Growing Movement Toward Localizing Juvenile Justice

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Not since the opening of the first juvenile reform school in 1886 has our nation’s approach to confining delinquent youth experienced such fundamental and widespread change. From California to New York, states are reducing juvenile placements, shuttering facilities and shifting money and kids to county control. If done thoughtfully, it’s a trend that holds much promise. This national realignment movement took a huge step forward on Sept. 1, when New York state’s “Close to Home” law went into effect.

White House Taps Juvenile Justice Advocates for Expertise on Gun Violence

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Representatives from a group of more than 300 juvenile justice and delinquency prevention organizations at the national, state and local level have met with White House staff and Congressional minority leaders at their invitation in recent weeks to provide evidence-based expertise on ways to reduce gun violence in the country, a coalition leader said. As tasked by President Barack Obama in the wake of mass shootings at an elementary school last month, Vice-President Joe Biden and his staff have spent the last few weeks meeting with gun-control advocates, pro-gun rights groups and dozens of concerned organizations in preparation for the release of the vice-president’s recommendations for the prevention of gun violence. According to Politico, Biden indicated today that the president could use an executive order to act on some of his recommendations, which are expected to be made public next week. On Jan. 4, representatives from the National Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Coalition and other advocates met with aides to the president and vice-president, including Tonya Robinson, a special assistant to the President on the White House Domestic Policy Council; Evan Ryan, an assistant to Biden; and Mary Lou Leary, the acting director of the Office of Justice Programs, said Nancy Gannon Hornberger, a coalition leader who was present at the meeting.

Number of Young People Arrested in Florida’s Public Schools Drops by Nearly Half over Last Eight Years

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The number of young people arrested in Florida’s public schools decreased by 48 percent from 2004 to 2012, according to a new Florida Department of Juvenile Justice report. Over the eight-year period, total public school arrests in the state fell from 24,000 to about 12,500 during the 2011-2012 school year. According to the report, 67 percent of all school-related arrests during the timeframe stemmed from misdemeanor offenses, with non-felony assault and battery, disorderly conduct and drug charges accounting for almost 56 percent of public school arrests over the eight-year period. Additionally, 51 percent of school-related arrests last year were attributed to first-time delinquents, a 7 percent drop from 2010-2011 statistics. In all, 65 percent of school-related arrests in the 2011-2012 school year in Florida were dismissed, not filed or eventually dismissed.

Reclaiming Our Children’s Futures

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The juvenile justice system in America has endured many trends and survived numerous attacks from its critics over the decades. From the paranoia about “super predators” in the 1990s that pushed an inordinate number of young people into adult jails, to the slow but steady decline in juvenile crime throughout the last decade, it has maintained its unique position in the criminal justice system.  In my estimation, it is still running shy of its credo of being a “balanced and restorative” system of justice for today’s youthful offenders. Part of the reason for this is that in many jurisdictions it is still mired in an old theory of behavior management that employs negative reinforcement as the chief means of managing delinquent misconduct. Despite the fact that the vast majority of offenders commit nonviolent property crimes, we still detain too many of these youth in the guise of managing misbehavior by consequences. Most of the disposition reports that I would read as a juvenile court judge contained only references to the negatives, rarely highlighting the assets that the young person may have.

Maine Looks at Placing Young Adult Inmates in Juvenile Detention Centers

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A proposal from Maine’s Department of Corrections (DOC) may change state laws that prohibit the housing of adults in juvenile holding facilities. Legislative Referendum (LR) 373, titled “An Act to Allow Young Adult Offenders to be Confined in Juvenile Correctional Facilities,” was submitted by the DOC for the first session of Maine’s 126th Legislature, which begins committee work this week. The proposal would allow inmates aged 18 to 25 to be held in juvenile facilities with unused beds. Department of Corrections Associate Commissioner Jody Breton told The Bangor Daily News the proposal would improve rehabilitation services and provide more resources for younger adult inmates. “It would allow us to provide more specific training to that age group,” she said.

Are Infants that Grow Up in Recession-Ravaged Homes Likelier to Become Delinquents?

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A study recently published in the Archives of General Psychiatry suggests that children adversely affected by economic downturns as infants may be likelier to engage in delinquent behaviors and substance abuse when they are older adolescents and young adults. Culling data from 1997’s National Longitudinal Study of Youth, researchers at the State University of New York’s Upstate Medical University examined a nationally representative sample of almost 9,000 young people born between 1980 and 1984. According to the study, infants exposed to a 1 percent deviation from regional unemployment rate average were found to have greater odds of using marijuana, smoking cigarettes and drinking alcohol, as well as a greater likelihood than their cohorts of being arrested, affiliating with gangs or engaging in both petty or major theft. Researchers sought to examine the potential consequences of the 1980 and 1981 to 1982 recessions on adolescents, in particular the possibility that living in an economically-disadvantaged home during the timeframe was likelier to produce a young person involved in substance abuse or criminal activity. In late 1982, the national unemployment rate stood at 10.8 percent - the highest such rate in the United States since the Great Depression.

Michigan Law Makes it Easier for Juvenile Offenders to Expunge Criminal Records

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In December 2012, Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder signed into law a bill that allows individuals to increase the number of juvenile crimes that are annually erased from their records. Under the new law, individuals with juvenile records will be allowed to ask courts to erase as many as three misdemeanor offenses from their records each year, pending the case has been closed for at least a year. Under the previous law, individuals were only allowed one expunged misdemeanor offense annually, and eligible cases must have been closed for a minimum of five years. The law also allows people that were charged as juveniles to request the expunging of one felony offense from their record per year, pending the offense was not a crime that, in an adult court, would be eligible for a life sentence. The bill received unanimous approval from the state’s House and Senate, with Snyder signing it into law in late December.