Juvenile Justice Information Exchange (https://jjie.org/tag/news-system/page/15/)
WASHINGTON, D.C. – With approximately 275 participants, representing 45 states and territories, the Coalition for Juvenile Justice held its annual conference in Washington, D.C. last week.
The federal Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP) Administrator, Robert Listenbee, officially announced Friday the reorganization of the office.
This week, the Texas Senate passed SB 1769, a legislative proposal that would establish an advisory committee to evaluate the prospect of ending the state’s practice of fingerprinting low-level juvenile offenders who are referred to probation departments.
DALTON, Ga. -- “This is a very crucial day in the state of Georgia,” said Gov. Nathan Deal Thursday at the Elbert Shaw Regional Youth Detention Center, where he signed into a massive reform package that rewrites the state’s juvenile code.
Advocacy group Human Rights Watch issued a new report Wednesday discussing the many negative impacts—on children and society—of including juveniles on sex offender registries.
Following Wednesday’s story on this site about the report, “Raised on the Registry: The Irreparable Harm of Placing Children on Sex Offender Registries in the U.S.,” JJIE called three experts in the field to ask why including juvenile sex offenders in these registries may or may not make sense.
Legislators in Texas heard a proposal Tuesday from Democratic state Sen. Leticia Van de Putte that would limit solitary confinement throughout the state’s juvenile detention facilities, the Associated Press reports.
Although fewer numbers of low-level offenders are being sent to Ohio Department of Youth Services (DYS) centers, a Correctional Institution Inspection Committee report released last week found that personnel use of force to restrain adolescents and teens in the state’s facilities increased in 2012. Last year, an estimated 4.69 “use of force” incidents per youth were tallied up by the Committee. Three years earlier, the estimates were just 3.74 incidents per detained juvenile. One facility -- Circleville Juvenile Correctional Facility -- was found to have a “use of force” rate that averaged 7.31 incidents per inmate. While the average rate of per capita “use of force” incidents has increased over a four-year period, the total number of “use of force” incidents in Ohio has dropped off considerably, however.
Pennsylvania officials are investigating administrators at a Pittsburgh juvenile detention center amid charges of mismanagement and favoritism. Last month, two of Shuman Juvenile Detention Center’s highest ranking administrators were given one-week suspensions, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reports. William Simmons, director of the Allegheny County facility, was placed on unpaid suspension for two days last month, and county controller’s office records indicate he will serve an additional three-day leave without pay in April. Lynette Drawn-Williamson, the facility’s deputy director, was also suspended last month, serving a five-day leave in March. Both suspensions come on the heels of a county report highly critical of the management at Shuman.
For me the keepers of convicts shoulder their combines and keep watch,
It is I let out in the morning and barr’d at night. Not a youngster is taken for larceny but I go up too, and am tried and sentenced. —Walt Whitman, Song of Myself
April is National Poetry Month. This year, thousands of students incarcerated in juvenile detention and correctional centers around the country are participating in a nationwide poetry initiative, “Words Unlocked,” sponsored by the Center for Educational Excellence in Alternative Settings. We should support the study of poetry in all of our nation’s schools, especially those located behind bars.
Recent data released by the New Orleans Police Department reveal a staggering number of black young people have been arrested on curfew violations, with black males arrested at a rate 16 times higher than that of the city’s white young people. Nearly 93 percent of all young people arrested for curfew violations in New Orleans from 2009 until 2012 were black, The New Orleans Times-Picayune reported. In 2009, 98 percent of all youth detained for violating curfew laws were black. Of the 1,416 curfew arrests in New Orleans in 2009, just 26 of the young people arrested were white. In total, white males and females represented about 7 percent of all curfew arrests over the three-year timeframe.