Juvenile Justice Information Exchange (https://jjie.org/tag/juvenile-justice/page/67/)
I got up this morning and started my routine toward the morning news-making coffee, feeding the cat and dog, and turning off all the porch lights-and upon pouring my first cup and sitting in what my wife calls my “man chair,” I turn the tube on, and there it was-on CNN-“fewer states are trying juveniles as adults.”
Internet Crimes Against Children Deconfliction System Program Grant offers assistance to organizations looking for financial help to thwart internet crimes against kids. The Internet Crimes Against Children Deconfliction Systems (ICAC) may be able to get help from OJJJDP through its grant program. This grant will award as much as $500,000 to help construct, maintain and house an Internet Crimes Against Children Data System (IDS). The grant's purpose is to assist law enforcement investigations with child exploitations, avoid conflict on data, and enhance the ability to share information among local, state and federal ICAC task forces. This grant is available to help enhance the ability of OJJDP to collect and aggregate information on child exploitation.
A few days ago, one of Judge Mary Carden’s probation officers came to her with a problem. A juvenile on probation and under the supervision of her court had moved to Texas with his parents. The probation officer did what he had always done; he phoned his counterpart in Texas, explained the situation and asked, as usual, that Georgia transfer supervision to the state of Texas. “Texas,” Judge Carden said, “essentially told us ‘come get your kid.’ They told us that Texas is very much aware that Georgia has chosen not to sign the Compact and as far as they were concerned, this wasn’t their problem.”
The Compact Judge Carden refers t o is the Interstate Compact for Juveniles (ICJ), a legal mechanism that allows for the speedy and seamless transfer of delinquents and runaways between states. Georgia currently operates under the framework of a 1955 agreement.
Thompson High School student Shakira Hudson was 15 when she was killed. Audrey Atkinson of Covington was 19. Jasmine Harris of Atlanta was 17 and pregnant. All three died in 2010. Boyfriends or ex-boyfriends were charged with their murders. The girls' deaths were among 130 recorded by the Georgia Commission on Family Violence and the Georgia Coalition Against Domestic Violence in the 2010 Georgia Domestic Violence Fatality Report, the largest number of such homicides since the first annual report in 2003.
It’s no secret that kids love social networking sites like Facebook. But a new study by the Pew Internet & American Life Project found that many of those kids aren’t supposed to be there at all. It turns out that tens of thousands of them are too young to be lingering in this cyber-hangout. The report says that 46 percent of 12-year-olds in the United States are on Facebook despite the fact the social media site expressly prohibits anyone under the age of 13. The problem with that, of course, is that all a young person has to do is lie about his or her age. And, apparently that's what a lot of them do. In fact, the Daily Telegraph in Australia reports that Facebook is kicking some 20,000 youngsters off the site a day.
A recent Australian study suggests that many kids don’t understand the legal risks of social networking sites such as Facebook. Thirty percent of Victoria, Australia middle-grade children surveyed did not believe there was any legal liability associated with social media sites. Legal risks include potential defamation and harassment, among others. With more than 93 percent of kids regularly using Facebook, and 73 percent of students surveyed reporting “unwelcome” contact by strangers through social networking sites, researchers recommend integrating social media education into school curricula. “Little attention has been given to the potential legal risks that children and young people may face when using social networking sites,” said Dr. Michael Henderson, a co-author of the study. You can read the full report here.
A bill that toughens laws against sex trafficking was voted out of a Georgia State Senate committee this morning, despite calls by conservative activist to add an amendment. HB 200 now moves to the Senate Rules Committee before heading on to the Senate floor for a vote. Sue Ella Deadwyler, the author of the Georgia Insight newsletter, who claims to have been “called by God,” wanted to change language that provides an affirmative defense for victims of sex trafficking under the age of 18. Proponents of the measure say the language concerning affirmative defense defines minors as victims of the sex trafficking industry, rather than criminals that participate in it. But Deadwyler disagreed, arguing that the bill legalizes child prostitution. She wants to reduce the age that children are prosecuted from 18 to 13, otherwise Georgia will become “a haven for male and female participants in various sexually explicit professions, including prostitution, masturbation for hire and pornography,” according to her website, GeorgiaInsight.org. At a press conference in February, 2010, Deadwyler said, “Sure there are those who are forced into prostitution, but I think most of them volunteer .
Fathers suffering from depression are more likely to spank their children and less likely to read to them, a new study finds. The research, published in Pediatrics, found that 41 percent of fathers with depression hit their child in the last month, nearly three times as frequently as fathers who weren’t depressed, ScienceDaily reported. The University of Michigan Health System study looked at 1,746 fathers of one-year-old children. Of those, 7 percent were diagnosed with depression. Depressed fathers were also less likely to read to their children. Forty-one percent of depressed dads read to their kids at least three times per week compared with 58 percent of fathers without depression. "This study is important because it demonstrates that depression in fathers has very tangible effects on how those fathers interact with their young children," said Sarah Clark, one of the authors of the study. You can read more information here.
The first overhaul of Georgia’s juvenile code in 40 years will be at least another year in the making. The rewritten code — Senate Bill 127 — failed to come up for a vote by the deadline to move it on to the House this year. But because the General Assembly works in two-year sessions, the bill is not dead and may be taken up next year without being reintroduced or reassigned to a committee. After its first reading in the Senate this year, the bill, also known as the “Children’s code,” was referred to the Senate Judiciary Committee, chaired by Sen. Bill Hamrick (R-Carrollton), who is also the bill’s sponsor. “We had a hearing on the bill and discovered that some stakeholders had issues with the bill,” said committee aide Emily Fisher, “so Senator Hamrick asked those stakeholders to meet outside of the committee and work out some sort of compromise. The committee was set to hear the bill again, but we ran out of time.”
Hamrick “hopes to have worked out the stakeholders' concerns over the break this summer and fall in order to reach a version of the bill that may be passed and considered in the House,” Fisher said.
Gail Wasserman and her colleagues from the Center for the Promotion of Mental Health in Juvenile Justice at Columbia University published an important new study that was released mid-February in Criminal Justice and Behavior: "Psychiatric Disorder, Comorbidity, and Suicidal Behavior in Juvenile Justice Youth." It may be the best source of information yet on the prevalence of substance abuse and mental health disorders among youth in the juvenile justice system. We need accurate information. I've heard many practitioners around the country make the same mistake, claiming that "70 percent" of the youth in "the system" have diagnosable disorders. As I've said before elsewhere, this common mistake usually starts with a misreading of the 2002 study by Linda Teplin at Northwestern University.