Juvenile Justice Information Exchange (https://jjie.org/author/james-swift/page/8/)
The United States Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) released data Thursday revealing new findings about rates of sexual victimization in the nation’s prisons. Advocates claim that the new figures, however, may underreport the amount of juvenile inmate sexual victimizations that goes on in the nation’s jails and prisons.
An OJJDP-hosted webinar this week brought together officials from various agencies to discuss strategic and innovative approaches to combatting underage drinking.
On Tuesday, Illinois state senators passed two bills with potentially profound implications on the state’s juvenile justice system. By a 40-10 vote, the Illinois Senate passed House Bill 2404, which would place young people in the state charged with felonies under the jurisdiction of juvenile courts as opposed to the adult system. Currently, 17-year-olds in Illinois charged with felonies are automatically tried as adults. If the bill is signed into law, such youth would instead be tried, initially, in juvenile courts, where judges have greater ability to avoid handing out sentences that entail incarceration. Under the legislation, however, 17-year-olds with serious offenses are still eligible for transfer to adult courts.
Dr. Michael Kimmel, professor of sociology at the Stony Brook University, has written more than a dozen books on constructs of “masculinity” in culture. When evaluating recent school shootings, he notices several commonalities that may provide vital clues as to why young men engage in such acts of bloodshed.
A Children’s Law Center report released last week finds that young people in Washington, D.C. are not receiving speedy assistance from the District’s mental health services.
Since 2009, the number of juvenile court referrals in Bell County, Texas has plummeted from 1,365 to 857 -- a decrease of almost 40 percent over the last four years. During the same timeframe, the county -- home to more than 300,000 people -- has seen its juvenile felony cases decrease by a quarter, falling from 202 in 2009 to just 153 in 2012. According to Judge Ed Johnson, a juvenile court judge in the central Texas county for more than a quarter century, family relationships and how communities respond to young people displaying delinquent behavior is pivotal in the rehabilitation process of young offenders. “In the last 20 years, they have also realized that soldiers with better family lives are better soldiers, and so they have also implemented a lot of family-based programs to provide support for these young families and their children,” he told KWTX-TV. Juvenile suspension officer Chris Dart said that the children at the Bell County Juvenile Education Center in Harker Heights typically come from troubled homes and have experienced severe abuse prior to becoming involved with the juvenile justice system.
Enrolling young people in school-based, cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) programs may lead to fewer arrests, improved educational performance and higher graduation rates, according to a new report released by the National Bureau of Economic Research. The study involved more than 2,500 young people in the 7th to 10th grades from Chicago neighborhoods with high crime levels. About half of the subjects participated in interventions provided by two area nonprofits, which included both after school programming and frequent meetings with a “pro-social adult.”
The interventions also included in-school CBT programming, which researchers said are “designed to reduce common judgment and decision-making problems related to automatic behavior and biased beliefs.”
Compared to a control group that did not receive treatments, researchers said violent offense arrests had fallen by 44 percent among young people who had participated in the programming, and arrests stemming from “other crimes” -- categorized as non-drug, non-property or non-violent offenses -- decreased by 36 percent. Additionally, youth involved in the programs demonstrated significant gains in overall educational outcomes, with researchers stating that the programming may result in a 3 to 10 percent increase in high school graduation rates. The programming also has major economic benefits, the authors of the report said.
The Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP) in conjunction with the National Center for Youth in Custody (NC4YC) held a webinar Wednesday titled “Family Comes First: Transforming the Justice System by Partnering With Families.” The online event coincided with the release of a new Campaign for Youth Justice (CFYJ) workbook, which was unveiled on Monday.
This week, numerous legislators and juvenile justice officials testified before Massachusetts’ Committee on Children, Families and Persons with Disabilities, in support of recent legislative proposals that would place 18-year-olds under the jurisdiction of the state’s juvenile courts as opposed to its adult courtrooms.
A new analysis is the first of its kind to assess both family engagement and partnership practices in the U.S. juvenile justice system.