Juvenile Justice Information Exchange (https://jjie.org/author/judge-timberlake/page/3/)
Judge George W. Timberlake, Ret., is chair of the Federal Advisory Committee on Juvenile Justice and national vice chair of the Coalition for Juvenile Justice. He is also chair of the Illinois Juvenile Justice Commission. He was a trial court judge for 23 years before retiring as chief judge of Illinois' 2nd Circuit.
Our country, community and American society should respond to issues that research and simple statistics reveal are important and far-reaching problems — such as substance abuse and addiction, mental health problems and the consequences of trauma to children.
Sex offenders are people, too. You probably won’t see that on bumper stickers soon, but it is the sentiment I try to convey when explaining my views of how our society should respond to sexual offenses committed by children.
The big picture is that restorative justice practiced by trained mediators is not touch-feely fluff. It is a response to the known traits of adolescents and young adults.
What happens when a probation officer begins to behave as a police officer?
It's time to ask whether our costly juvenile justice system is accomplishing what we want it to accomplish.
Research has shown that putting teens on the sex offender registry does not increase public safety — how can we convince our elected reps?
Attempts at reducing disproportionate minority contact (DMC) and disparate treatment of racial and ethnic youth in the justice systems of our country have not made much progress. Advocates, foundations, courts and stakeholders have exercised words and approaches, but the numbers don’t lie. According to the Juvenile Justice Information Exchange’s recent analysis of federal data from 1990 and 2010, minority youth were greatly over-represented at every point of the system. The comparison of that 20-year span shows little to no improvement of DMC in arrests, adjudications, detentions and transfers to adult court. Perhaps part of the problem is that we continue focusing on effects instead of causes.
For kids involved in the justice system, employment is clearly a positive outcome and a part of a normative approach and environment.
Shortly before Christmas, I returned a phone call from a woman whose 12-year-old stepgrandson wanted to end court-ordered visitation with his non-custodial mother. As I was about to tell her that I no longer practice law and am retired from the bench, she mentioned the mother’s name – let’s call her Amanda – and a flood of memories came to me. Hang with me, please. This is a story of complex family relations and problems and one that exemplifies the challenges, as well as the benefits, of engaging families in changing juvenile behaviors. I met Amanda first in a child welfare case when I was a judge in southern Illinois.
Missing a holiday with the dozens of brothers, sisters, nieces, nephews, cousins, aunts and uncles got me to wondering – what is the holiday experience for a kid in detention?