Author of Report Recaps Connecticut’s Long Road to Juvenile Justice Reform

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UPDATED: Large-scale abuses in Connecticut’s juvenile justice system drove a push for reform that rallied advocates and spurred politicians into action; according to the author of an exhaustive report on the history of the juvenile justice system detailing the strides the state has made over the last decade. “Connecticut had a terrible system 20 years ago,” said author Richard Mendel. “They’ve made a ton of changes around a ton of different areas … producing impressive improvements on a wide range of indicators.”

In 1993, the Connecticut Civil Liberties Union filed a lawsuit about the neglect, excessive punishment and unconstitutional practices in the system. The case was named after Emily J., a 13-year-old girl with a homeless mother and absent father. Skipping school landed her in a detention center, where she spent months.

Georgia’s First Lady, State DJJ Commissioner Attend Opening of New JJIE/Youth Today Office

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On Wednesday, the Center for Sustainable Journalism, which publishes the Juvenile Justice Information Exchange and Youth Today, celebrated the opening of its new Kennesaw, Ga. office in a ribbon-cutting ceremony featuring Georgia first lady Sandra Deal and Georgia Department of Juvenile Justice Commissioner Avery Niles. Initially founded in 2009 with the aid of a Harnisch Foundation grant, the Center for Sustainable Journalism (CSJ) began as a venue for experimenting with public affairs journalism” according to CSJ Executive Director Leonard Witt. “Mainstream journalists are cutting back, no one is covering important issues,” he said. “Our important issue is juvenile justice.”

The Juvenile Justice Information Exchange (JJIE) launched in 2010.

Analysis: The Numbers Behind the Dramatic Drop in Youth Incarceration

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Anyone concerned about the incarceration of young people in the nation will find both good news and bad news in “Reducing Youth Incarceration in the United States,” a new KIDS COUNT data snapshot from the Annie E Casey Foundation. The best news is that the youth incarceration rate in the nation dropped 37 percent from 1995 to 2010. In 1995, 107,637 young people were held in correctional facilities on a single reference day, while in 2010, this number had dropped to 70,792, the lowest in 35 years. The rate of youth in confinement dropped from 381 per 100,000 to 225 per 100,000 over the same period. Also good news is the fact that the youth incarceration rate fell in the District of Columbia and 44 of 50 states, and also fell in all of the five largest racial groups (non-Hispanic White, African American, Hispanic, American Indian, and Asian/Pacific Islander).

Report Credits Political Courage, Advocacy for Improving Connecticut’s Juvenile Justice System

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BRIDGEPORT, Conn. — On the third floor of a Romanesque church in Bridgeport there is a shabby office with unreliable electrical wiring and a collection of banged up folding chairs. It’s where Family ReEntry, a social service agency, operates its mentoring programs for at-risk youth. And it’s also where Tina Banas is about to supervise an experimental pilot program for children on probation connecting them to a network of services she could not imagine having existed when she started working as a social worker in the state 30 years ago. “There were a lot of frustrating times” she said, looking back on her career.

Number of Kids Behind Bars Reaches 35-Year Low

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There were fewer kids behind bars in 2010 than there have been in 35 years, demonstrating what one foundation called a “sea change” in American attitudes toward juvenile justice, according to a trio of new reports out today based on U.S. Census data. Although the United States still locks up young people at a far higher rate any other industrialized nation, that number has been steadily falling over the past decade and reached its lowest point in 35 years in 2010, the most recent year data is available, according to “Reducing Youth Incarceration in the United States,” a KIDS COUNT data snapshot released today by the Annie E. Casey Foundation. “Most of these changes have taken place idiosyncratically in individual states and counties, but collectively, in the aggregate, they represent an extraordinary trend that we haven’t seen in the U.S.,” said Bart Lubow, who directs the Annie E. Casey Foundation’s program for high-risk youth and who has worked in criminal justice for nearly 40 years. “I don’t know if we’ve ever seen it.”

More and more jurisdictions are taking on innovative approaches to reducing juvenile delinquency and relying less on punitive responses to juvenile crime, resulting in cost savings for the public and providing hope for better outcomes for youth, the Foundation’s report said. The KIDS COUNT report came out in conjunction with a pair of reports by the Justice Policy Institute, which detailed youth incarceration declines in specific states and outlined the lessons learned from reforms in those states’ juvenile justice systems.

Reducing the confinement of young people is usually couched in terms of reducing government costs, but it’s probably just one factor in the shift that is taking place socially and politically across the country, Lubow said in an interview with the JJIE.

After-School Cuts to the Quick

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NEW YORK -- Last year, the after-school program at P.S. 102 in Elmhurst, Queens shut down due to funding cuts. Without the program, 11-year-old Savannah Colon thought she’d have to ride a city bus back and forth for three hours each day with her 6-year-old sister, until her mother finished work. Thankfully, that didn’t happen. Savannah’s mother found a city-funded program called Beacon at I.S. 5, just a couple blocks away. “My mom was really frustrated,” Savannah said.

Facing Budget Cuts, Virginia Mulls Sending Special Needs Youth to Maximum Security Facilities

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Plans to house young people with special needs at a maximum security juvenile correctional center have drawn criticisms in Virginia, reports NBC affiliate WWBT. Beaumont Maximum Security Juvenile Correctional Center in Powhatan, Va., is scheduled to become the new home for several special needs young people who are currently housed at the Oak Ridge Juvenile Correctional Center in Chesterfield, Va. Facility officials believe an initial cost of $40,000 will be needed to renovate a wing designed specifically to hold special needs young people at the center; the youth being transferred range in ages from 12 to 20, with WWBT reporting that virtually all of the new residents are operating on “4th grade” levels. In 2011, a Virginia Department of Juvenile Justice report said such a move was “not viable,” citing concerns about how effectively low-functioning young people could be treated at the facility. Center officials, however, told WWBT that young people with special needs would not be housed alongside the rest of the facility’s maximum security population when the proposed transition takes place later this spring.

Restorative Justice and the Quickening Pace of Change

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ATHENS, Ga. -- A lot of my work at Georgia Conflict Center has lately been focused on restorative practices. In courthouses, schools, and at our office I have attended meetings, been on conference calls, submitted funding requests, and explained to various stakeholders what we hope to accomplish. We have achieved a lot in the last year or so, including funding for some of our operations and support from the court, schools and state juvenile officials. Everywhere we go there are principals, teachers, judges, probation officers, attorneys and private citizens who say our work is important and needs to be done.