Missouri and other states are using new approaches in the juvenile justice system to try to stem the flow of adults behind bars. Missouri managed to cut its adult population from 2005 through the first half of 2007 by applying techniques from the Missouri Model.

The reforms have begun to have a national impact, with a 12 percent decrease in juvenile offenders from 1997 to 2006, from 105,000 youths to 93,000.

Most of the decline during that period was in state confinements, although some of the decrease is attributed to a 28 percent decline in youth arrests, which reform advocates say proves that there is no detriment associated with fewer incarcerated juveniles.

The Anne E. Casey Foundation of Baltimore has been a leading advocate for ending the confinement of low-risk offenders and placing them in community programs. Since trying the foundation’s approach in 2003, five counties in New Jersey have reduced juvenile detention by 42 percent, to 288 youths from 499.

Three years ago in California, Scott MacDonald, who is in charge of probation in Santa Cruz County, began asking courts to use Casey Foundation methods. Instead of confining every gang member accused of a crime, or every juvenile who failed a drug test, judges now look at a youth’s record and risk to determine whether he should remain free. A youth who fails a drug test, for example, might be ordered to attend substance abuse classes.

“Even if a kid doesn’t follow all of the rules — particularly rules that have nothing to do with crime — we won’t necessarily detain him,” Mr. MacDonald said.

In the 1990s, the Santa Cruz juvenile hall averaged 50 to 60 youths. Now it averages about 20 detainees, most of them under community supervision. More than 90 percent of those in the community programs have not committed new crimes within three years, Mr. McDonald said.

“The question we’re always starting with is, How do we keep them home?” he said.

Isela Gutierrez, a juvenile justice expert with the Texas Criminal Justice Coalition, a nonprofit group, said one drawback to the Missouri state system was that too many low-level offenders there were being confined, while serious juvenile felons were being sent to adult prisons, where conditions are harsher.

Tim Decker, director of the Missouri Division of Youth Services, said judges preferred to send youths to state facilities — Missouri Hills or the Hogan Street Regional Youth Center, with dorms that have wooden beds, male health and wellness classes, group counseling and game rooms — rather than dismal county lockups or to backlogged community programs.

“Judges have more faith in us,” Mr. Decker said. “So far we’re O.K., but you can’t do what we do with 25 kids in a group.”

Missouri Hills is clean and homey, with plush couches, stuffed animals on the bunks, and a dog rescued from the pound. The violence that plagues many juvenile prisons is also absent.

In a typical juvenile corrections environment, Mr. Decker said, if a youth becomes aggressive “you would have guards drag him into isolation” for three days.

“But,” he added, “the problem is that a young person doesn’t learn how to avoid that aggressive behavior and it will get worse.”

In Missouri Hills, isolation rooms were used only about a dozen times last year, Mr. Decker said, and never for more than a few hours. Pepper spray is banned, and youths are taught to de-escalate fights or apply grappling holds, a form of restraint.

Victoria, 16, who stole her grandmother’s car, her second offense, explained how her housing unit does a “circle-up,” or ad hoc counseling session, several times a day, whenever there is a conflict, like cursing.

“There’s drama all the time,” she said. “It’s like having a bunch of sisters.”

The Missouri system provided triage for an imploding system in Washington, where the juvenile corrections agency was plagued by vermin-infested buildings, overcrowding and chronic violence.

“The kids were stuffing their shirts with paper before they went to sleep to keep the roaches and rats from biting them,” said Vincent Schiraldi, head of the city’s Division of Rehabilitative Services.

With advice from experts in Missouri, Mr. Schiraldi divided platoons of youths into small groups. By October, the number of juveniles reconvicted within a year of release dropped to 25 percent, from 31 percent four years earlier. However, as conditions improved, confinements have risen, even as juvenile crime has declined.

Mr. Decker said that upgrading facilities and training new staff cost more initially, but that the reforms would reduce recidivism, which would result in long-term savings.

VonErrick has been home for a few weeks, and his 18-year-old sister said he seemed calmer and less interested in running with the wrong crowd. Their mother, Rosie Williams, said all three of her sons seemed more focused, and she attributed the changes to the counselors at the state group home.

Ms. Williams, whose husband is in prison, occasionally attended family counseling sessions where she said she learned important lessons as a parent. “Instead of just hollering at them and trying to keep them out of trouble,” she said, “I try to do things with them one on one, to get to know what’s on their mind and what’s going on in their lives.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/27/us/27juvenile.html

Posted by lois at 11:24 PM | Comments (0)

PA: Despite Red Flags, Judges’ Kickback Scheme Thrived and PA Supreme CT Orders Records Of Youth Fraudulently Sentenced to be Expunged

Clean Slates for Youths Sentenced Fraudulently
By JOHN SCHWARTZ
March 26, 2009- NY Times
The Supreme Court of Pennsylvania on Thursday ordered the slate cleaned for hundreds of youths who had been sentenced by a corrupt judge.

The young people had been sent to privately run detention centers from 2003 to 2008 as part of a judicial kickback scheme that shocked Pennsylvania and the nation. The judge in the cases, Mark A. Ciavarella Jr. of Luzerne County, is one of two who pleaded guilty last month to wire fraud and conspiracy for taking more than $2.6 million in kickbacks.

The exact number of records to be expunged was not stated in the court’s order; a special master is investigating the cases.

Judge Ciavarella and the other judge, Michael T. Conahan, admitted that they had agreed to send teenagers to two privately run youth detention centers that paid them for the business. Under their agreements, the judges will serve 87 months in federal prison and will resign from the bench and from the bar.

The judges worked in tandem, beginning in 2002, with Judge Conahan controlling the budget and Judge Ciavarella overseeing the juvenile courts. They shut down a detention center run by the county and began sending the youngsters to newly built detention centers run by PA Child Care and a sister company, Western PA Child Care.

Judge Ciavarella has said he did not sentence juveniles who did not deserve the punishment, but the numbers suggested a different story: he sent one in four of the juvenile defendants to the detention centers from 2002 to 2006, while the rate elsewhere in the state was 1 in 10. He also routinely ignored requests for leniency, even when they were made by prosecutors and probation officers. His record for harsh treatment of juveniles had already made him a focus of complaints by youth advocacy groups.

The court on Thursday authorized the master to vacate judgments and consent decrees and to expunge the records where necessary. The special master had submitted an 11-page report that found “there was routine deprivation of children’s constitutional rights.”

The special master, Senior Judge Arthur E. Grim of Berks County, was appointed last month by the State Supreme Court to investigate whether a “travesty of juvenile justice” had occurred.

He recommended vacating judgments and expunging records in cases from 2003 to 2008 in which the youth was not represented by a lawyer and did not knowingly waive the right to counsel, and which included relatively minor offenses like third-degree misdemeanors.

“Today’s order is not intended to be a quick fix,” Ronald D. Castille, the chief judge of Pennsylvania, said in a statement. “It’s going to take some time, but the Supreme Court is committed to righting whatever wrong was perpetrated on Luzerne’s juveniles and their families.”

The Supreme Court’s order on Thursday should be only the beginning, said Marsha Levick, a lawyer with the Philadelphia-based Juvenile Law Center.

“Our view is that every kid who appeared before Judge Ciavarella was denied an impartial tribunal,” Ms. Levick said.

Michael J. Cefalo, a lawyer representing hundreds of the juveniles, said in an interview that “this is a great step” for his clients. The teenagers, he said, have been “pretty well smashed here” by the system, and so “it’s a reassurance for them that the system works.”

Ruby Cherise Uca, whose son Chad was sent away by Judge Ciavarella for three months in 2005, said that expungement would be welcome, but that her son expresses anger over the length of the judge’s sentence. “He wishes that they added up all the days that he had convicted each of the children wrongfully, and give him that sentence,” she said.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/27/us/27judges.html?scp=2&sq=Pennsylvania&st=cse

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Despite Red Flags, Judges’ Kickback Scheme Thrived

By IAN URBINA
Published: March 27, 2009
NY Times

WILKES-BARRE, Pa. — Things were different in the Luzerne County juvenile courtroom, and everyone knew it. Proceedings on average took less than two minutes. Detention center workers were told in advance how many juveniles to expect at the end of each day — even before hearings to determine their innocence or guilt. Lawyers told families not to bother hiring them. They would not be allowed to speak anyway.

“The judge’s whim is all that mattered in that courtroom,” said Marsha Levick, the legal director of the Juvenile Law Center, a child advocacy organization in Philadelphia, which began raising concerns about the court to state authorities in 1999. “The law was basically irrelevant.”

Last month, the law caught up with Judge Mark A. Ciavarella Jr., 58, who ran that juvenile court for 12 years, and Judge Michael T. Conahan, 56, a colleague on the county’s Court of Common Pleas.

In what authorities are calling the biggest legal scandal in state history, the two judges pleaded guilty to tax evasion and wire fraud in a scheme that involved sending thousands of juveniles to two private detention centers in exchange for $2.6 million in kickbacks.

On Thursday, the State Supreme Court ordered that the records be cleaned for hundreds of the 2,500 or so juveniles sentenced by Judge Ciavarella, and in the coming weeks, the two judges will be sentenced, under a plea agreement, to more than seven years in prison.

While the scandal continues to ripple nationally as legal experts debate whether juvenile courts have sufficient oversight, here in Luzerne County people are grappling with more immediate questions: How did two native sons, elected twice to the bench to protect children and serve justice, decide to do the opposite? And why did no one stop them?

Old Friends Hatch a Plan

It all started in June 2000 with a simple business proposition, according to the judges’ indictment and more than 40 interviews with courtroom workers, authorities and others.

Robert J. Powell, a wealthy personal-injury lawyer from Hazelton and longtime friend of Judge Conahan, wanted to know how he might get a contract to build a private detention center. Judge Ciavarella thought he could help.

The two men agreed to meet and, according to prosecutors, somewhere in that conversation a plan was hatched that courthouse workers and county officials would later describe as a “freight train without brakes.”

First, Judge Ciavarella put Mr. Powell in touch with a developer who also happened to be an old friend, Robert K. Mericle, to start work on finding a site. Then, in January 2002 — the month Judge Conahan became president judge, giving him control of the courthouse budget — he signed a secret deal with Mr. Powell, agreeing that the court would pay $1.3 million in annual rent, on top of the tens of millions of dollars that the county and the state would pay to house the delinquent juveniles. And by the end of that year, Judge Conahan had gotten rid of the competition by eliminating financing for the county detention center.

“They were unstoppable,” said Judge Chester B. Muroski, who sent a letter to county commissioners raising concerns about detention costs, only to be transferred days later to another court by Judge Conahan. “I knew something was wrong, but they silenced all dissent.”

Other dissenters were also steamrolled.

When the county controller, Steve Flood, leaked a state audit that described the state’s lease of the center as a “bad deal,” the center’s owner filed a “trade secrets” lawsuit against Mr. Flood, and Judge Conahan sealed the suit to limit other documents’ getting out. His decision was later overturned.

“Everyone began to assume that the judges had some vested interest in the private center because they were pushing it so doggedly,” one courthouse worker said. Virtually all former colleagues and courthouse workers would not allow themselves to be identified because the federal investigation into the kickback scheme was continuing and they feared for their jobs if they alienated former allies of the judges.

Mr. Powell has not been charged. His lawyer said that the judges had coerced him into paying the kickbacks and that he was cooperating with investigators.

The few officials who had concerns at the time say their hands were tied. Probation officers say they suspected that something was amiss but were overruled every time they requested lighter sentences or for sentences to be served at home. County commissioners were the only ones authorized to sign contracts for detention centers. But by eliminating money for the county center, Judge Conahan left them little alternative but to sign on to the deal for the private facility.

Prosecutors say that by sentencing juveniles to detention at twice the state average, Judge Ciavarella was holding up his end of the bargain. And by late 2003, so much money was rolling in that the two judges were struggling to hide it all. So in 2004, they bought a $785,000 condominium together in Florida to help conceal the payments, and they began disguising transactions as rent and other related fees.

“We did what we could to stop it,” said Commissioner Stephen A. Urban, who repeatedly argued that the county should build its own center rather than lease the private one. “There were so many red flags that no one could mistake them as any other color.”

Disparate Upbringings

One red flag was the 56-foot yacht in front of the judges’ Florida condo, where they and Mr. Powell started spending much of their time. Owned by Mr. Powell, the $1.5 million boat was named the Reel Justice.

The conspicuous wealth Judge Ciavarella enjoyed in Florida was a far cry from the rough East End neighborhood in Wilkes-Barre where he grew up and is still known as “the local kid who made it big.”

A stellar athlete and student, Judge Ciavarella was the son of a brewery worker and a phone company operator. Nicknamed Scooch, like his father, he drove a beat-up Volkswagen Beetle for years, and even after moving away, he visited his aging mother daily until she died in 2007.

After law school at Duquesne University in Pittsburgh, Mr. Ciavarella ran for a seat on the county’s Court of Common Pleas in August 1994. On the bench, he became known for a stern hand in sentencing and a sharp wit in making sure everyone knew who was boss.

By contrast, Judge Conahan was known for being quiet, even secretive, on and off the bench. His neighbors observed that in a community known for holiday parties and open houses, no one they knew had ever seen the inside of Judge Conahan’s house.

Raised in Hazelton, on the other side of the county from Wilkes Barre, Judge Conahan came from money and had a political pedigree.

His father, who owned a funeral home, was Hazelton’s mayor from 1962 to 1974. Judge Conahan attended Villanova University and went to law school at Temple University.

Despite their differences, the two men became close friends on the bench, connected, former colleagues say, by a similarly stern view of justice.

In 2004, Judge Conahan bought the house next to Judge Ciavarella’s in Mountain Top, a wealthy suburb of Wilkes-Barre, where Mr. Powell also lives. The judges and their wives began sharing a recreational vehicle to tailgate at Penn State football games and vacationing together in Florida.

“They were pretty average guys,” Frank Monaco, the superintendent of the Florida condominium building, said of the judges and Mr. Powell. “Average for people with lots of money.”

Though the judges and Mr. Powell generally kept to themselves, Mr. Monaco said, they lost that low profile in 2004 after Mr. Powell got into a dispute with marina officials who wanted to end his slip lease. Mr. Powell went to court to force the marina to let him keep his boat there, but he filed his motion in Luzerne County, not Florida.

A colleague of Judge Conahan and Judge Ciavarella ruled in favor of Mr. Powell, despite a protest from the marina’s lawyer that the case should have been heard in Florida and that he could not attend the hearing because he had been given only one day’s notice.

“People at the marina thought that seemed like a real abuse of power,” Mr. Monaco said. The lawsuit was dropped after Mr. Powell moved his boat to another marina.

“You get enough power and you’re bound to start abusing it, I suppose,” Mr. Monaco said.

Troubling Trends

There was never doubt about who had the power in Courtroom 4 in the Luzerne County Courthouse. Though courteous, even jocular, Judge Ciavarella ran hearings with breakneck efficiency, cutting lawyers off when they rambled, scolding them when they arrived unprepared.

Sometimes, he helped his friends, too.

One courthouse worker recounted seeing a high school friend appear before Judge Ciavarella on a speeding charge. When the state trooper testified that he had clocked the man going 80 in a 55-mile-per-hour zone, the judge interrupted. “No, I think he was just going 60. Matter closed,” the worker recalled the judge saying. Shocked, the trooper turned to face the judge. “You’re dismissed,” the judge said.

But the juveniles being sentenced in that dim oak-paneled courtroom tended to be less lucky. Parents who arrived with their children typically left without them.

“Your arguments in sentencing weren’t persuasive,” said Basil G. Russin, the Luzerne County public defender, who represented many juveniles in Judge Ciavarella’s court. “You expected your kid to go away.”

While judges elsewhere in the state were shifting away from incarcerating juveniles for delinquency, Luzerne County was becoming infamous for imposing heavy sentences for minor infractions.

Kurt Kruger, for example, was 17 when he was sent to a boot camp for five months in 2004 for being a lookout for a friend who was stealing DVDs from a Wal-Mart. DayQuawn Johnson was 13 when he was sent to a detention center for several days in 2006 for failing to appear at a hearing as a witness to a fight, even though his family had never been notified about the hearing and he had already told school officials that he had not seen anything. Both juveniles were first-time offenders.

Judge Ciavarella had never made a secret about liking his justice swift and firm. Nicknamed Mr. Zero Tolerance in the courthouse, he once put a father in jail after he could not pay court-imposed fees for his daughter, whom the judge had previously locked up.

Asked last year why he did not make a habit of telling juveniles of their right to a lawyer before hearings, Judge Ciavarella said, “I just don’t believe I have to spoon-feed people to do things in their life.”

But as he pleaded guilty last month and admitted having “disgraced” the bench, Judge Ciavarella denied that payments had influenced his sentencing decisions.

State data, however, give a different picture. The number of juveniles he sent to secure facilities outside the home more than doubled from 2001 to 2002, around the time that the authorities say he and Judge Conahan hatched their kickback plan. And that sentencing trend — more than double the state average — continued through 2007, according to data analyzed by The New York Times. (No data was available for 2008.)

After the Juvenile Law Center appealed a case involving a child who was sentenced without a lawyer, Judge Ciavarella told reporters in 2000 that he would avoid letting juveniles appear without counsel in the future. But state data indicate that the problem only worsened. From 1997 to 2003, juveniles appeared before Judge Ciavarella without counsel at more than five times the state average, and from 2003 through 2007, that rate was around 10 times the state average.

Federal authorities have declined to say when they began investigating the judges. But these trends started worrying State Department of Public Welfare auditors in 2003, when they noticed that the county was billing the state for the same amount every month for detention services. In most other counties, the bill fluctuates based on the changing numbers of juvenile offenders each month.

In a separate review, state auditors found that the detention centers were systematically overbilling the county and that the centers had fallen behind in their bills and begun receiving shut-off notices from utility companies.

“Those were all red flags to us,” said Ted Dallas, executive deputy secretary for the Department of Public Welfare, adding that his office tried to work with the county to lower its use of detention because the state pays partial reimbursement for those costs.

But, like so many others, Mr. Dallas said there was little he could do. Since the centers were privately owned, state auditors had limited authority. And since the judges were on the side of the centers, the auditors had little recourse in the event of a conflict.

“In the end,” Mr. Dallas said, “it all came down to what the judge decided.”

Sean D. Hamill contributed reporting.

Posted by lois at 11:21 PM | Comments (0)

March 20, 2009

MI: Juvenile lifer bills in Senate “The greatest hope I have had in 33 years.”

Juvenile lifer bills in Senate
“The greatest hope I have had in 33 years.”

By Diane Bukowski
The Michigan Citizen

DETROIT — Wayne County Prosecutor Kym Worthy charged a 17-year-old with assault with intent to commit murder, felonious assault, assault with a dangerous weapon on school grounds, carrying a concealed weapon and felony firearm after he wounded another 17-year-old in the stomach inside Central High School Feb. 18.

The two were gambling in the halls, a practice that has being going on since at least the 70s, according to one Central High alumni. The 17-year-old faces up to life in prison. Days later, police raided CHS and carried away teens as young as 14 on police buses to face loitering charges, whether or not they were students.

“Until they improve the conditions in our schools, there will be more trouble,” said Steve Conn, a high school teacher for 22 years with the Detroit Public Schools. “Despair runs so deep among our young people, who are treated like their lives don’t matter.”

A 16-year-old Detroiter was ordered to stand trial on first-degree murder charges Feb. 5 in connection with the shooting death of an Oak Park police officer, under unclear circumstances. Numerous suburbanites wrote in to daily news message boards calling for his execution, or at least life without parole, although he has not yet been tried or convicted.

These children, and numerous others in Detroit and communities across Michigan, have 400 counterparts already in the system, children who were sentenced at the age of 17 or below to life in prison without parole, and at least 1,000 others serving lengthy jail terms. The number of juvenile non-parolable lifers is up substantially from slightly over 300 a year ago, indicating that more juveniles are newly entering the system, condemned to death behind bars.

But there is hope on the horizon.

“The Juvenile Life Without Parole bills that were passed last year in the House of Representatives represent the greatest hope I have had in 33 years,” wrote Edward Sanders. “These bills must be voted on in the Senate now, to give the second chance we pray for.”

Sanders, who is currently incarcerated at the Earnest C. Brooks Correctional Facility in Muskegon, was 17 when he was convicted in a drive-by shooting in 1976, although he was not the shooter.

He is awaiting word from the Michigan parole board regarding his request for commutation. Before Michigan prisons ceased providing college courses, he obtained his bachelor’s degree and now helps other prisoners as a “jail-house” lawyer and spiritual advisor.

Sanders was referring to Senate Bills 0171 through 0176, sponsored by State Sens. Liz Brater (D-Ann Arbor), Martha Scott (D-Highland Park) and Michael Switalski (D-Roseville). Co-sponsors include Glenn Anderson, (D-Westland), Michael Prusi (D-Ishpeming), Samuel “Buzz” Thomas (D-Detroit), Hansen Clarke (D-Detroit), and Gilda Jackson (D-Huntington Woods).

House versions were passed Dec. 4 by an overwhelming margin of 83-22. The current Senate bills, however, will have to go back to the House again for approval before they can be forwarded to Michigan Governor Jennifer Granholm.

“The idea of sending a person whose brain is not fully developed to prison for life has been determined to be inhumane,” said Brater. “The U.S. is one of only two countries in the world, and Michigan is one of few states in the U.S. with this practice. Many of these youth were sentenced along with an adult defendant who got a lesser sentence and many were victims of abuse or neglect or are people with a mental illness or disability.”

The series of bills therefore addresses alternatives to incarceration for mentally ill individuals and diversion from jail under other circumstances as well as the central life without parole question.

S.B. 0173 says, “An individual who was less than 18 years of age when he or she committed a crime for which he or she was sentenced to serve a minimum term of imprisonment of 10 years or more, or who was sentenced to imprisonment for life, including imprisonment for life without parole eligibility, who has served 10 years of his or her sentence is subject to the jurisdiction of the parole board and may be released on parole.”

The bill specifies several aspects of the prisoner’s individual situation for the parole board to consider.

All six bills, introduced Jan. 29, are now in the Senate Judiciary Committee, which is chaired by State Sen. Alan Cropsey (R-Dewitt). Cropsey has expressed reluctance to let the bills out of committee.

Brater said that although the Senate is predominantly Republican, efforts are constantly being made to reach out to that side of the aisle. A particular consideration is the huge cost of such incarcerations. Both the Greater Detroit and Michigan Chambers of Commerce have passed resolutions calling for a reduction in Michigan’s prison population, along with numerous other organizations and even major media.

Felicia Tyson, part of a group of family members of juvenile lifers, said that they are continuing to organize and lobby Senators as well as Representatives, in the same fashion that won passage of the House bills last year.

“We are asking people to write, phone and email their legislators, and are planning a mass visit to the House in April,” said Tyson. Over 200 family members and even victims turned out for a lobbying effort last year.

The website for the group can be found at www.secondchanceforyouth.com.

The group’s address is P.O. Box 251941, West Bloomfield, MI 48325-1941 and phone 248-738-2111. An online petition to legislators is available at petition@secondchanceforyouth.com.

http://www.michigancitizen.com/default.asp?sourceid=&smenu=1&twindow=&mad=&sdetail=7116&wpage=1&skeyword=&sidate=&ccat=&ccatm=&restate=&restatus=&reoption=&retype=&repmin=&repmax=&rebed=&rebath=&subname=&pform=&sc=1070&hn=michigancitizen&he=.com

Posted by lois at 05:11 PM | Comments (0)

March 14, 2009

TX: Lawmakers considering plan that would cap the number of juveniles being sent to TYC jails and keep them in the county in which they live

Lawmakers eyeing Travis' plan for juveniles
Proposal among many being considered that would reform youth agency, save state money.

By Bob Banta and Mike Ward
AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF
Thursday, March 12, 2009

Legislators are studying proposals from Travis and other counties to save the state money by sending fewer young offenders to Texas Youth Commission facilities.

Although some lawmakers warn against diverting too much money from Youth Commission activities, Travis County's plan is part of a trend, sparked two years ago by sweeping reforms at the scandal-plagued agency that were designed to remove youths from remote state-run lockups and place them in community-based treatment programs closer to their families.

So far, Travis, Dallas and a group of 22 Southeast Texas counties have proposed pilot programs to do that — for far less than the nearly $99,000 per year that it costs to keep a youth locked up with the agency. Other counties are considering similar plans.

Under the concept, only juveniles convicted of serious crimes would be sent to the agency. In return, the state would reimburse the counties for each juvenile who is incarcerated and rehabilitated locally.

Youths would have a stronger network of rehabilitative support closer to home than in one of the agency's remote facilities, said Jeanne Meurer, legal management director for Travis County juvenile probation.

"But being able to do that depends on what a county or community's financial resources are," she said. "That's why many local agencies are excited about the possibility of getting funds from the state to keep their kids at home."

It costs Travis County an average $175 a day, or $63,875 a year per child, to incarcerate and provide rehabilitation services, according to the pilot project proposed by Meurer and Estela Medina, Travis County's chief probation officer. If the child were sent to a Youth Commission institution, it would cost the state an average of $270.49 a day, or $98,729 annually per child, they said.

In the 2005 budget year, Travis County sent 119 juveniles to the agency at a cost to the state of $11.7 million. If the 119 had been kept in Travis County facilities, the cost would have been $7.6 million, Meurer and Medina said.

Under the Travis County proposal, a limit would be placed on the number of offenders each county would be allowed to send to the agency each budget year. In the case of Travis County, local probation officials would cap the number of juveniles sent to the agency each budget year at 10. If the county sent more than 10 in that year, the county would pay the agency the cost of taking on those juveniles.

The Travis County plan calculates that the state would pay the county $7.6 million in 2010 and $8 million in 2011.

The plan is one of several being studied by state Sen. John Whitmire, D-Houston, the chairman of the Criminal Justice Committee and a member of the Senate Finance Committee.

"This is exactly what we had in mind when we passed the reforms two years ago," said Whitmire, an author of the reform bill in 2007.

The concept has been initially embraced by Senate budget writers, who last week cut the Youth Commission's proposed funding significantly so it can be put into local diversion programs paid for through the Texas Juvenile Probation Commission. House budget-writers have not signed on but have initially approved much of what Youth Commission officials requested.

State Sen. Juan "Chuy" Hinojosa, D-McAllen, also an author of the reforms, said while he supports the idea, he is concerned about too much money being taken away from the agency to pay for the local programs.
http://www.statesman.com/news/content/news/stories/local/03/12/0312tyc.html

Posted by lois at 09:16 PM | Comments (0)

Real Cost of Prisons Comix (the book)

The Real Cost of Prisons Comix
edited by Lois Ahrens
PM Press
Reviews: http://www.pmpress.org/content/article.php?story=loisahrens#reviews
Ordering info:
https://secure.pmpress.org/index.php?l=product_detail&p=48

One out of every hundred adults in the U.S. is in prison. This book provides a crash course in what drives mass incarceration, the human and community costs, and how to stop the numbers from going even higher. This volume collects the three comic books published by the Real Cost of Prisons Project. The stories and statistical information in each comic book is thoroughly researched and documented.

Prison Town: Paying the Price tells the story of how the financing and site locations of prisons affects the people of rural communities in which prison are built. It also tells the story of how mass incarceration affects people of urban communities where the majority of incarcerated people come from.

Prisoners of the War on Drugs includes the history of the war on drugs, mandatory minimums, how racism creates harsher sentences for people of color, stories on how the war on drugs works against women, three strikes laws, obstacles to coming home after incarceration, and how mass incarceration destabilizes neighborhoods.

Prisoners of a Hard Life: Women and Their Children includes stories about women trapped by mandatory sentencing and the "costs" of incarceration for women and their families. Also included are alternatives to the present system, a glossary and footnotes.

Over 125,000 copies of the comic books have been printed and more than 100,000 have been sent to families of people who are incarcerated, people who are incarcerated, and to organizers and activists throughout the country. The book includes a chapter with descriptions about how the comix have been put to use in the work of organizers and activists in prison and in the "free world" by ESL teachers, high school teachers, college professors, students, and health care providers throughout the country. The demand for them is constant and the ways in which they are being used is inspiring.

The Buzz:

"I cannot think of a better way to arouse the public to the cruelties of the prison system than to make this book widely available."
--Howard Zinn

"The Real Cost of Prisons comics are among the most transformative pieces of information that the youth get to read. We take it with us to detention centers, group homes, youth shelters and social justice organizing projects. Everywhere we go we see youth nodding with agreement and getting excited to see their reality validated in print. The Real Cost of Prisons helps youth know what's up and gives them the push they need to get active in the struggle to make interpersonal and community-wide change."
--Shira Hassan, Co-Director Young Women's Empowerment Project, Chicago, IL

Posted by lois at 09:14 AM | Comments (0)

March 06, 2009

CT: New Haven Independent Teen Prisoner’s Mom: Raise The Age

New Haven Independent
Teen Prisoner’s Mom: Raise The Age

by Melinda Tuhus | March 5, 2009 2:17 PM
HARTFORD — “I don’t understand why they have this idea that sending kids to jail is gonna help them,” cried Katherine Gonzalez (pictured), the mother of a 15-year-old boy who sits in prison alongside adult offenders.

“No, it’s not gonna help them.”

Gonzalez, of New Haven, spoke tearfully at a press conference at the Legislative Office Building, organized by the Connecticut Juvenile Justice Alliance to press the state legislature to stick to its original implementation date of January 1, 2010 for raising the age from 16 to 18 at which individuals are treated as adults in the criminal justice system. Gov. M. Jodi Rell has called for postponing the date by two years as a cost-saving measure to help deal with the state’s budget deficit. Click here for a previous story.

Gonzalez, who works and goes to school, has a 15-year-old son in prison at Manson Correctional Institution in Cheshire. She said his conviction stemmed from an incident last summer, when at age 14, he slipped out of the house to visit a friend, and accidentally shot her with a BB gun. Gonzalez said the girl was not badly hurt, but her son was sentenced to five years, three years in prison and two years on probation. She said he has bipolar disorder and ADHD and is depressed but won’t take any medications because he’s afraid of what might be in them.

“What Carlos did was wrong and he should be held accountable for it. He was irresponsible. But he is not a criminal,” she said. In her written testimony she added, “What my son did was no different than an accident the vice president of the United States had the year before. No one arrested Dick Cheney.”

At the press conference she concluded, “I know there’s a lot of empty slots in juvenile programs and I don’t understand why they have this idea that sending kids to jail is gonna help them. No, it’s not gonna help them,” she cried. “Do you want to see our kids getting education and training, or do you want to see them in jail with adults? If you want to give him some kind of punishment, put him in a youth program to teach him how to be a better person. Don’t send him to jail.” Click ">here to hear more of her testimony.

In a hearing room, New Haven’s Harry Vazquez provided a counterpoint to Gonzalez’s emotional testimony. He spoke before the Judiciary Committee, which was taking testimony on a raft of bills related to juvenile justice and the death penalty.

Harry, who’s 14, described the upside of state programs that help youngsters straighten out their lives before they get into serious trouble. He said that he was running away from home and hanging out with the wrong crowd when he got referred to the Family Support Center in New Haven, one of four in the state that serve 39 of Connecticut’s 169 towns.

He testified against the bill that would postpone implementation of Raise the Age “because I think it would harm me and other kids like me.” He described going to the support center’s respite care program, where he learned coping skills. “I used to curse a lot at my mom, but I learned to go into my room to cool off and then sit down and talk to her. I learned to make better friends. I used to be angry but I’m not angry anymore.” He predicted that without the family support center he would have ended up in the custody of the Department of Children and Families. Click ">here for more.

At the news conference and later in the Judiciary Committee hearing, youth advocates urged lawmakers not to delay implementation of the law. Sarah Bryer (pictured), director of the National Juvenile Justice Network, came up from Washington, D.C., to say that Connecticut is a model for many other states because it has taken steps to improve juvenile programs and has “followed the science” in responding to explanations that humans’ brains aren’t fully developed until at least the age of 21 by raising the age of juvenile jurisdiction. She urged lawmakers not to go back on that commitment.

Abby Anderson, executive director of the Connecticut Juvenile Justice Alliance said the reason there’s room in the juvenile system is, “We’re doing a better job of catching kids and diverting them, so why don’t we put these things into effect for the 16-and 17-year-olds too? The juvenile justice system has gotten better and there’s room for more kids, while the adult system is overcrowded.

To ease municipalities’ concerns about the cost of implementation, Anderson said youth advocates compromised on allowing police to question 16- and 17-year-olds without their parents present if they first make a reasonable effort to reach the parents. Another compromise would allow police to release older teens on a promise to appear, so they wouldn’t have to hold them in municipal facilities. Both these changes are incorporated into a separate bill that was also considered on Wednesday.

As one of only three states where 16-year-old offenders are still treated as adults, how can Connecticut be considered a leader? Anderson said that once the state raised the age, the other two states (New York and North Carolina) began considering taking the same steps. Plus, some of the ten states in which those 17 and up are considered adults are moving to make the cut off 18, and those that already have 18 as the dividing age between juveniles and adults are looking at ways to make it harder to transfer youths to adult court.

A compromise bill would treat 16-year-olds as juveniles on the original implementation date of the law, next January, while postponing bringing 17-year-olds into the juvenile system for one year. The Alliance officially opposes this bill, but their information sheet indicated the organization “would favor this over a complete delay until 2012.”
http://www.newhavenindependent.org/archives/2009/03/keep_the_age_ra.php

Posted by lois at 10:39 PM | Comments (0)

PA: Does any 11-year old deserve life in prison?

Pittsburgh Tribune-Review
Does any 11-year-old deserve life in prison?
By Chris Togneri
TRIBUNE-REVIEW
Saturday, February 28, 2009

Fears that someone might try to harm an 11-year-old homicide suspect prompted authorities to place extra patrols at a Beaver County detention center, tripling taxpayers' cost to house him, officials said Friday.

A week after charging Jordan Anthony Brown with killing his father's fiancee and her unborn son, authorities were still grappling with a system not accustomed to handling children so young accused of such crimes. Large questions loom: Was he capable of premeditated murder? Should he be tried as an adult? Is it inhumane to sentence kids to life in prison without parole? Why did he have access to a gun?

Brown was moved Wednesday from the Lawrence County Jail to the Allencrest juvenile center, prompting law enforcement to increase security. Kenzie Houk, 26, and the son she planned to name Christopher were buried Thursday.

Even in a facility designed for kids, Brown is the youngest inmate, Allencrest director Bob Rose said.

"We watched him a little closer when he was with the population early on, like we would with any new inmate," Rose said. "So far, so good. We look for any signs or symptoms. We are always alert to that, and we're particularly alert to that, given the nature of this offense.

"To this point, we have not seen a need to isolate him."

Police in Brighton and Beaver check the area frequently, and a sheriff's deputy guards the Allencrest perimeter around the clock, said Beaver County Solicitor Myron Sainovich. The extra security means Lawrence County is paying $4,500 a week to house Brown in Beaver County, rather than the typical $1,400.

Moving Brown to an isolated ward of the Beaver County Jail would be cheaper, Sainovich said. The jail has housed four minors since 2000.

If Brown is moved, he would be placed in an isolation cell where two guards could watch him 24 hours a day, Sainovich said. He would have access to a shower, a computer, medical care and psychological treatment. A camera would monitor his movements.

Charged with two counts of homicide as an adult, Brown is due in court March 24 for a preliminary hearing.

Brown's uncle described him as a typical 11-year-old boy who likes video games, football and dirt bikes and adores his father.

Prosecutors believe Brown was jealous of Houk and having trouble adjusting to their blended family when she and her two daughters moved in. They say he shot Houk in the head as she lay in bed at the family's rented home in New Galilee.

Dr. Paul Friday, head of clinical psychology at UPMC Shadyside, believes it's important to understand that the human brain does not fully develop until about age 25.

"Normal people know when crazy ideas are crazy," he said. "Does he understand the difference between good and bad? Yes, probably. But the chances of an 11-year-old understanding consequences in the same way he would when he is 21 is nonexistent."

If convicted as charged, Brown would face a mandatory sentence of life in prison without parole. If that happens, he could be the youngest American ever to receive such a sentence.

"We know of eight cases where 13-year-olds were sentenced to life in prison without parole, but our research shows no evidence of any children under 13, ever," said Michelle Leighton, the director of Human Rights Programs at the University of San Francisco School of Law. "He would be the youngest."

Leighton co-authored the 2008 study "Sentencing Our Children to Die in Prison," which shows the United States is the only country that sentences juveniles to life in prison without the possibility of parole. Pennsylvania has more juvenile lifers than any state.

In Pennsylvania, anyone 10 or older charged with homicide automatically starts in adult court. Defense attorneys can petition to move such cases to juvenile court. Brown's attorney, Dennis Elisco, has vowed to do so.

There is precedent for granting such a move:

• In 2007, an Elizabeth Township girl who said she fatally shot her father because he sexually abused her had her case moved to juvenile court. Last year, Rachel Booth, who was 13 when she stood over her sleeping father with a 12-gauge shotgun and shot him in the face, reached a plea deal with prosecutors allowing her to avoid jail.

• D.L. Timothy Fullum of Homewood had his case moved to juvenile court in 2004. He was 16 when he fatally stabbed his friend, Israel Cyrus, 15, during a scuffle as the two walked along a street. In juvenile court, he was convicted of voluntary manslaughter and held at a juvenile facility until he turned 21.

When Elisco petitions to transfer Brown's case, Lawrence County District Attorney John Bongivengo will have to decide whether to fight such a move.

"I have not made a decision yet," Bongivengo said. "It's something I'm definitely struggling with. Whatever decision I make, I'm probably going to be uncomfortable with it. I've got to make a decision that I can live with."

Houk's family wants Brown tried as an adult. They believe the slayings were calculated and accuse Brown of threatening to "pop" Houk and her daughters at least two months before the killing. They called him a skilled shooter who understood the consequences of pulling the trigger.

"There's no kid in him," said Jack Houk, Kenzie Houk's father.

"He was a miserable child," said Jennifer Kraner, 32, the slain woman's sister. "We tried to love him. But there was some sort of issue."

Leighton thinks it would be "morally reprehensible" to try an 11-year-old as an adult.

"This child is obviously extraordinarily disturbed and troubled -- that's evident by his actions -- but that does not make him an adult," she said. "We can't pretend that they are adults. No other country does that. It doesn't make any sense. It doesn't bring back the dead, and it doesn't help anyone."

Dr. Anthony Mannarino, director of the Center for Traumatic Stress in Children at Allegheny General Hospital in the North Side, said an 11-year-old is more likely to be impulsive than rational.

Bongivengo has said he will not pursue charges against Brown's father, Christopher Brown, for allowing the boy access to guns. But, Mannarino cautioned, mixing the unpredictability of youth with access to a firearm is a dangerous combination.

"We all have that thought of wanting to kill someone once in awhile, but as adults we think it through and we don't act on it," Mannarino said. "An 11-year-old is more likely to follow through on an emotional thought. And to give them access to a gun is really a mistake.

"That's one of the tragedies in this situation. If the kid did not have a gun, this doesn't happen."
http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/pittsburghtrib/news/cityregion/s_613846.html

Posted by lois at 10:34 PM | Comments (0)

February 27, 2009

70 Youths Sue Former Judges in Detention Kickback Case

70 Youths Sue Former Judges in Detention Kickback Case
By IAN URBINA
NY Times
Published: February 26, 2009

More than 70 juveniles and their families filed a class-action lawsuit Thursday against two former judges who pleaded guilty this month in a scheme that involved their taking kickbacks to put young offenders in privately run detention centers.

The suit contends that before resigning last year, the judges “used kids as commodities that could be traded for cash,” placing an “indelible stain” on the juvenile justice system of Luzerne County in northeastern Pennsylvania.

The suit, filed in the Federal District Court in Scranton by the Juvenile Law Center, seeks to have all profits that the detention centers earned from the scheme placed in a fund that would compensate the youths for their emotional distress.

In an earlier filing, the law center, based in Philadelphia, asked the State Supreme Court to clear the records of all juveniles who appeared before the judges, Mark A. Ciavarella Jr. and Michael T. Conahan.

The suit brought Thursday is the third filed on behalf of juvenile offenders. The two others, one of which also seeks class-action status, were filed by private lawyers.

Mr. Ciavarella and Mr. Conahan pleaded guilty on Feb. 12 to federal charges of wire and income-tax fraud for having taken more than $2.6 million in kickbacks to send teenagers to the two privately operated centers, run by PA Child Care and a sister company, Western PA Child Care.

“Judge Ciavarella’s placement of so many children in juvenile facilities without regard for their underlying charges suggests a Procrustean scheme that violated one of the core principles of the juvenile justice system — the right to individualized treatment and rehabilitation,” Lourdes M. Rosado, associate director of the Juvenile Law Center, said in a statement.

Lawyers for the two former judges declined to comment on the suit.

As for the criminal investigation of court personnel, two additional people have already been charged, and federal officials say they may soon charge others involved in the scheme.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/27/us/27judges.html

Posted by lois at 06:01 PM | Comments (0)

February 14, 2009

PA: Suit Names 2 Judges Accused in a Kickback Case

Suit Names 2 Judges Accused in a Kickback Case
By IAN URBINA
Published: February 13, 2009
NY Times

Several hundred families filed a class-action suit Friday against two Pennsylvania judges who pleaded guilty on Thursday to accepting $2.6 million in kickbacks for sending juveniles to private detention facilities.

“At the hands of two grossly corrupt judges and several conspirators, hundreds of Pennsylvania children, their families and loved ones, were victimized and their civil rights were violated,” said Michael J. Cefalo, one of the lawyers representing the families. “It’s our intent to make sure that the system rights this terrible injustice and holds those responsible accountable.”

Pennsylvania lawmakers called on Friday for hearings into the state’s juvenile justice system. And the Juvenile Law Center in Philadelphia, which blew the whistle on the judges, said it had sworn affidavits from families who said they had sought court-appointed counsel but were told that their children would have to wait weeks, sometimes months, for a lawyer. During that time, the children would have to remain in detention, the families said.

The two judges, Mark A. Ciavarella Jr. and Michael T. Conahan, pleaded guilty in Federal District Court in Scranton, Pa., to wire fraud and conspiracy to defraud the United States for taking more than $2.6 million in kickbacks to send teenagers to two privately run youth detention centers run by PA Child Care and a sister company, Western PA Child Care. Their plea agreements call for sentences of more than seven years in prison.

As many as 5,000 juveniles are believed to have appeared before Judge Ciavarella while the kickback scheme was going on. The judges are currently free on an unsecured $1 million bond, and they have surrendered their passports and a condominium in Florida. Neither is allowed out of the state without permission.

State Senator Stewart J. Greenleaf, a Republican from Montgomery County who is the chairman of Senate Judiciary Committee, said he intended to hold a hearing to find ways to help the children and their families once the federal investigation was done. A spokesman in Mr. Greenleaf’s office said one option was to provide money from the crime victims compensation fund.

“Money is important, but my son’s life has already been completely destroyed,” said Ruby Cherise Uca, whose son, Chad, 18, was sentenced to three months of detention by Judge Ciavarella in 2005, when Chad was in eighth grade.

Chad, who had no prior offenses, was charged with simple assault after shoving a boy at school and causing him to cut his head on a locker. Chad returned to school his freshman year, but he was so far behind in classes and so stigmatized by his teachers and peers, his mother said, that he soon dropped out.

Federal investigators remained silent Friday about whether they would file charges against the operators of the detention centers or who else they were considering as possible conspirators.

But a law enforcement official confirmed Friday that the Federal Bureau of Investigation visited a transitional housing program in Wilkes-Barre, Pa., where Judge Ciavarella furloughed inmates who had been sentenced by other judges, as federal authorities continue to scrutinize actions by Judge Ciavarella and Judge Conahan.

Lawyers for Robert J. Powell, the owner of one of the detention centers, released a letter saying Mr. Powell was not complicit in the kickback scheme but was a victim of demands from the judges for payment.

Robert Schwartz, executive director of the Juvenile Law Center in Philadelphia, said that juveniles should not be allowed to waive their right to counsel, as is permitted in Pennsylvania, and that if families wanted a lawyer but could not afford one, they should get representation.

Mr. Schwartz added that Luzerne County, where the judges handled cases, had only one public defender on staff for juveniles. The juvenile court processes about 1,200 juvenile defendants a year.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/14/us/14judge.html?scp=2&sq=PA&st=cse
A version of this article appeared in print on February 14, 2009, on page A13 of the New York edition.

Posted by lois at 04:30 PM | Comments (0)

February 13, 2009

PA: Judges Plead Guilty in Scheme to Jail Youths for Profit

Judges Plead Guilty in Scheme to Jail Youths for Profit
February 12, 2009
By IAN URBINA and SEAN D. HAMILL
NY Times

At worst, Hillary Transue thought she might get a stern lecture when she appeared before a judge for building a spoof MySpace page mocking the assistant principal at her high school in Wilkes-Barre, Pa. She was a stellar student who had never been in trouble, and the page stated clearly at the bottom that it was just a joke.
Instead, the judge sentenced her to three months at a juvenile detention center on a charge of harassment.

She was handcuffed and taken away as her stunned parents stood by.

“I felt like I had been thrown into some surreal sort of nightmare,” said Hillary, 17, who was sentenced in 2007. “All I wanted to know was how this could be fair and why the judge would do such a thing.”

The answers became a bit clearer on Thursday as the judge, Mark A. Ciavarella Jr., and a colleague, Michael T. Conahan, appeared in federal court in Scranton, Pa., to plead guilty to wire fraud and income tax fraud for taking more than $2.6 million in kickbacks to send teenagers to two privately run youth detention centers run by PA Child Care and a sister company, Western PA Child Care.

While prosecutors say that Judge Conahan, 56, secured contracts for the two centers to house juvenile offenders, Judge Ciavarella, 58, was the one who carried out the sentencing to keep the centers filled.

“In my entire career, I’ve never heard of anything remotely approaching this,” said Senior Judge Arthur E. Grim, who was appointed by the State Supreme Court this week to determine what should be done with the estimated 5,000 juveniles who have been sentenced by Judge Ciavarella since the scheme started in 2003. Many of them were first-time offenders and some remain in detention.

The case has shocked Luzerne County, an area in northeastern Pennsylvania that has been battered by a loss of industrial jobs and the closing of most of its anthracite coal mines.

And it raised concerns about whether juveniles should be required to have counsel either before or during their appearances in court and whether juvenile courts should be open to the public or child advocates.

If the court agrees to the plea agreement, both judges will serve 87 months in federal prison and resign from the bench and bar. They are expected to be sentenced in the next several months. Lawyers for both men declined to comment.

Since state law forbids retirement benefits to judges convicted of a felony while in office, the judges would also lose their pensions.

With Judge Conahan serving as president judge in control of the budget and Judge Ciavarella overseeing the juvenile courts, they set the kickback scheme in motion in December 2002, the authorities said.

They shut down the county-run juvenile detention center, arguing that it was in poor condition, the authorities said, and maintained that the county had no choice but to send detained juveniles to the newly built private detention centers.

Prosecutors say the judges tried to conceal the kickbacks as payments to a company they control in Florida.

Though he pleaded guilty to the charges Thursday, Judge Ciavarella has denied sentencing juveniles who did not deserve it or sending them to the detention centers in a quid pro quo with the centers.

But Assistant United States Attorney Gordon A. Zubrod said after the hearing that the government continues to charge a quid pro quo.

“We’re not negotiating that, no,” Mr. Zubrod said. “We’re not backing off.”

No charges have been filed against executives of the detention centers. Prosecutors said the investigation into the case was continuing.

For years, youth advocacy groups complained that Judge Ciavarella was unusually harsh. He sent a quarter of his juvenile defendants to detention centers from 2002 to 2006, compared with a state rate of 1 in 10. He also routinely ignored requests for leniency made by prosecutors and probation officers.

“The juvenile system, by design, is intended to be a less punitive system than the adult system, and yet here were scores of children with very minor infractions having their lives ruined,” said Marsha Levick, a lawyer with the Philadelphia-based Juvenile Law Center.

“There was a culture of intimidation surrounding this judge and no one was willing to speak up about the sentences he was handing down.”

Last year, the Juvenile Law Center, which had raised concerns about Judge Ciavarella in the past, filed a motion to the State Supreme Court about more than 500 juveniles who had appeared before the judge without representation. The court originally rejected the petition, but recently reversed that decision.

The United States Supreme Court ruled in 1967 that children have a constitutional right to counsel. But in Pennsylvania, as in at least 20 other states, children can waive counsel, and about half of the children that Judge Ciavarella sentenced had chosen to do so. Only Illinois, New Mexico and North Carolina require juveniles to have representation when they appear before judges.

Clay Yeager, the former director of the Office of Juvenile Justice in Pennsylvania, said typical juvenile proceedings are kept closed to the public to protect the privacy of children.

“But they are kept open to probation officers, district attorneys, and public defenders, all of whom are sworn to protect the interests of children,” he said. “It’s pretty clear those people didn’t do their jobs.”

On Thursday in Federal District Court in Scranton, more than 80 people packed every available seat in the courtroom. At one point, as Assistant United States Attorney William S. Houser explained to Judge Edwin M. Kosik that the government was willing to reach a plea agreement with the men because the case involved “complex charges that could have resulted in years of litigation,” one man sitting in the audience said “bull” loud enough to be heard in the courtroom.

One of the parents at the hearing was Susan Mishanski of Hanover Township.

Her son, Kevin, now 18, was sentenced to 90 days in a detention facility last year in a simple assault case that everyone had told her would result in probation, since Kevin had never been in trouble and the boy he hit had only a black eye.

“It’s horrible to have your child taken away in shackles right in front of you when you think you’re going home with him,” she said. “It was nice to see them sitting on the other side of the bench.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/13/us/13judge.html

Posted by lois at 02:52 PM | Comments (0)

February 11, 2009

CA: The Prison Overcrowding Fix

News Analysis
The Prison Overcrowding Fix
By SOLOMON MOORE
Published: February 10, 2009

In San Francisco last week, a federal court was hearing final arguments in the prison overcrowding lawsuit that led Monday to an unprecedented decision to reduce the nation’s largest prison system by one-third. Just a few blocks away, a state appellate court was affirming a life sentence for Ali Foroutan, convicted of possession of 0.03 gram of methamphetamine.

Critics of California’s justice system say Mr. Foroutan’s sentence under the “three-strikes law,” which mandates 25 years to life in prison for three-time felons, is the kind of punishment that has made the state’s prisons the most overcrowded in the nation.

Federal judges tentatively ruled Monday that packed facilities were the chief impediment to adequate health care in prisons — a system so flawed it was tantamount to a violation of the Eighth Amendment.

Monday’s ruling signaled the court’s intention to cap the number of prisoners at about 101,000, a reduction of 55,000. It came after more than a decade of federal court orders from exasperated judges who demanded that the state improve its facilities and personnel, after the appointment of the most powerful federal receivership since the days of forced racial integration in the South, and after the death of scores of prisoners who committed suicide or died of preventable illnesses.

The judges encouraged the state to negotiate with inmates’ lawyers to cut the prison population from 156,000, which is about double the system’s capacity, within three years. If the state refuses to negotiate such a plan, the judges could order specific actions, including shortened prison sentences, diversion of nonviolent felons to county programs, and parole reforms that would cut down recidivism.

Few releases of prisoners would be necessary to reduce the prison population if the state carried out sentencing and parole reforms, which could save $903 million a year, according to the federal judges. They also argued that such reforms could be achieved without jeopardizing public safety.

Attorney General Jerry Brown of California vowed to appeal the judges’ final order to the United States Supreme Court, a prospect that could delay the carrying out of the prison population cap or overturn it.

The case is significant because of the scale of the proposed prisoner reduction, and also because it shines a harsh light on the failures of state government to address the problem for years.

Decades of tough-on-crime laws coupled with a failure to finance prison programs have left prisoners stacked three bunks high in prison gymnasiums and hallways throughout the state. With few probation and parole programs available, about two-thirds of all ex-convicts return to prison within three years.

California’s 13-year-old three-strikes law, which doubles sentences for second-time felons, and reserves life sentences for even nonviolent third-felony offenders like Mr. Foroutan, has also increased the prison population by thousands. As of March 2008, there were 41,284 prisoners serving time under the three-strikes law. In 2005, the California Legislative Analyst’s Office estimated that the law cost the state $500 million annually.

California is the only state in the nation that paroles 98 percent of released inmates, even if they have completed their sentences. About 70,000 parolees return to prison every year. Nationally, states parole an average of 40 percent of their released inmates.

“That is a major reason for the overcrowding problem,” said Joan Petersilia, a parole expert at the RAND Corporation. “Everybody goes on parole in California,” she said. “Everybody serves at least one year” on parole. Many parolees go back to prison for violations, including failed drug tests.

But Stuart Drown, executive director of the Little Hoover Commission, a state-financed watchdog organization, said sentencing reform was the key to reducing prison population.

The Legislature, Mr. Drown says, has added thousands of new penalties for new and old crimes. “We don’t track how judges are sentencing people on a statewide basis,” he said. “We don’t have a sentencing policy.”

In other states, sentencing commissions monitor penalties to help policy makers anticipate how many prisoners will be coming and for how long.

California has no such data, Mr. Drown said. Proposed sentencing commissions have been defeated in the Legislature at least 10 times, according to Ms. Petersilia.

This case began not as an overcrowding lawsuit but as an effort to address inadequate health care. After the state failed to improve its care, Judge Thelton E. Henderson appointed a federal receiver to take over the medical system, and the receiver has demanded billions of state dollars to build health care facilities.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has responded with a mix of conciliatory gestures — supporting an as-yet underfinanced initiative to build space for 53,000 prisoners — and defiance, as when he called for the dissolution of the receivership.

Eventually the receiver concluded that new prison facilities could not be added quickly enough to stem the deaths and injuries to prisoners or to outpace the rising prison population.

Lawyers for the state have argued that the federal courts lack the authority to order prison reforms costing billions of dollars, especially at a time when California is facing a $40 billion deficit.

Counties in California say they cannot afford to serve parolees’ rehabilitation needs without additional financing, as many other states do.

Kara P. Dansky, a lecturer at Stanford Law School, believes that the judges may have the authority to push through sweeping reforms, including more financing for counties, under the Prison Litigation Reform Act of 1995.

The state disagrees that the court has such authority and plans to appeal to the Supreme Court, which could delay any outcome. Ms. Dansky said policy makers would be watching the case closely. “This is one of the areas that the law is unclear on because we’ve never seen a case like this,” she said.
A version of this article appeared in print on February 11, 2009, on page A17 of the New York edition.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/11/us/11prisons.html?ref=todayspaper

Posted by lois at 10:16 PM | Comments (0)

Pa. judges accused of jailing kids for cash

Pa. judges accused of jailing kids for cash
By MICHAEL RUBINKAM and MARYCLAIRE DALE, \Associated Press Writers Michael Rubinkam And Maryclaire Dale, Associated Press Writers

WILKES-BARRE, Pa. – For years, the juvenile court system in Wilkes-Barre operated like a conveyor belt: Youngsters were brought before judges without a lawyer, given hearings that lasted only a minute or two, and then sent off to juvenile prison for months for minor offenses.

The explanation, prosecutors say, was corruption on the bench.

In one of the most shocking cases of courtroom graft on record, two Pennsylvania judges have been charged with taking millions of dollars in kickbacks to send teenagers to two privately run youth detention centers.

"I've never encountered, and I don't think that we will in our lifetimes, a case where literally thousands of kids' lives were just tossed aside in order for a couple of judges to make some money," said Marsha Levick, an attorney with the Philadelphia-based Juvenile Law Center, which is representing hundreds of youths sentenced in Wilkes-Barre.

Prosecutors say Luzerne County Judges Mark Ciavarella and Michael Conahan took $2.6 million in payoffs to put juvenile offenders in lockups run by PA Child Care LLC and a sister company, Western PA Child Care LLC. The judges were charged on Jan. 26 and removed from the bench by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court shortly afterward.

No company officials have been charged, but the investigation is still going on.

The high court, meanwhile, is looking into whether hundreds or even thousands of sentences should be overturned and the juveniles' records expunged.

Among the offenders were teenagers who were locked up for months for stealing loose change from cars, writing a prank note and possessing drug paraphernalia. Many had never been in trouble before. Some were imprisoned even after probation officers recommended against it.

Many appeared without lawyers, despite the U.S. Supreme Court's landmark 1967 ruling that children have a constitutional right to counsel.

The judges are scheduled to plead guilty to fraud Thursday in federal court. Their plea agreements call for sentences of more than seven years behind bars.

Ciavarella, 58, who presided over Luzerne County's juvenile court for 12 years, acknowledged last week in a letter to his former colleagues, "I have disgraced my judgeship. My actions have destroyed everything I worked to accomplish and I have only myself to blame." Ciavarella, though, has denied he got kickbacks for sending youths to prison.

Conahan, 56, has remained silent about the case.

Many Pennsylvania counties contract with privately run juvenile detention centers, paying them either a fixed overall fee or a certain amount per youth, per day.

In Luzerne County, prosecutors say, Conahan shut down the county-run juvenile prison in 2002 and helped the two companies secure rich contracts worth tens of millions of dollars, at least some of that dependent on how many juveniles were locked up.

One of the contracts ­ a 20-year agreement with PA Child Care worth an estimated $58 million ­ was later canceled by the county as exorbitant.

The judges are accused of taking payoffs between 2003 and 2006.

Robert J. Powell co-owned PA Child Care and Western PA Child Care until June. His attorney, Mark Sheppard, said his client was the victim of an extortion scheme.

"Bob Powell never solicited a nickel from these judges and really was a victim of their demands," he said. "These judges made it very plain to Mr. Powell that he was going to be required to pay certain monies."

For years, youth advocacy groups complained that Ciavarella was ridiculously harsh and ran roughshod over youngsters' constitutional rights. Ciavarella sent a quarter of his juvenile defendants to detention centers from 2002 to 2006, compared with a statewide rate of one in 10.

The criminal charges confirmed the advocacy groups' worst suspicions and have called into question all the sentences he pronounced.

Hillary Transue did not have an attorney, nor was she told of her right to one, when she appeared in Ciavarella's courtroom in 2007 for building a MySpace page that lampooned her assistant principal.

Her mother, Laurene Transue, worked for 16 years in the child services department of another county and said she was certain Hillary would get a slap on the wrist. Instead, Ciavarella sentenced her to three months; she got out after a month, with help from a lawyer.

"I felt so disgraced for a while, like, what do people think of me now?" said Hillary, now 17 and a high school senior who plans to become an English teacher.

Laurene Transue said Ciavarella "was playing God. And not only was he doing that, he was getting money for it. He was betraying the trust put in him to do what is best for children."

Kurt Kruger, now 22, had never been in trouble with the law until the day police accused him of acting as a lookout while his friend shoplifted less than $200 worth of DVDs from Wal-Mart. He said he didn't know his friend was going to steal anything.

Kruger pleaded guilty before Ciavarella and spent three days in a company-run juvenile detention center, plus four months at a youth wilderness camp run by a different operator.

"Never in a million years did I think that I would actually get sent away. I was completely destroyed," said Kruger, who later dropped out of school. He said he wants to get his record expunged, earn his high school equivalency diploma and go to college.

"I got a raw deal, and yeah, it's not fair," he said, "but now it's 100 times bigger than me."
http://ydr.inyork.com/ci_11680195

Posted by lois at 10:09 PM | Comments (0)

February 06, 2009

CT: Gov. delays sending 16 & 17 year old youth to juvenile system

Criminal justice initiative clipped in Rell budget
By Keith M. Phaneuf
Journal Inquirer
Published: Thursday, February 5, 2009
HARTFORD — Though criminal justice initiatives traditionally are one area both political parties insist are immune to budget cuts, even they may not be safe in this economic climate.

The budget proposal Gov. M. Jodi Rell unveiled Wednesday would delay for two years an initiative to transfer most 16- and 17-year-offenders from the adult courts to the juvenile system.

That switch, which was supposed to occur in January 2010, would be delayed until January 2012.

Municipal leaders urged Rell to order this delay, noting that the switch would place an added financial burden on their police departments and other forms of support services. Juvenile cases, in general, carry a much higher price tag than other cases.

Connecticut is one of just three states that treats offenders in this age group as adults. An estimated 10,000 16- and 17-year-olds are prosecuted as adults each year, with about 60 percent becoming repeat offenders.

Advocates of the switch have argued that rehabilitation programs for 16- and 17-year-olds would be much more effective if these offenders are treated outside of the adult system.

The change is expected to cost the state close to $100 million in the first two years, not only to expand support programs, but also to expand courts and staff at the juvenile level.

The governor’s budget proposal for the next two fiscal years also would make several other changes, including:

• Canceling the planned Juvenile Justice Urban Cities Pilot Program.

• Closing courthouses in Meriden and Bristol, and realigning four towns amid judicial districts based in Middlesex and Waterbury counties.

• Leaving vacant five judge positions over the next two years. An additional 65 posts within the Judicial Department that have been vacant since the state’s 2003 early retirement program would be eliminated permanently.

• And canceling 60 community based, residential program beds for offender re-entry programs.

“Although each of the initiatives is very important, the state’s dire economic circumstances requires review of the initiatives that are not currently operating,” the governor’s budget message reads.

The recession has lowered projected collections for all state taxes. The current $18.4 billion state budget is $922 million in deficit, according to Rell.

Even more important, both the Rell administration and the legislature’s nonpartisan Office of Fiscal Analysis have projected that under current spending and tax policies, the next two fiscal years face huge, built-in deficits.

Rell’s budget office places the two-year shortfall at a combined $6 billion, while OFA pegs the deficit at $8.7 billion.

http://www.journalinquirer.com/articles/2009/02/05/connecticut/doc498af5918966c985809856.txt

Posted by lois at 03:35 PM | Comments (0)

NY: Rikers Fight Club After indications for more than a year that guards were using inmates as enforcers, New York's jails are rocked by a pair of indictments

Rikers Fight Club
After indications for more than a year that guards were using inmates as enforcers, New York's jails are rocked by a pair of indictments
By Graham Rayman
published: February 04, 2009
The Village Voice

Eighteen months after the Voice first reported cases of jail guards using inmates as enforcers, Bronx District Attorney Robert Johnson has made a criminal case that slices to the core of the problem.

The indictment, unsealed January 22, alleges that guards Michael McKie and Khalid Nelson handpicked and oversaw a gang of inmates who beat and terrorized other inmates, and extorted money and privileges from them over a four-month period in a teenage unit at the Robert N. Davoren Center (RNDC), culminating in the murder by inmates of 18-year-old Christopher Robinson on October 18. They called their operation "The Program."

The indictment lists at least seven teenage victims, but there were "scores" more who were victimized, Assistant District Attorney James Goward said at the arraignment two weeks ago. Numerous inmates gave information to investigators to help build evidence that showed a troubling pattern of misconduct right under the noses of jail officials.

"[McKie] was not simply the author of a crime," Goward told a judge. "He was the architect of a criminal enterprise that recruited and trained inmates to inflict violence. They turned jail into almost a nightmare environment."

The blockbuster case forced Correction Commissioner Martin Horn, for the first time, to discuss the issue before the assembled media. But he took a defensive posture, saying that he had no inkling of the problem. "I don't know that any of us believed that anything like this could happen," he told reporters at the Bronx District Attorney's office.

In fact, Horn was well aware of the problem. The Voice had been writing articles on the subject long before Robinson's death. The newspaper first put questions to Horn and his aides about guards deputizing inmates (often members of the Bloods gang) as enforcers in the summer of 2007, and kept writing articles about the problem over the next year and a half—articles that some law enforcement officials credited with placing a public spotlight on the problem.

Even though Horn was receiving information on these incidents during that entire period, it remains unclear whether he did anything to address the problem in the months leading up to the Robinson murder.

It was only after Robinson was killed that he took action: He suspended several officers, transferred several mid-level managers, forced the retirement of a chief, and reshuffled the roles of his senior staff.

Horn told reporters that he installed video cameras in the jails and now has the right to monitor inmates' phone conversations. "We investigate every serious injury," he said, pointing out that the Robinson homicide was the first at Rikers in four years. "We train our officers to maintain a standard of care. If the allegations prove true, these officers have stained the good name of thousands of officers."

Rose Gil Hearn, commissioner of the city Department of Investigation, called the case "the worst" she has ever seen in the jails, and has recommended adding more video cameras and making changes to policies surrounding access to telephones and the commissary.

Horn's spokesman, Stephen Morello, later provided the Voice with a list of things the commissioner has done and is doing to address the problem, including improving the staff-inmate ratio in high-risk teen housing areas to 1 in 25—a move that advocates have been demanding for years.

Morello says Horn has also ordered guards to check inmates' torsos for bruises and other evidence of violence at RNDC. He has expanded a program that provides better training to guards who work with teens—another thing that advocates wanted. And, according to Morello, Horn has ordered staff members to investigate every serious injury, including apparent accidents.

"While one inmate homicide is too many, the NYC jails compare quite favorably with other large city systems on this point," Morello says, citing federal stats that show the homicide rate in the city jails being far better than those of Baltimore, Philadelphia, Los Angeles, or Chicago.

As for Horn's comment in the press conference, Morello tells the Voice that the commissioner "did not say that he was never aware, nor did he claim no prior knowledge of the possibility or even actual allegations" of officers deputizing inmates as enforcers.

"He commented that the nature of the officers' complicity charged in the Robinson indictment and its consequences exceeded any such thing in his experience," Morello says. "In other words, he and we are, of course, aware of prior cases."

According to the indictment, McKie and Nelson handpicked up to 12 inmates to act as enforcers on each of the two wings of the RNDC housing unit known as "One Main."

The enforcers were called "The Team." The guards taught them how to use wrestling holds, like a full nelson, to secure victims during a beating. They told them to punch the torsos of their victims so as not to leave injuries that would be easily seen by other staff. In exchange for performing beatings on their orders, the members of the Team had the right to extort phone privileges and a fixed percentage of the commissary account from the other inmates.

What that meant is that they could use other inmates' phone accounts to make calls, force them to buy snacks for them, get extra food, and even choose where they sat in the day room. The members of the Team also got to roam the units freely, unlike the other inmates, and they had the power to tell inmates whether they were allowed out of their cells and whether they could go to the bathroom.

The practice evolved its own kind of slang. Inmates were asked, "Are you with the Program?"—or, in shorthand, "Are you with it?" If the inmate refused, he would be beaten. The beatings were called "spankings."

Prosecutors say McKie and Nelson also developed a series of signals to warn each other that a supervisor was arriving in the unit. They also failed to report assaults, lied in reports they did file, ordered inmates to make false statements, and hid injured inmates in cells to avoid scrutiny from supervisors.

The campaign climaxed on October 18, when several inmates beat Robinson to death after he refused to go along with the Program. Robinson likely bled to death internally over a long period, perhaps 12 hours. One of his ribs pierced his lung, causing the fatal bleeding, sources said.

Robinson might have avoided the fatal beating altogether had the department listened to the recommendation of a deputy warden and transferred the youth into a more secure area, following his involvement in a prior fight. He also might have survived had his injuries been treated in a timely manner. His family has asserted that he sought medical care in the jail's clinic, but was turned away because he did not have a pass.

McKie, Nelson, and a third officer, Denise Albright, pleaded not guilty to gang assault, conspiracy, and corruption in their arraignment last week. They were not charged in Robinson's death.

"This case is a web of lies built by inmates," said McKie's lawyer, Joey Jackson. "My client has a record of unblemished service. He has served with honor and justice. In an effort to save themselves, the inmates are pointing fingers."

Carolyn McKie told the Voice that her son won a basketball scholarship to Buffalo State, but returned home to care for his child. "None of this is true," she said. "He never had a record. What is going on here?"

Norman Seabrook, head of the correction officers' union, said the department was scapegoating the officers to avoid taking responsibility itself. "This is just another case of the department looking to blame someone else for its own mistakes," he told the Voice.

Sidney Schwartzbaum, union leader for deputy wardens and assistant deputy wardens, agreed with Seabrook. "Had they followed the recommendation, we wouldn't even be having this conversation," he said. "My mother used to say what gets done in the dark will come to light, and that will be true in this case as well."

The Robinson case was only the latest example of a problem at RNDC and other jails that the Voice has been following since the summer of 2007.

There was the case of Camillo Douglas and Luis Soriano, two inmates in RNDC, who were assaulted by Bloods members after their cell doors mysteriously opened shortly before 11 p.m. on April 16, 2007. RNDC is the same facility where Christopher Robinson was killed.

Douglas and Soriano both sustained stab wounds and bruising, but they also fought back against their attackers.

The men who assaulted Douglas and Soriano had been part of the "house gang," inmates who were tapped to clean up the facility and were, in return, given extra privileges by the guards. While it has yet to be proven in court, the fact that their cell doors opened when all the other inmates were locked in, just before lights out, suggests there was guard involvement in the assault.

The Voice found other examples that suggested guard involvement in punitive beatings of inmates at RNDC by other inmates.

Paris DeSuze, 18, filed papers with the city, claiming two guards failed to stop inmates from breaking his jaw in three places on April 13, 2007. Afterward, a guard told him to tell investigators that he was injured in a fall.

DeSuze's lawyer, Michael Hueston, told the Voice: "Young people tell me when they go in there, the culture is such that the kids control the jail. The COs know this happens, and they look the other way."

But the case that really should have set off alarm bells in the commissioner's office was the indictment in February 2008 of Correction Officer Lloyd Nicholson, who was accused of using teen inmates in RNDC to target other inmates. He, too, called his operation "The Program." The case allegations mirror the allegations made in the McKie and Nelson indictments.

For example, in both cases, the inmates enforced order and, in exchange, had the officers' permission to extort commissary, telephone privileges, and property from other inmates. And in both cases, the motive was laziness—the inmate gang freed the officers from having to monitor the floor constantly during their shifts.

"Basically, it was like the movie A Few Good Men," a source told the Voice last March. "Either you were in the Program or not. [Nicholson] thought the ones who weren't abiding with the Program were misbehaving, and he used other inmates to discipline them."

If any inmates misbehaved, Nicholson told them, there would be a "moment of truth," where they would be taken into the day room and beaten. He allegedly also told his enforcers to avoid the face because it would leave tell-tale marks—another element which mirrors the McKie indictment.

One of the inmates suffered a collapsed lung, but was denied medical treatment for several hours, until he was finally transported to Elmhurst Hospital. He barely survived the assault, prosecutors said in court.

Sources said Nicholson tried to delay reporting the injury until the next shift, but he finally relented when one of the inmates told him the injured youth desperately needed medical attention. Nicholson, the sources said, also told the inmates he would try to get the blame for the injuries pinned on them. "Some of you are going to go down for this," he told them, sources said.

Nicholson also allegedly beat an inmate himself. "He both watched and participated," a prosecutor said during the arraignment.

Last week, officials said Nicholson worked in another unit and was not connected to the McKie operation. In addition, Horn told reporters that when McKie and Nelson were not working, the practice did not extend to other officers. But some jail observers were skeptical of this claim, saying it had to be more than coincidental that both operations were called "The Program."

"What they are saying is that One Main was a vacuum, which doesn't make a lot of sense," a correction source said.

Housing units typically include two hallways with about 30 cells each, with a "bubble" or glassed-in observation booth at the hub with a day room and television on either side. Three officers control security in these units—one on the left wing, one on the right wing, and one in the bubble. There are three officers per shift, so at least nine officers cycle through the unit on any given day. In addition, the unit is visited once or twice per shift by a captain. On top of that, assistant deputy wardens and other higher-level supervisors might pass through.

What that means is that on any day, at least 18 correction employees might come through a unit. So it seems unlikely that no one other than the three implicated guards would be aware of the Program.

"It's tragic that it took the death of an 18-year-old to bring to light this terrible scheme, but it has to be asked whether it was more extensive," said the Robinson family lawyer, Sanford Rubenstein. "Someone in a position of power and authority should investigate it."

Even the New York Post, which rarely devotes much space to jail incidents, wrote an editorial expressing doubt that the operation was limited to just three guards. The editorial pressed officials to continue their investigation: "How could only three guards organize such an operation—with at least 12 inmates involved—without more people knowing what was going on?" wondered the Post's editorial board. "It defies credulity to assume that this is all that was going on."

And there were examples of the problem in other facilities dating all the way back to 2004, with the fatal beating of Tyreece Abney, 21, who was the last inmate murdered in the jail system before Robinson.

Abney, a mentally disabled man who probably never should have been in general population, was stomped to death in the George Motchan Detention Center by Bloods members after he had a loud argument with a correction officer. About 30 minutes before the fatal assault, a guard told the inmates in his unit: "You men in the house, you need to speak to the new inmates—you need to get your house in order," court testimony showed. Shortly thereafter, three inmates cornered Abney and attacked him, with one inmate saying he better "fly right."

During the investigation, authorities learned that one of Abney's assailants had been receiving extra phone and mail privileges from a correction officer.

In March 2007, the city agreed to pay $500,000 to settle a lawsuit involving a near-fatal assault by the leader of a "house gang." Inmate Kirk Fisher hit Donald Jackson, and Jackson fell, his head striking a piece of protruding metal in the floor. Jackson almost died. Fisher later testified that a correction officer told him to assault Jackson. "Before you do anything [he said], I'm going to go to the other side, and do what you got to do," the guard told Fisher, according to Fisher's deposition.

Describing his duties, Fisher said, "It was my job to enforce certain rules. Anybody that acted up in the house, it was my job to put them in line."

"The inmates tell us it's a really common setup," said Jackson's lawyer, Andrew Stoll, in the Voice's 2007 article on the case. "In a lot of the houses, the correction officers use the house gang as enforcers and pay them with cigarettes and extra commissary."

During the course of the Jackson case, Stoll was able to track down a former correction officer, Roger Cullen, who was on duty at the time of the assault. In his deposition, Cullen confirmed Fisher's claim: "It was like he was in charge," Cullen said in sworn testimony. "Any officer knows you're not supposed to do that. It's wrong."

Cullen was fired before he could be vested as a correction officer. As he told the Voice in 2007, he blamed the firing on his efforts to report corruption in the jail. The department investigated his claims, but in a cursory manner, and closed the case without taking action. "I tried to do the right thing," Cullen said in his deposition.

The McKie indictment has raised another issue. For many years now, the department has relied on statistics regarding stabbings and slashings in public testimony as its indicator of violence in the jails. Whenever the issue of violence is raised, officials trot out the low number of stabbings and slashings to show that the jail system is safe. Indeed, the figure has declined sharply over the past 15 years.

But this case vividly demonstrates that the figure is a poor indicator of the level of violence in today's environment. For one, it does not count beatings, broken bones, smashed noses, broken ribs, bruising, and many other kinds of injuries. Christopher Robinson's murder, for example, will not be counted as a stabbing or slashing.

Moreover, both the inmates and guards knew how to conceal injuries from the beatings, and they knew how to extort their victims into hiding the beating or lying about it. In other words, the system has evolved its own methods to avoid the heightened scrutiny that comes when a slashing or stabbing takes place.

In the end, no matter what the stats show, the number does not provide an accurate picture of the level of violence in RNDC.
http://www.villagevoice.com/content/printVersion/864266

NY Times editorial
Rikers Horror Story
Published: January 28, 2009

New York City corrections officials have done a commendable job reducing the number of beatings, stabbings and other violent acts that have long plagued city jails. We are very concerned about recent events — including the death of an inmate — at the troubled youth facility at the Rikers Island jail. Clearly, the city needs to do a much better job of training and supervising corrections officers there.

Juvenile justice advocates and former inmates had been complaining about misconduct by the guards long before Christopher Robinson, 18, was found beaten to death in his cell last fall. They accused the guards of turning disciplinary responsibility over to roving gangs that beat, harassed and extorted money and valuables from other inmates. Some critics referred to the facility as a “gladiator school” where young people were encouraged to fight and damage one another.

The Bronx district attorney has now charged three corrections officers with conspiracy in connection with Mr. Robinson’s death. This is the second indictment of its kind at the youth facility in less than a year. According to the new indictment, guards used violent inmates to ride herd over others, sanctioned assaults on inmates and decided when, where and how they would take place. Prosecutors accused the guards of setting up a system of warning signals to protect gang members from being discovered when they administered beatings. They said the guards directed their “teams” to avoid hitting inmates in the face so that any injuries would not be readily apparent.

City corrections officials believe they can discourage misconduct by expanding the use of surveillance cameras. The indictments suggest the entire culture of the Rikers youth facility needs to be changed. That’s the only way to ensure these horrors are never repeated.

Posted by lois at 03:22 PM | Comments (0)

February 03, 2009

Defining ‘Cruel and Unusual’ When Offender Is 13

Sidebar
Defining ‘Cruel and Unusual’ When Offender Is 13

By ADAM LIPTAK
Published: February 2, 2009

In 1989, someone raped a 72-year-old woman in Pensacola, Fla. Joe Sullivan was 13 at the time, and he admitted that he and two older friends had burglarized the woman’s home earlier that day. But he denied that he had returned to commit the rape.

The victim testified that her assailant was “a colored boy” who “had kinky hair and he was quite black and he was small.” She said she “did not see him full in the face” and so would not recognize him by sight. But she recalled her attacker saying something like, “If you can’t identify me, I may not have to kill you.”

At his trial, Mr. Sullivan was made to say those words several times.

“It’s been six months,” the woman said on the witness stand. “It’s hard, but it does sound similar.”

The trial lasted a day and ended in conviction. Then Judge Nicholas Geeker, of the circuit court in Escambia County, sentenced Mr. Sullivan to life without the possibility of parole.

“I’m going to send him away for as long as I can,” Judge Geeker said.

Mr. Sullivan is 33 now, and his lawyers have asked the United States Supreme Court to consider the question of whether the Eighth Amendment’s ban on cruel and unusual punishment extends to sentencing someone who was barely a teenager to die in prison for a crime that did not involve a killing.

People can argue about whether the punishment in Mr. Sullivan’s case is cruel. There is no question that it is unusual.

According to court papers and a report from the Equal Justice Initiative, which now represents Mr. Sullivan, only eight people in the world are serving sentences of life without parole for crimes they committed when they were 13. All are in the United States.

And there are only two people in that group whose crimes did not involve a killing. Both are in Florida, and both are black.

Joe Sullivan is one; Ian Manuel, who is in prison for a 1990 robbery and attempted murder, is the other.

About 1,000 people under 15 are arrested on rape charges every year, according to Justice Department data. But none of them have been sentenced to life without parole since Mr. Sullivan was. Indeed, no 13-year-old has been sentenced to life without parole for any crime that did not involve a killing in more than 15 years.

Florida’s attorney general, Bill McCollum, waived his right to file a response to Mr. Sullivan’s petition to the Supreme Court, a sign suggesting that he considers the case insubstantial if not frivolous. Sandi Copes, a spokeswoman for Mr. McCollum’s office, declined to discuss the case.

Last month, the court indicated that it found the case more interesting than Florida does, requesting a response from the state. That probably means that at least one justice considered the case significant or difficult. But it is nothing like a guarantee that the court will agree to hear it.

On the other hand, the question of whether life without parole for juveniles is constitutional is the logical next step following the court’s 2005 decision in Roper v. Simmons, which struck down the death penalty for crimes committed by 16- and 17-year-olds. Writing for the majority in that case, Justice Anthony M. Kennedy said that even older teenagers are different from adults. They are less mature, more impulsive, more susceptible to peer pressure and more likely to change for the better over time.

Last year, in Kennedy v. Louisiana, the court issued another ruling that helps frame Mr. Sullivan’s case. That decision said crimes against individuals that did not involve killing, including the rape of a child by an adult, may not be punished by death.

In 2007, after Mr. Sullivan had served almost two decades in prison, a Florida appeals court declined to have another look at his case. The Roper decision, the appeals court said, “established only one new constitutional right, the right for a juvenile not to be given the death penalty.”

Douglas A. Berman, an authority on sentencing law at Ohio State, said it was time for the Supreme Court and the legal system to widen its relentless focus on capital cases and to look at other severe sentences as well. Cases involving the death penalty receive careful review at multiple levels, he said. Life sentences can receive almost none.

Mr. Sullivan’s trial, for instance, lasted a day. He was represented by a lawyer who made no opening statement and whose closing argument occupies about three double-spaced pages of the trial transcript. The lawyer was later suspended, and the Florida Bar’s Web site says he is “not eligible to practice in Florida.”

There was biological evidence from the rape, but it was not presented at the trial. When Mr. Sullivan’s new lawyers recently sought to conduct DNA testing on it, they were told that the state had destroyed it in 1993.

“I absolutely believe he is innocent,” Bryan A. Stevenson, the executive director of the Equal Justice Initiative, said of Mr. Sullivan. Mr. Stevenson said he believed that one of the older youths who committed the burglary with Mr. Sullivan and who testified against him was probably the actual assailant.

But the point made by Mr. Sullivan’s brief to the Supreme Court is not that he is innocent. It is not even that he should be released after 20 years in prison. It is only that he should someday be allowed to make his case to the Florida Parole Commission.

“I don’t think it’s possible to say that a 13-year-old will never change and that life without parole is an appropriate punishment,” Mr. Stevenson said.

Aside from Mr. Sullivan’s case, it seems there is only one other appeals court decision about whether young teenagers may be locked away forever for rape. It was issued 40 years ago in Kentucky, and it involved two 14-year-olds. The court struck down the part of the sentences precluding the possibility of parole.

Juveniles “are not permitted to vote, to contract, to purchase alcoholic beverages or to marry without the consent of their parents,” the court said. “It seems inconsistent that one be denied the fruits of the tree of the law, yet subjected to all of its thorns.”

» A version of this article appeared in print on February 3, 2009, on page A12 of the New York edition.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/03/us/03bar.html?ref=us

Posted by lois at 05:48 PM | Comments (0)

January 14, 2009

THE PEOPLE’S AGENDA: VIRGINIA PEOPLE’S ASSEMBLY

THE PEOPLE’S AGENDA

Adopted unanimously Jan. 10, 2009, by the VIRGINIA PEOPLE’S ASSEMBLY

In this time of deepening economic crisis, the working people of Virginia are looking to the government to protect our interests. Instead, it is the Big Banks and Corporations that are receiving bail-outs, while we are faced with more layoffs, more cutbacks and more attacks on our standard of living. Obviously, the rich and powerful have their representatives. The working people need ours.

On Jan. 10, 2009, nearly 100 representatives from dozens of organizations and communities throughout Virginia met in Richmond to found a People’s Assembly to protect and promote the interests of working-class people and communities of color. After much discussion and listening to each other’s concerns, the delegates unanimously adopted this People’s Agenda which we are presenting to the Virginia General Assembly. Our first demands are the following:

Don’t Balance the Budget on the Backs of Virginia’s Workers!

We demand a Moratorium on Cutbacks, Layoffs, Evictions & Foreclosures!

We know there are alternatives to cutting the state budget. Virginia’s 6% corporate tax rate is the 7th lowest in the country and hasn’t been raised in more than 30 years. Raise it! Reinstate parole for Virginia prisoners so the state’s prison population can be reduced. Close the barbaric and unnecessary Red Onion SuperMax prison. No more state money to promote slavery-defending Confederate traitors. Bring home Virginia members of the National Guard and Reserves now stationed in Iraq and Afghanistan. In addition, we demand the following:

LABOR

No layoffs of public employees — Remove all legal restrictions to the right to collective bargaining and the right to organize (HJ-60) — Pass a living wage bill — Create permanent, sustainable employment for all Virginians willing and able to work; promote “green” jobs — Equal pay and pay equity for women and people of color — Provide economic protection for retirees — Promote equal opportunity in all facets of state government — Support passage of the federal Employee Free Choice Act — Support repeal of the federal Taft-Hartley Act — Support the repeal of the federal NAFTA and CAFTA trade treaties

BLACK COMMUNITY

Remove barriers to effective support of the development and sustenance of neighborhood, community-based initiatives that will effect youth development, continuing education and/or job skills — Promote training and apprenticeships and small business and nonprofit organizational development to meet the needs of the community — ake Juneteenth an “Emancipation Day” state holiday; form a state-level Juneteenth Commission to coordinate cultural and educational programs — Increase procurement contracts to minority-owned businesses — For every dollar spent on Confederate culture commemoration, a matching dollar should be spent to fund Black culture and achievement commemoration, especially in regards to science, math and history

IMMIGRANT RIGHTS

Declare a moratorium on anti-immigrant raids, deportations and foreclosures — Respect the right of residents to remain with their families — Prohibit local enforcement of the Delegation of Immigration Authority Section 287(g) Immigration and Nationality Act — Prohibit public funding for the implementation of UNJUST migratory laws — Prohibit the use of abstract and nonspecific legal terminology like “reasonable suspicion” and “probable cause” that allow racial profiling and indiscriminate arrests — Prohibit police from using individual interpretation of laws for their own implementation — Stop linking illegal immigration and terrorism — Respect the human rights of immigrant detainees and prevent inhumane treatment — Prohibit detention centers like the planned Farmville Detention Center — Enforce and expand labor & wage protection laws — Allow in-state tuition for undocumented Virginia residents — Allow people to obtain a driver’s license or identification without presenting a Social Security number, to prevent arrests, criminal records and deportations — Allow all Virginia residents to benefit from social programs -- health, education and other social services; no denial because of lack of a Social Security number — Prohibit public service workers from denouncing people because of their migratory status — Prohibit the use of the term “illegal alien” and any official use of discriminatory terms or concepts against people of color or immigrants

EDUCATION

Restructure public education to focus on critical thinking and practical life skills along with promotion of both higher education and vocational training, rather than test-taking skills to the exclusion of all others — Include worker and labor history in public education — Include partnerships with local initiatives in the standard curriculum for skills building and self-sufficiency — Build in vocational learning connected to local employment industries starting in middle school — Improve accuracy of the history and social studies curricula — Improve relevancy of civics in public schools curriculum by providing hands-on engagement with local government and school board processes from kindergarten through 12th grades

HEALTH CARE

Support universal health care — Promote real access to health care — Protect access to safe abortions and birth-control — Stop the privatization of health care services — No cutbacks in Medicare — No cutbacks in the WIC program — Provide for realistic explanation of patients’ legal medical rights — Stop stigmas based on morals related to health care — Stop the closing of the Commonwealth Center for Children and Adolescents — Legalize needle exchange — Provide condoms in prisons — Make “queer bashing” a hate crime — While paying proper attention to child welfare, allow people to freely parent and give birth in any method they prefer, including those in prison and on welfare

PRISONER ADVOCACY

Pass the Prisoner Literacy and Rehabilitation with “EARNED” Sentence Credit Allowance for Virginia state prisoners under the non-parole sentencing law who seek an “earned” second chance in society — Parole Board Oversight Committee to ensure fair and responsible parole for 9,000 prisoners remain incarcerated 13 years after parole abolishment. Remove barriers to medical care in prisons and jails — Recognize the right of prisoners to education — Revamp state law to allow for the speedy restoration of civil rights of convicted felons — Close the Red Onion SuperMax prison — Reform drug crime laws — Raise the pay for public defenders assigned to indigent defendants.
VPA Real Prison Reform Representatives:
Janet (Queen Nzinga) Taylor: OneRastaQueen@hotmail.com
Cassandra (Imani) Shaw: Shawthesavvy1@aol.com
Lillie (Ms. K) Branch-Kennedy: RIHD23075@aol.com

STUDENTS

Make academic programs and faculty/staff wages the first financial priorities — Protect and expand tuition financial aid programs — Ensure academic diversity through equal support for academic programs — Ensure job security and fair pay for faculty and staff — Create a more democratic system of oversight at the state level and in universities — Promote college and university expansion that takes into account the needs of the host communities

ANTI-WAR

Bring Virginia GIs and National Guard members home now — Support veterans when they get home — End the “poverty draft” and fund alternatives to military service; fund “green” civilian corps with same benefits as military service — Divest state funds from Israel until it complies with UN resolutions — Mandate truth and full disclosure in recruiting — Forbid military recruiters from entering public schools — Make higher education affordable

OTHER

Raise the state corporate tax rate — Repeal the Dillon Law — Redraw Virginia’s voting districts so they are equitable and not based on race — Promote ecology and environmental conservation and protection; increase spending on state parks — Cancel the Wise County power plant — Stop coal extraction while meeting the economic needs of the people of Appalachia — Ensure available, affordable housing — Make Virginia friendlier to small businesses.

VIRGINIA PEOPLE’S ASSEMBLY
PO Box 38441, Richmond, VA 23231
Web: www.RichmondJwJ.org

Posted by lois at 12:01 PM | Comments (0)

January 10, 2009

Cocaine and White Teens

White teens use cocaine at 4 times that of Black teens....and who is incarcerated?

January 10, 2009
Op-Ed Columnist
Cocaine and White Teens
By CHARLES M. BLOW

Last month, President Bush touted the results of a government-sponsored study by the University of Michigan called Monitoring the Future. It reported a broad decline in drug use among young people since 2001. This included a 24 percent drop in the overall use of illicit drugs. There was one exception he said: abuse of painkillers. But, one important metric that wasn’t mentioned, and that stubbornly resisted the downturn, was the use of cocaine.

According to data from the group that produced the report, the percentage of both black and white 12th graders who confessed to using cocaine in the past 30 days has essentially stayed flat since 2001. The major difference is that white usage outweighs black usage 4 to 1. (If you take a longer view back to 1991, when cocaine usage bottomed out following the outrageous ’80s, usage among white 12th graders since then has nearly doubled, while usage among black 12th graders has fallen a bit.)

While we turned our attention to pills being swiped from parents’ medicine cabinets, the number of youngsters snorting white lines continued virtually unabated, producing a striking consequence.

According to the most recent data from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, admissions of white teenagers to drug treatment centers for crack and cocaine abuse soared 76 percent from 2001 to 2006. Crack and cocaine was the only illicit drug category in which the number of admissions for white teens grew over this period, and in 2006 the number was at its highest level since these data have been kept. By contrast, admissions among black teens for crack and cocaine over the same period held steady. By 2006, white admissions outnumbered those for blacks by more than 10 to 1. (It should be noted that admissions for white youths abusing painkillers in 2006, while growing, was still less than half the number of admissions for those abusing cocaine that year.)

And there are ominous signs. According to the Monitoring the Future study, the risk of using crack and cocaine, as perceived by teenagers, is going down. The newly released 2009 National Drug Threat Assessment puts it this way: “The decrease in perceived risk suggests that adolescents are becoming less wary of trying cocaine, which may sustain demand for the drug in the near future.”

But, in a phone interview, David Murray, chief scientist in the White House’s Office of National Drug Control Policy, insisted that there was good news: a sharp rise in the price of cocaine and a drop in its purity since 2006, among other things, have cut into overall usage.

So, I thought, until policy makers put more of a focus on this issue and figure out how to reach these students, should we just hope that teens are too broke for this weak coke? I don’t think so. We need a real strategy, right now.
Graphs at this URL:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/10/opinion/10blow.html

Posted by lois at 05:55 PM | Comments (0)

January 06, 2009

CA: Group cites deep flaws in juvenile justice plan

Group cites deep flaws in juvenile justice plan
By Dana M. Nichols
Record Staff Writer
January 06, 2009 6:00 AM

SAN ANDREAS - The $93 million effort to reform California's juvenile justice system by transferring many young offenders to county custody is deeply flawed, with inadequate guidelines for how the money should be spent and contains no system for tracking the effectiveness of local programs, according to a report being issued today by the Prison Law Office.

The Prison Law Office is a nonprofit advocacy group that has participated in lawsuits over the treatment of wards at former California Youth Authority facilities in Stockton and elsewhere. Those suits resulted in agreements that have dramatically reduced the number of youths locked up in state facilities.

The critical report comes out at the same time that the temporary state Juvenile Justice Commission is expected to make its recommendations for improving the system. Bill Sessa, a spokesman for the Juvenile Justice Commission, said he would check the status of the commission report that was due Jan. 1. He did not have the information by The Record's deadline.

Patty Mazzilli, assistant chief probation officer for San Joaquin County, said she was not surprised that the Prison Law Office found deep flaws in the state's implementation of SB81, the 2007 law intended to reform the Division of Juvenile Justice, formerly known as the California Youth Authority.

The report noted that counties were expected almost immediately to receive offenders transferred from state lockups. And counties had only a month to come up with plans once they received state guidelines at the end of November in 2007.

"Thirty days is not a long time to come up with a real thorough plan to deal with a lot of kids ... to come up with community interventions that are well thought out," Mazzilli said.

Another major flaw described in the report: The reform law does not require counties to disclose how they spend future allotments of state money they get in return for taking a larger role in juvenile justice, and the law gives no state entity the authority to monitor the spending anyway.

Mazzilli said she is confident that San Joaquin County is spending its money well, in part, because the county already was running a number of programs which included careful measurements of the programs' success. Still, those programs can't be compared with efforts for getting state money elsewhere in California because of a lack of state standards, even for such seemingly basic pieces of information as how many young offenders end up getting in trouble again within a certain period of time.

Last month, David Steinhart, a member of California's Juvenile Justice Commission and director of the Commonweal Juvenile Justice Program in Mill Valley, said the upcoming commission report will recommend a variety of reforms, including how to gather data on the success of various probation and treatment programs for young offenders. Steinhart also said he fears current state budget woes will derail the effort.

The juvenile justice reforms, and possible future reforms of the adult prison system, are all happening in the midst of a financial crisis. In the case of the juvenile justice system, abuses such as students forced to attend classes in cages and a 2005 suicide at N.A. Chaderjian School in Stockton prompted lawsuits against CYA and its successor the DJJ.

Those suits resulted in orders and agreements that required the youth prison system to upgrade its schools and health care and to remake itself so that it would succeed at rehabilitating young offenders. That proved expensive, and the per-ward cost of housing the offenders jumped to $178,000 per year per youth in 2006 and was well more than $200,000 per year per ward by 2008, according to a Little Hoover Commission report published last summer.

So, state officials have been working to reduce the cost by reducing the number of youths in state lockups and, at the same time, meet the terms of settlements requiring more humane treatment by transferring lower-risk offenders to the counties.

Some in the criminal justice system say the adult prison system - whose rising population and costs are a factor in the current state budget crisis - could be next. But they warn that compared with the juvenile programs, there are very few county programs set up to help adults succeed in living lawful lives outside prison walls.

"It is night and day," Mazzilli said. "There has historically been funding to work with juveniles up front, where there has not been for adults."
http://www.recordnet.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20090106/A_NEWS/90106032
1

Posted by lois at 05:27 PM | Comments (0)

December 29, 2008

Study reports murders by Black teenage men rise

"Bruce Western, a sociologist at Harvard, cautioned that the change in murder rates was not large and did not yet show a clear trend. Dr. Western also said that the impact of the reduction in government spending on crime control would have to be studied on a city-by-city basis, and that many other changes, including a sagging economy, could have affected murder rates."

December 29, 2008
Murders by Black Teenagers Rise, Bucking a Trend
By ERIK ECKHOLM
NY Times
The murder rate among black teenagers has climbed since 2000 even as murders by young whites have scarcely grown or declined in some places, according to a new report.

The celebrated reduction in murder rates nationally has concealed a “worrisome divergence,” said James Alan Fox, a criminal justice professor at Northeastern University who wrote the report, to be released Monday, with Marc L. Swatt. And there are signs, they said, that the racial gap will grow without countermeasures like restoring police officers in the streets and creating social programs for poor youths.

The main racial difference involves juveniles ages 14 to 17. In 2000, 539 white and 851 black juveniles committed murder, according to an analysis of federal data by the authors. In 2007, the number for whites, 547, had barely changed, while that for blacks was 1,142, up 34 percent.

The increase coincided with a rise in the number of murders involving guns, Dr. Fox said. The number of young blacks who were victims of murder also rose in this period.

Murder rates around the country are far below the record highs of the late 1980s and early 1990s, when a crack epidemic spawned violent turf battles.

“Regrettably, as the nation celebrated the successful fight against violent crime in the 1990s, we grew complacent and eased up on our crime-fighting efforts,” the authors said.

The report primarily blames cutbacks in federal support for community policing and juvenile crime prevention, reduced support for after-school and other social programs, and a weakening of gun laws. Cuts in these areas have been felt most deeply in poor, black urban areas, helping to explain the growing racial disparity in violent crime, Dr. Fox said.

But Bruce Western, a sociologist at Harvard, cautioned that the change in murder rates was not large and did not yet show a clear trend. Dr. Western also said that the impact of the reduction in government spending on crime control would have to be studied on a city-by-city basis, and that many other changes, including a sagging economy, could have affected murder rates.

Conservative criminologists place greater emphasis on the breakdown of black families, rather than cuts in government programs, in explaining the travails of black youths.

Much of the increase, experts say, is a product of gang activity, in midsize and large cities.

“The aggregate national murder rate since 2000 has been impressively flat — not to say there haven’t been fluctuations in individual cities,” said Alfred Blumstein, a criminologist at Carnegie Mellon University. “But when you see a spike in a city,” he said, as in Chicago recently, “it very often involves young black males shooting other young black males.”

Dr. Blumstein said that while federal cuts might have contributed to the rise in murders by black teenagers, “I think there are much more endemic problems going on.”

“In the inner city, you have large numbers of kids with no future, hanging out together with a great emphasis on their street credibility,” he said. “They’ll go to great lengths to avenge an insult.” Many of these teenagers do not stay in school, let alone join the Boys Clubs or other after-school programs.

The heightened attention to security after the 9/11 attacks might, paradoxically, have contributed to a decline in crime-fighting.

“One problem we faced was a disinvestment in policing in the post-2001 environment,” said Chief Edward A. Flynn of the Milwaukee police, who served from 2003 to 2006 as secretary of public safety in Massachusetts. “I witnessed homeland security become the monster that ate criminal justice,” Chief Flynn said, as money went to security equipment and communications and the number of police officers fell.

To fight violent crime, Chief Flynn said, the police must be a visible presence in neighborhoods with high crime rates.

From 2000 to 2007, according to the report, murders in Milwaukee by whites ages 14 to 24 rose by 4 percent, while those by blacks rose by 62 percent.

This year, Chief Flynn’s first leading the department, he deployed new teams of officers to the most violent neighborhoods, having them patrol on foot and bicycles, while federal agencies helped bring down some large gangs. The number of murders this year — 70 as of last Friday — is down one-third from last year and is the lowest since 1985.

Still, Chief Flynn said, “any improvements will be temporary unless there’s more investment in the futures of our young people.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/29/us/29homicide.html?_r=1&hp

Posted by lois at 09:51 AM | Comments (0)

December 27, 2008

Cash-strapped states cut juvenile justice programs

Cash-strapped states cut juvenile justice programs
December 26, 2008
By JIM DAVENPORT

COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) — State budget cuts are forcing some of the nation's youngest criminals out of counseling programs and group homes and into juvenile prisons in what critics contend is a shortsighted move that will eventually lead to more crime and higher costs.

Tennessee, South Carolina, Kentucky and Virginia are among states that have slashed juvenile justice spending — in some cases more than 20 percent — because of slumping tax collections. Youth advocates say they expect the recession will bring more cuts next year in other states, hitting programs that try to rehabilitate children rather than simply locking them up.

"If you raise a child in prison, you're going to raise a convict," said South Carolina Juvenile Justice Director Bill Byars, credited with turning around a system once better known for warehousing children than counseling them and teaching them life skills.

Now, he's been asked to draw up plans to trim an additional 15 percent from a juvenile justice budget already cut $23 million, or 20 percent, since June as part of the state's effort to pare $1 billion from its $7 billion budget.

All five of the system's group homes — which generally house less-violent offenders and give them more individual attention — have been shuttered. Also gone are some intensive youth reform and after-school programs in detention facilities.

The story is similar in other states. Kentucky is nixing a boot camp-style program developed by the National Guard. Virginia is losing behavioral services staff and a facility that prepares children to go home after serving time, along with smaller camps and community programs. Juveniles in those programs will return to traditional correctional facilities.

"It's not like we're going to say, 'OK, let's close a juvenile detention center,' or something like that," said Gordon Hickey, spokesman for Virginia Gov. Timothy M. Kaine. "We have to reduce spending across the state, and the governor looked at suggestions and recommendations from all departments. He certainly realizes that all of these reductions have consequences. The idea is to limit the damage as much as possible."

Among the programs being cut in South Carolina is one that Lex Wilbanks, an 18-year-old arrested four years ago on drug and gun charges, credits with giving him back his future.

Before moving to the program run by Florida-based nonprofit Associated Marine Institute, which provides intensive counseling and wilderness camps in several states, Wilbanks spent four months in a regular juvenile detention center.

"When you did something wrong or you fight or you disrespect staff, they just throw you into lockdown," Wilbanks said. "They just throw you in and make them fight to survive. You're just making them a hardened criminal."

In South Carolina, only 22 percent of offenders who go through the institute's program later break the law, less than half the recidivism rate for juveniles in large state facilities, Byars said.

Through the program, Wilbanks worked his way to the top rank in Army Junior ROTC and earned a GED and college credits. Acting up brought meetings during which counselors "talk you through problems and how you can actually change," he said. "It gives you hope."

Florida is also axing three Associated Marine Institute programs to save $1.7 million, part of an effort to cut 4 percent, or $18 million, from the juvenile justice budget. Advocates are bracing for additional cuts as legislators go back to the Capitol in January to deal with a $2 billion state budget hole.

Florida's juvenile justice system "is going to die the death of a million 4 percent cuts," said Jacqui Colyer, who leads a state juvenile justice advisory group.

The picture isn't as bleak everywhere. In New York, where the population of jailed juveniles has declined as the state moves toward a more community-based approach, Gov. David Patterson has proposed closing six youth facilities and consolidating and downsizing others that aren't being fully used to save $12 million in 2009-10 and $14 million in 2010-11.

A court order limits the cuts California can make and Minnesota, Massachusetts and Nebraska haven't made serious cuts to their systems. Other states, including Connecticut, Oregon, New Hampshire and Utah, are making more modest cuts or delaying planned spending.

Advocates say they worry most about losing programs, such as group homes, that take children out of large facilities to give them individual attention.

Juvenile facilities see an array of major and minor criminals. Gun, drug, sex and assault offenders may share sleeping quarters and classes with teen pranksters sentenced for disrupting schools or destroying property. Terms can last weeks or, in extreme cases, until youths become adults and are transferred to adult prisons.

Generally, less violent offenders make it to the smaller group homes, and experts say social pecking orders are easier to defuse in those settings compared to prisons where gangs try to form and fight for control.

Sheila Bedi, executive director of the Washington-based Justice Policy Institute, said housing children can cost as much as $600 per child daily. But the expenses can be much higher when children emerge hardened from big youth prisons, commit more crimes and end up in adult facilities.

"The truant comes out learning how to steal a car," Bedi said. "You cannot expect a child to come out of that situation with the ability to make better life decisions."

Associated Press Writer Dena Potter in Richmond, Va., contributed to this report.
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5hFsfRjoS-SR_3irN_R3WEU8YhzfAD95AHFHG0

Posted by lois at 12:43 PM | Comments (0)

December 05, 2008

Boston MA: A $26m try to tame city's crime hot spots New program's workers may have rough pasts

A $26m try to tame city's crime hot spots
New program's workers may have rough pasts

By Maria Cramer, Boston Globe Staff | December 4, 2008

The Boston Foundation and city officials are preparing to flood a 1.5-square-mile section of the city with massive crime-fighting resources over the next six years, pinpointing about 2,000 young criminals who they believe drive more than three-quarters of the city's violence.

The $26 million effort, which will be formally announced later this month, will dispatch 25 new street workers - or "violence interrupters" - into five neighborhoods along or near Blue Hill Avenue, to make contact with gang members and try to defuse conflicts.

Unlike street workers hired by the city, these interrupters will not be disqualified if they have a criminal past. This background, community leaders say, could deepen their understanding of what drives people to crime and give the workers more credibility with young people caught up in violence.

The street workers, who have yet to be hired, would be clustered in areas of Roxbury, the South End, Lower Roxbury, and Dorchester, where 78 percent of the city's shootings and homicides occur.

"This thing has a lot of ambitions, but it is very sharply focused on achieving sharp reductions in murders, aggravated assaults, and robberies in these communities," said Paul S. Grogan, president of The Boston Foundation, which is putting $1 million a year of its own money toward the effort. "That's what this thing is all about."

Mayor Thomas M. Menino has instructed city agencies, including the Boston Police Department, the Department of Public Health, and the Boston Center for Youth and Families, to cooperate with the initiative on the plan, said his spokeswoman, Dorothy Joyce

"The mayor has always made it a priority of getting young people who may be at risk engaged in positive, productive opportunities," Joyce said. "This program will hopefully help them to that end."

The unusual public-private initiative, known as StreetSafe Boston, will concentrate on 1,400 to 2,200 people between 16 and 24 years old who live along or near the Blue Hill Avenue spine and are former offenders, gang members, actively involved in violent crime, or involved with the Department of Youth Services.

Specifically, it would focus on Dudley Square and Grove Hall in Roxbury, the South End and Lower Roxbury area, and two Dorchester hot spots, in the area of Morton and Norfolk streets, and Bowdoin Street and Geneva Avenue.

StreetSafe would also target 4,000 young people who may not be involved in violent crime but are vulnerable, like dropouts, drug dealers, pregnant teens, and runaways.

The money also would go toward the development of job training programs and mental health services for young people. The foundation has raised close to $7 million and hopes to get the rest through donations from national and local foundations and individual contributors.

"We don't want to just see young people decide, 'I'm not going to shoot anymore,' but they're still not in school," said Marc H. Germain, a foundation associate who described the program at a neighborhood meeting in Dorchester yesterday. "We're looking for improvement in their lives."

The street workers program will be overseen by the Black Ministerial Alliance, the Boston TenPoint Coalition, and Chris Byner, who runs the city's street worker program.

"I'm convinced it will work," said the Rev. Ray Hammond, chairman of the Boston Foundation, who compared it to efforts in the 1990s that led to the so-called Boston Miracle. "This kind of strategy was a major piece of the successes of the '90s - collaborative and comprehensive. And it's targeted. All of our kids need attention, but if violence is the issue, then we know it's a very a small population that needs a lot of attention."

The geographical area was picked not only because of the violence it experiences, but also because of economics.

"With limited resources, you have to be judicious," Germain said.

Still the program buoyed activists who have been alarmed by the growing list of cuts to youth programs.

"It's the largest commitment of funds to the most difficult-to-work-with group that I've ever seen," said Emmett Folgert, head of the Dorchester Youth Collaborative. "The focus population is quite small, and the amount of resources is high, so there is a good chance of success here."

But others expressed skepticism that the initiative will lead to a long-term reduction in violence.

"I really want this to work," said Ralph Ortiz, youth program coordinator at the Codman Square Neighborhood Development Association. "My concerns are that these things have been done before in the past."

The violence interrupters will need to receive formal, technical guidance in how to deal with young people traumatized by violence, he said.

"It won't be effective unless street workers are trained to become more clinical in their approach to young people," Ortiz said.

Hammond said he expects the street workers will not only be trained to help young people cope with trauma, but will also be taught skills to help them avoid the burnout that often comes with working with troubled youths.

Robert Lewis Jr., vice president for program at the foundation, said the violence interrupters - as well as the street workers already deployed in city neighborhoods - will receive new, specialized training under the same model and taught skills like mediation.

Lewis said he expects to start recruiting the interrupters in January. Criminal background checks - known as Criminal Offender Record Information, or CORI, checks - will not stand in the way of hiring, he said.

"You have to put the best workers out there. Period," Lewis said. "What we don't want to do is allow CORI to be a reason why we couldn't put the best worker out on the street."

The city employs about 23 street workers, down from about 40 in the 1990s. The ranks were once swollen with former gang members who spent late nights persuading their younger peers to drop their guns and pursue a peaceful life.

But in the late 1990s, the street workers became unionized, and the hours were changed so that workers were not out later than 9 p.m. Soon after, the state mandated that anyone working with children have a clean record, which precluded most former gang members from being in the program.

Some community leaders said those changes created a program of street workers out of touch with gang members and offenders.

Lewis, who started the city's street worker program in 1990, said the violence interrupters will work from 6 p.m. to 2 a.m. The goal will be to hire men and women who can relate to the city's troubled youth and are not afraid to stay out late and work with difficult, even dangerous people. Because the interrupters will not be city employees, they will not be beholden to state or union rules.

Jorge Martinez, executive director of Project RIGHT in Grove Hall, said he was thrilled CORI would not be a factor.

"It gives an opportunity for folks who have been in the criminal justice system to do some work in the community and reestablish themselves in the community," he said.

It will also help young offenders see they can move past their criminal record, Martinez said.

"Now you can say that it's not a barrier," he said. "If you're in the life, it's a perfect opportunity to look up and see someone in a similar situation actually succeeding."

Maria Cramer can be reached at mcramer@globe.com.

Posted by lois at 08:38 PM | Comments (0)

November 18, 2008

More children going hungry in U.S.

More children going hungry in U.S.
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Staff Writer

Tuesday, November 18, 2008

WASHINGTON - Some 691,000 children went hungry in America sometime in 2007, while close to one in eight Americans struggled to feed themselves adequately even before this year's sharp economic downturn, the Agriculture Department reported Monday.

The department's annual report on food security showed that during 2007 the number of children who suffered a substantial disruption in the amount of food they typically eat was more than 50 percent above the 430,000 in 2006 and the largest figure since 716,000 in 1998.

Overall, the 36.2 million adults and children who struggled with hunger during the year was up slightly from 35.5 million in 2006. That was 12.2 percent of Americans who didn't have the money or assistance to get enough food to maintain active, healthy lives.

Almost a third of those, 11.9 million adults and children, went hungry at some point. That figure has grown by more than 40 percent since 2000. The government says these people suffered a substantial disruption in their food supply at some point and classifies them as having "very low food security." Until the government rewrote its definitions two years ago, this group was described as having "food insecurity with hunger."

The findings should increase pressure to meet President-elect Barack Obama's campaign pledge to expand food aid and end childhood hunger by 2015, said James Weill, president of the Food Research and Action Center, an anti-hunger group.

He predicted the 2008 numbers will show even more hunger because of the sharp economic downturn this year.

"There's every reason to think the increases in the number of hungry people will be very, very large based on the increased demand we're seeing this year at food stamp agencies, emergency kitchens, Women, Infants and Children clinics, really across the entire social service support structure," said James Weill, president of the Food Research and Action Center, an anti-hunger group.

Weill said the figures show that economic growth during the first seven years of the Bush administration didn't reach the poorest and hungriest people. "The people in the deepest poverty are suffering the most," Weill said.

The number of adults and children with "low food security" - those who avoided substantial food disruptions but still struggled to eat - fell slightly since 2000, from 24.7 million to 24.3 million. The government said these people have several ways of coping - eating less varied diets, obtaining food from emergency kitchens or community food charities, or participating in federal aid programs.

like food stamps, the school lunch program or the Women, Infants and Children program.

Among other findings:

-The families with the highest rates of food insecurity were headed by single mothers (30.2 percent), black households (22.2 percent), Hispanic households (20.1 percent), and households with incomes below the official poverty line (37.7 percent).

-States with families reporting the highest prevalence of food insecurity during 2005-2007 were Mississippi (17.4 percent), New Mexico (15 percent), Texas (14.8 percent) and Arkansas (14.4 percent).

-The highest growth in food insecurity over the last 9 years came in Alaska and Iowa, both of which saw a 3.7 percent increase in families who struggled to eat adequately or had substantial food disruptions.

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On the Net:

Report: http://ers.usda.gov/Publications/ERR66/ERR66.pdf

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MS: Southern Poverty Law Center Calls for Closing Mississippi Youth Prison

11/17/2008
SPLC Calls for Closing of Mississippi Youth Prison

The Southern Poverty Law Center today called for the state of Mississippi to abandon the use of large youth prisons following a report showing that after almost four years, the state's Oakley Training School has made virtually no progress in ensuring that children held at the prison are safe and receiving effective suicide prevention and mental health treatment.

"It is time for Mississippi to fac