| May 29, 2012
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The Growing Problem of Homeless Female Veterans

Vintage Woman Soldier Veteran Bugler, WAF U.S, Air Force 1950sMemorial Day is over. The flood of stories and social media posts supporting the troops has subsided and for most people it is an ordinary Tuesday back at work. A lot of the veterans we paid homage to yesterday spent last night on the streets, and a growing percentage of them were female veterans.

Rosanne Haggerty, president of Community Solutions, recently noted the disturbing number of veterans “living rough” in the wake of serving our country (via The New York Times):

Right now, on any given night, roughly 68,000 veterans are homeless in the United States. Within that number, a group of at least 14,000 have been homeless for a year or more and suffer from at least one chronic — and costly to treat — health condition. These long-term, chronically homeless veterans typically don’t make it off the streets without specific, targeted help.

When you take into account the changing gender ratio of our military forces, these numbers become even more disquieting.

Annie Gowan of The Washington Post brings us the current statistics:

Officially, homeless female veterans number 3,328, a figure that doubled from 2006 to 2010, according to an estimate from the Government Accountability Office. The GAO says the data are incomplete and that the number is probably higher. Many of these homeless women are mothers, middle-aged or suffering from a disability.

Unfortunately there does not seem to be available data at this point on how many of those female veterans have children along with them.

The VA acknowledged in the report that there was an “acute” need to improve services for the growing number of female veterans. They are more likely to be diagnosed with mental health problems and to have suffered sexual trauma during their military service and have a greater risk of homelessness than their male counterparts, the report said.

Although the overall statistics on veteran homelessness show a steady reduction over the past few years, Gowan points out that the number of homeless women veterans is sharply rising.

On the bright side, we are slowly seeing awareness of the problem spread, and in some places solutions are actively being sought. In Fairfax, one organization is making strides in combating this exact issue.

Final Salute was founded by Jas Boothe, an Army National Guard captain. Not only did she serve our country, but she also lost everything in Hurricane Katrina, and was diagnosed with cancer in addition to becoming homeless herself. Eventually she was able to pull out of the nosedive and is remarried with a baby and a career as a human resources officer for the National Guard. Once she was back on her feet, she decided that her priority was to give back and help those who have suffered similar trials.

The result is a program that focuses on the needs of female veterans. The shelter can house a maximum of eight women and children at any given time, and residents have two years in which to get back on their feet.

In order to be admitted to the shelter, residents must commit to job training and, if they find work, contribute 20 percent of their income toward food and utilities. Final Salute currently has a waiting list of 20.

Granted that eight at a time is hardly a number that will dent the fearsome statistics we are facing, it is still a fantastic template for future efforts.

It is only the first step. We must take many more if we are to defeat this great enemy facing our soldiers.

Category: Homeless Veterans, Homelessness, Humane Exposures | Tags: , , , ,
| May 25, 2012
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Louisiana Office of Juvenile Justice Faces Fatal Cuts

There is a tragedy in the making down in Louisiana. An impending crisis is facing the state’s youth.

State’s appropriations bill, HB 1, which allocates funding for all state services, would slash funding to The Office of Juvenile Justice (OJJ). Next Monday The Senate Finance committee will vote on it and if it passes,  July 1, 2012 will mark a very sad day for juvenile justice.

What’s on the table is the termination of all OJJ contracts with community groups providing services for the Louisiana’s most at-risk youth. In New Orleans there are five organizations that provide these sort of services, and they would all lose state funding. At-risk young people in the state are about to be denied the sort of help that studies show is essential.

New Orleans based activist group Citizens for 1 Greater New Orleans lay out exactly what is at stake (emphasis mine):

What does this mean for the youth of our state? It means that the 472 youth (132 who are from New Orleans) currently housed in secure OJJ facilities would eventually return to their communities without any re-entry and community support services. Additionally, due to the proposed cuts, all community-based support services for the 3,599 youth currently under OJJ supervision for probation and parole would be cut. It goes without saying, that the elimination of these educational, job-training, and other support services greatly increases the risk that these youth will re-offend. These cuts would impact the lives, safety, and well-being not just of at-risk youth, but of all of us.

Think about it. All the community based programs in the state are about to get their funding yanked. This is bad for us in both the long and the short term. Both sides of the political aisle have the data – rehabilitation is far more effective and much less costly over time than incarceration.

Of course the negative impact of private prisons is also a proven fact and yet Louisiana Gov. Jindal has been pursuing an aggressive program of privatizing the states penal system. The fact that both the evisceration of the OJJ and privatization of the prisons are happening in the state that has more incarcerated people per capita than anyplace on the planet should sound warning bells. (See my prior writing on that subject for more details.)

As a New Orleans native I’ll always step up to brag about our food and our music, but I am sad to say that our state’s approach to juvenile justice is draconian, outdated, and counterproductive to say the least.

Let us hope that HB 1 fails to make it out of committee. If it passes Louisiana will slip back into the dark ages when other states are moving into the future.

Category: Humane Exposures |
| May 24, 2012
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Born, Not Raised Excerpt Featured on Youth Stories

We have a huge amount of respect for the National Juvenile Justice Network and the work that they do, so we are quite flattered that they have decided to feature one of the one of the personal narratives from Born, Not Raised in the Youth Stories section of their website!

‘It’s been six months and almost eight hours and I’m getting tired of this place.’ Hui (girl), age 15.

The NJJN is a fantastic organization that provides information and tools to groups across the U.S. that are working on vital issues such as reducing the level of racial disparity in the juvenile justice system, helping create community-based alternatives to incarceration, and improving aftercare and reentry. As you can see, we have a lot of overlap with them in our approach and philosophy.

If you’re involved with a local organization that deals with juvenile justice, you should check out the NJJN, they can not only broaden your network, but they can also greatly increase the array of tools you have at hand with which to work for change.

In closing, here is the description from their website’s About page:

The National Juvenile Justice Network exists to support and enhance the work of state-based groups to promote the reform of America’s critically flawed juvenile justice system at every level.

Through education, community-building and leadership development, NJJN enhances the capacity of juvenile justice coalitions and organizations in 33 states to press for state and federal laws, policies and practices that are fair, equitable and developmentally appropriate for all children, youth and families involved in, or at risk of becoming involved in, the justice system.

We seek to return the U.S. to the core ideals that led to the formation of the juvenile court more than 100 years ago, when our country realized that youth are fundamentally and categorically different than adults.

Category: Born Not Raised, Humane Exposures | Tags: , , ,
| May 22, 2012
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The Real Faces of Homelessness

FaceNo matter what city you live in you will see homeless people on the streets. The man standing on the side of the road with a “Will work for food,” sign is a sight we all are familiar with, as is the huddled figure sleeping in a doorway somewhere near you.

My grandmother used to point out people living on the street and say, “There, but for the grace of god, go I”, She would then stop and give them some spare change.

My grandmother’s words truly resonate with me these days. Bobbie Ibarra, Executive Director of the Miami Coalition for the Homeless, recently noted a substantive change in the demographics of the homeless these days:

Families are a newer face to homelessness that run the gamut, due to situations regarding financial instabilities, not having access to health care, unemployment, lack of affordable housing and the recent trend of foreclosures. However, the youth have their own face to homelessness as well, such as those who either run away from home or age out of the foster care system with no guidance and resort to ‘couch surfing.’ This is a group that is blending in with their counterparts in our school systems, making their situation invisible.

These days more and more of the homeless defy the stereotypes we have adopted (as happens all too often with stereotypes). The economic chaos of the past few years has thrust many families and individuals onto the streets. The man shamefacedly asking for spare change on the corner could well have been living in a large suburban home a mere few weeks ago.

There are many others who have ended up, like the students Ms. Ibarra spoke of above, living with friends or family because they can no longer afford a home of their own. One small step away from the streets but lacking resources of their own, they are the invisible faces of the homeless problem, and their numbers are also growing.

Writer Stephen Smith recently wrote about the homlessness issue in the U.K. In his blog post he noted the fine line so many tread between having a roof and living on the streets:

In 1990, the late, great Bill Hicks said ‘anybody can be a bum; all it takes is the right girl, the right bar and the right friends’.

Hicks always had a hard core of truth in his humour, recognising here that people can – and do – go from affluence and security to poverty, homelessness and insecurity faster than you can say ‘austerity budget’.

How are people left homeless? Relationships breaking up, substance addictions, serious illness, escaping abusive relationships, severe debt, leaving the Services or coming out of prison can all bring homelessness, as well as something we can all relate to: losing your job. No job, run up debt, you can’t meet the mortgage or rent. Bang! Of course, you may be lucky enough to have friends and family who’d look out for you – but many people don’t.

Ask yourself how long you would be able to make your rent or mortgage if your income stopped tomorrow? That’s how close you are to being classed as homeless.

With unemployment numbers continuing at absurd levels there are many of us who know the fear of not being able to make the bills. Living on the street is a specter in the lives of every household that is living “paycheck-to-paycheck.” I personally know of five people who in the last week have been let go from their jobs with no warning, in one case because the entire university department was dissolved (20 jobs gone in a flash). Now they are wondering what their options are and how long they will make it.

Smith’s words cut to the core. Read them again and think about it.

Ask yourself how long you would be able to make your rent or mortgage if your income stopped tomorrow? That’s how close you are to being classed as homeless.

The homeless person on the street could be one of your friends or family. It could, indeed, be you. The truly horrible part is how many families and children are living on the streets, “sleeping rough” as they say in the U.K.

Our first book, downTown:U.S.A.: A Personal Journey with the Homeless, focused on the people who suffer on our streets every day. Using their words and images, we have tried to show people the human depth behind the stereotypes in the hope of inciting change.

Image by Andrew Morrell Photography, used under its Creative Commons license

Category: downTown U.S.A., Homelessness | Tags: ,
| May 19, 2012
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Gov. Brown Recants Plan to Close California Youth Prisons

budgetIt looks like California Gov. Brown has had a change of heart about the fate of his state’s youthful offenders.

Brown has been busy slashing funds left and right as he attempts to get a handle on the state’s $15.7 billion budget shortfall, and for a while it looked like the Division of Juvenile Justice (formerly the California Youth Authority) was not long for this world. His proposed elimination of the agency elicited a hue and cry from the correctional officers’ union, various district attorneys and several law enforcement groups.

Despite the DJJ currently being under court oversight due to claims of systemic abuse and mistreatment of juvenile offenders, most groups agree that it has improved drastically from its sorry state in the 1990s. In those days roughly 10,000 kids were incarcerated there; today they number just over 1,000. Conditions and circumstances, while still often horrible, have also gotten better in that time.

So where do things stand if the DJJ has survived the chopping block? KKPC 89.3 brings us a look:

Under Brown’s revised proposal, juvenile parole operations will still be phased to county responsibility over the next two years. Furthermore, the jurisdictional age of the DJJ will go down to 23 from 25–meaning wards (other than those awaiting transfer to adult prison) will automatically be released from custody on their 23rd rather than 25th birthday.

The news was greeted with relief in numerous quarters:

California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation Spokesman Bill Sessa says the governor’s reversal was for good cause.

‘The youth we are serving, some of them, are from counties that don’t have treatment programs for violent youth,’ he says. Moreover, Sessa says the DJJ has made great strides in streamlining its budget, closing some facilities and laying off headquarters staff. ‘We’re focusing on serving our youth,’ he says.

Department of Finance Spokesman H.D. Palmer adds that counties are already dealing with adult prison realignment. ‘And we didn’t want to overburden that process, knowing that there’s a transition period we’re going through right now,’ he says.

In Los Angeles County, which has about 300 juveniles in the state system, more than any other county, Chief Probation Officer Jerry Powers calls Brown’s change of heart ‘great news.’

Palmer’s observation on the overburdened state of the system is one that particularly resonates. Many of the counties involved do not have separate facilities for youth, a problem that is made far worse if the adult population is in chaos when the kids arrive.

While we advocate for rehabilitation over incarceration, there is a small percentage of youth offenders, often the excessively violent ones, who need to be put behind bars . We simply note that the overwhelming majority of youth offenders currently incarcerated can benefit from other programs, rather than simply being locked up.

“Often the ones going to DJJ are the most significant risk to public safety,” said Karen Pank, executive director of the Chief Probation Officers of California. The governor’s latest plan “is good for California as a whole, not just for probation departments or for counties. You need to ensure that there are all of the tools available for dealing with this population.”

When she heard this news our own Susan Lankford said “I like what Karen Pank has to say. We are definitely not set up in local counties to handle this population of young criminals. It sounds as though Sacramento has listened, at last!”

We are glad to see that Gov. Brown took a slightly longer-term view. Too often are short-term gains embraced despite grossly inflated long-term costs, particularly in politics.

Category: Humane Exposures |
| May 17, 2012
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Dana Kaplan – A Call to Action: Criminal Justice Reform

Category: Criminal Justice, Prison Reform | Tags: , , , , ,
| May 16, 2012
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Recipe for a Dark Future: Kids in Solitary Confinement

Door to SolitaryAmy Fettig of the National Prison Project and Matt Simpson, of the Texas ACLU have tackled a rough topic- one to which advocates for juvenile justice should pay heed — the plight of juveniles in solitary confinement.

16 and Solitary: Texas Jails Isolate Children is their examination of this problem, and I would venture to call it required reading. Using data from a recent report,  Conditions for Certified Juveniles in Texas County Jails, by researchers at the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas, they provide even more ammunition in the battle to get our juveniles out of adult prisons.

Here is one key passage that I believe provides a good summation:

While in solitary confinement, children’s mental and physical health is severely compromised. The LBJ report notes the broad consensus among mental health experts that such long-term solitary confinement is psychologically harmful for adults. For children in solitary confinement, the impact is even more traumatic. Children experience time differently than adults, have a special need for social stimulation, and are damaged by forced isolation more quickly and severely than adults. It is also true that young people’s brains are still developing, which places youth at a higher risk of psychological harm when healthy development is impeded. But the psychological harm is not limited to developmental issues — it often means life or death. As the report notes, the risk of suicide and self-harm, including cutting and other acts of self-mutilation, increases exponentially for children in adult jails who are 36 times more likely to commit suicide than their counterparts in juvenile facilities.

Lives are quite literally on the line here. The difference between juvenile and adult psychology is thrown into stark relief when you look at the impact solitary confinement has on each. But that’s not all. In addition to the hazards these practices pose to the incarcerated, they also hold a dim outlook for those outside the prison bars.

Reviewing the data, the LBJ report notes ‘the impact of prolonged isolation may have mental health consequences that will make it difficult for these youth to reintegrate, and may increase the likelihood that they will recidivate.’ Solitary confinement hurts children and ultimately undermines public safety.

Once more it all comes down to foundations laid in childhood. Even though the rationale often presented is that the kids are put in solitary to protect them from the adult prison population (something that does need to occur), doing so simply damages them in other ways.

Children do not belong in adult facilities. As a matter of fact the vast majority would be better served by community programs, substance abuse / mental health aid, and other rehabilitation-oriented approaches. This is a fact proved over and over again by studies from both sides of the political aisle.

As publishers we have tried to address these issues both through our most recent book, Born, Not Raised, and through the news round-ups we present on this blog. We can only hope that by helping to put a human face on the kids behind bars we can mobilize people to make effective, and fiscally sensible, change.

Category: Born Not Raised, Juvenile Justice | Tags: , , , , ,
| May 14, 2012
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Where is the world’s prison capital? Would you believe Louisiana?

Cell at Camp HUnfortunately I find it all too easy to believe. As long time readers are aware, I’m the member of the team who is not in San Diego. I’m located in my home town of New Orleans, a city as rich in culture as it is in tragedy.

Cindy Chang of the New Orleans Times-Picayune showed us just how bad things have become in her cover story yesterday.

Louisiana is the world’s prison capital. The state imprisons more of its people, per head, than any of its U.S. counterparts. First among Americans means first in the world. Louisiana’s incarceration rate is nearly triple Iran’s, seven times China’s and 10 times Germany’s.

The hidden engine behind the state’s well-oiled prison machine is cold, hard cash. A majority of Louisiana inmates are housed in for-profit facilities, which must be supplied with a constant influx of human beings or a $182 million industry will go bankrupt.

I’ve often written about creeping privatization in our justice system, and with good reason. How can actual justice be involved when the bottom line is to fill as many beds as possible? It’s basic common sense that the two are incompatible, and the latter is ethically questionable.

Even worse is the fact that this approach is funneling money away from programs that do work. Chang continues:

More money spent on locking up an ever-growing number of prisoners means less money for the very institutions that could help young people stay out of trouble, giving rise to a vicious cycle. Louisiana spends about $663 million a year to feed, house, secure and provide medical care to 40,000 inmates. Nearly a third of that money — $182 million — goes to for-profit prisons, whether run by sheriffs or private companies.

‘Clearly, the more that Louisiana invests in large-scale incarceration, the less money is available for everything from preschools to community policing that could help to reduce the prison population,’ said Marc Mauer, executive director of The Sentencing Project, a national criminal justice reform group. ‘You almost institutionalize the high rate of incarceration, and it’s even harder to get out of that situation.’

It pains me to see my hope at the forefront of such a misguided and disastrous trend, especially in these recent years after Hurricane Katrina and the levee failure. We now lock up more human beings than any place else in the world, and yet we still have one of the highest rates of violent and property crime in the entire United States. It’s just not working.

If you want a look at what the rest of the nation will look like if we do not reverse this trend of privatization, read Ms. Chang’s article. It is an extensive and disturbing piece of reporting that will send chills down your spine. I’d also recommend Charles Mondonado’s article in Gambit Weekly – Privatizing Louisiana’s Prisons.

There is a truly frightening future being forged, and I am sitting on it’s leading edge. Please take a look at what is happening down here. Educate yourself before this model becomes the norm.

It is far more expensive to do nothing.

Category: Criminal Justice, Humane Exposures, Prison | Tags: , , ,
| May 9, 2012
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Born, Not Raised Just Won an IPPY Award!

IPPY Award 2012We are thrilled to announce that our newest book – Born, Not Raised: Voices from Juvenile Hall – has just won an Independent Publisher Book Award. To be precise, it won their Independent Voice Award!

What are the “IPPY” Awards? Here is a description taken from their website:

The ‘IPPY’ Awards were conceived as a broad-based, unaffiliated awards program open to all members of the independent publishing industry, and are open to authors and publishers worldwide who produce books written in English and intended for the North American market.

We have worked hard to share a vision of the human beings behind the statistics. It is one thing to hear about the number of people incarcerated in the U.S. and quite another to be brought face-to-face with women and kids in the system and hear about it in their own words. This is why we create the books that we publish.

While it’s an ego boost to receive an award, the really important thing is that the recognition will help get these personal narratives in front of more readers. We are confident that the social issues we write about can not only be addressed, but can also be addressed in a fashion that improves the lot of many unfortunates, while also reducing the cost burden on our state and federal tax base.

We are very proud of this award and would like to thank everyone over at Independent Publisher!

Category: Awards, Humane Exposures | Tags: , ,
| May 7, 2012
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Homelessness, NIMBY, and Perpetual Children

Today I’d like to share an article by Pat LaMarche that touches on aspects of the homeless problem that we have not yet examined in depth.

In her recent column on Common Dreams, None of the Poor Children Matter,  LaMarche comments on an increasingly common trend in US cities – the banishing from view of those in our society’s broken segments from the common view. This NIMBY (Not In My Back Yard) mentality is one that we are seeing with increasing frequency, and its “out of sight, out of mind,” stance can only make an already intolerable situation worse.

Officials in Clearwater, Fla., are working diligently to put the hungry in their place. In this case that place is eight miles out of town at a facility near the county jail. The St. Vincent de Paul soup kitchen is — according to the well fed elitists running the town — ‘enabling’ the handout taking behavior of those just looking for a meal.

This practice of the ‘haves banishing the have-nots’ to the hinterland is just a part of a trend that is sweeping the country. Clearwater isn’t alone in Florida and the practice is spreading to other regions. Philadelphia, Pa., has been in the news recently for their cutting-edge political philosophy that feeding people not only enables them but downright insults them if done in the presence of those who don’t need assistance.

To shuffle off the homeless to a site eight miles out of town in this fashion is reprehensible, to say the least. This is especially true when you factor in the number of children counted among the homeless.

It is appalling to shunt aside starving kids like this. I think we can all agree that children are innocent and not responsible for their circumstances. Privation during formative years like this is a recipe for a lifetime of ills, both social and physical.

The point that LaMarche makes with poigniant personal narrative is that not all of these children are young. The developmentally disabled are effectively children all their lives, and are often thrust onto the streets when their parents or guardians pass away.

 Many of the single women I worked with were permanently and equivalently 10, 11 or 12 years of age. Bonita — none of the names I’ll use here are real — told me when she showed up homeless at our once majestic hotel-turned-shelter, that she’d always wanted to live in a great big house with high ceilings and long stairways, but she didn’t know it would have so many homeless people in it.

You laugh or you cry in that line of work. Some days you do both.

I strongly advise reading this article, particularly for the story of the woman referred to simply as “Joan.” Trust me, it is a story that you need to read.

Drew Harwell of The Tampa Bay Times notes the ongoing battle between the city of Tampa and its homeless population: battle that involves the homeless being pushed further and further out of sight, despite their overwhelming numbers.

With more than 15,000 homeless people, the Tampa-St. Petersburg-Clearwater area has the highest rate of homelessness among metropolitan areas in the country, according to a 2012 report by the National Alliance to End Homelessness.

But Clearwater’s offerings for the homeless have shrunk as officials have pushed for consolidating services in places like Safe Harbor or a nearby tent city named Pinellas Hope — a practice critics deride as ‘warehousing.’ The Clearwater Homeless Intervention Project, a shelter and day center next to the soup kitchen that offered a number of services, closed last year after the city withdrew a $100,000 grant.

Are they deliberately trying to create new criminals? Think about it: if all of your options were suddenly gone and you had to resort to crime to put food in your children’s mouths wouldn’t you do it? Be honest.

By relocating food assistance eight miles out of town, the city is placing unnecessary hardship on people who already have a mountain of woes. The solution is to find a way to reintegrate them with day to day life, not to push them away in a fashion reminiscent of the way feudal lords in the Middle Ages treated their peasantry.

This trend of warehousing is one we intend to watch closely, as it is antithetical to every reputable finding on the subject of homelessness.

LaMarche is host of Maine’s The Pulse Morning Show (available online at zoneradio.com) and is also the author of Left Out In America: The State of Homelessness in the United States. Ms. LaMarche was the Green Party’s vice-presidential candidate in the 2004 U.S. presidential election.

If you are interested in learning more about the homeless issue in the US, you might wish to check out downTown U.S.A.: A Personal Journey with The Homeless, the first in our trilogy of books about modern-day social ills.

Category: downTown U.S.A., Homelessness, Humane Exposures, Mental Health | Tags: , , ,
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