Hangout On Air with the National Juvenile Justice Network!

HangoutWe are proud to announce a new Humane Exposures Hangout! On October 9 at  11 am PST / 1 pm CST / 2 pm EST we will be joined by several of the driving forces behind the National Juvenile Justice Network. We will be discussing the recent  release of an amazing resource they have compiled: Advances in Juvenile Justice Reform: 2009-2011, a compendium of youth justice reforms from across the country. This is an elegantly crafted document that provides capsule summaries of the changes in juvenile justice organized by topic area, state, and year. It covers a broad array of significant new laws, administrative rule and practice changes, positive court decisions, and promising commissions and studies.

I would cite this as a useful resource for advocates, juvenile justice system employees, legislators, and those who simply wish to become more informed on the subject. In it you can learn about recent reforms in other states, find tips on connecting with allies and other advocates, generating ideas for change, and ways in which to educate policymakers or journalists.
Our panel for the day will be comprised of the following people:

Abby Anderson is executive director of the Connecticut Juvenile Justice Alliance, an advocacy organization that consistently wins major victories for at-risk youth. She has served as co-chair of the Executive Committee of the National Juvenile Justice Network since 2007 and was formerly on the Executive Board of the Coalition for Juvenile Justice. In naming her to its prestigious “40 Under 40” list, Connecticut Magazine said: “She has reframed  juvenile justice as a mainstream issue by stressing the savings achieved by getting timely services to kids before their behavior becomes a public-safety concern.”

Jim Moeser is the Deputy Director of the Wisconsin Council on Children & Families, a multi-issue state advocacy organization promoting the safety, health, and economic stability of Wisconsin’s children and families. Jim is currently a member of the Federal Advisory Committee on Juvenile Justice for OJJDP. He co-chairs the Executive Committee of the National Juvenile Justice Network.

Sarah Bryer, NJJN’s Director, has been working in the juvenile and criminal justice fields for more than twenty years. Prior to joining NJJN, she was the Director of Policy and Planning at the Center for Alternative Sentencing and Employment Services (CASES), an alternative-to-incarceration program serving more than 10,000 misdemeanor and felony-level, court-involved youth and adults per year. Before that, she was Manager of Youth Programs at the Center for Court Innovation and has been a victim-offender mediator for court-involved youth in California.

Benjamin Chambers has been writing professionally for over 20 years, and has over 10 years of experience in the field of juvenile justice. Between 2000 and 2007, he worked for the Multnomah County Department of Community Justice in Portland, Oregon, where he was involved in improving youth drug treatment and served on the management team. Between 2008 and 2011, he launched and edited the Reclaiming Futures blog and social media channels, which he built into premier venues for juvenile justice news and resources.

George “Loki” Williams Our own Humane Exposures blogger will be moderating the discussion. Loki has blogged for clients including the National Association of Broadcasters and Kaiser Permanente as well as the Webby Award-winning KatrinaMedia.com. He is one of the organizers of the Rising Tide Conference in New Orleans, and his work has been seen or written about in The New York Times, The BBC, The New Yorker’s New Orleans Journal, and NOLA.com, among others.

Tune in Tuesday on our Google+ Page! See you there!

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Playground to Prison – The Shocking Numbers

Playground to Prison

 

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Youth Justice Awareness Month is Coming

Contribute to National Youth Justice Awareness Month

According to 2009 federal numbers there are roughly 7,500 kids under 18 years old residing in adult jails; approximately a third of those are in adult prisons. These numbers demand reaction, and October is the month for it.

You see, October is National Youth Justice Awareness month. The purpose is to  raise awareness about youth prosecuted in the adult criminal justice system. It was started by Tracy McClard, a parent who lost her child to suicide while he was incarcerated in an adult facility in Missouri.

McClard started campaign in 2008 with a 5k run/walk fundraiser dedicated to Jonathan, her son who hanged himself three days after his 17th birthday rather than face three decades in an adult prison.

Her assertion is that Jonathan would still be alive today if he had been put into the Missouri Dual Jurisdiction Program. This residential-style program  provides both counseling and educational services to juvenile inmates in a setting that provides additional support by being open to family visits. These are all characteristics that the adult facilities lack.

On the good side the preponderance of data that has come to light in these past few years supports her assertions. Public awareness both of the plight of those lost in the system and the financial savings of embracing more effective programs is starting to make a difference.

According to Maggie Lee over at the Juvenile Justice Information Exchange:

[Liz] Ryan [president and CEO of the Campaign for Youth Justice] is optimistic that both Democratic- and Republican-led states, despite tight budgets, will continue reforms. ‘Recidivism research is having an effect,’ she said, pointing to studies that say putting children through adult courts reduces reoffending. Both blue and red states are beginning to channel more youth away from adult incarceration.

In December, McClard and other activists and some state legislators will re-file a bill that proposes to remove barriers to the Dual Jurisdiction program.

McClard said that since her first run, ‘things are changing, people are becoming more aware … Conversations are starting, people are changing.’

‘The way we’re doing it now is so wrong and so horrendous we cannot keep doing it,’ she said. Kids are ‘so amenable to rehabilitation if you give them what they need.’

The entire month of October is dedicated to awareness of these issues. If you want to get involved or start an associated event in your area, go take a look at the Campaign for Youth Justice website, where a large array of resources is available including an event-planning toolkit, a film-screening budget sheet, and more.

If you do get an event going and are considering screening a film I’d like to close by suggesting our own documentary, It’s More Expensive to Do Nothing. You will never forget the view inside the penal system that it provides.

It’s More Expensive To Do Nothing About Homelessness in Canada

There is a very interesting study that was recently released in Canada. The findings may provide some insight into the issues of homelessness we face here in the US.

The substantive report (150 pages of it) analyzed the costs of homelessness, including oft-forgotten peripherals like emergency medical expenses and policing. It then compared them to the cost of implementing services and programs designed to combat the problem.

Via The Vancouver Sun:

The estimated annual cost of $55,000 per homeless person takes into consideration the high risk of infectious diseases. The study says some individuals can be slow to accept treatment because they don’t recognize their mental illness, and may circulate through the court system because of a need to get drugs and food.

The study argues that if housing and support were offered to these people, it would cost the system much less – just $37,000 a year.

The report calculated that a capital investment of $784 million is needed to provide adequate housing to the 11,750 homeless people, and a further $148 million per year is required for housing-related support services.

But the study argues that after removing what the province is paying for health care, jail and shelters, and by spreading the capital costs out over several years, taxpayers could ultimately stand to save nearly $33 million annually.

The interesting part is how well these findings complement the research already done on juvenile incarceration and the incarceration of women. In our documentary, It’s More Expensive to Do Nothing, we examined the fiscal and societal gains that can be attained by implementing rehabilitative programs. They are substantive and invite and obvious parallel to the Canadian study’s findings on homelessness.

Another common thread between the two subjects is the recurrence of mental illness and substance abuse as part of the equation. These factors, if not addressed, tend to spiral out of control. Those subject to them can find themselves on a downward path that can be counteracted with the correct therapy and support programs. (On a personal note I know two people who used programs like that to get a grip on things while fighting those battles. They are now well-respected professionals in our community.)

I don’t know of any studies of this nature going on stateside, but it might be worthwhile to encourage it. Our own look at similar fiscal waste, and the human impact it has, was presented in the documentary It’s More Expensive to Do Nothing.

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Education and Prisons in California

There are two vital issues in California that are inextricably linked – education and incarceration.

Education is one of the most reliable paths out of poverty and deprivation. Those who live within the confines of our overburdened prison system are quite often those deprived of it.

This is what makes it so terribly disturbing when you look at the numbers released in a recent study by California Common Sense. Stephanie Chung of NBC covered the story last week when the report was released:

California is spending 1,370 percent more money on prisons today compared to 1980 levels. NBC Bay Area got the first look at a report from Los Altos-based, non-partisan research group California Common Sense (CACS) published Thursday.

It’s the first time a group has looked at 30 years worth of data and crunched the numbers to show a long-term trend between state spending on prisons and on higher education, according to Director of Research Mike Polyakov.

California spent $592 million on corrections in 1980, Polyakov said. That spending has jumped to $9.2 billion in 2011.

Meanwhile, higher education spending has decreased. Researchers found that there is a trend to pay University of California and California State University faculty less money than in the past.

The disparity is unnerving. Even more so when you start reading through the report. Let’s take a look at the key findings, shall we?

  • Corrections’ growing slice of the State budget, High Education’s shrinking slice. As CDCR’s share of the State General Fund budget increased steadily through most of the last three decades, higher education’s share declined consistently.
  • Corrections’ first recession era budget cuts in 30 years. Although the Corrections budget survived most previous economic downturns unscathed, since the onset of the most recent economic downturn, expenditure on Corrections has seen a substantial decline.
  • Corrections inmate population explosion driving higher costs. Over the last 30 years, the number of people California incarcerates grew more than eight times faster than the general population.  Our calculations show that 55% of the increase in the cost of the state prison system between 1980 and 2012 (after adjusting for inflation) can be traced to this rapid growth.
  • Annual salary increases for prison guards, stagnant faculty salaries over last decade. Whereas prison guard salaries are subject to periods of sustained salary increases, faculty salaries have seen only weak growth over the years, falling in real terms over the past decade.
What does it say about us as a society that we spend so much on imprisoning our population, yet so little on preparing them for a productive and happy future? More than half of the increase in corrections’ spending is attributable to the massive increase in the imprisoned population, an increase that occurred during the period when “zero-tolerance” laws were very much in fashion.
Which one do you think will provide society with better long-term returns: pouring money into education so that our children have the best possible chance for a future or continuing to pay skyrocketing prices to file away our society’s cast-offs behind concrete walls and bars?
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Humane Exposures on Flickr!

humaneexposures. Get yours at bighugelabs.com

Greetings readers! I am very happy to announce that we have now carved out a foothold on Flickr, one of the oldest photo-sharing platforms online.

Not only will we be sharing photos of our own, but you will see some of Susan Madden Lankford’s images from our trilogy of books, and you will also get to share your own.

Today we are launching two new photo communities:

We would like to encourage any of our readers who use Flickr to join these groups and share their own images on the topics.
If we are going to effect any sort of substantive change in our nation’s current, fiscally irresponsible approach to incarceration we need to shine a spotlight on the problem. By sharing images from the streets we can hopefully make people more aware of the human faces they display.
The same holds true for our prison system, particularly as applies to the women and children detained within. After all, as US Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis once stated, “Sunlight is the best disinfectant.”
We hope you will join us, and if you know of other photographers examining these issues, please steer them our way!

Not since the Great Depression has New York City had 20,000 children sleeping homeless

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Image by JillK1 on Flickr

The ranks of the homeless in New York City are swelling, and with them the number of homeless children. Life on the streets of the Big Apple is tough enough to drive adults to despair; how much more so a child?

Sometimes life in a homeless shelter is more than a 14-year-old can handle.

Francheska Luciano, who is among a growing number of homeless children in the city, said living in a shelter was “like living in hell.”

“I’m tired of this,” she said Friday while sitting on a curb outside a shelter intake center in the Bronx with her mother and little sisters. “It’s a nightmare every day.”

Those are the lead paragraphs in the recent The New York Daily News coverage of the staggering rise in homeless numbers. The reason they start off their reporting that way is because the most unsettling number their research unearthed was just how many kids sleep in shelters or with no roof at all.

The number of children in the city’s shelters hit 19,000 last week, the most recent city data available show.

‘Not since the grim days of the Great Depression has New York City had 20,000 children sleeping homeless each night,’ said Patrick Markee, senior policy analyst with the Coalition for the Homeless.

This news follows the well-publicized statement last August by Mayor Bloomberg who opined that New York City shelters offer a “much more pleasurable experience than they ever had before.” The implication that people are subject to overcrowding because they do not want to leave the shelter system is hard to avoid – specially in contrast to stories like the recent New York Times profile on a nine-year-old girl living in a Manhattan homeless shelter.

No matter how you parse it, the bottom line is that almost 20,000 children are experiencing their early lives on the streets of the city.

How humane is it to continue to accept and enable homelessness in America – especially when the homeless in question are children.

Correctional System: Responding to Juveniles with Substance Abuse and Mental Health Needs

In their own words:

In order to provide effective treatment and programming to youth with behavioral health needs, juvenile justice authorities and their partners must be equipped to quickly identify individuals who may have these needs, make referrals for full assessments and appropriate services, and provide services both while the youths are in custody and during the reentry process. Presenters focus on the use of assessment tools and other treatment needs, and matching youths to appropriate and effective programs and supports.

Speakers:

  • Randy Muck, Senior Clinical Consultant, Advocates for Youth and Family Behavioral Health Treatment, LLC
  • Valerie Williams, Research Instructor and Co-Director, National Youth Screening and Assessment Project, Center for Mental Health Services Research, Department of Psychiatry, University of Massachusetts Medical School
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Hurricane Isaac: Suddenly Homeless

Today I would like to offer something a little more personal than my usual blog posts. After the “Hurricane Isaac Experience” I would really like to share my personal perspective.

Last week we had a spot of unpleasant weather down here on the Gulf Coast that took out almost 700,000 people’s power across Louisiana. Most of them, like myself, for five or six days. Some still remain in the dark as I write this.

Hurricane Isaac not only knocked out the lights, but also sat over the area more than three times as long as the average hurricane. That means a lot of water, and a lot of people in outlying areas seeing it in their homes. The truly eerie aspect of it for those of us down here was that the storm arrived on the seventh anniversary of Hurricane Katrina.

How does this tie in with our usual topics? Easily. As the land washed away under the feet of Plaquemines and St. John the Baptist Parish residents the specter of homelessness and financial ruin became very real for much of our rural population. Thousands of residents from St. John the Baptist Parish alone became refugees, the status of their home and employment lost to view.

Make no mistake about it, homelessness looms. It is still to early to have any accurate data as the hard hit rural regions are only starting to be assessed, but the sheer volume of water has ensured that many lost everything. Just to the Southeast of New Orleans the town of Braithewaite is only now emerging from the muck.

So many of us teeter on the edge. As the recession drags on more and more families find themselves living paycheck to paycheck. The advent of a natural disaster – be it hurricane, earthquake, wildfire or something else – can suddenly leave a person both homeless and jobless.

According to the Katrina Pain Index , by Loyola professors Bill Quigley and Davida Finger, “Seventy percent more people are homeless in New Orleans since Hurricane Katrina .”

In the wake of Isaac I fear we will see a similar spike in those numbers.

The Economic Ripple Effect of Investing in Education