Juvenile Justice Information Exchange (https://jjie.org/tag/feature2/page/8/)
In 2010, the federal Office of Juvenile Justice Delinquency Prevention released results from the first-ever nationally representative survey of youth confined in juvenile justice facilities. However, because interviews were conducted in 2003, the findings beg the question: What changes have occurred since 2003 in mental health care for confined youth?
President Barack Obama introduced his 2014 budget proposal on Wednesday, highlighting new efforts to increase funding for education and juvenile justice. Although the president described his proposal as “not optimal,” but necessary for compromise, agencies such as Health and Human Services and the Department of Justice were quick to praise funding included for needed mental health services, prevention of gun violence and investments in early childhood education. The president’s budget calls for $3.77 trillion in spending and anticipates $1.8 trillion in deficit reduction over 10 years. HouseRepublicans and Senate Democrats already passed their 2014 budget resolutions, which Congress will move to reconcile with each other and the president’s proposal in the coming months. House Majority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio), in a video statement, argued in favor of the House resolution, stating that the president’s budget doesn’t “come to balance.”
The president’s justice programs proposals focus on efforts to support evidence-based practices and to increase awareness of what works.
Drop out factories. Since coined by a Johns Hopkins researcher working on high school dropout issues in 2004, that’s the name given to schools that lead our nation in dropout rates, graduating less than 60 percent of their students each year. Around the country, half of the more than 1 million students that fail to graduate high school each year come from just 12 percent of the nation’s schools, according to U.S. Department of Education statistics. President Barack Obama, retired General Colin Powell and Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, among others, have taken notice. Since 1980, dropout rates around the United States have decreased – and graduation rates are up – but nearly one in four public school students still leave high school without a diploma.
A majority of young adults don’t know enough about contraceptives, according to results from a new Guttmacher Institute study. Six in 10 supposedly “underestimate” the effectiveness of birth control pills and other oral contraceptives. The report, Young Adults’ Contraceptive Knowledge, Norms and Attitudes: Associations with Risk of Unintended Pregnancy, involved 1,800 young adults, ages 18 to 29. Although approximately half of the male responders - and about 70 percent of female survey takers - stated that they were “committed to avoiding pregnancy,” around 40 percent of the survey population believed birth control was irrelevant, stating that “when it is your time to get pregnant, it will happen.”
The study shows a clear connection between young adults’ knowledge of contraceptive methods and devices and the likelihood they would engage in unprotected sexual intercourse. According to the authors, the odds of a female responder having unprotected sex within a three month window decreased by about nine percent with every correct answer she submitted for the questionnaire, with the odds of the responder using long-acting forms of contraception, such as hormonal treatments, rising by 17 percent.
Leonard Witt, executive director of the Center for Sustainable Journalism and publisher of Youth Today and the Juvenile Justice Information Exchange recently spoke with Judge Gail Garinger while at a symposium hosted by the John Jay College of Criminal Justice. Garinger is now Child Advocate for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. LEONARD WITT: You talked about the idea of bullying – and it’s on everybody’s mind right now – and you’re a little bit worried the legislators are going to over-react. Can you talk about that a little bit? JUDGE GAIL GARINGER: As you mentioned, I’m from Massachusetts, and what we saw in Massachusetts was a very tragic situation involving a suicide of a young woman who had been continually bullied in the school.
If passed, a California law will make it the first state in the nation to ban controversial therapy aimed at turning gay and lesbian teens straight. State Sen. Ted Lieu (D-Torrance), sponsor of the bill, said the so-called reparative therapy wrongly treats homosexuality as a disease and can be harmful to minors. “Some therapists are taking advantage of vulnerable people by pushing dangerous sexual orientation-change efforts,” Lieu told the state’s Senate Judiciary Committee last week. “These non-scientific efforts have led in some cases to patients later committing suicide, as well as severe mental and physical anguish.”
As it’s written, SB 1172 would ban juveniles under the age of 18 from undergoing “sexual orientation change efforts” (SOCE) and require adults considering treatment to sign consent forms stating they understand the therapy has no medical basis and the potential dangers. The bill has already passed two Senate policy committees and is due for a vote on the Senate floor, liking within the next month.
Some 22 million children who depend on the federal nutrition assistance program that replaced food stamps could lose their benefits under a 2013 budget resolution recently approved by the House Agricultural Committee. The budget, approved in April, would cut more than $33 billion over the next 10 years from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). Approximately one third of the proposed cuts are directed at “categorical eligibility” restrictions that could leave as many as two million people per year ineligible for SNAP benefits. The proposed bill would also eliminate more than 250,000 children from automatic enrollment in the Free School Lunch and Breakfast Program. Their benefits could vanish as early as this year if the budget is passed.
Mother’s Day marks the first day of the annual Feed the Kids food drive in New York City by City Harvest, a food rescue organization dedicated to feeding the city’s hungry. Feed the Kids brings together companies, organizations and individuals to collect kid-friendly, non-perishable food during the month between Mother’s Day and Father’s Day – May 13 to June 17, 2012. City Harvest is also partnering with the New York Mets through the team’s season-long hunger relief program, Feeding the Big Apple Presented by Hain Celestial. Students from P.S. 12 in Queens will be rewarded for collecting more than 2,000 pounds of food during the 2011 Feed the Kids food drive, more than any other school, when the Mets drop by their school at the end of May to play catch. The Feed the Kids campaign helps stock shelves at community programs during the summer so children who depend on meals at school will not go hungry.
Earlier this month, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) unveiled new data suggesting more teen girls are using birth control. Part of the “Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report,” the data was compiled from several National Survey of Family Growth (NSFG) cycles. According to the report, approximately 60 percent of sexually active teens reported using contraceptive methods considered “highly effective” by the CDC, such as hormonal treatments or intrauterine devices - an increase from 47 percent in 1995. Additionally, the CDC report estimated that 57 percent of females ages 15 to 19 reported they’d never had sex, up from 49 percent in 1995. The new report analyzed NFSG data collected from three different intervals - 1995, 2002, and a five-year survey encompassing findings from 2006 to 2010.
Last month, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court decided that a Pike County Jewish summer camp was no longer eligible for tax-exempt status in a ruling that could affect non-profit organizations throughout the state. In a narrow 4-3 decision, the state's Supreme Court ruled the summer camp, operated by Mesivtah Eitz Chaim of Bobov, Inc., did not meet the HUP Test, a series of qualifications, established in the court's previous ruling in Hospital Utilization Project v. Commonwealth 1985, used to determine if an organization is a “purely public charity.” Only organizations meeting the standard are given tax-exempt status by the state. The state's Supreme Court ruled the summer camp did not meet one part of the HUP Test, “relieving the government of some of its burden.”
The camp’s organizers, however, argued Act 55, a 1997 state law that includes a broader definition of a public charity, took precedence over the earlier HUP Test. But the Court dismissed this, ruling the state’s General Assembly could not interpret the Constitution and redefine the meaning of a “purely public charity.”
Stuart L. Knade, chief counsel for the Pennsylvania School Boards Association, told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette he supported the court’s decision. “People who are students of this area of the law are going to continue to enforce a higher bar to tax exemption,” he said.