California Activists Calling for Changes to State’s Juvenile Justice System

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Last month, California’s Center on Juvenile & Criminal Justice (CJCJ) released a policy brief recommending phased juvenile justice realignment beginning later this year. The release, entitled “Juvenile Justice Realignment in 2012,” was penned by Brian Heller de Leon, the organization’s Policy and Government Outreach Coordinator, and Selena Teji, J.D., the organization’s Communications Specialist and an occasional op-ed contributor to the JJIE. The CJCJ advocates a three-year program that would effectively abolish the state’s Division of Juvenile Facilities by 2015, reallocating funding to individual counties based on juvenile felony arrest rates. According to California’s Division of Juvenile Facilities, the state’s counties are saddled with an approximate annual cost of $125,000 per incarcerated youth, with state youth facility budgets topping out at $226 million annually. California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation data from 2010 found that approximately 80 percent of juveniles within the state’s Division of Juvenile Facilities populations were likely to be re-arrested within three years of release.

New Website Launched to Meet Needs of At-Risk and Delinquent Girls

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This week, a new online resource with a focus on providing services to delinquent and potentially at-risk young females was launched by the United States Department of Justice. The National Girls Institute, established in 2010 by the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP), is dedicated to providing local and private organizations with assistance and training to help prevent female minors from entering the nation’s juvenile justice system. Melodee Hanes, Acting Administrator of OJJDP, said that the organization has a responsibility to provide assistance, tools and other resources to programs designed to keep America’s girls out of courtrooms and detention facilities. “This website,” she said, “is an important step forward in our efforts to improve the lives of girls across the country.”

In addition to providing technical assistance and training materials, the website also includes extensive data and tool sets, many of which are customized in regards to specific needs of young women and girls, including trauma and cultural responsiveness resources. The National Girls Institute is also supported by the National Council on Crime and Delinquency.

Georgia High Court Changes Definition of Armed Robbery

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Following this week’s state Supreme Court ruling, the definition of “armed robbery” in Georgia has been changed. Now, according to the state’s high court, a person can be convicted of armed robbery without ever taking anything. The case stems from an incident in March 2009 when defendant Francisco Gutierrez, then 16, and four others entered a Chinese restaurant in Winder, Ga. while armed with an assortment of weapons, including a handgun, an aluminum baseball bat and a hammer. An undercover officer witnessed the incident and fearing for the safety of the owner and a small child inside, fired at the intruders.

Weighing the Cost of School Suspensions in Massachusetts

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The New England Center for Investigative Reporting recently reported findings detailing disciplinary trends within the public education system of Massachusetts. According to the analysis, almost 200,000 school days were lost to out-of-school and in-school suspensions and expulsions during the 2009-2010 school year. The organization said that days lost to suspension or expulsions during the timeframe were equal to about 10 percent of the 172 million school days accumulated by the state’s nearly 1 million public school students. The analysis reports that while the Boston school system is more likely to expel students permanently, the Worchester school system ultimately totaled up more lost school days due to disciplinary actions, with approximately 5,000 lost school days compared to the capital city’s estimated 2,765. The analysis also found that more than 2,000 students, some as young as age 4, were suspended from the state’s early elementary programs, which entails pre-kindergarten to third grade classes.

New Mexico Governor Seeking Harsher Sentences For Child Abusers and Predators

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New Mexico Gov. Susana Martinez announced several legislative proposals last month, which aim to alter the state’s Criminal Code in order to extend sentences for child abusers and predators. The legislation would triple jail time for first-time child abuse offenders, increasing sentences from three to nine years. The legislation would also double the sentences for repeat offenders, with second-time offenders potentially serving 18 years in prison as opposed to just nine. Gov. Martinez, a Republican, also wishes to extend New Mexico’s “Baby Brianna” law, which currently imposes a mandatory life sentence for anyone convicted of killing under 12, with the proposed legislation levying life sentences for those found guilty of killing anyone under the age of 18 within the state. The bill, introduced by state Rep. Al Park (D-Albuquerque) and state Senator Gay Kerman (R-Hobbs), would also stiffen penalties for drunk drivers responsible for accidents that result in the death or injury of children.

Redefining Mental Disorders Could Have Implications for Treatment, Insurance, Education

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When the American Psychiatric Association (APA) announced tentative plans to officially redefine a number of autism spectrum disorders, the controversial news was met with both praise and criticism by many mental health professionals, educators and parents across the United States. Under the proposed changes, the criteria for diagnosing autism spectrum disorders (ASDs) would be much stricter, with clients needing to display at least seven out of nine symptoms outlined in the fifth edition of the APA’s guide on disorders, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-V). Currently, clients need to display at least eight out of fourteen symptoms detailed in the DSM-IV to warrant an autism disorder diagnosis. The changes could prove crucial to the estimated 1.5 million children and adults in the United States affected by autism spectrum disorders, as the DSM is often used as a guideline to establish treatment, insurance coverage and access to healthcare and special education services. Additionally, the DSM-V proposals would re-categorize autism spectrum disorders into three levels based on the severity of the individual’s social communication deficits and tendencies to engage in restrictive interests and/or repetitive behaviors.

Virginia State Senate Rejects Proposal to Try Repeat Juvenile Offenders as Adults

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A Virginia Senate committee shot down a proposed bill that would have automatically transferred juveniles with repeat violent offenses to adult courts. Under Gov. Robert McDonnell’s proposal, juveniles as young as 14 could have been tried as adults in Virginia’s courts. The bill, supported by Gov. McDonnell and sponsored by State Sen. Bill Stanley -- both Republicans -- would have also given prosecutors the ability to try juveniles charged with specific gang-related crimes or multiple drug offenses as adults. Had the bill passed, minors with more than one offense of selling marijuana could have potentially been prosecuted as adults within the state’s judicial system. By an 11-4 vote, a state Senate committee rejected the legislation, with several of the sitting members stating that they were reluctant to pass a bill that took away the discretion of judges.

Vera Institute Report: American Taxpayers Spent Nearly $39 Billion Last Year on Incarceration

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Last week, the Vera Institute of Justice’s Center on Sentencing and Corrections and Cost-Benefit Analysis Unit released a new report entitled The Price of Prison: What Incarceration Costs Taxpayers. The report analyzed data from 40 states, estimating the total price American taxpayers paid in 2010 to fund corrections budgets, employee benefits, capital costs and healthcare services for inmates. The study projects that taxpayers paid almost $39 billion in the 2010 FY, which was more than $5 billion more than what the official corrections budgets originally projected. According to the report, Americans paid almost $2 billion to fund retiree health care programs for corrections employees, with another $1.5 billion going to fund state contributions to retiree health care and employee benefits, including health insurance. The report also factored in a number of other costs outside state corrections’ budgets that were funded by public dollars, including inmate services, legal judgments and claims, private facility costs and overlapping statewide administrative costs.

MTV’s Star on the Struggles of Being a Teen Mom

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Maci Bookout, a native of Chattanooga, Tenn., is anything but just another 20-year-old community college student. For the last four years, virtually every moment of Bookout’s life has been captured on camera. After responding to an advertisement on Craig’s List, Bookout found herself cast on the MTV program “16 and Pregnant,” a controversial “documentary” that led to the equally divisive -- yet unquestionably popular -- spin-off series “Teen Mom.”

Bookout is, for all intents and purposes, a media darling. Fans of her television exploits have posted “video tributes” to her and her son on YouTube, her Twitter account is followed by thousands upon thousands of “Teen Mom” devotees, and she makes regular appearances in the pages of numerous supermarket tabloid papers. Although she frequently rebuffs her “stardom,” it’s quite apparent that, in the eyes of many, many viewers, Bookout is indeed a bona-fide television celebrity.

State’s Juvenile Justice System Needs Overhaul, Says Chief Justice of Georgia’s Supreme Court

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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.”

Hunstein noted that state budget cutbacks have limited services for many mental health and child welfare programs, which she said puts juvenile judges in a position to send youth to detention facilities “or nothing at all.”

She cited Department of Juvenile Justice statistics showing that nearly two-thirds of the approximate 10,000 incarcerated youth in the state suffer from substance abuse issues, while approximately one-third had been diagnosed with mental health complications. The Chief Justice warned legislators that statewide budget cuts have created massive backlogs of court cases in many of Georgia’s counties, which threatens to impede the progress of court resources across the state. Hunstein said she supported proposals from Republican Gov. Nathan Deal to create specialized courts to treat adults with substance abuse issues, as well as military veterans, stating that the system needs to examine the “roots” of offender behavior.