Searching in Darkness for Answers to Juvenile Detention

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I was at the diversion center in Athens a few weeks ago talking with some of the residents about communication skills. We usually start with a general discussion, talking about our lives and struggles since the last time we met. In many ways their experience is similar to being in prison, and about half of them have been imprisoned sometime during their lives. One of the guys asked me what I thought needed to happen in prisons. This is a subject close to my heart, and I talked about it for a bit, but then I stopped and said to them, “You can’t fix prisons.”

I have been thinking about my statement since then, and about how it applies to larger systems. There are, in fact, a lot of things that can’t be fixed, not because efforts at reform are ineffective, but because the basic concept is flawed.

Pictures at a (Gun) Exhibition

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CARTERSVILLE, Ga. -- The mood outside the Clarence Brown Conference Center really cannot be considered anything other than festive. Throngs of friends and neighbors clump together, some of them still wearing their Sunday best, laughing and chit-chatting in the parking lot. Entire families -- mothers, fathers, sons and daughters -- trickle in and out of the building. Some of the kids skip their way merrily towards the front entrance.

Georgia’s High Court Chief Justice Calls for Reform

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A call for juvenile justice reform, in Georgia and across the nation, was the main focus of Georgia’s State of the Judiciary Address today. Speaking before the state’s General Assembly in her fourth and final address, Georgia state Supreme Court Chief Justice Carol Hunstein, said the majority of kids in the juvenile justice system deserve a second chance. “When did we stop believing that children are different from adults and that teenagers do stupid things, act impulsively and consider themselves immortal?” she asked. “When did we forget what we were like as teenagers?”

To read the entire prepared address click here.

Feds to Audit Solitary Confinement Policy

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The Federal Bureau of Prisons will hire an independent auditor to review the use of solitary confinement in federal prisons, according to a statement released by the bureau. The move could impact thousands of juveniles in adult facilities who are frequently isolated from adult inmates, sometimes on the pretext of protecting their personal safety.

Texas State Senator Calls for Transfer of Violent Juvenile Offenders to Adult System

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A Texas state senator wants to create a new system of youth prisons for the state’s 17- and 18-year-old offenders, the Austin American-Statesman reported last week. Sen. John Whitmire (D-Houston), chairman of the state Senate Criminal Justice Committee, said his proposal would operate as a division of Texas’ adult prison system. Under the new system, older teens with violent offenses would be transferred from the Texas Juvenile Justice Department (TJJD) to the Texas Department of Criminal Justice (TDJC). Most likely, he said that the first wave of transferred juveniles would be placed in a Youthful Offender Program in a Houston-area prison, which currently holds fewer than 100 inmates. The program might be expanded to include as many as 500 beds.

A Sad Truth: In Chicago, The Murder of Hadiya Pendleton, While Tragic and High-Profile, Is Commonplace

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Originally appeared in The Chicago Bureau

CHICAGO -  Violence stalks Chicago’s streets, but when faced with staunchly rising homicide rates that show no sign of ebbing, residents’ capacity to tolerate the state of crime drains by the day. After Hadiya Pendleton performed with her high school marching band during the presidential inauguration two weeks ago, the King College Prep teen became Chicago’s 42nd homicide victim of 2013 when she was gunned down on Chicago’s South Side – the unintended victim of a gang dispute. Her death added to a January homicide toll that was the bloodiest since 2002, according to Chicago Police reports, suggesting that despite wide attention to Chicago’s murder woes, shifts in policing strategy and big promises by powerful politicians, there will be no immediate respite to the escalating violence that claimed more than 500 in 2012. The ups and downs of Chicago’s homicide toll over the past six years/Graphic by Lynne Carty/The Chicago Bureau

Perhaps it’s because Pendleton performed for Obama, or maybe because she starred in an anti-gang public service announcement four years ago (Pendleton PSA) pleading for an end to the chaos, but the nation has embraced this 15-year-old as a symbol and not just another statistic. As for those who study crime, who write about it and opine about it in Chicago, the nation’s murder capital, the question remains whether it will really matter:

“There is action because of the attention but it is not clear that it will work,” said University of Illinois at Chicago’s Dick Simpson, a known political expert and former alderman who recently studied the nexus of drugs, gangs and police corruption.

Growing Up to Be Stickup Kids

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NEW YORK --By the early 1990s, the crack era that devoured New York City in the 1980s was on the decline and crime rates were similarly falling. But Randol Contreras saw something different on the streets in the South Bronx neighborhood where he grew up. His drug dealer friends, no longer making the same money selling crack, were turning to robbing drug dealers for an increasingly dwindling share of the market. One vice traded for another, more violent one. His book "Stickup Kids: Race, Drugs, Violence and the American Dream," published by the University of California Press last month, chronicles the downfall of the drug trade and the young Dominican men from his childhood neighborhood that tried to make an often dangerous living in it.

Let’s Use a Little Logic

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There are three ways people respond to challenges in life. Okay, I realize I am making a big generalization, but this has been my observation of three broad categories we all seem to fall into when things get tough. This way of looking at people grew out of my time in prison, which is hugely stressful, making it a good laboratory for studying people. The first group will respond positively to challenge. They will assess the situation, see what changes they need to make, or what strategies they should adopt, and start working.