Last November November 19-year-old Jade Holder was beaten to death. Holder was incarcerated at the Augusta Youth Development Campus (YDC) at the time.

Since then no less than eleven employees of the YDC have been fired. Gale Buckner, state Department of Juvenile Justice commissioner, told the press that criminal charges will be pursued after a joint investigation by her agency and the Georgia Bureau of Investigation.

Summer Moore of The Augusta Chronicle reports:

‘I find this latest officer misconduct case particularly egregious,’ Buckner said. ‘Because the events and blatant policy violations that led to the termination of JCO Tracy Banks for inappropriate conduct occurred even after we publicly announced we were bringing in agents from DJJ and the GBI to open investigations into misconduct cases at the Augusta YDC.’

The firing came after a daylong lockdown on Jan. 24 while GBI agents and DJJ investigators interviewed all of the YDC’s employees looking for evidence of sexual misconduct and contraband, the release says.

‘Apparently we have some policy violators who might think we’re done, but we’re not,’ Buckner said. ‘After our administrative probe is complete, the GBI investigations will continue and then criminal charges will be pursued.’

It is a true shame not only that this behavior occurs at all, but even more so that it continued in flagrant defiance of Officer Banks in the face of the investigation. This, more than the sheer number of terminations, throws into stark relief just how dysfunctional the system is.

As long as we rely on a broken system of juvenile justice tragic stories like this will keep rearing their ugly heads. The entrenched problems being thrown into sharp relief in Augusta are a symptom of a wider rot that has spread through the fabric of our society, a rot based in a toxic combination of lost opportunities, poor education, substance abuse and mental illness.

Juvenile detention centers often act as training grounds for better criminals, but that is only the beginning. When the abuse is coming from the figures of authority the psychological ramifications are even more devastating.

Thankfully WJBF News 6 reports that more light may be shining on the subject in the near future:

Next month, the interim director of the YDC, Gary Jones will finish his term with the YDC, so we’ll get a closer look at how things are inside the facility.

News 6 also provides a complete timeline of events at the Augusta YDC for those who wish to take a closer look at the events leading up to this sorry state of affairs.

The state of juvenile justice in this country is horrible, but things will not change until more people demand it. It is to raise awareness of these deplorable situations that we are releasing Born, Not Raised: Voices from Juvenile Hall in March of this year. Please follow us on Facebook or Google+ for updates on it’s release!

The fight to fix our juvenile justice system just got a shot in the arm. Yesterday the U.S. Department of Justice’s Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP) and the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation announced a new partnership supporting innovative and effective reforms in treatment and services for youth involved in the juvenile justice and child welfare systems.

A total of $2 million, $1 million from each partner, over the next two years will help fund the reform efforts of the following four organizations:

• The National Youth Screening and Assessment Project at the University of Massachusetts Medical School
• The National Center for Mental Health and Juvenile Justice at Policy Research, Inc.
• The Center for Children’s Law and Policy
• The Robert F. Kennedy Children’s Action Corps

‘We need to do what’s right for America’s children,’ said Melodee Hanes, Acting Administrator of OJJDP. ‘This partnership supports state and community efforts to protect youth from harm, hold them accountable for their actions, provide for rehabilitation and improve public safety.  In this tight economy, creatively partnering with a private organization such as MacArthur maximizes reform, while stretching limited public dollars.’

This week a Supreme Court judge in Georgia put forth her thoughts on why the state’s justice system desperately needs fixing. Let’s start with the pertinent quotes as reported by James Swift at the Juvenile Justice Information Exchange:

At Wednesday’s annual State of the Judiciary Address, Georgia’s Supreme Court Chief Justice Carol Hunstein urged lawmakers to overhaul the state’s juvenile justice system, asking legislators to support more rehabilitative services for youth as opposed to incarceration of juvenile offenders.

‘The same reforms we are recommending to you for adults must begin with children,’ Hunstein said. ‘If we simply throw low-risk offenders into prison, rather than holding them accountable for their wrongdoing while addressing the source of their criminal behavior, they merely become hardened criminals who are more likely to reoffend when they are released.’

Citing Department of Juvenile Justice statistics she pointed out that nearly two-thirds of the roughly 10,000 incarcerated youth in Georgia suffer from substance abuse issues. A full one-third of them have mental health problems as well.

Hunstein pointed out that state budget cutbacks have drastically reduced services for many mental health and child welfare programs. As a judge she says that this puts juvenile judges in a position sending youth into incarceration “or nothing at all.” These same budget cuts are creating a backlog of court cases which has a distinct possibility of impeding the progress of cases across the state, both juvenile and otherwise.

John Lash also addresses this in his own column, also on the Juvenile Justice Information Exchange,

As budgets continue to fall, not just in Georgia, but around the nation, governments are being forced to face facts. Rhetoric and popular appeals to the conservative base worked as long as there was money to pay for tough laws, but now it is time to pay for the outcome of such talk, and to hopefully put solutions in place that not only better serve non- violent, mentally- ill, and addictive- youth, but also serve society as a whole, not only fiscally, but also by reducing future criminal activity.

We will see these kids again. What state they are in when that happens is largely dependent on how they are treated now.

Indeed, let us hope that when we do see them we have made the right decisions.

The Internet is definitely the way to share information, and these days that means social media.

As we attempt to educate people about the three major social ills that our society faces – Homelessness, Women in Prison, and a broken Juvenile Justice system – HumaneExposures is spreading our reach across the web.

On Twitter we interact with our fans while curating a stream of pertinent news both from this blog and from around the Internet.

Follow HumaneExposures on Twitter

Facebook users can find us easily now and keep up with both our publishing projects and with similar efforts across the country. If you have questions for Susan or the rest of the team this is a great place to ask them.

Like HumaneExposures: The Facebook Page.

For those on the cutting edge we have just put together our brand new Google+ page! If you are one of the growing number of people on the platform we would love to hear from you as we get the ball rolling!

Circle HumaneExposures on Google+.

We believe in interacting with our reader on the platform of their choice, hence our embrace of these differing services. With election season looming we need to make sure that as many people as possible are mobilized and informed about the sort of legislation required to fix our broken society.

An emphasis on rehabilitation and re-integration into society is proven to be effective whether the subject is a youth offender or a homeless veteran. It is only by addressing these root causes that we will be in a position to effect real and lasting change.

If you agree with our stance please help us get things rolling by sharing these with your friends. As always, if you have story leads or information on other social justice oriented groups we would love to hear about them, use any platform you like!

Over the past ten years California has reduced the number of incarcerated youths to just over one tenth of what it was in the mid-1990s. Eight of the eleven state run facilities have been shut down in that time, responsibility for non-violent youth offenders now resting at the county level, and hopefully closer to family and community support.

Now Gov. Jerry Brown want to phase out the last three facilities. Facilities that house more serious offenders- 1,100 of them to be exact.

This unattributed editorial from the New York Times shines some light on the path from the mid-90s to the present day:

The California juvenile justice system has a long history of abuses. A 2004 court ruling that required the state to improve services and facilities pushed up costs. Beginning in 2007, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger began to downsize the system after the Legislature passed a law barring counties from sending nonviolent youths to state facilities. California did it the right way: providing generous financing to the counties for therapeutically based juvenile offender programs. Spending on the system has dropped by almost half, from nearly $500 million to about $245 million as crime rates dropped over all, and the state has cut its juvenile inmate population from about 10,000 in the mid-1990s to about 1,100 today.

Critics of the proposed closures point out that without state run facilities courts may well be tempted to try more teenagers in adult courts. If these last three centers get closed we can be sure that legislative oversight will be required in order to monitor for over-prosecution.

Some supporters of the plan worry that certain counties may lack secure facilities to hold juveniles convicted of arson, robbery and other serious crimes and the therapeutic know how to succeed with these young people.

Implementation is key. The way that the closures are handled and the provisions made for the youths being returned to county management will determine a lot of the details as things shake out.

What do you think about the potential closings? Are you for it or against it, and if so why? Let us know, it’s as easy as leaving a comment.

Image Source: Colin K. on Flickr, used under it’s Creative Commons license