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.

Georgia DJJ Audit of YDC Found Numerous Violations Months Before Detainee Escape

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In October, five young detainees escaped from Georgia’s Augusta Youth Development Campus (YDC). Just a few days later, the facility’s then-Director, Ronald Brawner, resigned. An internal audit released last month by the state’s Department of Juvenile Justice (DJJ) indicates that the facility had numerous departmental policy violations prior to the escape, with an interview conducted earlier in the year revealing that Brawner’s staff failed to maintain proper documentation or develop an emergency plan for the YDC, according to The Augusta Chronicle. Georgia Department of Juvenile Justice Commissioner Avery Niles stated last month that the DJJ told administrators and personnel at the YDC to improve facility safety and make departmental improvements. A late-August DJJ evaluation verified that the facility did not have cooperative agreements in place with emergency officials, such as local police.  Additionally, an auditor determined the YDC was both constructed unsafely and staffed by an “excessive” number of uncertified security personnel.

Review: ‘The Central Park Five’

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 An imperfect film reminds Americans of chilling crime and those wrongfully convicted

It’s often said that the more you know about something, the less you are apt to like a film about it. So let me state up front that I was living in New York City (in a single room occupancy hotel not far from Central Park, in fact — I went running in the park almost every day), in 1989, so I remember the Central Park jogger case quite well. In fact, if you lived in the city at the time, it was almost impossible not to hear about the case, including the controversy over the treatment of the young men arrested and later convicted of this crime. The case also received nationwide coverage, as did the fact that someone else later confessed to the crime, and that the Five’s convictions were overturned in 2002. Apparently most Americans don’t know much about this case, however, and they may be better served than I was by The Central Park Five, a new documentary by Ken Burns, Sarah Burns, and David McMahon.

Recognizing the Invisible Threads Connecting Us All

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My first workshop in restorative justice was just a few years ago. I had been studying the literature, and considering how the work I was doing fell within the RJ framework, but I had yet to meet any practitioners from the outside. That changed when some volunteers from the Georgia Council for Restorative Justice visited me in prison. I had written them a letter asking for help, and they answered that request in ways far beyond what I hoped for. We met in a small classroom in the library.

Review of The War on Kids (Spectacle Films)

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We’re living in a Golden Age for documentary film — thanks to digital technology, it’s easier than ever to make a documentary, and thanks to the Internet and DVDs, it’s easier than ever to watch one. This is both good and bad — good in that you don’t need a lot of resources to create a documentary, and the cost of watching one can be free, or at least far less than what you would pay for a ticket to a movie theatre. The problem is that a lot of half-baked documentaries are getting made and distributed, and it can be hard for a potential audience member to figure out which documentaries are worth his or her time. Cevin Soling’s 2009 documentary, The War on Kids, is typical of a lot of the digital documentaries being produced today. It’s neither great nor terrible, but it’s an OK watch if you have an interest in the subject matter and a tolerance for directors who hammer their point of view at you for 95 minutes, without providing a lot of context or research support and no alternative voices at all.