The Battle Lines Over Guns Often Drawn by Funding

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Story produced by the Chicago Bureau. President Barack Obama delivered his second inaugural address Monday, promising to focus on climate control and pursue greater equality for gay Americans. Those issues, however, are just the beginning of the challenges he must face as he starts his second term. Fixing a broken global economy still ranks first in the minds of many Americans, along with ending our conflicts abroad. On the domestic front there’s no getting around the debate over gun control, with both sides digging in for a fight in Congress – spurred on by a mounting body count that now includes a family in New Mexico, shot dead by a 15-year-old boy.

Georgia Governor: $5 Million for New Juvenile Diversions

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Georgia Gov. Nathan Deal is asking the state legislature to spend $5 million dollars to set up community diversion programs for low-risk youth offenders, on the model of other states. The appropriation would “create an incentive funding program” to encourage communities to treat appropriate youth at home, Deal told lawmakers at his annual State of the State address on Jan. 17. “We would emphasize community-based, non-confinement correctional methods for low-risk offenders as an alternative to regional and state youth centers,” Deal said, options like substance abuse treatment and family counseling. He emphasized the chance to save money, saying every secure bed in a Youth Detention Center, a facility for longer-term sentences, costs $91,000 annually.

Obama Announces Plans to Reduce Gun Violence

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President Barack Obama announced his support for a range of gun control policies this afternoon that addressed not only the threat of mass shootings but also the recurring gun-related violence that takes dozens of lives in the country every day. After his speech, he signed multiple executive measures ordering some immediate changes, while four children who had written to urge him to take action against gun violence stood behind him. “This is our first task as a society: keeping our children safe. This is how we will be judged,” Obama told an audience that included parents of children killed by a gunman last month at an elementary school in Connecticut. “We can’t put this off any longer.”

The president backed universal background checks for all gun purchases, including those sold privately and at gun shows, a ban on the sale of assault weapons and high-capacity ammunition magazines, increased hiring in law enforcement, and initiatives on mental health and school safety.

Michigan Law Makes it Easier for Juvenile Offenders to Expunge Criminal Records

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In December 2012, Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder signed into law a bill that allows individuals to increase the number of juvenile crimes that are annually erased from their records. Under the new law, individuals with juvenile records will be allowed to ask courts to erase as many as three misdemeanor offenses from their records each year, pending the case has been closed for at least a year. Under the previous law, individuals were only allowed one expunged misdemeanor offense annually, and eligible cases must have been closed for a minimum of five years. The law also allows people that were charged as juveniles to request the expunging of one felony offense from their record per year, pending the offense was not a crime that, in an adult court, would be eligible for a life sentence. The bill received unanimous approval from the state’s House and Senate, with Snyder signing it into law in late December.

Maryland Board Postpones Vote That May Double Size of Keymar Juvenile Facility

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The Maryland Board of Public Works has delayed voting on a potential $11.7 million contract that may allow a Carroll County juvenile facility to double the number of young people in residency. A key vote, originally scheduled for earlier this week, has been postponed for an additional three weeks. Pending approval, the measure would increase the number of juvenile residents at the Silver Oak Academy in Keymar, Md. from 48 to 96 young people. The service contract modification, which is termed from Feb.

Major Layoffs Expected for New Orleans’ Juvenile Court in 2013

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Massive cuts are expected for New Orleans’ Juvenile Court, with more than 30 employees expected to be removed from the city’s payroll in early 2013. More than a third of the court’s funding was recently slashed, Chief Judge Ernestine Gray told WWLTV, with more than $800,000 recently removed from the court’s former budget of $2.7 million. Reserve funds will be used to keep recently laid off employees available as contracted workers, although Judge Gray said that such funding will likely be expended before next year. “If we have the same situation from the city and the mayor next year for our budget,” she said, “I don’t know how we operate in 2014.”

The funding cuts were authorized by the New Orleans City Council, at the behest of Mayor Mitch Landrieu’s administration, who told the council that New Orleans had a larger judicial bench than necessary for the city’s workload. New Orleans Chief Administrative Officer and Deputy Mayor Andy Kopplin said that since the workload for the city’s juvenile court has decreased, while the city’s municipal court workload has increased, he considers the funding cuts to be appropriate.

Illinois Governor’s Plan to Close Juvenile Prisons Nears Completion

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CHICAGO -- Every morning in southern Illinois, 38 full-time prison guards board a state bus and ride 46 miles to the Illinois Youth Center and correctional facility at Murphysboro. The facility was built in 1997 with a capacity for 156 young people. But when the guards arrive for work every day, no inmates are waiting for them. Concurrent with a steady decline in youth incarceration, Murphysboro hasn’t seen an inmate in months. But a heavily disputed proposal by Illinois Gov. Pat Quinn to close Murphysboro and the under-populated juvenile facility at Joliet, consolidating their inmates with those in other facilities across the state, is nearing its final stages.

Georgia Panel Vote on Key Juvenile Justice Reforms next Week

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A blue-ribbon panel in Georgia is making the last tweaks to its recommendations for a statewide juvenile justice overhaul, ahead of a vote scheduled for Dec. 13. “There are ongoing meetings and discussions about a fiscal incentive model similar to Ohio,” said state Court of Appeals Judge Mike Boggs at a Dec. 4 meeting of the Georgia Special Council on Criminal Justice Reform in Forsyth, Ga. The so-called Ohio model, named for the state that pioneered it in the early 1990s, channels certain low-level offenders away from state custody and into locally-run diversion programs.  The Georgia Council may recommend some formula to give financial incentives to counties for treating or diverting kids who are guilty of certain misdemeanors or things that are only illegal because of their youth, such as truancy.

Nebraska Pardons Board Cancels Hearings for LWOP Prisoners Convicted as Juveniles

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The Nebraska Pardons Board cancelled this week’s hearings following the granting of an injunction request by more than a dozen prisoners, who said that the meetings, following the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in Miller v. Alabama, may result in them receiving prison sentences of at least 50 years. The Omaha World Herald reports that Douglas County Judge Thomas Otepka granted the request late last Friday, with the Pardons Board subsequently postponing several hearings scheduled for Monday and Wednesday. “Defendants are enjoined from commencing the commutation hearings scheduled for December 3 and 5, 2012, until such time as the Nebraska Supreme Court and the Nebraska Legislature addresses the constitutional mandates of Miller v. Alabama,” Otepka wrote. Two weeks earlier, Nebraska Attorney General Jon Bruning - a member of the state’s Pardons Board - said that he would likely give the prisoners, all currently serving life sentences for crimes they committed as juveniles, minimum 50-year sentences in hearings originally scheduled for this week. “We respectfully disagree with the court’s decision,” Bruning said.