| February 24, 2012
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Library Journal Reviews Born, Not Raised!

Born, Not Raised: Voices From Juvenile Hall

Born, Not Raised: Voices From Juvenile Hall

We are thrilled to announce that Library Journal has reviewed our upcoming release for net month- Born, Not Raised: Voices From Juvenile Hall!

Unfortunately the review is only available in the print edition, but it can also be found on the Barnes and Noble website’s entry for the book. It is the closing portion of the review that we are most proud of (emphasis mine):

VERDICT More policy-oriented than academic in tone, this book is recommended for specialized juvenile justice collections and libraries holding the other two volumes in the series. Though government austerity is in vogue, this book is a powerful reminder of the social costs of neglecting the specific needs of at-risk youth.—Antoinette Brinkman, Evansville, IN

And that is exactly what we hope for it to be, a powerful reminder. More than that it is our hope that it will also help to galvanize more people into action to fix this broken system.

Category: Humane Exposures |
| February 23, 2012
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Bipartisan Efforts to Reform Juvenile Justice

Behind barsIn states like Ohio and Michigan efforts are being made to reduce the prison population. Efforts that include both left wing groups like the ACLU and a variety of hard right politicians, a moment of bipartisan cooperation in the midst of a turbulent and vituperative run up to the presidential election.

What can possibly get these two political extremes to agree? Pat Shelenberger of The Bridge gives us some details:

‘Oh, my gosh,’ [Mike] Brickner, the Ohio ACLU’s director of communications, said some months later, ‘if you can get the ACLU and the most conservative Republicans and liberal Democrats — people who usually can’t agree on anything — to come together, then you can get some momentum built.’

That momentum resulted in sweeping legislation overwhelmingly approved by the Republican-dominated Ohio Legislature and signed by Republican Gov. John Kasich last year, pulling back on years of ‘tough on crime’ laws that had caused massive crowding in the state’s prisons and a huge increase in its corrections spending.

Similar efforts are under way in other states, mostly led by conservatives, including some who once hewed to the ‘lock’em-up-and-throw-away-the-key’ attitude.

‘It’s almost a tectonic shift,’ said Ken Sikkema, former Republican leader in the Michigan Senate and House. ‘Even the people who have taken the position that we’ve got to be tough on crime are now saying, ‘We’ve got to be smart on crime.”

As is hardly shocking one of the prime areas being looked at is juvenile justice. Many of the “tough on crime” laws, the majority of which include mandatory sentencing language, have been more of a burden than a blessing.

It also illustrates why we chose the title It’s More Expensive to Do Nothing, for our documentary. Not only do we need to change our stance for the sake of our children and our communities, but also for the sake of our dwindling and increasingly strained state and federal budgets.

“What the research shows is when a youth ends up in adult prison, it has much harsher consequences for the youth” and for the community, said Michelle Weemhoff, a senior policy associate at the Michigan Council on Crime and Delinquency.

Removed from their homes and communities and exposed to the more-hardened adult inmates, juveniles are likely to commit more crimes, she said. Weemhoff and her organization are urging lawmakers to consider alternatives to incarceration, including in-home placement for low-risk offenders.

MDOC says it spends, on average, about $33,000 a year for each prison inmate. Incarcerating youths in privately owned juvenile facilities costs about $200 a day, Weemhoff said. Placing youthful offenders in their own homes, where they can be supervised and participate in treatment programs, averages about $10 a day, she added.

The numbers are irrefutable, and should be embraced by any who lay claim to a stance of being a fiscal conservative. Since one out of every one hundred people in the United States is behind bars these dollar amounts rapidly soar into the stratosphere.

In Ohio Republican governor John Kasich signed a law geared toward diverting non-violent first time offenders into community based programs, rather than simply incarcerating them. It also allows inmates to earn points toward an early release by participating in vocational, mental health, and educational programs.

Just as importantly it also restored judges’ discretion when sentencing youths. Discretion that had been crippled by the wave of tough on crime laws passed across the nation in the ’80’s and ’90’s.

The new law also restored judges’ discretion to decide when youths should be charged as adults — and it offered alternatives to incarceration for young offenders.

The idea of justice reform is often viewed as a province of the liberal left, however the current reality is that more and more conservatives are embracing it now that they are becoming aware of the harsh financial realities. Let us hope this trend continues.

Are there bipartisan efforts like this going on in your state or local community? If so please chime in with a comment and tell us about them.

Category: Humane Exposures |
| February 17, 2012
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An Audio Interview with director Alan Swyer

Welcome to our latest Humane Exposures audiocast! Today we sit down with director Alan Swyer, who directed our own feature length documentary, It’ More Expensive to Do Nothing, as well as The Buddy Holly Story, Beisbol, and more.

About Alan Swyer

Alan Swyer has been a faculty member at the American Film Institute, the University of Southern California, and Pepperdine University, and now teaches at Chapman University.  Internationally, he has given seminars on writing and directing in both France and Singapore.  Mr. Swyer studied at the Sorbonne University in Paris and speaks fluent French.

As a filmmaker, he has worked as writer, director, and/or producer on projects ranging from our own It’s More Expensive to Do Nothing to HBO’s award winning Rebound; The Buddy Holly Story; Alfred Hitchcock Presents; and his award-winning documentary The Spiritual Revolution.  Among his other work is Beisbol, the winner of the 2009 Imagen Award for best feature-length documentary, which is the definitive look at Latin baseball—its origins, lore and impact upon the game today with narration by Andy Garcia. Beisbol just screened at the Baseball Hall of Fame in Coooperstown; and Leimert Park, about a black cultural mecca in Los Angeles. He has also directed assorted music and video and commercials, and produced the NBC special entitled The Diabetes Epidemic: Challenges & Breakthroughs.

Mr. Swyer served as film critic for the Hollywood Reporter, as well as being a frequent contributor to Britain’s Blues & Rhythm.  He has produced albums including a Ray Charles compilation of love songs and has written liner notes for CDs ranging from The Best of Big Joe Turner, to The Fiftieth Anniversary of Doo-Wop, and Ray Charles & Betty Carter.

Mr. Swyer is also an activist of note, having created, in conjunction with the LA County Probation Department and the Juvenile Judiciary of Los Angeles, the Los Angeles Teen Court, which has had remarkable success as an “intervention” for the first-time juvenile offenders.  In addition, he is a Board Member of the Compton Baseball Academy, whose purpose is to get at-risk youth off the streets and onto the playing field.

Category: Humane Exposures, Interview, It's More Expensive to Do Nothing | Tags: , , , , , ,
| February 16, 2012
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Attack at the Bridge City Center for Youth raises new calls for reform

For those who are unaware, I am a native of New Orleans. This is one reason that I take the issue of juvenile justice so very seriously. All one needs is a moment on Google to see just how many hurdles we face down here ranging from the disparity in how justice is meted out according to race to the profound lack of effective facilities and trained staff.

This was thrown into very sharp relief recently when a 26 year old juvenile justice specialist was attacked in the Bridge City Center for Youth. The unnamed woman watched as inmates barricaded the door, ripped the phone from the wall, smashed her radio, and spent the next 45 minutes groping and threatening to rape her. The three youth’s involved were age 14, 15, and 16 respectively.

WDSU TV reports:

According to the Sheriff’s Office, as one of the boys cursed and taunted the woman, one of the boys was seen with his genitals exposed in front of the woman. The accused “ringleader,” Normand said, was being held in the facility on attempted murder charges.

The woman was rescued after one of the boys covered the security camera with a rug, blacking out the camera. An employee passing the video viewing room noticed the camera blacked out and alerted other counselors.

There are many troubling aspects to this, and in my opinion most of them are directly traceable to lack of funding and accountability. An editorial on NOLA.com points out many of the worrisome issues surrounding this incident:

But while the office is characterizing its response as swift, one important action didn’t happen quickly: reporting the incident to local law enforcement. The Jefferson Parish Sheriff’s Office didn’t learn about the attack until two days after it happened, according to spokesman Col. John Fortunato. That delay is hard to understand. Even though the suspects were already in custody, local law enforcement officials surely should be alerted when a crime takes place at the center. If calling the Sheriff’s Office isn’t part of the youth center’s protocol, it should be.

Investigators also need to determine why a single female counselor was supervising 11 teenage boys on her own. Two other employees were absent, but there should be a better backup plan when there are staffing shortages.

How’s that for a direct effect of staff shortages? Having a young woman assaulted and threatened with rape. It’s a side of the equation that many don’t even consider. The editorial also touches on the aspect that I find most troublesome – how long it took for someone to notice.

The WDSU report notes that the woman was assigned to the justice dormitory because two other employees were absent. That may well be the case, but one young woman to eleven youth offenders is not a safe equation no matter how you slice it. The editorial continues:

It’s also troubling that it took nearly an hour for other staffers to realize the woman was in trouble. Another employee, who happened to be passing the video control room, noticed an inmate throwing a rug over a camera, Col. Fortunato said. Video cameras are only useful as a monitoring tool if someone is paying attention to them.

So another staffer noticed because he happened to be walking by the video monitoring room? Where were the staff that were supposed to be watching the feed? Were they downsized out of a job or were they simply neglecting their duties?

Unfortunately this is not an isolated incident for the facility. Not only that but the local law enforcement agrees with assessment that budget cuts are to blame. Maya Rodriguez of WWL TV brings us the details (keep your eyes out for Dana Kaplan, who we recently interviewed here on HE):

“The state has got to step up and provide the necessary funding to make sure that these facilities are safe and secure and that’s not what’s happening at the present time,” said Sheriff Normand. How true. His campaign to release juvenile records however is an iffy one. A number of programs like that have been being implemented across the U.S. and many of them have crashed and burned. Among others the ACLU is challenging the practice in a number of jurisdictions.

It’s easy to get mad at the offenders here, their behavior was vile there is no doubt. If we wish to effect any sort of lasting change, a way to prevent this sort of incident, then we need to look at long term solutions. That requires funding.

The really frustrating part is that funding of the proper programs now will result in both more effective programs and less overall financial expenditure. With budgets tight everywhere politicians want to show immediate savings, even if that means that the long term costs, both human and financial, will skyrocket.

Category: Born Not Raised, It's More Expensive to Do Nothing, Juvenile Justice, New Orleans, Prison Reform | Tags: ,
| February 13, 2012
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Tent Cities: Modern day Hoovervilles appear across the nation as homelessness grows

HoovervilleThe University of Washington has a special online project, The Great Depression, that takes a hard look at Hoovervilles. For those not familiar with the term here is an explanation drawn from that website:

Homelessness followed quickly from joblessness once the economy began to crumble in the early 1930s. Homeowners lost their property when they could not pay mortgages or pay taxes. Renters fell behind and faced eviction. By 1932 millions of Americans were living outside the normal rent-paying housing market.

Many squeezed in with relatives. Unit densities soared in the early 1930s. Some squatted, either defying eviction and staying where they were, or finding shelter in one of the increasing number of vacant buildings.

And hundreds of thousands–no one knows how many–took to the streets, finding what shelter they could, under bridges, in culverts, or on vacant public land where they built crude shacks. Some cities allowed squatter encampments for a time, others did not.

The truly frightening thing is how much this resembles today. The BBC just released an in depth look at the rise of tent cities in the modern day U.S. The following description would not have been at all out of place in the headlines of Hoover’s era:

Just off the side of a motorway on the fringes of the picturesque town of Ann Arbor, Michigan, a mismatched collection of 30 tents tucked in the woods has become home – home to those who are either unemployed, or whose wages are so low that they can no longer afford to pay rent.

Conditions are unhygienic. There are no toilets and electricity is only available in the one communal tent where the campers huddle around a wood stove for warmth in the heart of winter.

Ice weighs down the roofs of tents, and rain regularly drips onto the sleeping campers’ faces.

Tent cities have sprung up in and around at least 55 American cities – they represent the bleak reality of America’s poverty crisis.

With unemployment the highest it’s been since the Great Depression, and state budgets being slashed left and right we should not be at all surprised by the societal fallout. After all, many of those budget cuts used to fund programs that cared for our nation’s poorest and most at risk members.

According to the BBC report there are currently about 5,000 people living in the dozens of homeless encampments that have sprung up over recent time. The largest one is Pinella’s Hope in central Florida which spans thirteen acres. With thirteen million unemployed Americans it is sad to say these numbers will probably grow.

Even in the best of times there is a stigma to homelessness for many people, one that exists even though the reasons for that homelessness are often beyond the individual’s control. This becomes more and more tragic as the number of people living on the streets increases.

The BBC piece closes by taking note of this:

The stark reality is that many of them are people who very recently lived comfortable middle-class lives.

For them, the economic downturn came too fast and many have been forced to trade their middle-class homes for lives in shelters, motels and at the far extreme, tented encampments.

Every day there are more stories about people who’ve become jobless due to austerity measures. The jump from jobless to homeless is a small one, and many end up on the streets every day.

In downTown: U.S.A. we looked at the homeless problem and possible ways to fix it, mostly centered on rehabilitation and educational programs. These are the exact programs under fire as the states tighten their belts, and the exact programs we need to support!

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

Category: Humane Exposures |
| February 11, 2012
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Report finds Gov Brown’s planned closure of state juvenile facilities financially viable, but is that a good thing?

Earlier this January California Gov. Jerry Brown announced his strategy for fading out the Division of Juvenile Justice system by 2014. Counties would have to cough up $10 million towards developing local alternatives to the state level facilities that will close. Members of the law enforcement community and the counties themselves have been quite vocal in their concern that they lack adequate secure juvenile placement facilities for high-risk youth offenders the DiJJ currently serves.

It would now seem, according to a report just released by The Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice in San Francisco, not to be the case. According to their numbers California’s counties easily have the capacity required to implement the Governor’s proposed closures.

Rina Palta of KALW News gives us some details:

The CJCJ reports a different picture. From 1996-2007, CJCJ says 41 counties have invested $438 million in state and federal funding for building new and secure juvenile justice facilities. That’s resulted in California having a surplus of 4,090 beds that the CJCJ says is enough to house and serve high-risk offenders at the county level over the proposed realignment period.

Even though juvenile crime in California has been in steady decline for several decades and at an all time low of 52,000 felony arrests in 2010—down from 76,100 in 1998—counties continue to build jails and increase their bed capacity.

In the last ten years, Alameda County has replaced the dilapidated 48-year-old Alameda County Juvenile Hall with a new 358-bed facility given. San Francisco County built a new 150-bed juvenile hall to replace the 51 year old run down 132-bed facility.

Youth justice advocates, probation chiefs and district attorneys are apprehensive about the proposed closures. They warn that it could well lead to more youths being sentenced to doing time in adult facilities, something proven to simply manufacture hardened criminals.

While the ability to afford the closures is there this is not a simple issue of finances. There is little training at the county level for servicing the the very specialized needs of juvenile offenders. Once more it becomes a matter of short-term fiscal savings vs. the long-term damage that can be done.

Facilities and staff must be prepared for the influx of youth if we are to refrain from creating an even larger problem, and that at the cost of lives that could have been reintegrated into society.

Decisions of this magnitude always require the best data available, and hard numbers are always a good thing. Now that we have a clear picture of the actual ability to bear the costs we can begin to focus on what steps would be needed to prepare the counties to properly handle the transition. Otherwise we face exponentially greater expense as these kids enter the revolving door of recidivism.

These are the steps that will guarantee success or failure, not mere finances. The current set up is surely flawed, but we run the risk of sacrificing the future for small “gains” today.

What are your thoughts on the matter? Do you support the Governor’s aim to close the state facilities over the next few years or do you think it’s a mistake? Let us know and tell us why!

Category: Humane Exposures | Tags: , , ,
| February 9, 2012
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Faces of Justice: An Interview with Judge Irene Sullivan

JudgeSullivanJudge Irene Sullivan is a well known figure in Florida and nationally when it comes to the subject of juvenile justice. A retired judge she is currently an adjunct professor at Stetson University College of Law and has been the juvenile track leader for circuit judge’s education.

For more information about Judge Sullivan please see her full bio at the end of this interview. The number of task forces she is on is truly stunning! But now, on with the interview!

HE: What drew you to working with juvenile justice in the beginning? Was it the focus of your work as a trial lawyer or was it something that began after you attained the judiciary?

IS: I’d never done any juvenile or criminal work as a trial lawyer.  When elected to the bench in 1998, I was assigned to family law, i.e. divorces, domestic violence, etc. After three years, I was asked to move to our newly-created Unified Family Court, where I would serve as a juvenile judge handling both dependency (child abuse, abandonment, neglect) cases and delinquency, as well as related family law matters of the parents or guardians of the kids who appeared before us. It was an experimental court and I jumped at the opportunity to serve in a “one family, one judge” model, which I did for nine years. I enjoyed the kids the most, even the delinquent ones!

HE: Would you be kind enough to tell us a bit about your visit to Umatilla Academy for Girls and how it influenced your stance and actions since then?

IS: Umatilla Academy for Girls was a residential program for high risk girls located in a former children’s hospital in a small central Florida town. Not long after becoming a juvenile judge, I visited the program as three of the girls from our circuit had been sentenced there. I actually wept when I saw the atrocious conditions of the place: dirty walls, dirty sacks for clothing, terrible food, no exercise, girls running wild, screaming inside, and no doors on the toilets or curtains on the showers, despite the presence of male guards. It was awful, and after my findings were confirmed, it was shut down. That experience taught me that kids deserve kind and nurturing treatment everywhere, even when committed, and that people will listen to make that happen.

HE: One hundred years ago the first juvenile courts were created in Chicago, Illinois. Today we find a system in shambles and the effectiveness that was once an example for the rest of the world seems long lost. What factors do you believe brought us from there to here?

IS: Hopefully, we’re slowly returning to more of the old Chicago court juvenile model. For the last 25 years, kids have been treated like adults; we’ve lost focus on prevention, diversion and rehabilitation; legislators run on “tough on crime” platforms that include kids, and public schools have turned into places where a kid first gets arrested. It’s beginning to turn around, especially in states like Florida under the enlightened and inspired leadership of Department of Juvenile Justice Secretary Wansley Walters.

HE: Let’s talk a bit about Evanston High School. Last May you wrote a column for the Juvenile Justice Information Exchange in which you levied high praise on their approach and it’s effectiveness. Now that you’ve had half a year to process the experience would you share a bit about it with our readers?

IS: At Evanston High School just north of Chicago, I became part of a “peace circle” of students, teachers and counselors who shared their deepest fears and desires, and then promoted restorative justice as a better way to deal with school-based infractions.  I learned that a “peer jury” could deliver more appropriate sanctions than the court system, for example, having the disruptive student not only apologize to the teacher but show up early for a month to help her organize her classroom, and not have a criminal record. It’s a wonderful program and should be replicated nationwide.

HE: What would you point out as exemplary programs for dealing with juvenile offenders both in Florida and nation- wide? To what do you attribute their success?

IS: Florida is know for its progressive, humane and nurturing girls programming, in and out of residential care, due to the efforts of Dr. Lawanda Ravoira, with the National Center for Girls headquartered in Jacksonville, and Pace Center for Girls, which has 17 alternative schools throughout the state where counseling, education, therapy and mentoring is delivered in a very therapeutic way to at risk girls who have histories of physical, sexual and emotional abuse. Other evidence-based programs throughout the country, such as those run by the Annie E. Casey Foundation and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, have revolutionized detention care and juvenile drug treatment. As more dollars are put into prevention and diversion, we are starting to see juvenile jails being closed or consolidated.

HE: What do you espouse as the best means of combating recidivism among juvenile offenders?

IS: Recidivism is a big problem in the re-entry of teenage boys from residential programs back into the community. The best way to reduce it is through a re-entry program designed by Parenting with Love and Limits (PLL),created by Dr. Scott Sells, that brings the family and family counseling into the residential program from the time the juvenile is first committed, and follows the juvenile and family after re-entry into the community, to provide aftercare and prevent recidivism. The PLL program not only works to reduce recidivism, it shortens the length of residential stay as it is based on an “earned release” philosophy.  You can’t fix the kid until you fix the family, and that’s what PLL does.

HE: Much like our own Susan Lankford, you also utilize a lot of personal narrative in your book, Raised By The Courts. Did you collect all those stories yourself or were you assisted by other interviewers? How did those interviews change your own perspective on the issue?

IS: The stories in my book, Raised by the Courts: One Judge’s Insight into Juvenile Justice, are all true stories of the kids who appeared before me. Only the names have been changed. I began collecting these stories almost from “day one” on the juvenile bench, when I realized how complicated the lives of these kids were, how much chaos and violence they were exposed to daily, not only on the street but in the home.

HE: What would you say are the three most important things you have learned from your years dealing with these issues from the bench?

IS: The three most important things I learned, out of many, are that kids are not born bad; all kids need love, nurturing and, most important, hope, in their lives, and that a single caring adult can make a big difference in the life of the most hardened child.

HE: Every day it seems like technology progresses by leaps and bounds. What online tools do you think could improve our engagement with at risk youth, or allow us to serve them in a more efficient and cost effective fashion?

IS: I’m not the most computer literate person, that’s for sure, but I think that the internet, laptops, appropriate use of social media, can bring to many at risk kids the sense of connection and hope for the future that is lacking in traditional education and upbringing. I’m optimistic about it, despite the dangers of “sexting,” etc.

HE: Internet rumors are floating around about a new book as a follow up to Raised By The Courts. Is there any substance to them, and if so is there a timeline for publication yet?

IS: Yes, if I can discipline myself to finish it, I have a biography of one of the most abused and mistreated young men in my book in the works, as well as a fictional series based on juvenile court. Sort of like:  Law and Order in Juvenile Court!!!  Thanks for asking.

HE: Thank you for joining us Judge Sullivan, keep up the good work!

About Irene Sullivan: Judge Sullivan served as a juvenile and family court judge from 1999-2011 in the St. Petersburg/Clearwater area of Florida. Prior to that, she was a general partner at Harris, Barrett, Mann & Dew, L.L.P. in St. Petersburg, Florida, where she had a civil trial practice for 22 years and became an A-V rated trial lawyer.

She obtained a Juris Doctorate degree from Stetson University College of Law, cum laude, and a Bachelor of Science in Journalism, with honors, from Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism, in Evanston, Ill.

Judge Sullivan received the following awards:  The Florida Network of Youth and Family Services, Inc. Outstanding Community Partner Award; Clearwater and St. Petersburg Bar Associations’ Annual Judicial Appreciation Award; Stetson University College of Law Ben C. Willard Distinguished Alumni Award; Guardian ad Litem Community Advocate Award; Florida Association of School Social Workers’ Diamond Award; Salvation Army’s Children’s Justice Award; Pinellas Enrichment Through Mental Health Services (PEMHS) P.A.C.E. Award; Family Resource’s Family Advocate Award; Community Action Stops Abuse (CASA) Domestic Violence Champion Sponsor Award.

She has presented at many conferences and seminars involving juvenile crime, the importance of prevention and diversion, truancy, domestic violence and mental health issues for juveniles. In February, 2011, she was a keynote speaker at the Adolescent Conference sponsored by the Florida Juvenile Justice Association and the Florida Alcohol & Drug Abuse Association, where every registrant received a copy of her book, Raised by the Courts: One Judge’s Insight into Juvenile Justice, released by Kaplan Publishing Co. in November, 2010.

She currently sits on the following boards or task forces: The American Bar Association’s Commission on Youth At Risk; The Ounce of Prevention of Florida, Inc., PACE for girls, state and local; The Pinellas Community Foundation, The InterCultural Advocacy Institute; Florida Disproportionate Minority Contact Task Force; Blueprint Commission to Reform Juvenile Justice, and the Juvenile Indigent Defense Action Network at Barry University Law School, funded by the MacArthur Foundation. She’s an adjunct professor at Stetson University College of Law and has been the juvenile track leader for circuit judge’s education.

Category: Juvenile Justice, Parenting, Prison Reform | Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,
| February 4, 2012
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Things are heating up in Augusta: More firings among youth detention staff

Blue Sky in GeorgiaLast November November 19-year-old Jade Holder was beaten to death. Holder was incarcerated at the Augusta Youth Development Campus (YDC) at the time.

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!

Category: Humane Exposures |
| January 31, 2012
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New public-private partnership: $2 million commitment to support reform

OJJDPThe fight to fix our juvenile justice system just got a shot in the arm. Yesterday the U.S. Department of Justice’s Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP) and the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation announced a new partnership supporting innovative and effective reforms in treatment and services for youth involved in the juvenile justice and child welfare systems.

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:

These four organizations were selected by OJJDP and MacArthur because they helped develop, field test and evaluate effective best practice models included in the MacArthur Foundation’s Models for Change initiative. The intent is to build upon the foundation Models for Change has laid down, developing successful and replicable models of juvenile justice systems reform.

‘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.’

Models for Change is a national initiative supported by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation to accelerate reform of juvenile justice systems across the country.  Focused on efforts in select states, the initiative aims to create replicable reform models that effectively hold young people accountable for their actions, provide for their rehabilitation, protect them from harm, increase their life chances and manage the risk they pose to themselves and to public safety.  More information is available at www.modelsforchange.net.

Category: Humane Exposures |
| January 28, 2012
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Chief Justice of Georgia’s Supreme Court: State’s Juvenile Justice System Needs Overhaul

hunsteinThis 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.

Category: Humane Exposures |
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