Raising Boys with Manners

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Living with eight men can have the flavor of living in a fraternity house – literally. There’s often an overabundance of socks left in the living room, garbage flowing from the can to the floor and dishes overwhelming the countertops in the kitchen. Even more shocking have been the occasional outbursts of Cro-Magnon manners among our young people. I’ve also noticed an increased level of boorishness in the population as a whole. It’s now considered OK to confront publically and embarrass people (let’s hear it for Shock Jock Howard Stern).

Alternatives to Youth Detention Conference Opens in Houston

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Texas State Senator John Whitmire came to the podium last night at the opening of the Juvenile Detention Alternatives Initiative (JDAI) conference in Houston and got right to the core work of the JDAI. Five years ago, he said, 5,000 youth in Texas were incarcerated at any one time. Today the number is down to 1,500. It has happened, he said, without compromising public safety. The JDAI is an initiative backed by the Annie E. Casey Foundation and according to its press release, “In 2010, JDAI sites detained 42 percent fewer youth — approximately 2,400 — on an average day than they had prior to implementing approaches that include electronic monitoring, community monitoring, and day or evening reporting centers."

Day Two: John Jay Juvenile Justice Conference

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NEW YORK – The John Jay College of Criminal Justice’s Center on Media, Crime and Justice is holding a two-day conference for journalists on its campus in New York Monday and Tuesday. While the conference, Kids Behind Bars, Where’s the Justice in America’s Juvenile Justice System?, is primarily meant for journalists, many of the topics will be of interest not only to those in the field, but the general public as well. JJIE/Youth Today’s John Fleming and Clay Duda are attending the conference and continue their reporting today. For Day One coverage head over to our post here. DAY TWO

Panel One:

Mike Bocian, provided the keynote address Tuesday morning.

A Juvenile Justice System in Flux: Updates from John Jay Symposium

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NEW YORK – The John Jay College of Criminal Justice’s Center on Media, Crime and Justice is holding a two-day conference for journalists on its campus in New York Monday and Tuesday. JJIE/Youth Today’s John Fleming and Clay Duda are attending the conference and will be reporting some highlights throughout. While the conference, Kids Behind Bars, Where’s the Justice in America’s Juvenile Justice System?, is primarily meant for journalists, many of the topics will be of interest not only to those in the field, but the general public as well. Speakers on Monday include: Mark Soler, executive director of the Center for Children’s Law & Policy; Vincent Schiraldi, commissioner of New York City’s Department of Probation; Ricardo Martinez, co-director, Padres & Jovenes Unidos and David Utter, director of policy, the Florida office of the Southern Poverty Law Center. Gail Garinger, a former juvenile court judge, who is now the Child Advocate of Massachusetts’ Office of the Child Advocate, will deliver the keynote address.

The Case for Phased Juvenile Justice Realignment in California

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California is embarking on an ambitious and deep-rooted reform of its corrections system, an effort that has come to be know as realignment. Gov. Jerry Brown’s main aims in this undertaking is to reduce dramatically high costs, as well as overcrowding and recidivism rates by transferring non-serious adult offenders and parolees from the state to the counties. But concurrent to this effort, many reform-minded criminal justice advocates also propose a full devolution of the state juvenile system to local counties. Full juvenile realignment is a historic opportunity to end a failed system, while addressing county-level discrepancies in sentencing and services. California’s 58 counties already manage much of the juvenile system, including total responsibility for supervising probation.

Secretary of Education Unveils Blueprint to Reform Nation’s Vocational Education System

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During a national press call on Thursday, U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan announced an outline for the reauthorization of the Carl D. Perkins Career and Technical Education Act of 2006; a proposal entitled Investing in America’s Future: A Blueprint for Transforming Career and Technical Education. Joining Duncan for the teleconference was Brenda Dann-Messier, the Department’s assistant secretary for the Office of Vocational and Adult Education and Stanley Litow, vice president of corporate citizenship and corporate affairs and president of the IBM International Foundation. The Investing in America’s Future proposal zeroes in on a number of educational reform issues, primarily as it pertains to two-year colleges and technical education programs. According to Dann-Messier, the proposal aims to increase the nation’s skilled labor force – primarily in the fields of computer science and healthcare – through a series of career and technical education (CTE) program reforms.

Dann-Messier noted the Obama administration’s fiscal year 2013 budget included a number of investments in the nation’s community colleges and technical schools, including $1 billion proposed for carrying out the four “key areas” of the newly unveiled blueprint, which seek to increase the nation’s number of community and technical college graduates through “alignment, collaboration, accountability and innovation.”

According to an official Department of Education press release, the proposal would also incentivize “secondary schools, institutions of higher education, employers and industry partners to work together to ensure that all CTE program offer students high-quality learning opportunities.”

During the press call, Litow said the needs of private industry may necessitate a complete overhaul of the American education system. A proponent of Pathways in Technology Early College High schools (P-TECH), Litow said he would like to see more institutions adopt the educational model, which merges high school with a post-secondary technical track into a six-year program. Litow said that the key to “rebuilding” the nation’s economy was not through job creation, but through increasing the percentages of Americans with technical or career educations.