Ohio Legislators Propose Bill Giving Kids the Right to Counsel in Interrogations

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Earlier this month, in a narrow 4-3 decision, the Ohio state Supreme Court ruled juveniles are not entitled to the many of the same legal protections as adults, including the right to counsel during police interrogations that occur before charges are filed. Now, several state legislators are responding, proposing a law that would overrule the high court’s decision. Ohio state Minority Whip Rep. Tracy Maxwell Heard, a Columbus-area Democrat, began drafting the proposed bill a year before the Oct. 3 Supreme Court ruling, The (Cleveland) Plain Dealer reports. The General Assembly proposal, co-sponsored by Rep. Ross McGregor, a Republican from Springfield, requires juveniles be informed of their right to counsel - either with an attorney or a parent or guardian - prior to police interrogations.

From the Streets to Cyberspace: What are the Links Between Gang Membership and Internet Use?

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Gang members may be using the Internet to commit crimes – more so than non-gang members – according to a study published in October by JRSA Forum, the official newsletter of the Justice Research and Statistics Association. The study examined the crossover between gang-associated activities and Internet use. “Gang Offending and Online Behavior,” written by Arizona State University’s Scott H. Decker and Sam Houston State University’s David Pyrooz, involved 585 interviews with current and former gang members in five cities, including Cleveland, Los Angeles and St. Louis. According to the researchers, the average age of the subjects ranged from 25 for current gang members to 28 for ex-gang members, while young people that did not self-identify as gang members reported an average age of 23.

Community Key to Reducing Youth Gang Violence, Expert Says

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Community Involvement, Relational Networks Key to Reducing Youth-Related Gang Violence in Los Angeles, says City’s Head of Gang Reduction and Youth Development Office
“Youth in a very diverse environment continue to solve conflicts through violence,” said Guillermo Céspedes, director of the Mayor’s Office of Gang Reduction and Youth Development for the City of Los Angeles. “We kept doing the same thing and expecting a different result.”
Céspedes was the keynote speaker for Thursday’s “Improving Citizen Security in Central America: Options for Responding to Youth Violence” event at the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington, D.C. He said that gang culture is “embedded in the identity of the city,” with many residents displaying a “certain unconscious pride” about Los Angeles being considered the “gang capital of the world.”

“LA has, documented, roughly 450 gangs within the boundaries of the city and 45,000 documented gang members” he said. “If we include the county, the whole county region, those numbers double.”

Prior to 2007, the City of Los Angeles primarily focused on community-based approaches and youth gang services, Céspedes said. Frequently, he said that law enforcement used “very aggressive” strategies, such as the controversial Community Resources Against Street Hoodlums (CRASH) and Operation Hammer programs to combat gang violence. “I work very closely with law enforcement, especially with the chief of police,” he said.

National Juvenile Justice Network Holds Roundtable on Reform Policies

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The National Juvenile Justice Network (NJJN) recently published Advances in Juvenile Justice Reform: 2009-2011, a compendium of noteworthy reform measures enacted across 47 states and the District of Columbia. Tuesday, a quartet of NJJN representatives joined George Williams of Humane Exposures for a roundtable discussion of the new report, which was broadcast via a live Google Hangout feed. According to Williams, everybody lives in a state with juvenile justice problems. A resident of Louisiana, he said that his state has a higher incarceration rate than Iraq. “If we want public safety, we have to look at these issues in a different way,” said NJJN Director Sarah Bryer. She said that when state-based advocacy groups work together for reform policies, their combined efforts can serve as an “elevator for collective gain.”

Bryer said the information contained in the new compendium encompasses a “massive amount of data,” which allows organizations to analyze trends and policies enacted by agencies in other states.

“Dear Juvenile Injustice” – Richard Ross on the State of America’s Youth Detention Facilities and Juvenile Justice Policies

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A day before holding a lecture at Kennesaw State University in Georgia, Richard Ross visited his friend, Ronald F., in Miami. “It was his birthday,” Ross said. “He’s 18 this past week, and they switched him over to an adult facility.”

Ross said that prior to his incarceration, he was a special education student in the sixth grade. He said that for 30 years, his mother was a crack addict. “Before he got brought in on these charges, four and a half years ago, she tried to kill him, quite literally stab him to death,” Ross stated.

New Research Examines Long Term Links Between Juvenile Detention and Psychiatric Disorders

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A new study published in the Archives of General Psychiatry finds that, five years after being released from one Illinois juvenile detention center, more than 45 percent of male former detainees, and almost 30 percent of female former detainees, had been diagnosed with at least one psychiatric disorder associated with mental impairment. The study, conducted by the Northwestern Project with support from the National Institution on Drug Abuse and the National Institute of Mental Health, examined more than 1,800 detainees, ranging in ages from 10 to 18, at Chicago’s Cook County Juvenile Temporary Detention Center. According to researchers, the report is the first longitudinal study to fully track psychiatric disorders in juveniles following release from detention. Researchers said that half of the center’s former male detainees had been diagnosed with a psychiatric disorder not associated with impairment, while more than 40 percent of female ex-detainees has been diagnosed with at least one or more disorders not commonly associated with mental impairment. The most common disorders noted were substance abuse issues, with researchers saying the male ex-detainees were two to three times likelier to develop problems with alcohol and illicit drugs than female ex-detainees.

Juveniles Not Entitled to Legal, Parental Counsel Prior to Police Investigations, Ohio Supreme Court Rules

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Last week, the Ohio Supreme Court ruled that the state’s laws do not entitle juveniles the right to an attorney during interrogations that occur before charges are formally filed, or prior to an initial appearance in Ohio’s juvenile courts. The decision stems from a case involving a juvenile, caught driving without a valid license, when he was initially stopped by a Cleveland-area police officer. Later, the teen signed a Miranda Rights waiver and a statement admitting he was involved in a robbery. The teen’s defense team said that his statement should not have been admitted into evidence, as police did not provide him with a lawyer. A portion of Ohio state law requires minors in delinquency cases to have legal counsel “at all stages of proceedings.” Ohio’s high court, in a 4-3 ruling, determined that “proceedings” does not entail investigator actions.

Award Winning “Juvenile-in-Justice” Photographer to Speak on Art and the Incarceration of Young People

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Tuesday, Juvenile-in-Justice: Photographs by Richard Ross will premiere at Kennesaw State University (KSU), with a public lecture by the 2012 recipient of the National Magazine Award for News and Documentary Photography scheduled at 5 p.m. in the Prillaman Hall auditorium. For five years, Ross visited more than 350 detention centers, treatment facilities, juvenile courtrooms and maximum-security lock-down shelters, documenting the daily lives of America’s incarcerated young people. Ross’s work, organized by the Nevada Museum of Art and sponsored by the Wilhelm Hoppe Family Trust, was recently featured in Harper’s Magazine, in addition to making appearances on Wired.com and Picture Dept., a site operated by the photo editors at Newsweek and The Daily Beast. Earlier this year, ProPublica listed “Juvenile-in-Justice” as one of the year’s five best investigative reports on prisons. And the American Society of Magazine Editors (AMSE) and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism praised Ross’ photo essay, calling it the best news and documentary photography of 2012.

Safe Start Center Provides Best Practices for Working with Young Victims of Trauma

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The Safe Start Center recently released a publication that outlines the best practices for youth service providers working with children that have experienced victimization or severe trauma. “Victimization and Trauma Experienced by Children and Youth: Implications for Legal Advocates” addresses numerous topics, including the best available assessments and treatments for trauma-related stress in young people. The brief, the seventh entry in “Moving from Evidence to Action: The Safe Start Center Series on Children Exposed to Violence,” contains suggestions for experts in both the juvenile justice field as well as the field of child welfare, providing attorneys and court-appointed advocates with specialized information about trauma-informed practices. The brief lists several symptoms of traumatic stress for workers in the juvenile justice and child welfare systems to note, in addition to multiple screening and assessment instruments commonly used to address past traumatic experiences and exposure to violence by young people. The Safe Start Center notes numerous emerging, evidence-supported interventions, such as Child-Parent Psychotherapy (CPP) and Trauma Affect Regulation: Guide for Education and Therapy (TARGET) as promising programs for the treatment and rehabilitation of young people effected by trauma and victimization.

Experts Offer Strategies for Preventing Child Welfare and Juvenile Justice Crossover

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“We knew the pathway existed,” Shay Bilchick said during the opening of Preventing Youth from Crossing Over Between the Child Welfare and Juvenile Justice Systems, a webinar held Wednesday by the National Training & Technical Assistance Center, a program of the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention. As a prosecutor working the family court circuits in Florida, Bilchik -- now the founder and director of the Center for Juvenile Justice Reform (CJJR) at Georgetown University’s Public Policy Institute -- noted an apparent connection between child abuse and neglect and delinquency cases, referring to such crossover youth as a “challenging” population. 

Shortly after Bilchik joined the Public Policy Institute in 2007, the Center for Juvenile Justice Reform and Casey Family Programs worked together to create the Crossover Youth Practice Model. This model stems from the Juvenile Justice and Child Welfare Integration Breakthrough Series Collaborative, developed in the mid-1990s by the Associates in Process Improvement, Casey Family Programs and the Institute for Healthcare Improvement. According to Bilchik, certain methods, policies and practices can “interrupt the trajectory” of crossover between child welfare and juvenile justices systems. Serving as the webinar’s moderator, he introduced three speakers with extensive experience in “crossover prevention.”

“These young people are our young people,” said CJJR Program Manager Macon Stewart. “Prevention is a collective responsibility.”

Stewart said that crossover youth entails three categories of juveniles; those that have experienced some level of maltreatment and delinquency -- typically referred to simply as “crossover youth” -- as well as dually-involved youth and dually-adjudicated youth.