Juvenile Justice Information Exchange (https://jjie.org/tag/juvenile-justice/page/53/)
I am sitting in the back of a room at a local non-profit -- observing a break-out session with parents of troubled kids. John is leading the session. He is 20 years old. A father raises his hand and says, “My boy wants to play basketball all day. He doesn’t go to school.
The Gang Violence That Never Was — Social Media and Bad Journalism in Boston
http://bit.ly/k0AT5D
School Internet Filter Illegally Blocks LGBT Websites, Says ACLU
http://bit.ly/mEUWua
Journeys
http://bit.ly/gladxs
Last year, the Cold Case team reviewed a massive file of a 14-year-old foster child named Charlie. Among the state of Georgia forms, reports, statements and all things bureaucratic was a long-forgotten letter from his kindergarten teacher when the boy was 5. In the letter, the teacher pled for intervention for Charlie*. She obviously cared for her student, who came to school without a coat or socks in cold weather, sometimes wearing filthy underwear. The teacher noted that Charlie was frequently hungry at school and also described the emotional abuse she witnessed when visiting him in his roach-infested home.
Charles Taylor Gould, a former co-worker of mine, is a juvenile probation officer in Multnomah County, Ore., who's been hearing stories for 15 years from teenage girls in the juvenile justice system who've been sexually exploited or victimized by sex trafficking. So what did he do? He did what anyone would do: he made a full-length documentary. And along the way, he interviewed people like U.S. Senator Ron Wyden and actress Daryl Hannah. Your American Teen "follows three teens for approximately two years.
ORLANDO, Fla, - Frontline practitioners working on gang prevention, intervention and suppression are gathered this week for the National Gang Symposium in Orlando, Fla. For prevention, think of the Boys & Girls Club. For intervention, think of the Los Angeles-based Homeboy Industries, whose motto is “nothing stops a bullet like a job.” And for suppression, well, of course, think of the police. The number crunchers from the National Gang Center, using their own just released data, are telling symposium attendees today that gangs remain a substantial problem in the nation. However, gang levels are lower than the peak levels in the mid-1990s, and law enforcement agencies reported gang activity in their jurisdictions at about the same levels for five straight years – all this during a time when overall violence is way down.
In Florida, an investigation by The Palm Beach Post discovered more than a third of psychiatrists working for the state juvenile jails have accepted large speaking fees from pharmaceutical companies producing the anti-psychotic drugs regularly prescribed to kids in the Florida juvenile justice system. According to The Post, child advocates are claiming the doctors are over-prescribing the powerful psychotropic drugs to children in the juvenile jails as a “chemical restraint” and not for a legitimate medical reason. As a consequence of The Post’s findings, the Florida Department of Juvenile Justice Secretary Wansley Walters began an investigation into how psychotropic drugs are prescribed to children in DJJ custody.
Junior high school was a special hell for me, a daily torture made especially terrible by one particular boy I’ll call “T.”
He delighted in standing behind me and pointing out to everyone in the band room that, though I was in eighth grade, I didn’t shave my legs or wear nylons. (My mom had five kids, worked full-time, and had an alcoholic husband. My beauty regime -- or lack of it -- was the least of her worries.)
Anyway, those days were spent with my nose in a book. As I devoured Gone with the Wind, every page convinced me that if Scarlett could survive the burning of Atlanta, I could attend another horrible day at Lance Junior High in Kenosha, Wis. Dealing with T was bad, but I’ll never forget that bus incident involving “Miss M.” Since my dad was already at the factory and my mom was at work, I rode the bus home to babysit my four younger siblings.
Students and teachers in Gwinnett County, Ga., schools hoping to find educational material about sexual orientation and identity are discovering that those websites are blocked by the school district’s Internet filter. The filter, administered by a private company, includes a category named “LGBT” intended to block access to sites that include information about lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender issues. The American Civil Liberties Union of Georgia says the filter violates the First Amendment and the Equal Access Act, federal legislation that provides equal access to school resources for all extracurricular clubs. According to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, the ACLU sent a letter to the Gwinnett school superintendent demanding the LGBT filter be removed or risk litigation. “The administration at Brookwood High School has always been really supportive," said Nowmee Shehab, a senior and the president of the high school’s Gay Straight Alliance. "But a few weeks ago the web filter system at our school was changed, and suddenly websites that I’d been using all year to plan activities for our gay-straight alliance club started being blocked.”
A Gwinnett school system spokesperson told the AJC that students and faculty may request access to some blocked sites.
The continuing debate about sentencing juveniles to life without parole has real-world implications for a 12-year-old boy in Jacksonville, Fla., accused of killing his two-year-old half-brother. The Florida attorney general, Angela Corey (pictured at left) charged Christian Fernandez as an adult in the first-degree murder case. Corey quoted in the Florida Times-Union, said eight years was not enough time to rehabilitate Fernandez. But his adult status leaves Fernandez open to the possibility of a life sentence. The Times-Union story describes how Corey’s staff spent two months examining the 12-year-old before deciding how to charge him. The story also takes a long look at the history of juvenile life without parole sentences.
Sharon Smith’s daughter Angela died in 1998 of a heroin overdose. She was 18 years old. For four years before her death, Angie was in and out of 11 treatment centers, stood before a half dozen judges, and lived at one juvenile detention center. Sharon formed MOMSTELL in 2000 to advocate for more effective, accessible drug treatment and greater family involvement across the continuum of care and in the policy-making process. “Because no family should have to face the disease of addiction alone,” MOMSTELL is committed to identifying and removing barriers to treatment, many of which Sharon encountered when trying to find help for her daughter. Sharon was one of the organizers of the "national dialogue" sponsored in 2009 by SAMHSA for Families of Youth with Substance Use Disorders. Here, she illustrates some of those barriers specific to juvenile justice. When Angie started to use drugs, were there adults in her life who tried to help her?