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!

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.’

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.

Here is an excerpt from the City Beat report by Dave Maas in which he looks at the absence of vital information from the U.S. Department of Justice’s Bureau of Justice Statistics’ required annual Survey of Sexual Violence:

>San Diego County Probation has filed 15 such survey forms for juvenile facilities since 2004 and not one discloses any allegation of sexual misconduct by staff, giving the false impression of a perfect record. Presented with inconsistencies between the surveys and other public records, the Probation Department now admits it does not disclose cases that are investigated by its internal-affairs unit. Since all allegations against staff are investigated by internal affairs, this policy has resulted in the omission of all staff-misconduct cases from the federal surveys.

‘Information for the survey was gathered from data entered into the probation case management system, which does not include internal affairs reports due to their sensitive nature,’ probation spokesperson Tammy Glenn said in an email to CityBeat. ‘We do plan to review our department’s process for gathering data to determine if internal affairs reports should be captured for the purposes of the survey in the future.’

Probation’s internal-affairs unit has investigated at least six allegations of staff sexual misconduct at its facilities since 2008, Glenn says. Chief Probation Officer Mack Jenkins has also said in previous news stories that its internal-affairs unit launched 10 such investigations between 2004 and 2010 at the East Mesa Juvenile Detention Facility and the Kearny Mesa Juvenile Detention Facility, through which roughly 9,000 kids pass each year. Probation says that some of these cases occurred at facilities that were not surveyed and therefore would not have been reported to the BOJS anyway. However, Glenn acknowledges that the department failed to report one case on a federal survey it filed in 2011.

Read the entire article- there is much, much more.

While it is hardly surprising that the perpetrators of illegal acts of this nature would want to conceal themselves, this sort of defiance of federally mandated standards is frightening if true.

Not only are these incidents tragic, but the obscuring of the events proves a huge and long term issue. How can we address the issues of juvenile justice when the data has been fudged? How can we prevent prison rape if we don’t know it is happening?

Let us hope that the six investigations just launched by the Probation Department help drag the facts into the light. Just think, those investigations only cover the last four years. That might merely be the tip of the iceberg.

Read the whole story on City Beat – County misreports data about sexual violence in juvenile jails.

In a city with a history of poverty and violence the challenges facing those in the field of juvenile justice are massive but not, as you will see, insurmountable.
Humane Exposures- Juvenile Justice Project of Louisiana: An Interview with Dana Kaplan by socialgumbo

About Executive Director Dana Kaplan

Since becoming the Executive Director in the fall of 2007, Dana Kaplan has been steadfast in her dedication to the reform of Louisiana’s juvenile justice system. Prior to joining JJPL, Dana Kaplan was a Soros Justice Fellow at the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) in New York City, focused on detention reform. At CCR, Ms. Kaplan worked with community groups and government on developing alternatives to detention and downsizing local jails in states including Tennessee, California, Ohio, New Orleans, and New York. She was also the State-wide Organizer for the New York Campaign for Telephone Justice, a partnership between CCR and two prison family organizations that successfully reduced the cost of all phone calls from New York State prisons by fifty percent. Ms. Kaplan has also been on staff at the Brooklyn-based Prison Moratorium Project, where her efforts helped stop the construction of a youth prison in upstate New York and two youth jail expansions in New York City. She has consulted with national organizations including The National Resource Center on Prisons and Communities and the National Education Association (NEA), developing a curriculum for teachers on “Education not Incarceration”. Dana holds a Bachelor of Arts from the University of California at Berkeley and was a recipient of the John Gardner Fellowship for Public Service.

About JJPL
When the Juvenile Justice Project of Louisiana (JJPL)  first opened our doors in 1997, our state was acknowledged to have one of the country’s worst systems to treat and prevent delinquency. In July of that year, the New York Times called Louisiana home to the “most troubled” juvenile public defender’s office in the country.¹ That same month — after earlier reports in 1995 and 1996 by Human Rights Watch and the United States Department of Justice (DOJ) — the DOJ detailed brutal and inhumane conditions in Louisiana’s juvenile prisons, bringing international shame to the system. Louisiana’s juvenile justice system provided virtually no representation for children accused of crimes and then placed them in hyper-violent prisons where they regularly suffered bodily and emotional harm. The large majority of these children were African-American.

JJPL’s mission is to transform the juvenile justice system into one that builds on the strengths of young people, families and communities to ensure children are given the greatest opportunities to grow and thrive. We have three key program objectives to achieve this mission: to reduce the number of children in secure care and abolish unconstitutional conditions of confinement by improving or, when necessary, shutting down institutions that continue to inhumanely treat children; to expand evidence-based alternatives to incarceration and detention for youth; and to build the power of those most impacted by the juvenile justice system.

JJPL litigates on behalf of youth both locally and statewide. Additionally, we educate policy makers on the need for reform, coordinate with parents, youth and other concerned citizens to ensure their visibility and participation in the process, and actively implement media strategies to hold the state accountable for the treatment of its youth. By coordinating our diverse abilities in strategic campaigns to engage policy makers and organize community members and youth, JJPL continues to work on improving the lives of Louisiana’s most vulnerable children. In the past fourteen years of our existence, we have accomplished many achievements.

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.

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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.

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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

Florida’s youth-corrections system is so poorly administered that children are assaulted by officers, denied necessary medical care and punished harshly for minor infractions, a federal report released Friday concludes.

Conditions are so severe, the U.S. Department of Justice said, that they violate the Constitution.

So begins Carol Marbin Miller’s article in The Miami Herald last Friday about the blistering report handed down by the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division. 28 pages that detail the horrible conditions experience by those incarcerated at Florida’s Dozier School for Boys and the Jackson Juvenile Offender Center. While both of these facilities were closed earlier this year the report states that similar conditions are likely common in other state youth prisons. The reasoning? The state’s “failed system of oversight and accountability”.

We see these stories in the news far too often. Just last July the death of Eric Perez, 18, at the Palm Beach County detention center was in the news. If any of the multiple guards and administrators who heard his pleas for medical attention had listened he might still be with us.

Suicidal youths are put in isolation. Others are discouraged from seeking medical attention, many times because what needs attention is an injury inflicted by the staff. Isolation and confinement are often used as punishment despite the fact that experts discourage it in all non-emergency situations. The list goes on and on, often involving different permutations of unneccessary or excessive force.

“These conditions return youth to the community no better — and likely less-equipped to succeed than when they were first incarcerated,” Assistant Attorney General Thomas E. Perez wrote in a Dec. 1 letter to Gov. Rick Scott, adding that such practices “erode public confidence in the juvenile justice system and interfere with the state’s efforts to reduce crime.”

While Perez’ words are strong and voice valid concerns there is no intimation that either the Justice Department or Perez himself will seek further action. That is the truly disappointing facet of this otherwise

 Image Source: Conner395 on Flickr, used under it’s Creative Commons license

One of the largest factors behind this statistic is the privatized prison, something that did not exist before 1984. It was in that year that the Corrections Corporation of America received a contract to operate a public jail in Hamilton County, TN, the nation’s first-ever private prison was born.

The American Civil Liberties Union just released a study examining the history of prison privatization - Banking on Bondage: Mass Incarceration and Private Prisons - which clearly demonstrates how corporate profit seeking has caused our prison populations to explode.

Rania Khalek has a brilliant condensed version of the report’s findings on AlterNet, replete with useful documentation and links. I highly advise taking a few moments to read the whole thing, it is more than worth your time. Right now we will have to settle for an excerpt concerning how this privatization impact juvenile justice:

There is no clearer example of dangers associated mixing profit-making and juvenile rehabilitation than the Walnut Grove Youth Correctional Facility (WGYCF) operated by the GEO Group in Mississippi.  WGYCF, which has been called “the deepest depths of hell,” is the nation’s largest juvenile prison. It houses 1,200 young males between the ages of 13 and 22, 67 percent of whom are incarcerated for non-violent offenses.  The facility was originally established by the Mississippi state legislature to create a safe environment for juveniles charged as adults by keeping them separate from the cruel and harsh conditions often found in adult prisons.

Unfortunately, that mission is incompatible with the priorities of the for-profit prison industry. As it turns out, conditions at WGYCF are so atrocious that the ACLU and Southern Poverty Law Center have teamed up to file a class-action lawsuit on behalf the inmates against the prison operator (GEO Group), prison administrators, and state officials.

The complaint alleges, “The for-profit entities that manage WGYCF perpetuate violence and corruption.”  More specifically, youth have been kicked and punched while handcuffed, others stripped naked and confined to solitary for weeks at a time.  Another inmate was “held hostage in his cell for almost 24 hours, brutally raped and physically assaulted after prison staff failed to heed his plea for protection.”  Another lives with permanent brain damage after suffering multiple stabbings and beatings that prison staff are described as having been complicit in.

On the other side of the political aisle similar concerns are being raised by Fox News, which looks at the statements to this effect by the corrections companies themselves:

Corrections Corporation of America (CXW), the industry leader based in Nashville, Tenn., with more than $1.7 billion in 2010 annual revenues and capacity for more than 90,000 prisoners, said a drop in tough criminal sentences means a drop in revenues. According to its 2010 annual report:

‘Demand for our facilities and services could be adversely affected by the relaxation of enforcement efforts, leniency in conviction or parole standards and sentencing practices, or through the decriminalization of certain activities that are currently proscribed by our criminal laws.’ [...]

‘Any changes with respect to drugs and controlled substances or illegal immigration could affect the number of persons arrested, convicted, and sentenced, thereby potentially reducing demand for correctional facilities to house them,’ the company’s annual report said.

Boca Raton, Fla.-based GEO Group Inc. (GEO), in the industry’s No. 2 spot with nearly $1.3 billion in 2010 annual revenues and capacity for 81,000 prisoners, offers similar language in its 2010 annual report: ‘A decrease in our occupancy rates could cause a decrease in revenues and profitability.’

When Fox and AlterNet agree it’s worth paying attention. For private companies keeping the prisons filled is their financial bottom line, one that should never be allowed to trump the lives wasted within their walls. The money motive is so strong that their approach continues to remain dominant despite reams of evidence that rehabilitation is cheaper and more effective.

For these companies the safety of our streets does not even enter into the equation. It’s all about the profit margin.

Image Source: 401K on Flickr, used under it’s Creative Commons license

If you are unfamiliar with the group, YouthBuild is a national youth and community development program that works with 16-24 year old, low income youths. Education is the baseline of their efforts, a vital topic in the modern day. Youngsters work toward their GEDs or high school diplomas, learn job skills while serving their communities by building affordable housing.

YouthBuild boasts 273 programs across the country. 21,000 units of affordable housing have been built since 1994 by 110,000 participants in the program. Now almost half of those programs across the U.S., 121 of them to be exact, have just lost their primary funding due to Department of Labor cuts.

Education is vital, it is one of the most important subjects on the table in modern society. Judge Grillo wrote a much needed call to arms about the direct correlation between education and quality of life:

Here in Southeastern Ohio, young people without a diploma, skills or GED have little to no hope for becoming useful adults. We have a population of young people without skills going on the dole, becoming takers rather than givers. Without an education our young people are just drifting, and as a judge, I know that society pays a high price.

I’ve seen young people who have committed serious crimes straighten themselves up through YouthBuild.

And I see young parents breaking a cycle of poverty by getting training and building a future for their families. One young woman got pregnant at 15 and struggled to stay in school after her daughter was born. She eventually dropped out and tried homeschooling, but nothing stuck until she enrolled in YouthBuild. Now 19 and head of her household, she has graduated from high school, completed nurse’s aide training and is enrolled at a state university.

While Southeastern Ohio is in a bind they are not alone. 121 Youthbuild Programs nation wide have just lost funding. Another victim of the drive to make short term savings shortchanging our future. Judge Grillo sums it up nicely:

Cutting funding for YouthBuild is short-sighted. We should be front-loading the social services system with educational opportunities and hope instead of back-loading it, only providing services when people fail and have nowhere else to turn.

Programs like YouthBuild are major weapons in the battle for juvenile justice. The combination of education and job skill training can be a potent weapon against the allure of crime. Additionally, it is far less expensive to taxpayers in the long run to focus on preventative and rehabilitative measures such as these.

It’s all about the future. Will we help the next generation realize their potential or will be allow their opportunities to recede into the distance.

As William Butler Yeats once said, “Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire.”

Image Source: YouthBuild Philly