| July 18, 2012
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Mid-Week News Roundup

Homeless and coldAs the news-cycle prepares for the adrenalin surge that is Presidential campaign season we are going to see a lot of items concerning social justice and budget concerns. Starting this week we are going to provide a weekly survey of some of the most pertinent ones.

This week let’s start off with the  state of Florida, where there has been a lot of brouhaha about cost shifting from the state to the counties in their justice system. Tuesday an administrative law judge ruled that the shift in juvenile-detention costs from the Florida Department of Juvenile Justice to the state’s counties was improper. Since literally millions of dollars are involved and officials at both levels are trying to enact as many budget cuts as possible, this is no small case. Jim Saunders at The Palm Beach Post has more details – Judge: Florida improperly shifted juvenile-detention costs to counties.

In Georgia it looks like an overhaul of the juvenile justice system may be ready for prime time as soon as next January. Georgia has been crafting a comprehensive bill to reform their ailing juvenile justice system for almost five years now. Most of the provisions proposed, and hopefully to be kept in the final version, are geared toward providing upgraded intervention and rehabilitation options for children. Maggie Lee at the Juvenile Justice Information Exchange notes the new life being breathed into the effort:

A juvenile justice subcommittee will be formed soon out of the Special Council on Criminal Justice Reform, a blue-ribbon panel appointed by Gov. Nathan Deal to study adult and child justice codes.  The full committee held its first meeting July16, where it heard a background briefing from the Pew Center on the States about juvenile justice in other states. The subcommittee will build on at least five years of work that ended in House Bill 641, a bill that died in the legislature in March.

A final version is expected in January, with luck.

Our next stop is the state of Iowa. It is there that Iowa Gov. Terry Branstad has defied the spirit of a recent Supreme Court ruling by imposing blanket sentencing on a group of juvenile offenders who had been sentenced to life without parole. The Supreme Court ruled that “one size fits all justice” does nothing of the sort, and Branstad’s ruling commuted the sentences of 38 juvenile offenders to 60-year terms before the possibility of parole. This blanket ruling completely ignores the Supreme Court stance that offenders  must be held accountable individually, not collectively. The Editorial Staff of The Quad City Times takes a closer look at this issue – All Iowa juvenile offenders are not created equal.

The last stop on our tour is our blogger’s home state of Louisiana, a state constantly embroiled in scandal over the state of it’s justice system (among other things). The Louisiana Office of Juvenile Justice is in an uproar as administrators examine their hiring and training practices. The reason for this renewed scrutiny:  two escapes from Jetson Center for Youth that have, so far, cost four people their jobs and led to three more being placed on administrative leave. Daron Brown, Jetson’s director, is one of those.

Kimberly Vetter at the Baton Rouge Advocate covers this issue in depth, including a look at the actions of Louisiana Juvenile Justice Project. (You might remember our own interview with executive director Dana Kaplan a few months ago.)

Dana Kaplan, executive director of the Juvenile Justice Project of Louisiana, said it is clear that improvements need to be made in the way that juveniles in secure care facilities in Louisiana are being treated.

Kaplan’s organization recently joined Families and Friends of Louisiana’s Incarcerated Children in filing a federal lawsuit against the state. The lawsuit alleges that some juveniles in state custody have been denied access to legal counsel. The lawsuit also alleges that some juveniles have suffered abuse inside the facilities.

So that is this week’s update! Your comments and thoughts are always welcome!

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Category: Humane Exposures |
| July 17, 2012
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Bryan Stevenson: We need to talk about an injustice

“We have a system of justice in [the US] that treats you much better if you’re rich and guilty than if you’re poor and innocent. Wealth, not culpability, shapes outcomes.” – Bryan Stevenson

The following talk inspired one of the longest and loudest standing ovations in TED’s history. 

Bryan Stevenson is a public-interest lawyer who has dedicated his career to helping the poor, the incarcerated and the condemned. He’s the founder and executive director of the Equal Justice Initiative, an Alabama-based group that has won major legal challenges eliminating excessive and unfair sentencing, exonerating innocent prisoners on death row, confronting abuse of the incarcerated and the mentally ill, and aiding children prosecuted as adults. One recent victory: A ban on life imprisonment without parole sentences imposed on children convicted of most crimes in the United States.

Your thoughts and opinions are welcome and invited!

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| July 14, 2012
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Rehabilitation: Gov. Christie Speaks At The Brookings Institution

Governor Christie of New Jersey spoke at The Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C. recently (July 9 to be exact). It was eerie; almost as if he had seen our documentary. Great stuff to hear from an elected leader, it bodes well for future progress.

Here is Christie’s speech. It’s a great few minutes:

Category: Humane Exposures |
| July 10, 2012
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The Homeless -Invisible or Ignored?

Homeless?There are many stereotypes about the homeless. To many people they are written off as alcoholics and drug addicts. Others barely register their existence. Despite the recent economic misadventures, events that have greatly swelled the ranks of the homeless, these stereotypes remain consistent.

Only someone oblivious to reality would say there is no substance abuse among the homeless. By the same token you cannot paint such a diverse group of people with a single brush.

Between the housing crash and the ailing national economy many thousands have become homeless over the past few years. Families that had opted for sub-prime mortgages suddenly found themselves on the streets. Families and parents pushed to the financial brink find themselves on the street. Across the United States people who have been living paycheck to paycheck are finding themselves sleeping under the stars.

A highly disturbing number of these these recent homeless are women, children and veterans. And still the pejorative stereotypes persist.

Cary Fuller, a homeless single mother, gave her thoughts on the subject in a recent post for the Huffington Post:

The first thing I asked him was this: “If the homeless had permanent housing and support services, would they be hanging around in parks and alleyways?” Give people something better to do and a better place to go and the majority will, I said. At this point he then said that many of these homeless could get welfare and a job to which I then said “Really? Where? How can you get a job without an address? If you’re mentally ill, who will hire you?” Once again, a blank stare from my ex-neighbor. That’s when I told him that if you’re not part of the solution, you’re part of the problem and the problem here is that too many people have the attitude that they don’t have to get involved with anything so long as they’re not affected. The truth is that everybody is affected by homelessness. When homeless people get sick to the point of having to be taken to the emergency room, who do you think foots the bill for that?

Her last observation was particularly resonant. While people may well tune out the homeless they see on the streets, their pocketbooks cannot. (This is the reason we titled our documentary It’s More Expensive to do Nothing. The cost of rehabilitating these people back into mainstream society is far less than is currently being expended.)

To the vast majority of people the homeless remain faceless. As a result they fall back on images of the rum-soaked alcoholic snoring away the afternoon under an overpass – and other caricatures.

Take a moment and meet some of them. In our book downTown:USA our own Susan Madden Lankford takes you on a visual journey into their world, where she shares their narratives.

You see these people on your streets every day. Now take a moment and really look at them.

Category: downTown U.S.A., Homelessness, Humane Exposures | Tags: ,
| July 9, 2012
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Despite SCOTUS Decision Problems Still Loom

On 25 June the Supreme Court of the United States took a bold step into the 21st Century. It was on that date that they decided the sentencing of youth offenders to life without parole was cruel and unusual punishment.

This ruling is a truly momentous one, a step into the modern age for a juvenile justice system that seems to have lost its way over the years. There are, however, many more issues that still need to be addressed. One of the first and foremost among these is the propensity for racial profiling. The fact that African Americans tends to outnumber members of all other ethnicities when it comes to juveniles sentenced to life without parole is a disturbing statistic.

The Sentencing Project puts that stat under a microscope with their new report, the first-ever survey of juveniles serving life without parole.

Politics365 had a recent piece by Larry Miller, a man known for his work on The Philadelphia Tribune. Take a look at it:

The study, The Lives of Juvenile Lifers: Findings from a National Survey, determined that along with the racial disparity was a tendency on the part of judges to impose sentences without judicial discretion, and the defendants were generally exposed to excessive levels of violence in their homes and communities, high levels of physical abuse, and significant social and economic deprivations.

According to the report, a third of the more than 1,000 defendants surveyed were raised in public housing, 18 percent were not living with a close adult relative before their incarceration and some reported being homeless. More than half witnessed weekly violence in their neighborhoods and less than half were attending school at the time of their arrest. More disturbing is the proportion of African Americans serving juvenile life without parole sentences for the killing of a white person: 43.4 percent. Conversely, white juvenile offenders with Black victims are only about half as likely to receive a sentence of life without parole.

These findings support the growing body of work on the subject that has been accumulating since the 1980s. The direct impact of early life experiences is obvious. The disproportionate sentencing is a problem whose treatment is long overdue. The battles for equality that brought us figures like Dr. King are not finished; they just don’t grab as many headlines these days.

“The large number of individuals sentenced to juvenile life without parole represents the dismantling of the founding principles of the juvenile justice system,” said Marc Mauer, executive director of the Sentencing Project in a press release. “These youth were failed by systems intended to protect children.

Many juveniles sentenced to life without parole first suffer from extreme socioeconomic disadvantage, and are then sentenced to an extreme punishment deemed unacceptable in any other nation. Miller v. Alabama and Jackson v. Hobbs, the cases behind the ruling involved Evan Miller and Kuntrell Jackson, both of whom were sentenced when they were 14 years old. Miller was convicted of killing a man in Alabama; Jackson was convicted of being an accomplice in a robbery that ended in murder in Arkansas.”

Here in the U.S. we excel at incarceration. In Louisiana we have the highest rate of prisoners to population in the world, triple that of Iraq. We lock up more of our citizens nation-wide than any other developed country. The list goes on and on.

The problem is that incarceration is not the answer- something shown by every reputable study done over the last three decades or so. We’re great at locking people up; what we need to be is great at rehabilitating them.

Category: Humane Exposures | Tags:
| July 2, 2012
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Rethinking Juvenile Justice: The Supreme Court Decision

US Supreme CourtLast week United States Supreme Court declared it cruel and unusual punishment to sentence a juvenile offender to life without parole. As with all of their decisions, it was met by some with complete outrage and by some as a move long-needed.

This one is based on a growing body of research, one that has influenced court decisions since around 2005. Neurophysical examination of children and youths has shown that there are very direct and physical reasons that the prior approach to juvenile justice does not work.

Ethan Bronner of The New York Times provides a bit of historical background on these prior court cases:

“What we are seeing is a very stark and important rethinking of how we treat juvenile criminal offenders,” said Marsha Levick, who co-founded the nonprofit Juvenile Law Center in Philadelphia in 1975. “For years we were trying to convince the courts that kids have constitutional rights just like adults. Now we realize that to ensure that kids are protected, we have to recognize that they are actually different from adults.”

That sense of difference has fueled the Supreme Court decisions of the past seven years — first a ruling that barred the death penalty for juveniles in 2005; one that banned life in prison for juveniles convicted of crimes other than homicide in 2010; and now Monday’s ruling that rendered invalid state laws requiring youths convicted of homicide as well to die in prison. That decision will lead to resentencing hearings for about 2,000 convicts — some of them now well into middle age — in more than two dozen states.

All of the recent rulings placed emphasis on research showing that the less-formed brains of the young make them less morally culpable and more capable of change later. So condemning them to die in prison, advocates assert, ignores key advances in scientific understanding.

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In addition to the evidence provided by the physical sciences there is also the problem of cookie-cutter justice, a “one size fits all” approach that removes judicial discretion from the picture.

Conservative writer Elizabeth Hovd on Oregon Live casts things in terms of the rights that we as a nation choose to bestow and which to deny. It’s a very interesting exercise when you consider the ages involved.

Justice is better served by weighing individual considerations than by following mandatory sentencing laws that offer no opportunity to rehabilitate people or allow them to become contributing members of society some day. If we are comfortable claiming people aren’t old enough to fully consider who to vote for before age 18 or be responsible with a beer until 21, banning mandatory life-without-parole sentencing for juveniles makes sense. Parole can and should still be denied if a criminal seems unchanged or is considered a continued threat to society.

Hovd also invokes Christian charity along with a reminder that if you do actually read the decision you’ll discover that this is not an automatic out for everyone, merely the rectification of a poor approach – one that dispenses with actual justice far too often.

It is far more important that we do what is right by victims and offenders than that we copy other countries. I would remind fellow conservatives who are also Christians that ours is a god of second chances — a god of the mulligan. Isn’t it our job to show mercy to penitent men, just as God has shown mercy? Besides, punishment and revenge have never brought back a loved one.

This ruling doesn’t offer a get-out-of-jail-free card. It does stop the legal system from treating children like adults. Children aren’t typically ready to drive at 12 or vote at 14. And children don’t magically turn into adults when they commit a horrible act.

That last point is the one that most people miss: these are children. This is one of the reasons that we produced Born, Not Raised. People need to be exposed to the narratives of the kids lost in our system. It is these narratives that humanize them.

A problem becomes much harder to ignore once you put a human face on it.

Category: Born Not Raised, Criminal Justice, Humane Exposures, Juvenile Justice | Tags: , , , , , ,
| June 27, 2012
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Court or Circus? The Rise of Shaming as a Punishment

In a distorted reflection of popular entertainment, courts across the land are resorting to colorful and non-standard punishments in their sentencing practices. Shame is the common denominator in these case:, an array of punishments that share a spirit with the stocks of old.

Nationally recognized legal scholar Jonathan Turley, currently a professor at George Washington University, shared a survey of a few such incidents in a recent interview for The Kansas City Star:

In a 2009 column for USA Today, Turley cited an abusive father in Texas given a choice of spending 30 days in jail or 30 nights sleeping in a doghouse. He chose the doghouse to be able to keep his job.

In an Ohio case, a municipal judge sentenced two teens found guilty of breaking into a church on Christmas Eve to march through town with a donkey and a sign reading, “Sorry for the Jackass Offense.” The same judge later ordered a woman to be taken to a remote location to sleep outside for abandoning kittens in parks.

Is it just me or do these sound like the sort of punishments meted out in fuedal  Europe?

Turley said Texas Judge Ted Poe made people shovel manure to degrade them. Poe parlayed his “poetic justice” into a congressional seat, while Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio has faced complaints over orders that male inmates wear pink underwear.

“To some extent, we’ve seen the merging of law and entertainment in the last 10 years,” Turley said, noting that citizens are being given a steady diet with television programs such as Judge Judy and Judge Brown.

I find it hard to think of a more disturbing combination than of the courtroom and this sort of lowbrow “entertainment.” It would be one thing if these bizarre penalties were more effective, but they’re not.

He said he has seen no evidence that shame sentences have any more impact than conventional ones and thought society had “turned back the door” on such primitive sentences in the 18th century.

Entertainment value should never be a factor in sentencing. Never.

It’s the early 21st Century now. We’ve eliminated shaming as a punishment along with debtor’s prison and the selling of indulgences. At least that’s what I thought until I started running across these stories.

The subject is once again in the news, this time a tale originating from Utah. Valerie Bruno was in for a shock at the Carbon County Court Complex in Price, Utah. It was there that 7th District Juvenile Court Judge Scott Johansen told her to cut off her daughter’s ponytail in court in order to reduce the 13-year-old’s required community service. The May 2012 hearing spurred her to file a complaint with the Utah Judicial Conduct Commission against the presiding judge.

This sort of behavior is unbecoming of someone sitting on the judicial bench. Not only that, but it is also counter to all known findings about effective rehabilitation. Inducing shame and injuring a child’s self esteem is the exact wrong way to go about getting any sort of effective long-term results.

Have you seen any of this “Judge Judy justice” being handed down in your community? If so let us know, as we intend to follow up on this highly disturbing trend.

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Category: Humane Exposures |
| June 25, 2012
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Hanging Out With Humane Exposures

Due to technical difficulties our debut Hangout On Air last Thursday did not archive to YouTube. It’s a real shame because we had an amazing conversation! I’ve discovered that many people had trouble that day with both their broadcasting and their archiving, so it was not just a glitch on our part.

In the meantime I have actually been able to interact with the Hangout team over at Google and am working on smoothing things out for our next one.

Marcy Axness will be joining us, along with a rotating array of special guests, for a series of conversations that touch on early home life, neuroscience, and juvenile justice as well as the ways that these topics intersect. It is our hope to create an archive of supplementary resources that build off the material presented in our books.

While we hope to get the kinks worked out of Hangouts we do have a backup plan: BlogTalkRadio. Either way we will make sure that these debates and conversations are available online, and easily shareable.

If you would like to suggest a guest, or submit yourself as one, please leave us a comment here or touch base with us through one of our social media profiles.

Once we get things rolling you should see a new show roughly once or twice a month!

Category: Born Not Raised, Events, Humane Exposures | Tags: , , , , , ,
| June 20, 2012
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LIttle Girls in Solitary

The Girl - High ContrastSolitary confinement. A harsh penalty, and purportedly one of last resort. The type of penalty reserved for hardened, adult criminals. Or so it seems on the surface…

How would you react if told that solitary is often used for the most minor infractions, and the recipients are all too often female juvenile offenders. This is the subject of a recent piece on RH Reality Check by Yasmin Vafa of the Human Rights Project for Girls:

There is a growing body of evidence that demonstrates the severe psychiatric consequences of placing individuals, and particularly children in solitary confinement.  Prisoners who have experienced solitary confinement have been shown to engage in self-mutilation at much higher rates than the average population. These prisoners are also known to attempt or commit suicide more often than those who were not held in isolation. In fact, studies show that juveniles are 19 times more likely to kill themselves in isolation than in general population and that juveniles in general, have the highest suicide rates of all inmates in jails.

Every year approximately 600,000 girls are arrested in the U.S. The majority of these girls are incarcerated for non-violent offenses  such as truancy, loitering, running away, alcohol use, or violations of prior court orders for non-violent offenses. Evidence demonstrates that 73 percent of these girls are victims of some form of physical or sexual abuse. Many of them end up in these exact circumstances.

Despite all these facts, when girls in the juvenile justice system express evidence of or the desire to self harm, the typical response is to put them in solitary confinement. While these girls are being placed in solitary for their own protection, there is no consideration given to the fact that such practices deepen existing trauma. When subjected to isolation, these youth are often locked down for 23 hours per day in small cells with no natural light.  This confinement can last several days, weeks or even months, which leads to severe anxiety, paranoia, and further exacerbation of mental distress. The ACLU has reported that in certain juvenile detention facilities, girls are restrained with brutal force and are ‘regularly locked up in solitary confinement — a punishment used for minor misbehaviors as well as for girls who express wanting to hurt themselves.’

This is an especially important topic because this week, the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution, Human Rights, and Civil Rights is holding their first-ever Congressional hearing on the issue of solitary confinement in U.S. prisons and jails. It is our distinct hope that we will see the subject of juvenile solitary confinement addressed in this hearing, as well as the other other issues faced by both juveniles and females incarcerated in the American prison system.

Category: Born Not Raised, Criminal Justice, Humane Exposures, Juvenile Justice, Prison, Prison Reform, Women's Issues | Tags: , , ,
| June 18, 2012
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Hangout Live: Watch it here!

Going live in just a moment. Watch it live right here!

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