He Wrote the Book on Kids and the Law: A Conversation with Georgia’s J. Tom Morgan

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ATLANTA -- Criminal defense attorney and author J. Tom Morgan said his phone has rumbled late in the night with texts from minors seeking legal advice about police at the door. Today the high-profile lawyer specializes in defending young people, and, as a local district attorney in the past, prosecuted hundreds of people for crimes against children. In an upcoming article in the State Bar of Georgia’s journal, he argues that kids’ behavior hasn’t changed, but the consequences have. “Its not what’s happened in the last 30 years that kids are worse, it’s what we’ve done in our legal system,” he said.  Things like zero tolerance, raising the drinking age and criminalizing consensual sex between teens under child abuse laws have put kids in the crosshairs of the police. Last year alone, he spoke at more than 100 events explaining to kids and adults the facts in his book “Ignorance is No Defense, A Teenager’s Guide to Georgia Law.”

JJIE talked to Morgan after he gave a presentation to some 150 parents at a private school in Atlanta on Nov.

International Group Hails Florida Juvenile Justice Reformer

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The woman driving the Florida Juvenile Justice Department toward a goal of “system excellence” is a 2012 winner of an international award that recognizes commitment to children’s justice. “We’re trying to do a complete paradigm shift,” said Wansley Walters, Secretary of the Florida DJJ and one of eight recipients of the 2012 Juvenile Justice Without Borders International Award, presented by the International Juvenile Justice Observatory, a Belgium-based international organization that works in conjunction with the United Nations, the European Union and other groups. “We’re trying to be proactive, not reactive,” she said. Walters came to the DJJ nearly two years ago from the Miami-Dade County Juvenile Services Department. There she pushed to keep most kids in treatment or diversion programs, leaving secure beds and police records only for the most serious, risky offenders.

States Mull Ohio-Style Juvenile Justice Reform

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Georgia has room to make its juvenile justice system more regular, cheaper and better, according to preliminary suggestions from a blue-ribbon panel charged with drafting an overhaul. States including Texas and Ohio have gone down the same path, which, say experts, is not completely smooth. Georgia’s juvenile justice system lacks in various ways, according to the findings from a juvenile justice workgroup within Georgia’s Special Council on Criminal Justice Reform. The state needs to do a better job evaluating kids, so that only the most acutely dangerous ones end up in jail, the workgroup announced last week. And Georgia needs a uniform method for deciding what to do with kids: court, probation or other options.

Federal, State Courts may Clash on 350 Juvenile Lifers

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A Michigan state court case says some 350 people given mandatory no-parole sentences for murders committed as juveniles must serve their full sentences. But in the coming days, a federal court is expected to opine on a similar question. A federal court in Michigan will soon rule on the constitutionality of automatic, no-appeal life sentences given to 13 people over the last few decades. The offenders in Hill et. al.

Kentucky to Decide on Miranda Rights in Schools

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I did  “something stupid,” said Kentucky high school student N.C., admitting to his assistant principal and the school’s sheriff’s deputy that he gave two of his prescription pain pills to another student.  He was not read his rights, and the officer subsequently charged him with illegally dispensing a controlled substance.  N.C.’s attorney is arguing that the student should have been informed of his rights to leave, stay quiet or call an attorney. N.C. was “in custody” when he sat in an office with Nelson County High School Assistant Principal Mike Glass and School Resource Officer Deputy Steve Campbell, talking about his empty prescription medicine bottle, argued Robert Strong, assistant public advocate.  So the adults erred by failing the familiar Miranda warning: “You have the right to remain silent …”

“Given that the officer testified that the assistant principal was aware that N.C. had given some pills away before they interrogated him, the interrogation was a criminal investigation,” Strong wrote in his brief to the Kentucky Supreme Court. N.C. was not read his rights, so, Strong argued, the student’s statements to the two men should have been inadmissible in the criminal case against him. N.C., whose age is not given, was sentenced to 45 days in adult jail, on hold pending the outcome of his appeal.

In Georgia: New Boss Takes over Department of Juvenile Justice

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The third commissioner within a little more than a year holds his first regular Georgia Department of Juvenile Justice Board meeting, conducting workaday business on bonds and education, while a recruitment drive starts up. “I thank the governor [Nathan Deal] and the DJJ Board for their confidence and I will work diligently to maintain their trust,” said Avery Niles upon his swearing-in. “We look forward to making real changes in the lives of our young offenders.” Niles, commissioner since Nov. 2, had been board chair and leaves his job as Hall County Correctional Institution warden to take over DJJ. Audrey Armistad, associate superintendent of the DJJ school system announced that a pilot education program pushed by Deal will soon start up in south Georgia’s Eastman Regional Youth Detention Center.  That facility holds older youth on long-term sentences, some of whom have already graduated high school or gotten a GED.

Mississippi may Reform Juvenile Detention

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In a state regularly beset by lawsuits about conditions at some of its juvenile detention centers, an official Mississippi task force is starting work on diversion and setting higher standards. “This lack of sufficient staff has caused the facility to practice imminent and deliberate harm to youth … the facility is forced to place the kids on lockdown most of the day; not because they want to, but because it’s the only way to maintain any type of control,” reads a court-appointed inspector’s report on the Henley-Young Juvenile Justice Center in Hinds County, Mississippi.  “This lack of appropriate staffing dictates the level of violence that is experienced in the facility.”

The lockup for up to 84 youth is unclean and “has a dungeon-like feeling.” Two juveniles admitted to the facility were allowed no phone call or shower.  While there’s some limited recreational programming for boys, there’s none apparent for girls. That July 2012 report is a recent, but not unique, verdict on some of Mississippi’s juvenile detention centers.

Gaps in Mental Illness Checks Swallow Juvenile Victims

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The family of 19-year-old Ashley Smith says guards watched and did nothing as the young woman strangled herself to death in an Ontario prison cell. Smith spent her teen years in and out of juvenile custody and, once in the adult system, had her mental illness answered by physical abuse, her family alleges in a legal battle to find out more about their daughter’s death. For youth incarcerated in the United States, the mental care they get — or don’t — varies. “In some places, all of this is really done quite well,” said Preston Elrod, a professor in the Department of Criminal Justice at Eastern Kentucky University and a juvenile justice specialist. “But in other places, none of it is done well.”

About 70 percent of young people who come into an institution have a diagnosable mental health disorder or symptoms of one, according to Gina Vincent, a psychiatry professor from the University of Massachusetts Medical School, in a 2012 report about screening and assessment in juvenile justice systems.

Rules vary by state, though in many places, children will not stay in the juvenile detention system, receiving what juvenile-tailored services exist, as long as Smith did: her 18th birthday.

Federal Appeals Court to Hear Birmingham School Pepper Spray Case

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A case that alleges chemical spray is overused in Birmingham, Ala., schools is headed to federal appeals court and will probably not re-emerge for at least a year. Attorneys for the school officials, resource officers and city police officers named as defendants have asked the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit to hear two questions. First, if the case go forward as a class action; and second, if they have any official immunity. If the court decides to hear the questions, no ruling is likely for at least a year, said Ebony Howard, an attorney with the Montgomery-based Southern Poverty Law Center. She is lead attorney representing six youths who say officers on campus sprayed them with a chemical called Freeze+P for minor school-based infractions, including in one case, uncontrollable crying over being bullied.

Conference Offers Strategies for Protecting the Child From Sexual Abuse and Rooting Out the Predator

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Organizations that serve youth must overlap their defenses against sexual predators, say experts at a youth protection conference organized by the Boy Scouts of America (BSA). “The first problem we have in the country is that most people most of the time won’t report abuse, no matter how clear the evidence is … even when they walk in on a child being sexually abused,” declared Victor Vieth, executive director of the National Child Protection Training Center at Minnesota’s Winona State University. “It’s not a close question,” he said, referring to decades of research.  “People tell researchers, ‘I don’t report because I’m not quite sure.’”

In 2012 alone, personnel in the Roman Catholic Church, the BSA and Penn State University, to name a few big organizations, have all been accused or convicted of complicity in ignoring child sexual abuse, in some cases, for decades. That’s part of what’s fueled new public attention to child sex abuse in places where kids go to worship, learn and play. As a response, the BSA organized the two-day Atlanta conference, where some 40 leaders of youth-serving organizations, other non-profits, and advocates gathered to hear from leading child abuse prevention researchers.