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.
