Fate of Low-Income Children Teeters on ‘Fiscal Cliff,’ Advocates Warn

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Already reeling from budget cuts over the last 10 years, federal programs affecting children are bracing for another $1.5 trillion in discretionary spending cuts throughout the next decade. As federal negotiations over a looming fiscal crisis continue, advocates are warning the White House and Congress that further cuts to discretionary and non-discretionary funding would have devastating consequences. “How we tackle the problem, how the Congress approaches deficit reduction and who bears the burden of deficit reduction, is really the defining issue of the battle ahead of us,” said Ellen Nissenbaum, senior vice president for government affairs at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, speaking on a conference-call briefing organized last month by child advocacy organizations Coalition of Human Needs, Voices for America’s Children and the Children’s Leadership Council. As part of a fiscal agreement with President Barack Obama last year, Congress passed the Budget Control Act, which slashed non-defense discretionary spending on programs like education, social services and public health by $1.5 trillion from 2013 to 2022. Now, the president and Congressional Republicans are facing off again over how the United States will prevent the so-called fiscal cliff, a combination of tax increases and deficit-reduction measures (known as sequestration) that will hit early next year and which is likely to take the country back into recession.

Survey: Incarcerated Teens Eager for Online Health Records

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Young people who get in trouble with the law and who may move around frequently, often have trouble accessing and sharing accurate, up-to-date versions of their medical records. As a result, they don’t always get the vaccinations they need nor the follow-up care they require to manage chronic conditions like asthma, sexually transmitted diseases, and mental health or substance abuse issues. Allowing young people to access their medical histories in a digital format through the Internet could solve this problem, researchers hope. Under federal reforms to the health care system, more and more medical practitioners are switching to electronic recordkeeping, and according to a study released in October by the journal Pediatrics, incarcerated teenagers appeared surprisingly open to the idea. Researchers from the Stanford University medical school and the Santa Clara Valley Medical Center interviewed 79 incarcerated young people who came to the medical center for treatment.

Report Finds That Reasonable Video Visitation Policies in Prisons Benefit Children

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The jail in Washington, D.C., recently began to allow family members to visit inmates by video conference. The problem is, in-person meetings are no longer permitted. The only way families can see each other now is by sitting in front of a computer screen several blocks apart. Correctional facilities in more than 20 states currently have or plan to have video technology in place, according to a report released by the research and advocacy organization The Sentencing Project. Video technology’s popularity in facilities is driven by a desire to cut staff costs, to reduce security risks created by in-person visits, and in some cases, to raise revenue.

‘Models for Change’ Series Available Online

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A series of eight reports that summarize effective strategies to improve services and treatment of juveniles in the justice system is now available through the Models for Change Research Initiative website. At a time of tight federal, state and local budgets, the aim of the “Knowledge Briefs” series is to share pioneering strategies that communities can study and possibly duplicate within their own juvenile systems. Supported by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, which has spent some $100 million on juvenile justice reform efforts since 2004, the series outlines inventive approaches adopted by different states to cost-effectively improve the outlook for young people leaving the justice system and re-entering society. The series includes a study that examined whether young people at three sites in Louisiana and Washington state were treated differently in probation if they belonged to a minority race or ethnic group, and a cost-benefit analysis from a juvenile center in Cook County, Ill., that could serve as an example of how to determine whether certain reforms are worth the money. Although the reports were published last December, the MacArthur Foundation announced their release as a series a couple of weeks ago, and the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention within the U.S. Department of Justice promoted their availability in an email to its news subscribers yesterday. In January, the OJJDP announced a $2 million partnership with the MacArthur Foundation to support key reforms in the juvenile justice system.

Sexual Trauma Marks Girls’ Path to Juvenile Justice System

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When Crystal Contreras was seven and living in Los Angeles, her mother put her in the care of someone Contreras saw as a father figure. Instead, he pressured the little girl for sex. For the next three years, until she was 10, the man raped her regularly, often creeping into the house at night without her mother’s knowledge. “I never said nothing to my mom,” Contreras told JJIE.org during an interview in July. “I was scared he would kill her or hurt her or hurt the animals that I had.

State Advisors to Federal Juvenile Justice Office Briefed on Reforms

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WASHINGTON, D.C. – Thirteen advocates and professionals from around the country who serve as advisors to the federal office for juvenile justice met for two days last week in Washington, D.C., to share information on reforms and funding at the state and federal levels. The Federal Advisory Committee on Juvenile Justice, which normally meets online every few months, gathered face-to-face for the first time in a year. Its last online meeting occurred Aug. 10. 

Some of the reforms the committee discussed lie within the federal Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention itself. Melodee Hanes, the acting office administrator, told committee members on the opening day of the meeting that a structural reorganization of her office, which has been in the works for months, would be announced soon.

FCC Looks Likely to Cap Phone Rates for Prisoners

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Nine years since it was first petitioned to do so by families of people behind bars, the Federal Communications Commission appears closer to imposing a limit on the soaring rates some prisoners have to pay to make interstate telephone calls. It won’t say when it will take action, however. The FCC’s consumer advisory committee submitted a list of recommendations last month urging the FCC to ensure that prices for phone calls from prison are kept to “reasonable” levels. And both the FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski and FCC Commissioner Mignon Clyburn have come out in support of limiting charges by private companies holding monopolies over prison telephone service in many states. The push to cap prison phone rates started when Martha Wright, a grandmother who could not afford to call her grandson when he was incarcerated, filed a petition in 2003 asking the FCC to take regulatory action.

Report: Make Families of Detained Juveniles Part of the Solution

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Every day, nearly 50,000 children are forced to spend the night away from their families because of their involvement in the juvenile justice system, according to a new report. It’s not as if these youth have no one to care for them. Families of young detainees care deeply about their children, but often feel helpless when their children get into trouble -- especially in the face of high adult incarceration rates, zero-tolerance school policies and reduced social services, which can make it difficult for families to offer support. Add to this a juvenile court system that practically shuts out family members from receiving or offering input, and the feelings of frustration and helplessness multiply. These are the findings of Families Unlocking Futures: Solutions to the Crisis in Juvenile Justice, a report released Monday that offers a blueprint for reforms that involve family members at every step when a child gets into trouble, whether at school or in the juvenile justice system.

VIDEO: The Increasing Use of Private, For-Profit Prisons

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JJIE caught up with Alex Friedmann, associate editor of Prison Legal News, to talk about the increasing use of private prisons by local, state and federal government. Relying on private institutions to provide extra capacity discourages progress on real reforms to reduce the prison population, while putting profits first can adversely impact prison conditions, Friedmann argues. “It’s not an issue a lot of people know or care about unless they’re personally impacted by it,” Friedmann said, who spent years incarcerated in both private and public prisons. He sat down with JJIE after speaking on a panel on the same topic at a conference in Ohio last month. Privatization of Prisons from JJIE Multimedia on Vimeo.

Senate Confirmation Rule Dropped for Federal Juvenile Justice Office

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WASHINGTON, D.C. – Juvenile justice advocates are dismayed by a new law that they say threatens to accelerate the fading relevance of juvenile justice reform within the federal government. To the chagrin of many, President Barack Obama has not nominated anyone for the U.S. Senate to confirm as a permanent leader of federal juvenile justice efforts since he took office. For three and a half years, the federal office responsible for setting national policy, sharing research on best practices and funding state initiatives on juvenile justice and delinquency prevention has chugged along on temporary leadership, first under acting Administrator Jeff Slowikowski and since January, under acting Administrator Melodee Hanes. If the White House does name a person to fill the long-vacant position – something unlikely to happen soon, advocates say, given a looming presidential election -- such a Senate confirmation will never come. That’s because effective Aug.