“Urban Deconstruction,” an exhibit sponsored by Wells Fargo’s ArtsVibe Teen Program and the Juvenile Justice Information Exchange (JJIE), paints a dual portrait of Atlanta as both a modern marvel and a city in decay. The photographs on display at the Alliance Theater are a vision of the Southeastern metropolis as both towering buildings and dilapidated structures, a place where spiraling skyscrapers stand side-by-side with crumbling schoolhouses and abandoned, graffiti-covered interiors. The artwork, much like the city itself, is a demonstration of sharp contrasts and contradictions. The artists behind the exhibit, however, aren’t your average photojournalists. Devin Black, 18, of Sandy Springs, Ga.
The number of young people arrested in Florida’s public schools decreased by 48 percent from 2004 to 2012, according to a new Florida Department of Juvenile Justice report. Over the eight-year period, total public school arrests in the state fell from 24,000 to about 12,500 during the 2011-2012 school year. According to the report, 67 percent of all school-related arrests during the timeframe stemmed from misdemeanor offenses, with non-felony assault and battery, disorderly conduct and drug charges accounting for almost 56 percent of public school arrests over the eight-year period. Additionally, 51 percent of school-related arrests last year were attributed to first-time delinquents, a 7 percent drop from 2010-2011 statistics. In all, 65 percent of school-related arrests in the 2011-2012 school year in Florida were dismissed, not filed or eventually dismissed.
A proposal from Maine’s Department of Corrections (DOC) may change state laws that prohibit the housing of adults in juvenile holding facilities. Legislative Referendum (LR) 373, titled “An Act to Allow Young Adult Offenders to be Confined in Juvenile Correctional Facilities,” was submitted by the DOC for the first session of Maine’s 126th Legislature, which begins committee work this week. The proposal would allow inmates aged 18 to 25 to be held in juvenile facilities with unused beds. Department of Corrections Associate Commissioner Jody Breton told The Bangor Daily News the proposal would improve rehabilitation services and provide more resources for younger adult inmates. “It would allow us to provide more specific training to that age group,” she said.
A study recently published in the Archives of General Psychiatry suggests that children adversely affected by economic downturns as infants may be likelier to engage in delinquent behaviors and substance abuse when they are older adolescents and young adults. Culling data from 1997’s National Longitudinal Study of Youth, researchers at the State University of New York’s Upstate Medical University examined a nationally representative sample of almost 9,000 young people born between 1980 and 1984. According to the study, infants exposed to a 1 percent deviation from regional unemployment rate average were found to have greater odds of using marijuana, smoking cigarettes and drinking alcohol, as well as a greater likelihood than their cohorts of being arrested, affiliating with gangs or engaging in both petty or major theft. Researchers sought to examine the potential consequences of the 1980 and 1981 to 1982 recessions on adolescents, in particular the possibility that living in an economically-disadvantaged home during the timeframe was likelier to produce a young person involved in substance abuse or criminal activity. In late 1982, the national unemployment rate stood at 10.8 percent - the highest such rate in the United States since the Great Depression.
In December 2012, Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder signed into law a bill that allows individuals to increase the number of juvenile crimes that are annually erased from their records. Under the new law, individuals with juvenile records will be allowed to ask courts to erase as many as three misdemeanor offenses from their records each year, pending the case has been closed for at least a year. Under the previous law, individuals were only allowed one expunged misdemeanor offense annually, and eligible cases must have been closed for a minimum of five years. The law also allows people that were charged as juveniles to request the expunging of one felony offense from their record per year, pending the offense was not a crime that, in an adult court, would be eligible for a life sentence. The bill received unanimous approval from the state’s House and Senate, with Snyder signing it into law in late December.
A new study published in the journal Child Development finds that adolescents that eschew school for employment are more likely to be associated with antisocial behaviors than peers that either work less hours or focus solely on schooling. Researchers, over a five year window, examined the relationship between work hours and school attendance in a sample of almost 1,300 juvenile offenders. The study, conducted by researchers from Temple University, the University of Pittsburgh and the University of California, Irvine states that teens that work long hours while simultaneously attending high school classes were more likely to engage in antisocial behavior than classmates that had less work hours or did not work at all. In particular, researchers noted an apparent connection between high-intensity employment - categorized as more than 20 hours per week—and greater likelihoods of teens fostering antisocial behavior, such as bullying and vandalism. Teens that attended school regularly, without working, were found to demonstrate the least amount of antisocial behavior, while teens that worked long hours and did not attend classes regularly were found to be the likeliest adolescents to engage in antisocial activities.
The Maryland Board of Public Works has delayed voting on a potential $11.7 million contract that may allow a Carroll County juvenile facility to double the number of young people in residency. A key vote, originally scheduled for earlier this week, has been postponed for an additional three weeks. Pending approval, the measure would increase the number of juvenile residents at the Silver Oak Academy in Keymar, Md. from 48 to 96 young people. The service contract modification, which is termed from Feb.
The Centers for Disease Control’s National Center for Injury Prevention and Control (NCIPC) has published numerous studies analyzing firearms-related deaths and injuries data, but over the last 16 years, the NCIPC hasn’t conducted a single study exploring why such acts of violence take place. The reason, several former CDC directors say, is because pro-gun lobbyists made the topic of gun violence research forbidden through several measures adopted in the mid 1990s. In 1996, several legislators co-sponsored an amendment that would cut the CDC’s budget, with a House Appropriations Committee adopting an additional amendment that prohibited CDC funding “to advocate or promote gun control.” Eventually, $2.6 million was removed from the CDC’s budget -- the exact amount that the NCIPC spent on firearms injuries studies a year prior. The National Rifle Association (NRA) has long been critical of the CDC, with NRA executive vice president Wayne LaPierre recently telling the Atlanta Journal Constitution (AJC) that he believed the agency was promoting a political agenda through the NCIPC in 1995. Other gun proponents agreed.
The Special Council on Criminal Justice Reform for Georgians recently released a report claiming that the state could save an estimated $88 million by reducing the number of young people held in secure facilities over the next five years. The authors of the report recommend decreasing the state’s total out-of-home adjudicated population by more than a quarter by 2018, stating that the measure would allow “significant opportunities for savings and reallocation of resources.”
The report states that status offenders should not be subjected to either short-term or long-term detention, while young people accused of misdemeanors would be better served by diversions to community-based programs. Combined, status offenders and youth found guilty of misdemeanors represented more than a quarter of Georgia’s juvenile lock-up population in 2011. Currently, almost 30 crimes are considered “designated felonies” in the state of Georgia, including several property offenses, such as smash and grab burglaries. Last year, however, almost two-fifths of the designated felons in the state’s youth developmental campuses (YDC) were assessed as “low-risk,” while approximately 40 percent of young people in Georgia YDCs in 2011 were detained for committing non-violent offenses. The report suggest revising the state’s Designated Felony Act (DFA) to establish a two-class system that “continues to allow for restrictive custody in all designated felony (DF) cases while adjusting the dispositional sanctions to take into account both offense severity and risk level.”
Prior to entering state custody, the council suggests that young people be assessed for their likelihood of committing future crimes and given mental health screenings.
UPDATE: The Henry & Rilla White Foundation, Inc. released a response to these reports, which can be found here: Letter to The Reader Forum - Miami Herald. With more than $1.2 million in annual benefits and salary - a majority of which stems from state tax payers - Florida’s Department of Juvenile Justice says it’s time to decrease the pay of William Schossler, president of Tallahassee’s The Henry & Rilla White Youth Foundation. Schossler, 65, heads a nonprofit that currently holds 23 statewide juvenile justice contracts in Florida, with the foundation managing numerous residential treatment beds and funding programs that grants adolescents access to therapy and counseling after leaving state care. In total, the Henry & Rilla White Youth Foundation’s juvenile justice contracts with Florida are tallied at an estimated $10.2 million in value. The state DJJ, however, believes that Schossler’s pay - which in 2010, consisted of almost $400,000 in salary and more than $800,000 in additional compensations - is excessive, with Florida juvenile justice chief Wansley Walters stating that the funding should go towards youth services instead.
