The Real Cost of Prisons Weblog: Youth Archives

July 03, 2008

NY Times Editiorial: Don’t Teach Our Children Crime

NY Times
July 3, 2008
Editorial
Don’t Teach Our Children Crime

Under the Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act of 1974, the states agreed to humanize their often Dickensian juvenile justice systems in exchange for increased federal aid. This promising arrangement collapsed in the 1990s during hysteria about an adolescent crime wave that never materialized. The states intensified all kinds of punishments for children and sent large numbers to adult jails where, research has shown, they are more likely to be battered, traumatized and transformed into hard-core, recidivist criminals.

Congress is in the process of reauthorizing the law, and it ought to bar the states from housing children in adult jails, except for the most heinous crimes. Sadly, the updated version of the law, recently introduced in the Senate, falls short of that goal. But it does include a number of farsighted measures that discourage the placement of children in adult jails during the pretrial period and expands protections for children charged as adults.

The need for these measures is alarmingly evident in a report issued last year by the Campaign for Youth Justice, an advocacy group. The report found that as many as 150,000 people under the age of 18 are held in adult jails in any given year. More than half of young people who are transferred into the adult system are never convicted as adults — and many are never convicted at all.

The Senate bill takes a comprehensive approach to these issues. It would considerably tighten rules aimed at keeping children out of adult jails during pretrial periods. Children arrested for truancy, running away or other offenses that would not be criminal if committed by an adult would not be placed in juvenile jail unless absolutely necessary.

It also would require the states to work toward reducing racial and ethnic disparities in the juvenile justice system. It increases federal funding for technical assistance and for drug treatment, mental health care, mentoring and after-care programs that keep children out of the juvenile system in the first place. The bill advocates an evidence-based approach to hand out the money.

Jailing and criminalizing young Americans causes a lot more crime than it punishes or prevents. This bill represents an important step toward rational and compassionate justice for troubled children.
> http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/03/opinion/03thu2.html?_r=1&ref=opinion&oref=slogin

Posted by lois at 03:11 PM | Comments (0)

June 30, 2008

JJPL AND FFLIC WIN HISTORIC VICTORY WITH CLOSURE OF JETSON YOUTH PRISON

The results of years of litigation, media advocacy and family organizing reached a high point in 2003-2004 with the closure of the hyper-violent Tallulah youth prison and sweeping juvenile justice reform legislation, requiring a change from a punitive juvenile system to a rehabilitative system based on the highly effective Missouri model. The Juvenile Justice Reform Act of 2003 required the move away from large youth prisons to small, regional, home-like secure care facilities close to children's homes, an increase in evidence-based alternatives to incarceration programs and a decrease in the number of non-violent children sent to secure care.

In spite of the ground-breaking legislation, juvenile justice reform had come to a standstill over the past year, with the three large youth prisons deteriorating, new reports of abuse in Jetson, and no movement to build the small, regional rehabilitative facilities and alternative programs required by the sweeping reforms JJPL and FFLIC helped pass in 2003. Jetson was the site of both widespread violence and, recently, the tragic death of a child who was just three weeks away from his release date.

JJPL and FFLIC stepped up pressure for reform through widespread media
coverage including a series of articles in the Baton Rouge Advocate such as, "Prison Problems Return: Juvenile Prison Reform has Stalled, Critics Say" (4/17/08) and "Jetson Closure Pushed" (4/19/08) and two New York Times editorials "Louisiana Tries Again" (5/29/2008) and "Louisiana: Closing an Abusive'Center for Youth'" (6/18/08)[1] Media profiles of youth who were incarcerated in Jetson for minor offenses, such as a teenager who served four years for stealing his mother's necklace to give to his girlfriend for Christmas and suffered violence and brutality in the facility,[2] drew attention to the fact that more than 60 percent of youth in Louisiana's juvenile prisons are non-violent.

The bill passed unanimously in the House and with only one opposition vote in the Senate, signaling a renewed commitment to reform. This means that smaller more regionalized facilities that focus on rehabilitation will be built, more children will be directed into community-based alternatives to incarceration, and that the antiquated youth prison known as the Jetson Correctional Center for Youth will no longer house children as of 2009.

Posted by lois at 06:13 PM | Comments (0)

June 16, 2008

New book: Right to Be Hostile: Schools, Prisons, and the Making of Public Enemies.

Meiners, E. R. (2007). Right to Be Hostile: Schools, Prisons, and the Making of Public Enemies. London & NY, NY: Routledge
224 pages
List price: paperback $33.95

Coincidence…or trend? This morning’s issue of Common Dreams includes an article titled “ACLU Report Exposes Unjust Detention of Youth: Pre-Trial Juvenile Lockup in Massachusetts Disproportionately Impacts Youth of Color” (May 12, 2008). (http://www.commondreams.org/news2008/0512-01.htm) Last weekend my social worker daughter railed at length about the hostility—abusiveness, actually—of a New York City judge who consistently refuses to release juvenile offenders to a demonstration program designed to keep them permanently out of jail. The judge is impervious to the fact that the city’s recidivism rate for juveniles who have been imprisoned is 80%, clearly demonstrating that what jail time most reliably yields…is more jail time. Meanwhile, on my nightstand awaiting review is Erica Meiners’ Right to Be Hostile, a microscopic look at juveniles, the justice system—and schools.

Anyone exposed to media and in the habit of thinking would see the above as indicating trend, not coincidence. Pieces on juveniles and the justice system routinely appear in news media. In February of this year, for example, the New York Times editorialized on the fact that the U.S. leads the world in the number of youthful offenders sentenced to life imprisonment, a situation headlined as “A Shameful Record.” (http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/06/opinion/06wed5.html?_r=1&oref=slogin) In March, a United Nations panel called for the United States to disallow life sentences for offenders under 18. (http://abcnews.go.com/US/WireStory?id=4408351&page=2) While most people equate “juvenile offenders” with “males,” researchers have meanwhile reported that girls are at increasing risk in the justice system, most often for behaviors that wouldn’t be considered criminal if they were adults (including running away and promiscuous behavior). (http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/DyeHard/story?id=747671&page=1)

Educators, of course, are generally aware of the problem and often lament the youthful promise squandered by a punitive justice system; often, too, they philosophize about who and what is responsible for the growing problem, rightfully implicating issues of poverty and parenting as well as the role of No Child Left Behind, responsible for increasing the numbers of school push outs and drop outs. As a body, however, education professionals will react with horror and disbelief when Meiners points an accusing finger in a new direction: at the education establishment itself. We are, she says, complicit in the massive production of fodder for the growing prison industrial complex (PIC). And, when she says we, she is inclusive: personnel in K-12 schools as well as teacher educators, she argues—persuasively—serve an important function in readying young people for incarceration. Precisely because her charge is so horrifying, it must be carefully examined. While readers are likely to immediately and vehemently deny any complicity, if there is any truth in Meiners’ claims, conscientious educators will want to know. Unhappily for readers, the author’s arguments are so carefully considered and constructed that after reading the book no thoughtful educator will be able to persist in outright, energetic and all-encompassing denial.

By page 2, Meiners is detailing the context of her discussion with statistics that command attention. The United States has 5% of the world’s people, yet 25% of the world’s incarcerated—over two million human beings, not including those on probation or parole, or those housed in Immigration and Naturalization facilities or U.S facilities outside the U.S. African American and Latina women are imprisoned far more often than white women, but 75% of all women imprisoned are prosecuted for nonviolent offenses. Some 12% of all African American males between 20 and 34 are imprisoned; the South has some states in which one-third of African American males cannot vote. Prison is a “growth industry,” big business, and getting bigger. As a nation, we are building more prisons than schools. Meiners’ essential argument is that schools play a large role in identifying and preparing the young people who will eventually fill those prisons. Because it is not possible to adequately summarize this carefully constructed argument in a review, readers are cautioned not to draw conclusions about the validity of Meiners’ arguments without reading the full text, something every educator interested in social justice should do as soon as possible.

Each of the book’s six chapters examines a particular element of schooling that serves to help channel select youth onto a path toward incarceration. Chapter 1 discusses how reasonable emotional reactions to oppressive social and institutional conditions, most specifically anger, are characterized as “outlaw” emotions and used as pretext for excessive control of oppressed populations by authority: “If you do not have the right to be hostile, anger can be read as violence, disruption, disrespect, or as evidence of inherent deviancy, or cognitive and behavioral impairment” (p. 30). Once justifiably angry students, aware of how poorly and inequitably served they and their communities are not only by schools but by other institutions, are branded with such negative labels, they are ripe to suffer the expulsion that commonly results from widespread “zero tolerance” policies. Expulsion is a strong predictor of dropping out—itself an indicator of likely eventual imprisonment. Expulsion rates are higher for boys than girls, and much higher for African Americans than Latinos, Caucasians or Asian Americans. This racialized expulsion trend begins in preschool; in one study, 37 out of 40 states reported that their preschool expulsion rate exceeded the K-12 expulsion rate.

It is also well documented that African American boys are disproportionately placed into special education, a placement that also decreases the chance that a child will graduate (although, as the author takes care to mention, some students do benefit substantively from special education programs). Meiners believes that such channeling may be traced, at least in part, to the fact that the teaching force is overwhelmingly white and female, unfamiliar with other cultures, subject to cultural stereotypes, and quick to feel threatened and intimidated by the Other—especially the African American male, and apparently at any age—and to impose the most severe sanctions.

Chapter 2 traces the systematic reallocation of resources from education to incarceration, despite the fact (or perhaps because of it?) that the more time a child spends in school, the less likely imprisonment becomes. That is, more schools would mean fewer, more expensive prisons—but we choose instead to build more prisons, concurrently calling for “less government,” widely translated as less money available for social welfare programs and popularly justified on such old stereotypes as the lazy welfare queen. This chapter also explores in detail the relationship between not only schools and prisons, but among those institutions and an economic sector that characterizes prisons as a growth “industry” promising new jobs and profits to depressed (white) communities (as long as the flow of new prisoners continues uninterrupted). To the extent that white educators fall prey to stereotypes and discount anger and hostility as legitimate emotions, they are likely to support and participate in school policies that ensure a steady stream of prisoners and revenue to the PIC.

Chapter 3 traces the role of the media in mischaracterizing prisons and incarceration, further ensuring continued public ignorance about the realities of prison populations and conditions while simultaneously promoting racial and other stereotypes, including suggestions that violence is characteristic of race. Chapter 4 is a sensitive, nuanced and especially thought-provoking examination of rhetoric around the need to protect innocent children from predators, especially sexual predators, which has led to Sex Offender Registries and the hyper-vigilance they promote. Of course, Meiners does not defend molestation of children; what she does point out, however, is that children are most often assaulted not by strangers but by family members and friends, people known to them. The author seeks in this chapter to move the reader to ask how the extreme focus on the area of “stranger danger” distracts attention from far more pervasive and systemic dangers to children. Among these, she cites evidence that poverty is the greatest of all such dangers.

xxxI know this fact, I teach this fact. Yet it persistently gets obscured. In a nation with no adequate or affordable childcare system, no universal health care, expensive to prohibitive costs for higher education, and a minimum wage that is not a living wage, we have no registries for the politicians, and employers, who routinely implement or execute policies that actively damage all people, including or even particularly children. (138)xxx

One can’t help but be reminded of writers like Lippman and Chomsky and to think again about how media loves spectacle (the relatively rare but sensational rape and murder of children) and how spectacle functions to distract the bewildered herd of the public from more systemic and pervasive problems.

Chapter 5 examines the ways that special education and recovery groups function to institutionalize and legitimize concepts of normalcy and, in doing so, concurrently determine what constitutes deviance. Moreover, deviance is associated with some problem in the individual—a congenital learning disability, or the disease of addiction. When such problems are assigned to individuals, attention is again distracted from social policies that create oppressive conditions and rational resistance. Blessedly, this chapter also contains examples of programs (Boarding School Healing Project and Prison: A Site for Resistance) that offer a stark contrast to the norm and suggest possibilities for change.

Chapter 6 is a thorough discussion of the author’s own goal: prison abolition. With extensive experience in talking to groups, Meiners is well-equipped to voice and answer a reader’s most likely, immediate questions as the book nears its close: “What about the really bad people?” and “How do I get involved?” Her answer in each case is detailed and extremely helpful to anyone new to and overwhelmed by her line of argument.

Of course, many writers have been exploring the explosion of the PIC, so many readers will be familiar with some of the trends and statistics Meiners uses to build her case. What is new, and startling, however, is her clear-eyed indictment of the education system and its personnel. She is not insensitive to the good intentions and hard work of many educators (and others in the “helping professions”), nor is she unaware that many critical educators are already on paths leading to the one she charts. She is, always, sensitive to the difficulties inherent in telling people things they don’t want to hear and are loathe to believe. Given how formidable her task, the result is nothing short of remarkable. No educator can read this book and be unchanged by it.

June 13, 2008

Report Finds Racial Disparities in the Severity of Punishment of Youth

Report Finds Racial Disparities in the Severity of Punishment
By Robert E. Pierre
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, June 13, 2008; B02

The nation's juvenile justice system metes out harsher punishment to black and Latino youths, locks up thousands of children for relatively minor offenses and ultimately makes them more dangerous, according to a national study released yesterday.

"We are generating more violence and criminality in our effort to interrupt it," said Douglas W. Nelson, president and chief executive of the Annie E. Casey Foundation, which conducted the study, during a news conference yesterday. "We routinely fail to recognize that children are different than adults. We need to alter the context in which we serve kids."

Nelson's remarks came with the release of the foundation's annual Kids Count report, which measures the well-being of America's children in 10 categories. The report shows reductions in the rates of child deaths, teenage births, high school dropouts and teens who are not in school or working. Four areas increased: low-birthweight infants, children in single-parent homes, children in poverty and children in families in which no parent works full time.

The percentage of newborns weighing less than 5.5 pounds, who are at greater risk of dying in infancy or having long-term problems, is the highest in 40 years. It was the only category in which Maryland worsened from 2000 to 2005, when the percentage of low-birthweight babies in the state rose from 8.6 to 9.1.

Nationally, infant mortality remained steady during the period.

Maryland tied New Hampshire, at 10 percent, for the lowest rate of children living in poverty. The national rate was 11 percent for white children, 36 percent for blacks and American Indians and 28 percent for Hispanics.

Virginia improved in all but three categories: low-birthweight babies, infant mortality and children in single-parent homes.

The District lost ground in half of the 10 categories: infant mortality, teen deaths, teen births, children living with no parents working full time and children in poverty.

But the primary focus of this year's report was the fate of the 400,000 youths who cycle through the juvenile justice system each year. During a two-hour news conference yesterday at the Cannon House Office Building, a panel of experts said the problem has largely been fueled by fear and racism that often lead police to take young white offenders home and minorities to jail.

In 2006, for example, three youths of color were in custody for every one white youth, the report said. Two thirds of all youths in custody were incarcerated for a nonviolent offense.

In the 1990s, 49 states made it easier to try youths as adults. On any given night, 100,000 minors are in jails, prisons, boot camps or residential facilities. A succession of speakers yesterday said these places often cause more problems than they solve. Grace Bauer of Lake Charles, La., said her son, who had been sent to a boot camp for being "ungovernable," was raped when he was 13.

Bauer said her son, now 21, carries the scars. She later learned that the program had a 95 percent failure rate. "On my first visit to see him, he had welts on his face," she said.

Rep. Robert C. Scott (D-Virginia) said many "get tough" crime measures are "nonsense that does not reduce crime."

"It helps [politicians] get elected," he said. "If you can get it to rhyme, even better."

Vincent Schiraldi, director of the District's Department of Youth Rehabilitation Services, said it would be more rational to lock up only the most violent offenders and use less restrictive options for the others, particularly those without long criminal records.

Reginald Dwayne Betts, now in his mid-20s, said he should not have been sent to adult jail when he was arrested at 16 for carjacking in Fairfax County. He had no previous criminal record and was an honor roll student.

But instead of being sent to a juvenile jail, he was placed with adults and served eight years in prison. He never received any mental health treatment.

After he was released, Betts attended Prince George's Community College. He now goes to the University of Maryland on a poetry scholarship.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/06/12/AR2008061202842_pf.html

Posted by lois at 09:57 PM | Comments (0)

June 10, 2008

Bob Herbert - "Out of Sight"

June 10, 2008
Op-Ed Columnist
Out of Sight
By BOB HERBERT
NY Times

When the dismal unemployment numbers were released on Friday (at the same time that oil prices were surging to record highs), I thought about the young people at the bottom of the employment ladder.

Below the bottom, actually.

A shudder went through the markets when the Labor Department reported that the official jobless rate had jumped one-half a percentage point in May to 5.5 percent — the sharpest spike in 22 years.

The young people I’m talking about wouldn’t have noticed. These are the teenagers and young adults — roughly 16 to 24 years old — who are not in school and basically have no hope of finding work. The bureaucrats compiling the official unemployment rate don’t even bother counting these young people. They are no one’s constituency. They might as well not exist.

Except that they do exist. There are four million or more of these so-called disconnected youths across the country. They hang out on street corners in cities large and small — and increasingly in suburban and rural areas.

If you ask how they survive from day to day, the most likely response is: “I hustle,” which could mean anything from giving haircuts in a basement to washing a neighbor’s car to running the occasional errand.

Or it could mean petty thievery or drug dealing or prostitution or worse.

This is the flip side of the American dream. The United States economy, which has trouble producing enough jobs to keep the middle class intact, has left these youngsters all-but-completely behind.

“These kids are being challenged in ways that my generation was not,” said David Jones, the president of the Community Service Society of New York, which tries to develop ways to connect these young men and women with employment opportunities, or get them back into school.

It is extremely difficult because, for the most part, the jobs are not there and the educational establishment is having a hard enough time teaching the kids who are still in school.

“Schools have not made much of an effort to bring this population back in,” said Mr. Jones. “Once you fall out of the system, you’re basically on no one’s programmatic radar screen.”

So these kids drift. Some are drawn to gangs. A disproportionate number become involved in crime. It is a tragic story, and very few people are paying attention.

The economic policies of the past few decades have favored the wealthy and the well-connected to a degree that has been breathtaking to behold. The Nation magazine has devoted its current issue to the Gilded Age-type inequality that has been the result.

Just a little bit of help to the millions of youngsters trying to get their first tentative foothold in that economy should not be too much to ask.

It’s not as if these kids don’t want to work. Many of them search and search until they finally become discouraged. The summer job market, which has long been an important first step in preparing teenagers for the world of work, is shaping up this year as the weakest in more than half a century, according to the Center for Labor Market Studies at Northeastern University in Boston.

Now, with the overall economy deteriorating, the situation for poorly educated young people will only grow worse. As Andrew Sum, director of the Center for Labor Market Studies, told The Times recently:

“When you get into a recession, kids always get hit the hardest. Kids always go to the back of the hiring queue. Now, they find themselves with a lot of other people in line ahead of them.”

As the ranks of these youngsters grow, so does their potential to become a destabilizing factor in the society.

More important, the U.S. needs the untapped talent (and the potential buying power) in this large pool of young people, just as it needs the talents of the many other Americans of all ages whose energy, intelligence and creativity are wasted in an economic system that is not geared toward providing jobs for everyone who wants to work.

America needs to dream bigger, and in this election year, job creation should be issue No. 1. If I were running for president, I would pull together the smartest minds I could find from government, the corporate world, the labor movement, academia, the nonprofits and ordinary working men and women to see what could be done to spark the creation of decent jobs on a scale that would bring the U.S. as close as possible to full employment.

We’ve maxed out the credit cards, floated mindlessly in stock market bubbles, refinanced mortgages to death — now’s the time to figure out how to put all Americans to work.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/10/opinion/10herbert.html?ref=opinion

Posted by lois at 08:19 PM | Comments (0)

Philadelphia: A Messed-Up Justice System

Karen Heller: A messed-up justice system
By Karen Heller
Philadelphia Inquirer

"If the United States leads the world in incarceration," says civil-rights lawyer David Rudovsky, "Philadelphia leads the United States."
We have a higher percentage of our citizens in prison than anybody else, 3.5 times more than New York City.
We're No. 1!
We've won the inmate championship. And our prize is the chance to spend $230 million on prisons every year.
This is one business we should be doing everything to unload.Prisoners are a growth industry. "Booming," says prison commissioner Lou Giorla.

It's not hard to see why. When so many of the city's population are woefully uneducated - almost 30 percent lack high-school degrees - decent jobs are hard to come by.

The drug-dealing business, however, is always hiring.

Spend a day inside one of the Court of Common Pleas' four jury-waiver courtrooms and the parade of criminals never stops. One defendant, aged 41, had three trials scheduled simultaneously last Wednesday, from three drug-selling arrests in six weeks. He'd kept out of trouble for 10 years, then fell back because he couldn't find work.

Nonviolent defendants such as he, charged with petty drug dealing, constitute the majority of cases in these courts. If convicted, felons face mandatory minimum sentencing: one to two years for selling two grams or more of cocaine or heroin for the first offense, three to six years for subsequent offenses.

A packet of sugar is four grams.

The criminal division heard 15,000 felony cases last year, 80 percent of them related to drugs.

"We're not doing the things that would prevent the market from growing," says Judge Pamela P. Dembe, chief of the criminal trial division. "We operate a justice system that is based on a very old model, a punitive model."

Punishment is not where we should put money or manpower.

This spring, Philadelphia's prisons made history - by having more prisoners in jail than at any time in the last three centuries, 9,334 prisoners, at an annual cost of $30,000 each. The facilities were designed to hold 6,433.

Who says we don't make anything anymore? We make prisoners.

Two-thirds of inmates are awaiting trial, half for minimum drug charges. Some wait as long as two years for their cases to be heard.

It's an expensive mess. Fifteen percent of prisoners are mentally ill. More than 2,000 are held three to a cell designed for two; one of them has to sleep in a plastic shell on the floor. Due to overcrowding, guard overtime will hit $35 million this month.

Rudovsky is suing the system, on behalf of 11 named inmates, stating that overcrowding violates their civil rights. He's been fighting this issue since 1970, when the prison population was a mere 2,800.

"Building new prisons is not a good idea. You build them, you'll fill them," Rudovsky says.

"We're not going to win the war on drugs in the court system," Dembe argues. By then, it's too late.

We need to find people jobs, so they can earn $30,000 a year instead of our spending that on a cell.

A quarter of Philadelphia's budget goes to criminal justice, almost $960 million on cops, courts and prisons. And 80 percent of the criminal justice system deals with the nasty tentacles of drugs. Do the math. That's $767 million to deal with problems at the end of the line, not the beginning, before they all clot the system.

That money could be spent on day-care. That money could be spent on rec centers. That money could buy early childhood education and job-training centers and mental-health care.

That money could turn girls and boys into educated, law-abiding citizens, and transform potential petty dealers into taxpaying workers.

Mayor Nutter and the new administration are trying, but there needs to be more effort, more money and more manpower to wipe out the prison industrial complex, so the city can reduce the annual drag on the budget fighting a war on drugs that no one is winning.
http://www.philly.com/inquirer/columnists/karen_heller/20080609_A_messed-up_justice_system.html

Posted by lois at 02:17 PM | Comments (0)

June 06, 2008

White House Office of National Drug Control Policy Awards $5.8 Million for Student Drug Testing

The White House Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP) has awarded $5.8 million in grants to 49 schools to fund random drug testing of students.

Grantees included schools in 20 states. The awards were made in conjunction with the U.S. Department of Education.

"Student drug testing programs promote safer, healthier school environments where students can work toward achieving their full potential," said Education Secretary Margaret Spellings. "A good student drug testing program helps students defy peer pressure and say 'no' to drugs and alcohol, and provides the opportunity for at-risk students to get the support they need."

This is the fifth round of grants awarded for school-based random student drug testing programs since 2003.
http://www.jointogether.org/news/funding/trends/2008/ondcp-awards-58-million-for.html?log-event=sp2f-view-item&nid=40009885

Posted by lois at 10:24 PM | Comments (0)

June 03, 2008

Louisiana Tries Again: State promises to close Jetson Prison for Youth

May 30, 2008
Editorial, NY Times
Louisiana Tries Again

Two years have passed since the federal courts relinquished control of Louisiana’s notoriously troubled juvenile justice system. The state regained its autonomy by reducing the number of children held in detention and by promising to embrace reforms based on Missouri’s system, which long ago abandoned sprawling, prison-style facilities in favor of small, regional facilities that focus on rehabilitation.

Despite those promises, Louisiana’s system was never fully reorganized and the regional facilities never got built. Embarrassed by fresh charges of violence and brutality at the infamous Jetson Center for Youth near Baton Rouge, the state has now promised to close the troubled facility and proceed with genuine reform.

Gov. Bobby Jindal needs to make sure that the state’s new plan truly follows the Missouri model and that Louisiana’s juvenile justice officials implement it this time.

The community-based centers in Missouri are considered a national model that stresses therapy, not punishment, and often includes parents as well as the children. Instead of housing minor offenders and more serious offenders in the same place, as too often happens, Missouri sorts detainees by the seriousness of their crimes.

The oversight continues even after the young persons’ release, through case managers who help former inmates with job placement, school issues and drug or alcohol treatment. Missouri’s system more than pays for itself by keeping recidivism rates low. After completing the program, officials say, less than 10 percent of detainees go back to prison through the juvenile courts.

A team of consultants led by Mark Steward, an expert on the Missouri juvenile justice system, is advising Louisiana on how to proceed. For the sake of some of the state’s most vulnerable children, the Jindal administration should embrace the advice and follow it.

Posted by lois at 12:41 PM | Comments (0)

June 01, 2008

California's Runner Initiative: Overview and Opposition

The Runner Initiative, a California ballot initiative also called the "Safe Neighborhoods Act," was introduced in April by Senator George Runner (R-Antelope Valley), Assemblywoman Sharon Runner (R-Lancaster), Mike Reynolds, author of California's Three Strikes sentencing law, and San Bernardino County Supervisor Gary Ovitt. The Runner Initiative includes many traditional "tough on crime" approaches to addressing crime, including increasing the length of penalties for certain crimes, the establishment of a statewide gang registry database, and making individuals convicted of certain crimes ineligible for public housing. Unfortunately, this approach emphasizes punishment and incarceration over prevention and early intervention efforts that could be utilized to address the underlying causes of crimes. The text of the initiative can be found here.

In response to the initiative, on May 16th, Los Angeles Councilmembers Tony Cardenas and Bernard Parks announced their aggressive opposition to the Runner Initiative. A press release of their announcement is available here.

Additionally, over 50 California individuals and organizations have formed a Coalition to Defeat George Runner's Initiative. The Coalition includes elected officials, influential individuals, city governments, labor unions, and interfaith, environmental, civil rights, and other organizations. A complete listing of Coalition members is available at http://www.ellabakercenter.org/?p=runner_opposed. More information on the Coalition and action items to help defeat the Runner Initiative can be found at http://www.ellabakercenter.org/?p=defeat_runner.

The W. Haywood Burns Institute, a California-based national organization working to reduce the overrepresentation of youth of color in the juvenile justice system, has also has written an analysis of this initiative. The analysis describes the implications associated with each line of the initiative's language and includes fiscal impacts, cost effective arguments against the initiative, a description of implications on youth of color, and a listing of the problems associated with the creation of a gang database. A listing of the initiative's proponents and opponents is also included. The analysis can be found at http://www.ellabakercenter.org/downloads/runner/runner_summary.pdf.

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

MA: Stopping the School to Prison Pipeline

The Boston Globe
DANIEL G. MEYER
By Daniel G. Meyer | May 28, 2008

A 13-YEAR-OLD girl was handcuffed and arrested at Brockton High School last June for wearing a T-shirt. The T-shirt, which she was asked by school officials to remove, bore the image of her ex-boyfriend, 14-year-old Marvin Constant, who had recently been killed in a Boston area shooting. The girl refused to remove the memorial shirt and was arrested for "causing a disturbance."

In Texas, 14-year-old high school freshman, Shaquanda Cotton, was sentenced to seven years in prison. Her crime was pushing a hall monitor out of the way when she was stopped from entering a school building. The official charge was "assault on a public servant."

While extreme, these cases are not unusual. In Massachusetts and across the country, an increasing number of incidents that traditionally have been handled in schools by trips to the principal's office are being dealt with by law enforcement officials and judges in the juvenile justice system. Countless school children, particularly children of color in poverty-stricken zip codes, are being pushed out of schools and into juvenile correctional facilities for minor misconduct.

A variety of overzealous disciplinary measures, including a mandatory "zero-tolerance" policy, are removing children as early as elementary school from mainstream educational environments and funneling them into a one-way pipeline to prison. This "school-to-prison pipeline" begins in the nation's neglected and under-resourced public education system and flows directly into the country's expansive ocean of overcrowded, privatized, profit-producing prisons.

America's Promise Alliance released a report in April that said that 17 of the nation's 50 largest cities have high school graduation rates of lower than 50 percent. Boston barely boasted a graduation rate of 57 percent, placing it 27th among the 50 cities. It is no surprise that urban public high schools ranked lower in graduation rates than their suburban counterparts.

When school funding is based on student test performance, lack of resources creates heinous incentives for school officials to funnel out "problem" students believed likely to drag down a school's scores. This bottom line business is a convenient method of concealing schools' educational deficiencies, but it does little to address the systemic problem of poor performance.

Racial disproportion runs through every level of the system. A black male born in 2001 has a 1 in 3 chance of going to prison in his lifetime compared with a white male's 1 in 17 chance. Incarceration rates are directly correlated with school performance. Children of color are more likely to be suspended or expelled than their Caucasian classmates. More than 70 percent of the prison population in Massachusetts is functionally illiterate. The cycle begins early and is hard to break. A black child is nine times more likely to have an incarcerated parent, and children with imprisoned parents far more likely to be imprisoned themselves.

Abraham Lincoln wrote that "the dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present." There remains a deeply ingrained punitive paradigm in the psyche of the American criminal justice system. Our overzealous "get tough on crime" philosophy is totally inadequate to the stormy present. Americans are far more likely to be victimized by a violent assault, rape, murder, or robbery than our European counterparts who incarcerate relatively tiny percentages of the population. There, prison is viewed as a fundamentally "criminogenic" institution that creates more crime than it deters.

Prisoners are a major fiscal burden on the rest of society. It costs Massachusetts $43,000 a year to keep an inmate behind bars. States are spending on average more than three times as much per prisoner as per public school pupil. Is it more valuable to imprison than to teach? The majority of suspended students and juveniles in detention did not commit violent offenses. Is society safer with nonviolent criminals in jail or in school?

Relying on incarceration as the sole solution to crime is ineffective. Academic achievement is the leading determining factor for delinquency. Improving school performance will be an effective strategy for reducing chronic court involvement.

We have the resources. It is not a question of funds but rather a question of will. Will Massachusetts be first to say enough and dam the flow of the school-to-prison pipeline?

Daniel G. Meyer is a volunteer at the Youth Advocacy Project at the Committee for Public Counsel Services.
ttp://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2008/05/28/problem_students_in_pipeline_to_prison?mode=PF

Posted by lois at 08:39 PM | Comments (0)

May 23, 2008

MA: Youth lockup doesn't work and isn't fair

"...why Latino youths are five times more likely, and African American youths eight times more likely, than Caucasian youths to be confined in a detention or correctional facility?"

Friday, May 23, 2008
Youth lockup doesn’t work and isn’t fair
Clive McFarlane
Worcester Telegram

According to an American Civil Liberties Union report released last week titled “Locking up our Children,” Massachusetts is detaining 5,000 to 6,000 youths in secure facilities each year, many of whom do not appear to be high-risk.

Last year, for example, 78 percent of the young people were charged with misdemeanors or low-level felonies, and more than 80 percent of them were eventually released back into their communities after spending an average of 25 days in lockup awaiting arraignment.

Not only is the Massachusetts youth detention rate far greater than that of many other states, but minority youths are bearing the brunt of the state’s pretrial detentions.

Minority youths account for approximately 20 percent of the state’s juvenile population, but nearly 60 percent of the young people securely detained after arraignment and before their innocence or guilt is ascertained.

The Worcester County division of the state’s juvenile court system is the leader in the high detention rates of young people.

In 2006, the Worcester County division detained 815, or 46 percent, of the 1,772 people 17 years old and younger who were the subject of delinquency complaints.

In comparison, although a greater number of young people were the subject of delinquency reports in Suffolk County (1,953), Essex County (1,848) and Middlesex County (1,809), smaller percentages, 42, 31 and 28 percent respectively, were detained in those three counties.

The statistics are crystal clear, but the reasons for them are not.

Is race, for example, a factor for why Latino youths are five times more likely, and African American youths eight times more likely, than Caucasian youths to be confined in a detention or correctional facility?

“We cannot say for certain, because we do not currently have a system in place to analyze the data and to identify more accurately what the problem points are,” said Amy Reichbach, racial justice advocate with the ACLU of Massachusetts.

The Worcester district attorney’s office, however, seems to have a clue.

“We believe justice is colorblind in Worcester County,” said Timothy Connolly, spokesman for the DA’s office.

It is not that I don’t believe Mr. Connolly’s “colorblind assertion,” but I would have been a lot more assured if someone in the office had at least read the report.

No one had at the time I spoke with Mr. Connolly yesterday.

Of course, as it was pointed out to me, many of the numbers cited by the ACLU were compiled from 2006 and thus predate the current district attorney’s administration.

Talk about washing your hands.

In the DA’s defense, however, an argument can be made that just as the schools have done, the courts are shouldering a greater share of the burden of looking out for many young people.

The ACLU report, for example, points out that justices detain children who are not at high risk of flight or danger to their community because they believe detention to be in the children’s best interest.

“Some use detention as a ‘wake-up call’ or rehabilitative tool to frighten children who have yet to be convicted of any wrongdoing into obeying the law,” the report said.

“In addition, almost all justices detain youth who they believe cannot return home safely. They do so because they have no other place to house these children.”

But “far from assisting youth in dealing with the issues that may have gotten them into trouble, secure detention is one of the most accurate predictors of future criminal behavior and other problems,” Ms. Reichbach said.

“This approach is failing both youth and our communities.”

Worcester public school officials are involved with a federal initiative to provide alternatives to juvenile detention.

It is one of several community solutions being recommended by the ACLU.

Of course, courts and community efforts are all second-best solutions.

The best solution would be for these young people to have stable homes and responsible parents to go home to, and unfortunately many do not.
http://www.telegram.com/article/20080523/COLUMN44/805230664&SearchID=73318542911635

Posted by lois at 10:04 PM | Comments (0)

The Chronicle of Philanthropy: Leaving Hard Time Behind. Foundations lead effort to change juvenile-justice sytems

The Chronicle of Philanthropy

From the issue dated May 15, 2008

Leaving Hard Time Behind
Foundations lead effort to change juvenile-justice systems

By Caroline Preston

When Emily Tow Jackson first started talking to leaders of local youth organizations in the late 1990s
about supporting their efforts to improve the Connecticut juvenile-justice system, many were skeptical that a grant maker wanted to get involved.

"They thought a foundation wouldn't be interested," says Ms. Jackson, executive director of the Tow Foundation, in Wilton, Conn. "They could get people to fund programs for elementary-school kids, or for SAT-prep classes, but there wasn't much history of foundations funding those really down-and-dirty issues."

But over the past eight years, the Tow Foundation and its grantees have won a string of victories in their efforts to persuade the state that sending kids to prison is not necessarily the best way to reduce crime.

The fund helped convince state legislators to design a plan to improve the two agencies that oversee the juvenile-justice system, and last year, along with the Campaign for Youth Justice, in Washington, and other allies, it won approval of legislation that raises to 18 the age at which children in Connecticut are automatically tried as adults.

The foundation now supports programs to reduce the number of children who are sent before judges because of misdemeanors they commit in schools, among many other projects.

$100-Million Effort

Those successes are part of a growing effort by grant makers to find new ways to help young people who get in trouble with the law. In recent years, a handful of local and national grant makers, including the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the Annie E. Casey Foundation, the JEHT Foundation, the Open Society Institute, and the Eckerd Family Foundation, have produced research and financed model efforts that emphasize rehabilitation, rather than harsh punishment.

Preliminary successes from those projects prompted the MacArthur foundation, in Chicago, to allocate $100-million through 2012 to efforts to overhaul the juvenile-justice system in four states and examine how mental-health problems, racial injustice, and poverty can increase a young person's chances of ending up in prison.

Meanwhile, the Open Society Institute, in New York, and other grant makers are trying to end life-without-parole sentences for people under the age of 18, following a 2005 Supreme Court decision that struck down the death penalty for juveniles.

And the Annie E. Casey Foundation, in Baltimore, continues to expand a program it pioneered in 1992 to reduce the number of children who are detained.

"I'm not prone to optimism, but it may be the case that we're poised to demonstrate really fundamental change in juvenile justice in ways that we haven't seen in a hundred years," says Bart Lubow, who leads the Casey foundation's program for troubled youngsters.

Other grant makers are taking note. The number of foundations that receive information on juvenile-justice issues through the Youth Transition Funders Group, a network of grant makers focused on youth issues, has grown to 37, three times as many as in 2003.

Deborah Leff, president of the Public Welfare Foundation, in Washington, said she decided in 2007 to make criminal and juvenile justice one of three key causes the foundation supports because she was heartened by the success of advocacy efforts like the one last year in Connecticut.

"When you're a mid-sized foundation, you look for opportunities where an injection of funds can make a difference," she says. "Our grantees saw enormous opportunities for change."

Challenging Cause

Compared with many causes, however, the number of foundations that make grants to juvenile-justice groups is still relatively small. Grant makers provided about $191-million for crime, justice, and legal issues in 2006, according to the Foundation Center, only a portion of which went to juveniles. (That money includes not just efforts to change the judicial system but also programs to improve public safety, among many other causes.)

Some foundation leaders say that the complexities of juvenile-justice grant making may dissuade others from stepping in. The cause requires foundations to work closely with governments, which can be challenging as political views of officeholders change. What's more, juvenile offenders rarely pull at people's heart strings.

"This isn't a population that people have a lot of sympathy for," says Robert Crane, president of the JEHT Foundation, in New York. "If you have a choice between funding a program in a school for underserved kids who are working really hard to succeed in their lives and funding criminal-justice work, justice work is a hard sell."

Yet advocates say that the urgency of juvenile-justice work was laid bare in February with the publication of a study by the Pew Center on the States. The report found that the United States imprisons more people than any other country, with 1.6 million people, or 1 in 100 American adults, serving time behind bars. Many nonprofit and foundation leaders say the failures of juvenile facilities have contributed to those high incarceration rates among adults.

"As a country, we believe that the practice of imprisonment, and the threat of imprisonment, deters crime," says Mr. Lubow. "And yet we're the country with the most people locked up and the highest crime rates."

The MacArthur foundation, in particular, has been key to supporting research that undermines the notion that hard time reduces juvenile crime.

The Chicago grant maker started supporting juvenile-justice research in 1996, the same year that John DiIulio (then a Princeton University professor), along with other criminologists, published a book predicting that bands of hardened young "superpredators" would drastically increase the levels of youth violence in the United States. Such warnings prompted a wave of legislation that made it easier to prosecute adolescents as adults.

Those measures led MacArthur to spend $12.6-million on research documenting how young people's brains are less developed than those of adults and how serving time in adult prisons doesn't reduce young people's risk of committing future crimes. In fact, one study found that youths who were punished through the juvenile system were about 60-percent less likely to commit another crime than those who went before adult courts.

Advocates have relied on that research to persuade policy makers and citizens nationwide of the disadvantages of prosecuting young people as adults. The Supreme Court cited the MacArthur-supported research, for example, in its decision three years ago to strike down the death penalty for juveniles.

To build on that research, the MacArthur foundation created a new program, known as Models for Change, that will help four states — Illinois, Louisiana, Pennsylvania, and Washington — use the research to make changes in their juvenile-justice systems.

The foundation works with a broad array of individuals, including charity leaders, prosecutors, legal advocates, and people in all three branches of government, to build a program that can sustain changes in political administrations and shifting public opinion.

The foundation will also support efforts to design and put in place new policies in 12 additional states that seek to reduce racial inequality, ensure that young people with mental-health problems receive the services they need, and improve legal representation for impoverished youths. Black youths are arrested at twice the rate of white youths nationwide, while an estimated 25 percent of juveniles in the justice system have serious mental-health conditions.

Dropping Crime Rates

Meanwhile, the Annie E. Casey Foundation is building on the success of a program it began in 1992 to help counties, cities, and states decrease the number of young people who are detained. The Baltimore fund works with government officials to show them how alternatives to detention can keep children who aren't a threat to public safety out of the penal system.

The program also provides government officials with tools to evaluate how racism might play a role in sentencing. It helps them improve the conditions in which young people serve out detention and provide home care and other alternatives to prison time.

The Casey foundation has some encouraging statistics to back up the program's success. Youth crime has dropped by 47 percent in places that have adopted its approach, while the number of juveniles behind bars has decreased by 55 percent. Today, approximately 95 jurisdictions in 25 states have embraced the approach known as the Juvenile Detention Alternatives Initiative.

It has also won support from other grant makers. In 2005, the JEHT Foundation gave $2.5-million to help expand the program. (Mr. Lubow estimates that the Casey foundation has spent $50-million over the past 15 years on the program.)

Grants to states adopting the initiative, meanwhile, range from $50,000 to $200,000. But the biggest challenge, says Mr. Lubow, has proved not to be money but a lack of determination on the part of policy makers and citizens.

Some of the efforts Casey has supported "have failed for want of administrative acumen or political will, but not for lack of resources," he says. Mr. Lubow cites the example of New York City, which adopted the Casey foundation's model under Mayor David Dinkins's administration in 1992. But the foundation had trouble garnering support for its agenda under Mayor Rudolph Giuliani and ended its funding a few years after he took office.

Indeed, that is a major challenge for all foundations seeking to improve treatment of juvenile offenders. Political winds shift and allies may get voted out of office.

"At the end of the day, change will only occur if you get the political powers that be to understand the value in changing," says Mr. Crane, of the JEHT Foundation. "You can't create a private justice system. You're stuck with the system you have."

Even so, some grant makers have managed to change how government acts. For instance, the Tow Foundation makes a deliberate effort to test promising programs and then asks states to step in and finance them. It was able to phase out support for dance and music classes to inmates at the Bridgeport Juvenile Detention Center, for example, when the government stepped in and paid for the program's expansion to all of the state's detention centers.

Spreading an Idea

The Casey and JEHT funds have also supported efforts to improve correctional facilities based on an approach pioneered in Missouri. Their grants have helped the Missouri Youth Services Institute, a nonprofit group founded in 2005, spread Missouri's techniques — which emphasize smaller facilities and a more cooperative relationship between youths and staff members — in places such as Santa Clara County, Calif., and Washington.

Family foundations, such as the Eckerd Family Foundation, in Tampa, Fla., and the Tow Foundation, have been key to producing change on the state level.

Last year, the Eckerd Family Foundation persuaded Florida legislators to create a committee that drew up recommendations to improve the juvenile-justice system. The foundation gave $100,000 to pay for consultants, travel, and other expenses, an unusually large grant for the foundation and one of the first it made to aid a government entity.

Marie Osborne, chief of the juvenile division of Florida's Miami Dade Public Defenders Office, says that her experience working with the Eckerd Family Foundation showed that grant makers can provide a nonpartisan voice of reason, persuading policy makers to pass legislation based on evidence, not on the political climate.

"They're independent of whether this is the get-smart-on-crime year or the get-tough-on-crime year or the rehabilitation year," she says. "They can say, 'This is the science of what works for what type of children at what stage of their development, and this is the cost.' That is so sobering, and so necessary."

No-Parole Problem

As foundations look to the future, some are mobilizing around an effort to end life-without-parole sentences for juveniles.

More than 2,225 adolescents under the age of 18 have been sentenced to life imprisonment without parole. Seventy-three of them were 13 or 14 when they committed the crime for which they're in prison, according to the Equal Justice Initiative, in Montgomery, Ala.

In February, the Open Society Institute held a meeting of foundations and nonprofit groups concerned about the issue.

"It's a way to bring fresh thinking to a problem and to make connections between funders and advocates," says Nancy Chang, a program officer at the New York foundation."There's a large group of excellent advocates working in this area, but there's a need for some coordination and additional funding to push these state campaigns."

Mr. Lubow, of the Casey foundation, says progress nonprofit leaders have made in rolling back punitive state laws, combined with the success of many counties and cities in reducing the number of youths they imprison, has left him convinced that private dollars can have a big impact.

But, he says, the challenge remains of translating a collection of small successes into nationwide, systemic change.

"There are places that have broken their addiction to incarceration," he says. "But as a country, we still believe that the path to public safety is paved with punishment."

Posted by lois at 09:51 PM | Comments (0)

May 22, 2008

OH: Federal Jugde Approves Plan to Overhaul Prisons for Youth

Overhaul of state's juvenile prisons approved
Wednesday, May 21, 2008 8:40 PM
By ALAYNA DEMARTINI
THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH
The state's overcrowded, understaffed and violent juvenile prisons are about to be overhauled.

A federal judge approved a plan yesterday to improve the medical care, mental-health care and education of young felons and to better train prison employees to subdue their charges without violence.

The policy has been, “Hit first, ask questions later,” said Fred Cohen, a consultant who evaluated the prison system last year, exposing a host of serious problems.

“This is not going to go away overnight.”

The 89-page proposal resulted from a series of lawsuits child-advocacy lawyers filed against the Ohio juvenile-prison system. The plan went into effect yesterday and includes deadlines for the changes.

O
In federal court yesterday, Lisa Ward held up a picture of her son and described how he has suffered a series of injuries since he arrived in prison in January.

An 18-year-old inmate sexually assaulted her son in prison when he was 12, she said.

Guards trying to restrain the boy bashed his head on the ground, causing a concussion, Ward said. In another incident, she said, “One of the guards punched him over his heart. He had a bruise, and they call that restraint.”

Nicholas Seefong, an inmate in the Circleville juvenile prison, pointed out in court that the state needs to quickly improve how it houses the inmates.

Young felons in the juvenile prison often are beat up, Seefong said, because they are housed with more-violent inmates.

Inmates fear retaliation if they report that a staff member assaulted them, he said, and even when they do report it, little is done.

Cohen has blasted the juvenile prisons' policy of placing severely misbehaving youths in solitary confinement for extended periods. He called it “unconstitutional'' and said it should be immediately stopped.

Cohen is part of a team of professionals that will continue to monitor and assist the system in making the required changes.

The U.S. Department of Justice also will be watching. It filed a lawsuit last week against the state's juvenile-prison system and Gov. Ted Strickland.

It agreed to drop the suit after the state agreed to keep the justice department in the loop on the agency's progress.

The state's eight juvenile prisons have 1,527 inmates ranging from 11 to 20 years old. It costs the state about $80,000 a year for each juvenile inmate.

The new plan is estimated to add $20 million to $30 million annually to the system's budget of $293 million.

The state has agreed to pay the legal fees of the lawyers who sued the state on behalf of juvenile inmates. The fees are expected to total about $220,000, said Al Gerhardstein, a Cincinnati lawyer involved in the suit.

“It isn't easy to change large organizations,” Tom Stickrath, director of Ohio's juvenile-prison system said as he left court yesterday. “I have found it to be challenging, perhaps more challenging than I had expected.”
http://www.columbusdispatch.com/live/content/local_news/stories/2008/05/21/JUVI_PRISONS.html?sid=101

Posted by lois at 11:05 AM | Comments (0)

May 20, 2008

Panel OKs closure of Louisiana youth prison

May 20, 2008
BATON ROUGE (AP) — Gov. Bobby Jindal’s administration is supporting a plan to shut down a state juvenile prison near Louisiana’s capital city and send its teenage inmates to facilities better equipped to educate them.

A Senate judiciary committee on Tuesday approved a bill that would close the Jetson Center for Youth, in rural East Baton Rouge Parish, by June 2009.

The prison has long been the focus of criticism because of violence and inadequate educational and job training capabilities. The bill’s sponsor, Sen. Don Cravins Jr., said the lockup “looks like a 1949 prison” with its decaying buildings, cell blocks and razor wire.

Richard Thompson, Jindal’s juvenile justice chief, said his Office of Youth Development would gradually reduce the number of youths locked up at Jetson, probably beginning this summer. He planned to offer more details at a Friday meeting of the Juvenile Justice Implementation Commission, which oversees the shift from prison-like facilities to smaller ones more focused on education.

As of Tuesday, 202 youths were held at Jetson.

It was not clear what Jetson’s buildings, including an up-to-date medical center, would be used for if it ceased to be a juvenile lockup. Thompson said it might be turned over to the state’s adult corrections division, as happened to another former juvenile prison in Tallulah when it closed in 2004.

“There is no plan to just close it down, lock it up and let the roof fall in,” Thompson said.

Thompson said the most dangerous prisoners at Jetson would be transferred to a similar facility in Monroe, which under Cravins’ bill would become Louisiana’s only high-security prison for juvenile convicts.

“Under no conditions are we going to sacrifice public safety to follow through on these reforms,” Thompson said.

The measure would also change OYD’s name to the Office of Juvenile Justice, which Thompson said is the name used by most other states.

The bill by Cravins, D-Opelousas, moves to the full Senate.
http://www.theadvertiser.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080520/NEWS01/80520022

Posted by lois at 10:26 PM | Comments (0)

May 16, 2008

Vicky Gunderson awarded prize for organizing on behalf of justice for youth

Published - Friday, May 16, 2008
Onalaska woman honored for justice work

The Campaign for Youth Justice and the National Juvenile Justice Network named Vicky Gunderson of Onalaska recipient of this year’s National Mother of Distinction Award.

This honor is presented each Mother’s Day to one or more mothers who have made an outstanding contribution toward reforming the juvenile justice system. Gunderson was nominated for the honor by the Wisconsin Council on Children and Families.

“We are proud of Vicky and her persistence in calling for juvenile justice reform,” said Liz Ryan, executive director of CFYJ. “There are too many kids locked up in adult facilities in Wisconsin and the rest of the United States. Through the work of Vicky and other dedicated advocates, we can make an impact across the country.”

At the age of 17, Vicky’s son Kirk was incarcerated as an adult in the La Crosse County jail. After nearly seven months there, he took his own life. Since losing her son, Gunderson has become a leading advocate in Wisconsin for keeping youth out of adult jails and prisons.

Gunderson has worked closely with the Wisconsin Council on Children and Families and other interested individuals and organizations to promote legislation that would return 17-year-olds in the state to the juvenile justice system. She has spoken at numerous conferences and other public events, and has written guest columns that have appeared in several newspapers. Her words, and those of her late son, were featured in the Campaign for Youth Justice’s recent report, Jailing Juveniles.

“We can only hope that by raising awareness of this issue, we can bring about changes that will spare other families the pain and devastation the Gunderson’s have experienced,” said Sarah Bryer, director of NJJN.

Vicky Gunderson was given a national honor last week for her work promoting juvenile justice reform.

An estimated 200,000 youth are tried, sentenced or incarcerated as adults every year across the United States. Most of the youths prosecuted in adult court are charged with nonviolent offenses and as many as half of the young people held in adult jails are returned to juvenile court or not convicted.

However, most of them will have spent at least one month in an adult jail, and one in five will, like Kirk, have spent more than six months in jail.

In Wisconsin, all 17-year-olds are treated as adults for any crime. Each year in Wisconsin nearly 30,000 17-year-olds are arrested, the vast majority of whom are accused of nonviolent crimes.

“Parents like Vicky help remind us that this issue is not just some abstract debate,” said Wendy Henderson, WCCF juvenile justice policy analyst. “Real families are being hurt by the current policy.”

Research shows that placing youths in the adult system decreases public safety and puts young people in danger. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, youths who are transferred from the juvenile court system to the adult criminal system are approximately 34 percent more likely than youth retained in the juvenile court system to be re-arrested for violent or other crime. They are 36 times more likely to commit suicide in an adult jail than in a juvenile detention facility.

For her work on the issue of youth incarcerated in adult jails and prisons, Gunderson received a plaque, a $100 gift certificate from Sue Kolve’s Salon & Day Spa and a one-night stay on the Plaza Club floor at the Radisson Hotel La Crosse. She was selected by nominations and recommendations from juvenile justice organizations across the country.
http://www.onalaskalife.com/articles/2008/05/16/news/06aamotheraward.txt

Posted by lois at 06:26 PM | Comments (0)

May 07, 2008

MA: Packed Prisons. The how and why of overcrowding.

Packed Prisons
The how and why of overcrowding
By CARA BAYLES

Phillip is a gentleman. He folds up his limbs with poise and wears wool pants with an impeccable crease. He's prone to diatribes against misogyny. He's a "voracious reader," and has a sixth sense for "figuring people out." He has a gentle, not entirely trusting way of regarding a person. He can talk a mile, but also listens; not simply to your words, but the words between them. He radiates a wavelength that's easy to tune into.

He's 47 years old, and he's spent 21 of those years in prison.

***
The US prison population grew eight-fold since 1970; more than 2.3 million people are incarcerated nationally. The rising numbers aren't proportional to population growth; the Pew Institute recently reported that for the first time in history, more than one in every 100 Americans is incarcerated. Don't like those odds? One in 30 men aged 20 to 34 is locked up, and that jumps to one in nine for black men. People of color make up 70 percent of the prison population, the reverse of the US race ratio outside prison walls.

The Massachusetts prison population grew by 3 percent since 2006, and overcrowding is pandemic. Two years ago, Massachusetts Department of Corrections (DOC) facilities were at 134 percent capacity. Now they've reached 143 percent. But that's merely a median ... MCI Framingham, the state's largest women's prison, is at 323 percent capacity. Only two of Massachusetts' 22 facilities are not spilling over capacity.

"Overcrowding means the facility population is greater than the design capacity," says DOC spokeswoman Diane Wiffin. "We turn single cells into doubles, provide more beds in a dormitory."

Hakim Cunningham was recently incarcerated in Massachusetts. "They were putting two or three people to a cell together," he says. "In Concord CI, they have people sleeping on the gym and rec areas in cots."

Such solutions are dangerous, says Joel Pentlarge, acting executive director of the Criminal Justice Policy Coalition, a nonprofit that advocates reforming the state's justice system. "Those cells are very small—typically under 80 square-feet. They're designed to hold only one prisoner," he says. "Those conditions escalate prisoner-on-prisoner violence."

Why is the prison population climbing, and why are people of color disproportionately incarcerated?

The relationship with Massachusetts' crime rate is tenuous; the prison population has climbed steeply since the late 1970s, but crime has wavered up and down, with peaks in the mid '70s and early '80s, and a steady decline since 1990.

Thomas Nolan, a professor of criminal justice at Boston University and retired Boston Police officer, says the rise in imprisonment corresponds with the war on drugs. "What we're seeing nationally, as well as in Massachusetts, is an incremental, long-term trend to incarcerate people, particularly for drugs," he says.

Nolan joined the Boston Police Department (BPD) in 1978, and saw the shift in national priorities play out locally. "In the mid '80s, police departments in urban areas devoted more time and attention to drug enforcement than ever before. Historically, a department goes where the federal funding goes. In the 80s it was the war on drugs, in the '90s it was community policing," he says. "In the 70s we had a small, centralized city drug department of half a dozen officers. Now, every district has its own drug unit. Roxbury even has two of them, a day shift and a night shift. And there's still a city-wide unit. So you've got 100 officers whose sole purpose is enforcement in the war on drugs."

***

Phillip, who asked that his real name not be used, has been shooting heroin since he was 16. He grew up in Cambridge public housing. Both his parents were junkies; his mother died of AIDS in 1997, his 65-year-old father is still in a methadone clinic. His father's face is scarred from "an incident when he fell asleep on a radiator because he was so high."

"There were a couple of times when my father would come into school inebriated and tell the teacher, 'Phillip has to go, he has a doctor's appointment,'" he says. "We'd walk out, and I'd say, 'Do I really have a doctor's appointment, Daddy?' and he'd say, 'No, I just thought you'd like to get out of there.' And I'd say, 'School's what I look forward to. It's the best part of my day.'"

***

While the percentage of people of color in Massachusetts prisons doesn't reach the national figures, they're still overrepresented. Hispanics make up 21 percent of prisoners in a state where they comprise 7.9 percent of the population. Nationally, Latinos make up 20.5 percent of prisoners, and 14.8 percent of the general population.

"It's not that these people are more likely to commit an offense," says Nolan. "They're just more likely to get caught and subsequently incarcerated."

National figures from 2000 indicate whites make up 72 percent of all drug users, yet blacks are five times as likely to get arrested on drug charges.

Their neighborhoods are policed more, according to Nolan. "Law enforcement is concentrating its efforts in communities of color," he says. "Historically, that's where law enforcement has devoted its resources. Law enforcement is going to tell you they go where the crime is, and it would be fruitless to focus elsewhere."

The BPD failed to respond to questions about their policies.

Katrina Christensen, a coordinator with the Cambridge Needle Exchange, says economic prejudices exist as well. "There's a stigma on a person sleeping on the street," she says. "There are many professionals out there who use, and people say, 'Oh, that's OK. They're doing well.' Well, what does that mean? That someone who's struggling to get by is useless?"

Pentlarge says the mentally ill are also more susceptible to getting mixed up in the criminal justice system. "When we closed down mental institutions in the '80s, prisons became the place of last resort for the seriously mentally ill," he says. With 15 suicides in the last three years, Massachusetts has the highest prisoner suicide rate in the country. Last year, the DOC hired suicide prevention specialist Lindsay Hayes to do an independent review of the phenomenon. Diane Wiffin says the DOC has implemented most of Hayes' recommendations.

Pentlarge insists prisons aren't designed to deal with mental illness. "A person might be seriously delusional," he says. "The prison's first response is to put them in solitary, which is where the majority of our prisoner suicides occurred."

***

Phillip started using because everyone around him was. But he couldn't afford it. "A lot of drug addicts resort to stealing to support their habit," he says. "The effect of the heroin will wear off, and it's a serious drag. When heroin addicts withdraw, they become ill."

In 1979, Phillip was convicted of armed robbery. He walked into a store, and the clerk welcomed him perkily. "I thought, 'I can't believe I'm about to do this. This isn't me.' I pulled out the gun, and she freaked," he says, dragging his fingers down his cheek. "It's hard for me to live with the fact that I traumatized this woman. I wasn't going to hurt her, but she didn't know that." He squats on the floor, placing his hand by his face. "She was just like this. It stays with me."

He went to prison when he was 17, and grew up inside those walls.

***

In 1994, the Gun-Free Schools Act mandated that states adopt legislation requiring the one-year expulsion of students who brought drugs or weapons to school. Massachusetts' statute allows for permanent expulsion and doesn't require any alternative education for expelled students.

Amy Reichbach, an advocate with the Massachusetts ACLU, says such measures are used mostly at schools with few alternatives. "Schools are under-resourced, and may not be able to offer counseling and the extra costs of different educational needs," she says.

Since the busing riots in the 1970s, Boston public schools have Boston School Police in their halls. Today, they employ 84 such officers, who don't carry weapons but have full arrest powers on school property.

Reichbach says transgressions the school traditionally dealt with are now met with harsher penalties or given to law enforcement. "There's a perception out there that this just affects kids bringing weapons," she says. "But they can get expelled for other misbehavior, like disorderly conduct. They can get arrested for disturbing a school assembly." Any student facing criminal charges (including offenses that occurred off school grounds) can also be suspended.

Tami Wilson studies this "school-to-prison pipeline" at Harvard's Charles Hamilton Institute. "This is happening more often than we think, though it varies by school district," Wilson says. "Five urban school districts in Massachusetts with a large population of children of color, immigrants and children eligible to receive free lunch were responsible for 103, or over half, of all school exclusions." Students of color make up approximately 20 percent of the state's student population, but represent over 55 percent of school exclusions. The state's dropout rate has also risen, reaching 3.8 percent.

In Massachusetts, 70.4 percent of prisoners never completed high school.

Aaron Tanaka, of the Boston Workers' Alliance (BWA), a nonprofit for underemployed workers, sees crime as a product of poverty. "About 12,000 Boston youth aren't in school," he says. "They don't have options in the mainstream economy, so they get involved in illicit activity, like drug trade or sex work."

***

Phillip's done several stints since his initial sentence; mostly petty thefts and drug charges. "You always come out worse than you came in," he says. "You come out with so much anger, your self-esteem plummets because you're used to being treated like you're worthless, like you have no value. People talk like I'm an evil, vile human being."

Now he's homeless. He can't get public housing or a job with his record. "Idle time for a drug addict is very dangerous," he says. "You can imagine."

***

Pentlarge says the state must find alternatives to incarceration. "Part of the reason we've so overcrowded is we're treating a disease as a crime," he says. "If we treated it like alcoholism, we'd ultimately save some money."

Nolan thinks there's been a shift in societal conception. "People lose their sense of relativity. We panic when we see the number of homicides reach 60, but forget that in the '80s, it hit triple digits," he says. "We have a harsh and punitive attitude toward those who violate laws. I think we should be targeting addiction and everything that goes along with it. Prisons serve no purpose other than warehousing people and taking them off the streets for a period of time."

Approximately 97 percent of prisoners face eventual release. A 2006 report from Brandeis University estimates at least 39,700 people in the state are in critical need of drug treatment, but aren't receiving it. The Pew Center recently found that in the last 20 years, Massachusetts' spending on corrections grew 127 percent, compared to a 21 percent increase for public higher education. For every dollar spent on a state college, 98 cents is spent on prisons.

The governor's extensive bond bill plan for infrastructure repairs includes $2.5 billion for prison repairs and expansions. It's in committee right now, but results are due in June. Rep. Carl Sciortino Jr., D-Medford, backed a bill placing a moratorium on prison construction for the next five years, and creating a committee to investigate incarceration trends. The bill's essentially dead for the session.

Wilson says that her final report on Massachusetts' school-to-prison pipeline will offer alternatives to punitive measures. "We're looking into restorative justice and peer mediation programs," she says. "Say a student commits some type of offense. Instead of shipping them off, they'd have to own up to what they did. An apology is made, and students work together to find ways to rectify the situation. It's more of a healing process, it's inclusive and the offense itself is addressed."

Such approaches to criminal justice exist in many court systems worldwide, and are being explored in some US states. Colorado, Kansas, Arizona, Delaware, Florida and Tennessee have passed legislation allowing for out-of-court reparation programs, particularly for juvenile offenders. No such legislation exists in Massachusetts.

For now, Wilson is focusing on the statistical landscape of the problem. "But as we look at data, it's important we make the connection that these are actual people with real potential," she says.

***

Phillip is still using. Over the course of the interview at the Cambridge Needle Exchange, he verged from tangential diatribes, to holding his eyelids open with his fingers, to scratching his arms, looking around the corner.

He says he'd like to get clean and councel other junkies. But it's not so easy.

"It's a mess of a life," he says. "You're defeated without hope. But I have hope."

http://www.weeklydig.com/news-opinions/feature/200805/packed-prisons#

Posted by lois at 05:54 PM | Comments (0)

May 04, 2008

Adults or Kids? States debate what the best response is to teenagers who commit crimes.

Adults or Kids?
States debate what the best response is to teenagers who commit crimes.

By Sarah Hammond
April 2008

When teenagers break the law, do they need rehabilitation or punishment? For several years in the 1990s, state lawmakers decided to treat young lawbreakers as adults, sending them to prison with tough sentences. In recent years, however, some states are rethinking the wisdom of such punishment.

Last session, Connecticut, which automatically tried 16- and 17-year-olds in adult court—giving it the largest number of inmates under the age of 18—changed course.

What the public didn’t know, says Connecticut Representative Toni Walker, was that “only 3 percent of these young people are dangerous.”

For years, Representative Walker has been trying to change Connecticut’s treatment of youths in the criminal justice system. The process was arduous. Members of the Juvenile Jurisdiction Planning and Implementation Committee, which Walker chairs, looked at the number of kids involved in the system. They talked with local police chiefs, children’s advocates, lawyers, judges and staff from the departments of Children and Families and of Corrections. They examined what was working in other states.

What really turned lawmakers around, Walker says, was learning that high school drop-outs are often the same kids ending up in the criminal justice system. When kids aren’t in school, they get in trouble, she says. The majority of young people tried as adults in Connecticut are arrested for minor, nonviolent crimes such as drug possession, fighting and disorderly conduct. “We realized it was finally time to take action,” she says.

Last year, the legislature raised the age of juvenile court jurisdiction from 16 to 18, returning 16- and 17-year-olds to the juvenile system starting July 1, 2009.

“The ‘adultification’ of young people who commit crimes has become a significant part of many states’ anti-crime policies even though research shows that it harms children and does not improve public safety,” says Walker.

She says the new law places Connecticut at the forefront of a trend to reduce the number of youth sent to the adult system. At the same time, it will create safer communities by strengthening the juvenile justice system where education and treatment is emphasized over punishment. “The end result of this effort is a product of statewide collaboration and is expected to save tax dollars over time,” Walker says. Young offenders will have more opportunity to be rehabilitated in the juvenile system and not as likely to re-offend, thus reducing crime and the costs associated with crime.

“Holding kids accountable is an important component of rehabilitation,” Walker says. “There are still penalties in place for kids who commit crimes. But we will hold them accountable in a setting that’s designed to improve their behavior rather than exacerbate it. Sending kids to adult prisons is a great way to create adult criminals.”

What Works?
There are still those who contend that safety must be No. 1 as legislatures update juvenile justice systems or send juveniles to adult court.

They argue that juvenile offenders have become more violent. Kids are using guns instead of knives and knives instead of fists. Additionally, drug sales and substance abuse are widespread. A dangerous mix of guns, gangs and drugs have become endemic to our society and now cross over from cities into suburban areas.

States have ways to try juveniles in adult court when the crime is particularly heinous. All but Nebraska, New Mexico and New York use judicial waiver, meaning a juvenile court judge can send a case to adult criminal court based on the circumstances of the offender or the alleged act. Twenty-nine states have statutory exclusion which automatically keeps certain juvenile offenders, usually based on age and offenses, from being tried in juvenile court. Fifteen states allow concurrent jurisdiction, sometimes called prosecutorial discretion or direct-file, which lets prosecutors decide how to file charges in many cases. Most states have some combination of these mechanisms.

Other Recent State Actions
After approving an executive proposal in 2006 that decreased the age of juvenile jurisdiction from 17 to 16, Rhode Island lawmakers reversed the action this session, keeping 17-year-olds in juvenile court. Lawmakers in Illinois, Missouri, New Hampshire, New York, North Carolina and Wisconsin have debated legislation to raise their ages in the past two years, but the measures did not move forward.

In Virginia a new measure, however, did change the “once an adult, always an adult” law. Previously, a one-time transfer of a youth to adult court was enough to keep that teen in the adult system for all future proceedings, no matter how minor the charge, even if he was acquitted or had the case dismissed. The new law requires that youth must now be convicted of an offense when they are transferred to adult court in order to be tried in adult court for all future offenses.

Another way states are rethinking adult treatment of young people is by focusing on how and when to protect the confidentiality of juvenile records for schooling, employment or other transitions to adulthood. New laws in Arkansas, Illinois, Kansas, New Mexico and New York deal with the protection of juvenile records.

Only three states have lowered the maximum age of juvenile court jurisdiction in recent years. This is considered a drastic step because it moves an entire age group of adolescents into the adult system. Wyoming did so in 1993, moving 18-year-olds to adult court. New Hampshire and Wisconsin changed their systems in 1996, moving 17-year-olds to adult court. But in 2007, New Hampshire voted to again consider 17-year-olds juveniles.

Supporting Research
Although there are some juveniles who truly need to be incarcerated, it is often circumstances, such as child abuse, neglect or poverty, that lead to criminal behavior, says Representative Walker. “The key to treating youthful offenders is effective ‘habilitation,’ not rehabilitation.”

A Center for Disease Control Prevention Task Force found that juveniles who enter the adult justice system, on average, commit more violent crimes following release than juveniles retained in the juvenile justice system. Researchers at the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Research Network on Adolescent Development and Juvenile Justice found that adolescents processed in New York adult courts, which they enter at age 16, were more likely to be re-arrested more often and more quickly for serious offenses than those in New Jersey, where youth are kept out of adult court until age 18.

And the Wisconsin Legislative Audit Bureau reported that young criminals coming out of Wisconsin’s prisons are even more likely to re-offend and end up back behind bars than their adult counterparts.

The Road Ahead
Growing research along with analysis of state data can help guide states as they make critical judgments about when young criminals should be treated as adults. The change in the age of juvenile jurisdiction in Connecticut will move more than 10,000 new cases a year from the adult criminal justice system to the juvenile justice system. This was one of the challenges facing Representative Walker as she pushed the law through.

“As states face the fiscal burdens of growing prison populations, public safety concerns and the desire to prevent juvenile offenders from becoming career criminals,” she says, “I hope other states consider Connecticut’s experience.”

Sarah Hammond specializes in juvenile justice and victims’ issues for NCSL.

http://www.ncsl.org/magazine/articles/2008/08SLApr08_AdultKids.htm

Posted by lois at 05:59 PM | Comments (0)

April 29, 2008

LA: Youth prison abuse alleged

Youth prison abuse alleged

* By SANDY DAVIS
* Advocate staff writer
* Published: Apr 19, 2008 - Page: 1A

A state senator said Friday he will submit legislation next week to close Jetson Center for Youth by June 30, 2009.

“Louisiana was once notorious for having the most brutal facilities in the country,” Sen. Donald Cravins Jr. said at a rally on the steps of the State Capitol. “Some legislators had the fortitude to try and stop that, but here we are five years later without much progress.”

The Opelousas Democrat said the legislation he plans to introduce would not only close Jetson, an 850-acre boys juvenile prison near Baker, but also give the Juvenile Justice Implementation Commission more power to make sure reforms take place.

The commission was formed during the Blanco administration to oversee reforms in the juvenile justice system.

The Advocate reported this week that promised reforms of the state’s three secure care facilities for boys have never happened.

The reforms were approved in the Juvenile Justice Act of 2003 and promised among other things the building of regional care facilities housing small groups of boys. Not one of those facilities has been built.

Instead, boys who violate laws are often sent by judges to one of the state’s juvenile prisons, including Jetson, Swanson (in Monroe) and Bridge City centers for youth, where the teenagers often end up spending years for minor crimes.

Teenage inmates at Jetson have said brutality has returned and they are beaten by guards and by other inmates and that sexual assaults are not uncommon.

Cravins, a member of the commission, which met Friday, told members he visited Jetson on Thursday and came away with concerns.

“There was no hope in the youths’ eyes; just hopelessness,” he said.

Cravins said some teenagers at Jetson told him they had been beaten while there. He did not say whether they identified their attackers.

A Lake Charles mother also told the commission her son was attacked at Jetson on Thursday.

“Two boys jumped my son and tried to rape him,” Kathleen Qualls said. “He had to fight them and no one came to rescue him. Our kids are supposed to be safe there.”

Commission members also listened to testimony from the head of the state Office of Youth Development, which oversees the three state juvenile prisons.

Richard Thompson, appointed youth development chief in February, told the commission he also has concerns about Jetson.

“Jetson may be better used as something else (besides a secure care facility),” Thompson said. “I want you to understand, I share some of your concerns about Jetson.”

Thompson earlier told The Advocate that Jetson has recently been “out of control.”

Lt. Gov. Mitch Landrieu, who is chairman of the commission, asked Thompson to investigate the allegations at Jetson and prepare a report for the commission in two weeks.

“We have no tolerance for kids being abused. I want the kids safe,” Landrieu said after the meeting. “If we have to, we will close Jetson and build something else where the kids are safe.”

Landrieu admitted that reforms have not taken place in the secure care facilities, but did say other parts of the juvenile system have moved forward.

“We are off track now,” he said. “But we can get back on and move forward.

Landrieu also said he is waiting for the Jindal administration to publicly support the reform programs.

“I’m hopeful the governor will articulate how committed he is to juvenile reforms,” Landrieu said. “When the governor says something is a priority, then money becomes available and it gets done.”

Thompson said youth development office plans to build about 10 to 12 regional secure care facilities for boys.

“We’re committed to doing that. We are committed to reforms,” Thompson said. “We hope in the next four years to have adequate regional facilities in place.”

Louisiana Supreme Court Justice Kitty Kimball, a commission member, said all of the problems in the juvenile justice system should not be borne solely by youth development office.

“Our judges and district attorneys have a tremendous amount of work ahead of them,” she said.

She was critical of judges who hand down long sentences for minor crimes.

“I am going to ask my court to appoint three retired judges to look at particular cases to discuss with other judges that something (a sentence) might not be appropriate,” Kimball said.

Kimball was also critical of the number of employees at Jetson, particularly guards, who are taking “leave time.”

“The number of employees at Jetson on leave is unusually large,” she said.

Thompson told her that was true.

“There are too many people taking advantage of that program,” he said. “We’re trying to do something about that.”

Several dozen members of Family and Friends of Louisiana’s Incarcerated Children, including the mothers of Andy Naccio and Eric LaSalle, attended the meeting.

Naccio died recently after inhaling from an aerosol can in a welding class at Jetson. LaSalle was featured in an article Thursday in The Advocate about his experiences during the nearly four years he was imprisoned at Jetson.

“I’ve listened to a lot of rhetoric today,” Grace Bauer, a community organizer for FFLIC, told the commission and then she pointed to the back of the room where a large group of mothers of imprisoned teens were sitting.

“There’s your human toll,” she said. “While everyone here is trying to coordinate their schedules and not offend everyone, we should be worried about them.”

Bauer said she went with Cravins on Thursday to tour Jetson — where her son was incarcerated seven years ago.

“Nothing has changed out there,” she said. “It even smells the same.”

After the commission meeting, the mothers, members of FFLIC and the Juvenile Justice Project of Louisiana, a nonprofit advocacy organization, held a rally on the Capitol steps.

“Downsize and regionalize,” the mothers chanted. “Close Jetson down.”

Posted by lois at 05:42 PM | Comments (0)

April 14, 2008

NY: Youth prison to stay open study to take 3 years

Legislation approved Wednesday directs that a study compare the effectiveness of residential vs. community-based treatment for juveniles — the latter, a new approach recommended in former Gov. Eliot L. Spitzer’s executive order carrying out a plan to close Great Valley and several other juvenile treatment facilities in 2009.

The study will take three years, with an interim report delivered to Albany in 2009.

By Kathy Kellogg
CATTARAUGUS CORRESPONDENT
Updated: 04/10/08 2:45 PM

GREAT VALLEY — The Great Valley Youth Residential Center will not be closed or converted to a limited secure youth detention facility but will continue temporarily as a nonsecure foster facility to house about 25 youths.

State Sen. Catharine Young, R-Olean, managed to secure funds in the state budget to study the facility’s future and announced the development Wednesday.

The study will take three years, with an interim report delivered to Albany in 2009. Young promised to convene a task force of community leaders if the study makes an alternative recommendation.

The possibility of Great Valley’s closing triggered a push in February by the Cattaraugus County Legislature, employees, residents and town officials to keep the facility open. County legislators backed converting it to a limited secure facility as a stopgap measure.

Opponents of the closing have listed several economic reasons why the facility should remain open. The annual payroll is about $1.4 million — it is one of the area’s largest employers — and an estimated $400,000 is spent annually on local services. The state has invested about $1.2 million in infrastructure upgrades in recent years.

Many local residents argued that a local facility should be available to treat the area’s youth, instead of somewhere else in the state. A similar foster-care facility for juveniles is operating in Limestone, and they are the only treatment centers in Western New York.

“After carefully reviewing data supplied by the state Office of Children and Family Services, and listening to the community, we decided the best solution is to keep the center the way it is for now,” said Young, who is also a member of the Human Services Conference Committee.

She called for evidence before changes are made and demanded to see that the new juvenile justice system and proposed treatments will work and that recidivism rates will improve.

Great Valley Supervisor Dan Brown said the move will keep money and jobs in the community.
http://www.buffalonews.com/cityregion/otherwny/story/319859.html

Posted by lois at 01:10 PM | Comments (0)

March 27, 2008

NY Times Editorial: NY Legislature Should Close 6 Residential Detention Centers for Juveniles

New York Times
Editorial
New Day, Line by Budget Line
Published: March 27, 2008

Moving beyond the steamy executive headlines, the New York Statehouse had better show taxpayers something more promising than business as usual as it tackles the deficit-threatened state budget. One quick test, buried in the fine print, would strike a blow for both juvenile justice and budget savings by shutting six of the state's 31 residential detention centers for juveniles.

Studies show such centers ‹ which warehouse largely nonviolent offenders far from their families ‹ are counterproductive and prohibitively costly. Center alumni have higher rates of recidivism compared with those placed in alternative programs in their home communities.

What should be a budgetary no-brainer, however, is already being undermined by the Senate Republicans. In an obvious move to protect upstate jobs for local constituents, they are insisting on keeping open three of the expendable and virtually unused centers. One of the centers the Senate would spare would be staffed even though there are no youths residing there in its 24 slots. Each empty bed costs taxpayers more than $140,000 annually to maintain. A second has 25 beds and three residents, while the third has 11 children for its 25 beds.

The millions that would be wasted in this proposed shell game present a small but revealing indicator of whether Gov. David Paterson can live up to his inaugural promise to end the turf struggles and get something better from government.

There are far larger budget fights looming, dollarwise. But here is a worthy chance for Governor Paterson to show business as usual will not always trump justice and economic sense in a supposedly chastened Albany.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/27/opinion/27thu4.html

Posted by lois at 08:47 PM | Comments (0)

NY: The Juveniles Are Gone, Yet the Jails Remain

March 26, 2008
About New York
The Juveniles Are Gone, Yet the Jails Remain
By JIM DWYER

The public pays about $500 a night for each of the 25 beds in the Auburn Residential Center — a place for teenagers who have gotten into lower-grade trouble with the law, a junior-varsity jail. For the last two weeks, the beds in Auburn have been empty. And state officials expect them to remain empty, permanently.

But even with no one under the sheets, each bed will continue to cost as much as $200,000 a year, the officials say.

Auburn, near Syracuse, is one of three state facilities for teenagers that are becoming high-priced ghost jails. Brace Residential Center, in Delaware County, with 25 beds, has just two teenagers staying there, watched over by a staff of 24; Great Valley in Cattaraugus County has 10 young people and a staff of 24. Soon, Brace and Great Valley, like Auburn, will no longer have teenagers staying there.

Yet if the State Senate has its way, all three will remain open until at least January 2010.

“I believe the number of juveniles was deliberately reduced this year and the kids sent elsewhere” to justify closing Great Valley, said State Senator Catharine M. Young, a Republican from Cattaraugus County, which is in the western part of the state, near the borders of Pennsylvania and Ohio. The Senate has passed a resolution that requires Great Valley and the others to remain open.

Nearly all politicians fight to keep jobs in their districts. Prisons, jails and juvenile facilities have been a source of political and economic power to upstate areas that have little other industry. Most of the inmates came from the five boroughs and the metropolitan area.

In the battle over the ghost jails, though, the fight is not simply about the local economy, but also about a system of juvenile corrections that has been in a quiet state of collapse for nearly a decade, particularly for teenagers who are not in trouble for serious offenses.

New York City has found better, cheaper ways to move teenagers onto safer ground, said Ronald E. Richter, the city’s family services coordinator.

For offenders whose home lives are filled with problems, the city now provides intense programs for the entire family, buttressing the role of adults in the lives of the teenagers. Last year, about 275 teenagers and their families were sent into these programs rather than the state juvenile system.

So instead of sending the teenagers off to state facilities that cost $140,000 to $200,000 a year per person, the city is spending about $17,000 a year, Mr. Richter said. And while the state’s juvenile recidivism rate is 80 percent, the city program had a rate of about 35 percent in its first year, he said.

Gladys Carrión, the commissioner of the state’s Office of Children and Family Services, which administers the juvenile centers, says straightening out teenagers who have committed minor offenses is a job better done in community-based systems. The juvenile centers, she said, should be reserved for “young people who are a danger to themselves and their communities.”

“For most of the kids, we don’t need these facilities, and we don’t need to be shipping them hundreds of miles away from their families,” she said. “That money can be reinvested in programs that work better for these young people.”

The prison economy is a central feature of New York’s political economy. The state Public Employees Federation, which represents some of the employees in the juvenile centers, has bought advertisements in small newspapers in towns near the centers, arguing that the state is jumping the gun.

“We think it’s premature,” said Darcy Wells, spokeswoman for the union. “The police say that juvenile arrests are up by 8 percent in New York City.”

Ms. Carrión said that there would be plenty of space if serious juvenile crime rose sharply. “Even after I close the facilities, I will have 20 to 30 percent excess capacity, so I have the flexibility in the system,” she said.

Senator Young said that the community-based programs like the one in New York needed to be studied before the existing system was shut down. The current data, she said, is not adequate.

Ms. Carrión says there is no need to wait: The current juvenile system catapults needy youngsters far from the families they will eventually return to, with no changes in the households that they left.

“Almost all of the kids are black and brown,” she said. “This is the alternative boarding school system for children of color. We can do better than this.”

Posted by lois at 09:13 AM | Comments (0)

March 17, 2008

Getting Out and Staying Out

Executives Teach Inmates
How to Be Employees
By CAROL HYMOWITZ
Wall Street Journal- March 17, 2008

Mark Goldsmith didn't expect to go to jail when he volunteered to be "principal for a day" at a New York City school. But after requesting a "tough school," he was assigned to Horizon Academy, a high school for inmates ages 18 to 24 at Rikers Island prison.

Mr. Goldsmith, a former executive at Revlon and Shiseido, was ushered through locked gates to the prison's classrooms. Standing in front of his new class, he looked at the young students and saw in them signs of his own difficult youth. He had never committed a crime; but he told the students he thought he was dumb, and graduated near the bottom of his high-school class. He enrolled in college at night because his wife insisted, but he didn't think he could achieve anything. Then, he landed his first business job at 29 at Coty, a fragrance company then owned by Pfizer, and proved his hard work could earn him advances.

"I started at the bottom, got in earlier than anyone and left later, and then I got promoted -- and you can do this, too," he explained to the class.

Mr. Goldsmith felt the teaching experience was rewarding for both sides and volunteered again for the program. After, he decided he needed more than just one day a year with these inmates if he were to help them turn their lives around. In 2005, he launched his own nonprofit, Getting Out and Staying Out. GOSO, as it is called, now is working with 275 inmates serving sentences in upstate New York prisons and 150 at Rikers.

Mr. Goldsmith and 14 other current or retired executives who volunteer at GOSO, based in Harlem, plus a paid staff of six, are working to counter the familiar story of prisoners getting released without skills, jobs, money or a place to live, and then resorting to crime only to get locked up again. Fewer than 10% of the 400 released inmates GOSO has worked with have been arrested again since the group was formed three years ago. That figure compares with two-thirds of prisoners released annually nationwide who have been rearrested, according to the U.S. Department of Justice.

In addition, three-quarters of the former prisoners counseled by GOSO, which receives private and public funding, are employed or attending school.

As former business executives, Mr. Goldsmith and other GOSO volunteers offer something else that's different: They understand who gets hired and promoted in a variety of industries and can teach inmates how to turn the entry-level jobs they typically get after prison into a career.

"A lot of programs for prisoners are run by former prisoners or social workers, but Mark brings a business perspective, he's a role model of success and he tells kids who have never thought they can be successful that they're entitled to that," says Anthony Tassi, executive director of adult education in the mayor's office, New York.

GOSO also urges participants to keep returning for counseling so they can keep advancing.

"GOSO is successful because unlike other groups it works with young prisoners to plan for re-entry from the day they're incarcerated, and then sticks with them over the long term," says Hazel Beckles, head of the planned re-entry for incarcerated adolescents program at Community Service Society of New York, a nonprofit organization.

Mr. Goldsmith and Richard Block, the retired CEO of a 2,000-employee entertainment-packaging company, spend several days a week at Rikers, counseling inmates studying for their high-school equivalency diplomas. The pair believe that the same motivation principles -- including perseverance and adventuresome ambition -- that they used to help their employees build a career can help young prisoners.

On a recent morning, the two men gathered with 10 inmates in a classroom watched closely by prison guards.

"What's going to be hardest for you when you get out of here?" asked Mr. Goldsmith.

"Staying away from the friends I got into trouble with -- and getting a job," one inmate quickly answered.

The group fell silent, though, when asked what jobs they wanted after prison. "What are you good at, what do you like to do?" insisted Mr. Block.

One inmate blurted that he had taught his cousin how to play basketball and might like to be a school basketball coach. Another said he loved to cook. "We have three GOSO members who are now in culinary school," said Mr. Block, who promised to bring him restaurant menus on his next visit to Rikers. He wants inmates to know there are hundreds of different jobs and they don't have to choose between crime and menial labor.

Because GOSO works only with young prisoners who are attending school, and haven't been in prison long, it has a better chance of success, acknowledges Mr. Goldsmith. Even this select group, however, faces steep hurdles after release -- from steering clear of gangs and violence in their neighborhoods, to avoiding drugs, to following strict parole rules and to mending relationships with relatives.

GOSO members are urged to come to the group's office within a week of their release. They are each given an alarm clock, mass-transit cards for commuting, a subway map and a calendar to keep track of appointments.

Roberto Moran, GOSO's career-development manager, provides individual job education coaching. The group maintains a job bank of openings with employers willing to hire former prisoners, helps them to write resumes, gives out college and other education scholarships, and holds seminars. A retired construction-industry executive, for instance, teaches what is required to become a skilled tradesperson.

Mr. Goldsmith tells everyone who gets a job interview that "the three most important things to say are, 'I'm never late, I work very hard. I never get sick.'" He warns them to dress in conservative clothes, avoid faddish hairstyles and to remember to turn off their cellphones for the interview.

He encouraged Larry, who spent eight months at Rikers before the robbery charge against him was dropped, to talk directly to the hiring manager when he applied for a job at Target. When Larry wasn't selected from a crowd of other applicants, he stuck around until the manager noticed him and invited him to his office. Within an hour, he had a job.

"I got lucky," he told Mr. Goldsmith.

"You made your luck," Mr. Goldsmith replied.

Not everyone sticks with the program. "There are disappointments," says Mr. Block. He says he felt most let down when a Rikers inmate he'd spent hours mentoring and loaned money to never came to GOSO's office after his release.

But those who do show up say GOSO is a "home" they can keep returning to for help. Some former inmates drop by just to chat or to share good news about a job, or talk about a problem they are having with their mother, girlfriend or boss. Many call the office daily, or bring by their relatives. Others return for counseling whenever they lose or don't land a job, want a different one, or decide to go back to school.

"I know it's up to me to change, but GOSO always receives me like family and helped me change my life," says Mark, who was in and out of prison three times between the ages of 16 and 23 on drug dealing and robbery convictions. He met Mr. Block at Riker's when the former executive held a workshop on how to write a business plan for a small company. After Mark got out of prison last year, Mr. Block urged him to recall his worst experiences to remind himself why he never wanted to return. "The food was nasty, I missed my family so much and you're dependent on the guards for everything," Mark said. "No one thinks about kindness in prison."

Now 25 and off parole, he worked at the delicatessen counter of a supermarket when released 11 months ago, but he was fired when he threw out some turkey he hadn't sliced properly. He talked to Mr. Block, who told him, "don't bury your mistakes, it's all right to make some."

Now he has a job driving patients to and from hospital appointments. Last week, when he passed the test required to drive a van with 40 passengers, he immediately called Mr. Block.

When Mr. Block first volunteered at GOSO nearly three years ago, Mr. Goldsmith told him that if felt ambivalent about helping people convicted of crimes, he shouldn't get involved. He has turned away other executives who were afraid to use their real names with inmates. Some of his friends tell him he's crazy to spend so much time with convicts.

"If they'd get to know some of these kids better, they'd know they're not hopeless, he says. "A lot of them are as smart and talented as anyone you meet in business, they just haven't had anyone to help them."

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120553488750437965.html?mod=googlenews_wsj

Posted by lois at 06:52 PM | Comments (0)

March 15, 2008

States reconsider life behind bars for youth

March 12, 2008
States reconsider life behind bars for youth
With nearly 2,400 inmates sentenced to life as juveniles, the U.S. is the only nation imposing the mandate on children.

By Amanda Paulson | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor

Chicago

How should a society treat its youngest criminal offenders? And the families of victims of those offenders?

Half a dozen states are now weighing these questions anew, as they consider whether to ban life sentences for juveniles that don't include a option for parole – and whether those now serving such sentences should have a retroactive shot at parole.

Here in Illinois, proposed legislation would give 103 people – most convicted of unusually brutal crimes – a chance at parole hearings, while outlawing the sentence for future young perpetrators.

The proposal has victims' families up in arms, angry that killers they had been told were in prison for life might be given a shot at release and that they'd need to regularly attend hearings in the future, reliving old traumas, to try to ensure that these criminals remain behind bars.

Advocates of legislation, meanwhile, both in Illinois and elsewhere, note that the US is the only country in the world with anyone – nearly 2,400 across the nation – serving such a severe sentence for a crime committed as a juvenile. They criticize the fact that the sentence is often mandatory, part of a system devoid of leniency for a teenager's lack of judgment, or hope that youth can be reformed.

"Kids should be punished, and held accountable. The crimes we're talking about are very serious crimes," says Alison Parker, deputy director of the US program of Human Rights Watch and author of a report on the issue. "But children are uniquely able to rehabilitate themselves, to grow up and to change. A life-without-parole sentence says they're beyond repair, beyond hope."

The sentence is automatic for certain crimes in more than half of all states, part of a wave of "get tough" laws aimed at cracking down on rising crime rates during the 1980s and '90s. Which means judges often have little to no discretion when they mete out punishment. In many instances, they are prohibited from considering age or even whether the juvenile was the one who pulled the trigger. About a quarter of the juveniles serving life without parole sentences nationally were convicted of what is known as "felony murder," says Ms. Parker. They participated in a felony in which murder was committed, but they weren't the ones who did the actual killing.

In Illinois, that list includes Marshan Allen, a 15-year-old who accompanied an older brother and some friends on a drug-related mission, and says he didn't know they were going to kill several people.

In California, another state considering doing away with the sentence, it includes Anthony, a 16-year-old painting graffiti with a friend when the friend produced a gun and decided to rob an approaching group of teenagers. His friend pulled the trigger, but Anthony – who turned down a plea bargain because he couldn't imagine paying for a crime he didn't feel he'd committed – got a life-without-parole sentence.

"There are people in prison for crimes they committed as juveniles that should never see the light of day," says Rich Klawiter, a partner at the law firm DLA Piper and part of the Illinois Coalition for the Fair Sentencing of Children, which produced a report on the issue last month and advocates reform. "But those that show themselves worthy of redemption ought to be given an opportunity before a parole board."

The frequent citing of cases like Allen's bothers supporters of the sentence, who say such examples are hardly representative. Generally, the mandate is saved for such extreme offenses as multiple murders, killing of a police officer, aggravated sexual assault, and murder of a child.

"These guys are the worst of the worst," says Jennifer Bishop-Jenkins, whose pregnant sister and brother-in-law were murdered by a 16-year-old in their Winnetka, Ill., townhome in 1990. She acknowledges automatic sentencing has probably punished a few juveniles unfairly, but notes that such individuals can always appeal for clemency. What she doesn't understand is bringing offenders back for hearings that, in her mind, would only unearth the past for the families of victims who thought they'd seen their loved ones' killers put away forever.

Ms. Bishop-Jenkins and her sister, Jeanne Bishop, are both prominent victim activists against the death penalty, and helped in the case that got the juvenile death penalty overturned by the Supreme Court three years ago. Now, they both say, they feel betrayed by the same allies with whom they fought against the death penalty, who never sought their input on this issue.

"Once you say this person could get out someday through this mechanism, you've just placed a crushing burden on the hearts and minds of the victims' families," says Jeanne Bishop, a Cook County public defender who has also defended juveniles. She and her sister both support getting rid of the mandatory sentencing and giving judges more discretion, but worry that in all the talk of the human rights of juvenile offenders, the rights of victims are being forgotten.

The current legislation in Illinois is unlikely to go anywhere, with its key sponsor backing away last week and saying more time is needed to dialogue with victims. Reform advocates hope to have new legislation introduced in the near future. Colorado outlawed juvenile life without parole in 2006, and legislation is pending in Michigan, Florida, Nebraska, and California, while a few other states are experiencing grass-roots efforts.

Some activists against the sentence say they hope the