Ruling Could Vacate Sentence of Man Who Carried Out School Shooting Rampage in 1998

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Citing last year’s Miller v. Alabama Supreme Court ruling, an attorney representing Kipland “Kip” Kinkel -- who in 1998, murdered his parents and embarked upon a shooting spree at Thurston High School in Springfield, Ore. -- has filed a petition asking a state judge to void Kinkel’s current sentence. "He pleaded guilty and didn't try to evade responsibility for what he had done and asked for a lawful sentence," The Oregonian quotes Andy Simrin, attorney for the now 30-year-old Kinkel. Due to last year’s landmark ruling, he is requesting that his client’s current sentence be vacated and a new sentence hearing be ordered. On May 20, 1998 -- a day after killing his parents -- then 15-year-old Kinkel went on a shooting rampage at his high school.

New report on Video Games and Juvenile Offenders

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A study recently published in the journal Youth Violence and Juvenile Justice argues that there may be a link between violent video games and aggressive juvenile behavior. The study analyzed the video game playing behaviors of more than 200 young men and women involved in Pennsylvania’s juvenile justice system. According to the report, inclinations towards more violent games, as well as frequency of playing video games in general, may be factors in both delinquent and violent behavior among young people. According to the researchers of the report, the study is the first of its kind to measure the relationship between juveniles adjudicated with serious offenses and violent video game exposure. “Violent video game playing is one of dozens or perhaps hundreds of risk factors that kids can have that is associated with delinquency and violence,” Radio Iowa quotes Iowa State University researcher Matt DeLisi.

New Jersey Legislator Wants Violent Video Games Banned in Public Places

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If New Jersey Assemblywomen Linda Stender (D-Union) has her way, it could soon become a finable offense in the state for businesses to have violent video games available for public play. According to The Star Ledger, Stender announced plans to introduce a measure that would prevent public places — such as retail outlets, bowling allies and movie theaters — from having accessible video games that are rated either “mature” or “adults-only” by the Entertainment Software Ratings Board (ESRB.)

Under the legislation, she said that offenders would face first-time fines up to $10,000, with repeat offenders being tabbed $20,000 for each subsequent violation. Although Stender said that she doesn’t believe that video games are lone factors in contributing to violent youth behavior, she does consider the games to have a profound influence on young people. “Children today are exposed to violent images more than ever,” she is quoted in a recent press release. “Violent video games can desensitize children to violence and give them a warped version of reality where violence and death have no consequences outside their TV screens.”

Under the proposal, the violent video game ban would extend to all “places of public accommodation.” In addition to barring the games from restaurants, bars and amusement parks, the legislation would also restrict video game access in hospitals, public libraries and “any educational institution under the supervision of State Board of Education or the Commissioner of New Jersey,” which encompasses a wide swath ranging from kindergarten classrooms to the state’s colleges and universities.

Georgia Agencies Offering $6 Million for Juvenile Reinvestment Proposals

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On Friday, Georgia’s Governor’s Office for Children and Families (GOCF) and the Criminal Justice Coordinating Council (CJCC) announced a call for proposals, with $6 million in grants being offered to reduce recidivism rates among juvenile offenders. “We aim to incentivize court projects that provide services which hold juveniles accountable for their actions,” stated GOCF Executive Director Katie Jo Ballard. “While also holding our juvenile system accountable to taxpayers.”

The agencies are currently looking for in-state projects, involving evidence-based models that have been proven to reduce juvenile offender recidivism. The state will fund $5 million, with counties prioritized based on recidivism rates, while the GOFC will be providing an additional $1 million in federal funds. Funding applications are due by June 21, with award notifications expected to be announced on July 22.

Q&A With New Jim Crow Author Michelle Alexander

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JJIE and Youth Today Washington, D.C. correspondent Kaukab Jhumra Smith is in Cincinnati this week covering a conference sponsored by the Children’s Defense Fund. Among the more than 3,000 people in attendance is legal scholar Michelle Alexander, author of The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness. Smith managed to catch up with her to ask a few questions. JJIE: What do you think is the civil rights issue of our day? Alexander: I think the disposal of people who are viewed as “other,” defined along lines of race and class is a civil rights issue of the day.

LGBT Youth Over-Represented in Juvenile Justice System

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A disproportionate number of LGBT teens are represented in the nation’s juvenile justice system, possibly making up as much as 15 percent of the total juvenile justice population in the United States, according to a representative of the Center for American Progress. The findings were discussed last month in Washington, D.C. at an event sponsored by the National Council on Crime & Delinquency and titled “Unfair Criminalization of LGBT Youth.”

Aisha Moodie-Mills, a LGBT policy and racial justice advisor at the Center for American Progress, presented findings on behalf of Dr. Angela Irvine, one of four authors of “Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender (LGBT) Youth and the Juvenile Justice System.”  The results from the report, which were published in the 2011 book, “Juvenile Justice: Advancing Research, Policy, and Practice,” state that while gay and transgender teens make up only 5 to 7 percent of the total youth population, they represent an estimated 13 to 15 percent of the population of young people involved with the nation’s juvenile justice system. Moderating the event, Moodie-Mills said that stressors from family and school could potentially make LGBT teens more vulnerable than the general population to violence, prostitution and homelessness. Shortly after the event, survey findings from a joint project involving the Williams Institute, the Palette Fund and the True Colors Fund found that almost 40 percent of the nation’s homeless or at-risk youth are gay or transgender. Panelist Maya Rupert, a representative of the National Council for Lesbian Rights, said that several institutions, such as the nation’s education and legal systems, were failing the country’s LGBT teens.

Proposed Budget Cuts Loom for Juvenile Justice Programs

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Youth advocates are ringing the alarm bells at Congress’s proposed levels of funding for state programs that would prevent young people from being locked up for skipping school, keep young offenders from being held in adult prisons and reduce the disproportionate numbers of minority youth in jail. Since 2002, the funds available for states to implement Title II of the federal Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act have been slashed by more than half from $88.8 million, according to the Washington, D.C.-based Coalition for Juvenile Justice, which brings together citizens and public officials who work on juvenile justice issues in every state. Current funding levels for Title II -- whose four core requirements aim to protect young people from being unfairly confined in prison -- are at $40 million, according to figures released by the Coalition for Juvenile Justice in April. The White House requested $70 million for the 2013 budgetary year, an amount unlikely to pass Congress. If federal funds shrink further, states will have little incentive to meet federal guidelines for keeping juveniles out of the adult prison system, said Liz Ryan, president of the D.C.-based advocacy organization Campaign for Youth Justice.

No Quick Fix for Disproportionate School Discipline of Black Students

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In the wake of a batch of federal data released earlier this year showing minority children are disproportionately disciplined in schools, experts and policy makers say the reasons are complicated and not so easy to explain. But one thing is clear, they say, changing that is going to require a major shift in school philosophy. African-American students make up 18 percent of the pupils in a major U.S. Department of Education Office for Civil Rights survey covering the 2009-2010 school year. But they make up 35 percent of students suspended once, 46 percent of students suspended more than once, and 39 percent of students expelled. “There’s no proven conclusive definitive explanation,” said Michael Harris, a senior attorney for juvenile justice with the National Center for Youth Law in Oakland, Ca.

Stray Bullets Injured Hundreds in One Year, Study Finds

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More than 300 people in the United States were struck by stray bullets between March 2008 and February 2009, often from shootings unconnected to the victims, according to a new study by researchers from the School of Medicine at the University of California, Davis. Published in The Journal of Trauma and Acute Care Surgery, the study calculated the frequency of stray-bullet shootings during an 11-month period - a phenomenon, according to researchers, that resulted in at least 317 injuries. Garen Wintemute, professor of emergency medicine and director of the Violence Prevention Research Program at UC Davis conducted the research, which was partially funded by the California Wellness Foundation and the Eli and Edythe L. Broad Foundation. Using data collected from news alert services such as Google Alerts, in addition to GunPolicy.org archives, Wintemute and his colleagues tracked stories containing the term “stray bullet” for nearly one year, ultimately counting 284 shootings in which people were injured or killed by stray bullets. The study defines a stray-bullet shooting any instance in which a bullet escapes the immediate scene of the shooting and results in the injury of at least one person either by directly striking the victim or through associated “secondary mechanisms,” such as injuries sustained from glass shattered by a bullet.

Quinn, Hoping to Fill Huge Budget Hole, Sends Mixed Message to State’s Neediest

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By Eric Ferkenhoff and Maryam Jameel

Only hours before a Sunday deadline, Illinois Gov. Pat Quinn inked a $33.7 billion budget Saturday, balancing the books but angering some education and child welfare experts and confounding political observers who said the Democrat may well have done more harm than good to the state’s neediest residents. Quinn, facing a $43.8 billion budget deficit – reportedly the nation’s worst — before the new fiscal year 2013 kicked in,  took a budget that the General Assembly handed him on Friday, and cut it by $57 million. In doing so, Quinn said  ”our priority should always be the safety and well-being of our children,” and promised to return some of the Illinois’ legislature’s planned $50 million in cuts to the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services, or DCFS, the agency that handles most abuse and neglect cases and shelters the most at-risk. But critics said just the opposite could happen as Quinn, while saying he was protecting children and their education, cut $200 million in education funding and $85 million in child-welfare funding. Kent Redfield, an Illinois political expert and a professor emeritus at the University of Illinois at Springfield, said that while the cuts bring immediate savings, they could deepen problems, leading to bigger spending down the road.