Razor wire fence borders the Metro Regional Youth Detention center in Atlanta, Ga. JJIE Staff, 2010. File photo.

County Police Called to Quell Riot at Georgia YDC

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Operations have returned to normal at the DeKalb County Regional Youth Detention Center (RYDC) after local law enforcement were called in to secure the facility following a riot this past Sunday. More than half of the 64 juvenile inmates were involved in the disturbance, according to a report by WSB’s Richard Belcher.

This is the second time in less than six months county law enforcement have been called on to regain control of the RYDC. In May, a DeKalb County SWAT unit was called in after what was called a “group disturbance” by then DJJ spokesperson Scheree Moore.

In 2011, at least two similar incidents occurred at Eastman RYDC near Macon, Ga. In February, outside law enforcement from two nearby counties were called in to help regain control and return the 60 inmates involved to their cells.

DJJ officials declined to comment, only saying that the investigation is ongoing, but Atlanta’s WSB TV was able to piece together a timeline of what happened in the facility on the afternoon of Oct. 2 through a combination of police reports and a 911 call from an official working at the time of the riot.

The most recent incident was the largest such disturbance reported to date, involving at least 34 of the 64 youth held at the facility, according to the 911 call.

Also in May, a murder suspect escaped from the DeKalb RYDC. The 16-year-old escapee was apprehended later the same week, but the circumstances surrounding the escape are still unclear.

Citing budgetary constraints the DJJ closed two RYDC facilities last spring, although neither of the closed facilities were near Eastman or DeKalb. Twenty RYDCs remain active throughout the state. In addition there are six long-term Youth Development Campuses in Georgia.

Judge Teske Gives Voice to Juvenile Justice Reforms on National Stage

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Regular JJIE contributor Judge Steve Teske was recently featured in The Washington Post for his crusade to end the school-to-prison-pipeline. The Post examines how Teske’s work to reduce schools’ referrals to juvenile court has gained a national audience.

Teske says zero tolerance policies have resulted in too many kids entering the juvenile justice system. In Teske’s opinion, “zero tolerance often means overpunishment for low-level misdeeds,” according to The Post. Because of that, he helped bring reforms to his home community of Clayton County, Ga., where Teske is chief juvenile judge. Since implementing the changes, juvenile crime has dropped, recidivism is down and graduation rates are up.

Teske, the story says, remains tough on crimes involving guns and drugs.

“The cases we have in court now are the burglars, the robbers — the kids who scare you, not the kids who make you mad,” Teske told The Post.

As Teske travels the country speaking about the need for reform, the success of Clayton County, The Post notes, is now inspiring communities in Connecticut, Indiana and Kansas, among others, to implement similar reforms.

And Teske is quick to point out his own teenage lapse in judgment, a school prank that today would have landed him in juvenile court. At 13, he pulled his school's fire alarm but his principal insisted the school handle Teske's punishment.

“Would I even be a judge today had I gone to jail that day?” he asked in The Post.

Americans Believe in Treatment Over Incarceration for Youth, New Poll Finds

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A majority of Americans favor rehabilitation and treatment of youth over incarceration, new national poll found. The survey, commissioned by the Campaign for Youth Justice (CFYJ), also found most Americans, 76 percent, believe youth should not automatically be sent to adult court. The poll was given to 1,000 U.S. adults.

"This public opinion research demonstrates Americans’ strong support for rehabilitation and treatment for court-involved youth, over incarceration and automatic prosecution in adult criminal court," stated CFYJ’s President and CEO Liz Ryan in a press release. "In light of this research, it is urgent that state officials accelerate youth justice reforms to reduce the incarceration of youth and prosecution in adult criminal court, and that Congress and the Administration reject deep cuts to juvenile justice funding."

Other highlights from the poll include:

A large majority of the public, 89 percent, would prefer youth to receive treatment, counseling and education.
Family is an important component in the juvenile justice system. Eighty-six percent of Americans favor involving the youth’s family in treatment while ensuring youth remains connected to their families.
Sixty-nine percent of Americans believe children should not be placed in adult prisons and jails.
Many Americans, 71 percent, favor providing more funds to public defenders to represent youth in court.
Eighty-one percent of Americans trust judges over prosecutors when determining if a child should be tried as an adult.

GOCF Executive Director Katie Jo Ballard

Georgia’s Governor’s Office of Children and Families Gains Footing with New Executive Director

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Newly appointed executive director Katie Jo Ballard will be the first to tell you that the Georgia Office of Children and Families (GOCF) has a heck of a job. Since 2008 the organization has been charged with implementing “a spectrum of prevention, intervention, and treatment services for all children” in Georgia.

That means identifying effective programs and delivering funding across four areas of service: youth development, family violence, juvenile justice, and prevention programs.

“We’re looking for people that can provide 360 kinds of care for a family,” says Ballard. “Like really wrap themselves around a family and support them in every aspect.”

The GOCF doesn’t deliver any services directly. Rather, the organization distributes a combination of federal and state funds to community-based programs through a competitive grant process.

Since taking office in mid-August, Ballard has been trying to wrap her head around everything the organization does. The agency offers so many grants in so many areas, and some of those grantees offer sub-grants, she says, so there’s a lot to take in.

“I’m a very visual person, so I’m actually going out there and trying to visit sites so I can see what they do,” she says. “That’s what’s been the most rewarding to me, actually meeting a survivor of domestic violence, meeting a child that survived sexual exploitation, hearing those stories and how our programs have helped them… That’s the best part, but it’s also the hardest.”

National Youth Justice Awareness Month Aims to Raise Issue of Juvenile Incarceration

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This October marks the fourth annual National Youth Justice Awareness Month. The month long program, sponsored by the Campaign for Youth Justice, involves activities and events across the United States that are centered on raising awareness and civic involvement with youth justice issues, primarily the incarceration of minors in the prison system of the nation.

National Youth Justice Awareness Month was created by Tracy McClard, a Missouri mother whose 17 year-old-son committed suicide while incarcerated in an adult prison. McClard, who now runs the organization Families and Friends Organizing for Reform of Juvenile Justice, said that she began the program as a means to raise awareness about the incarceration of minors in the United States.

“One reason why we started the National Youth Justice Awareness Month is because [the general public] doesn’t understand what it’s like to have a child in jail at all,” McClard said. “If you don’t know what it’s like, it’s real easy to approve of policies that you don’t understand or know the statistics about.”

Advocates for reform also point to statistics showing the number of youth in detention. This week, for example, the Annie E. Casey Foundation issued a new report on juvenile detention in the United States. The report, No Place for Kids: The Case for Reducing Juvenile Incarceration, details the enormous cost associated with detaining tens of thousands of young people each year.

New Juvenile Justice Database in Georgia Puts Pieces of Puzzle in One Place

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With the goal of presenting “the most current and accurate juvenile crime data available,” Georgia's Governor’s Office for Children and Families (GOCF) launched a new website this week. The Georgia Juvenile Justice Data Clearinghouse aggregates data from multiple partners such as the Georgia Bureau of Investigation and the Georgia Department of Juvenile Justice.

“It’s a way to synthesize the information so people can look at it and say, ‘OK, this is what we’ve got,'” said Joe Vignati, director of Justice Programs at GOCF.

“You’ve got pieces of the puzzle all over the place,” Vignati said. And not all counties are able to report their data yet. In fact, one county, Vignati said, is still using paper records.

Georgia's First Lady, Sandra Deal, was the inaugural visitor to the website a few days ago. After signing on, she said, “I am confident that this effort will go a long ways in helping improve outcomes for Georgia’s Youth, “said Mrs. Deal.

The site is broken into three main sections: Reports and Dashboards, Interactive Map and Pre-made Maps, each providing multiple ways of exploring the data from spreadsheets to pie charts.

OJJDP Finds Information Gap in Juvenile Transfer Cases

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Since the 1980’s, nearly every state has passed or expanded juvenile transfer laws that allow kids to be tried as adults in some cases. But a recent report from the federal Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP) found that only 13 states publicly report how many kids are transferred each year and even fewer report any details of those transfers. According to the report, in the states that publicly reported, 14,000 youth were transferred to criminal courts in 2007, the last year data was available. However, that number has declined sharply since 1994. Writing in the report, OJJDP Acting Administrator Jeff Slowikowski said, “To obtain the critical information that policymakers, planners, and other concerned citizens need to assess the impact of expanded transfer laws, we must extend our knowledge of the prosecution of juveniles in criminal courts.”

Young people accused of a crime are sent to juvenile or criminal court, in part, based on their age — 18 in most states, but as young as 16 in others, the report says.

Clayton County, Ga. Juvenile Probation Officer Ronaldi Rollins

An Inside Look at a Typical Day on the Street with a Clayton County Juvenile Probation Officer

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Ronaldi Rollins’ view from his corner office on the third floor is typical of metro Atlanta. A parking lot, some two-story apartment building, all nestled in the middle of a bunch of pine trees. Welcome to Jonesboro, Ga., command central for one juvenile probation officer in charge of 20 struggling teens. To pay a visit to Rollins, a kid has to make it past two levels of security. First, the metal detector and officer at the front door.

Photo illustration: Clay Duda/JJIE.org

Law Enforcement Learns the ‘Social Media Beat’

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It’s no secret: Social media has redefined the way people communicate, especially among the under-30 crowd. Now, law enforcement agencies are catching on and increasingly incorporating social media into their arsenal of crime-fighting tools.

Over the past few months a series of high profile social-media-turned-criminal acts have made headlines -- from flash mobs turned violent on the streets of Philadelphia to Atlanta house parties taped off as homicide scenes -- and law enforcement has taken note.

Some agencies have been quick to recognize the potential of embracing social media. The Department of Homeland Security, for example, has run a “Social Media Monitoring Center” since early 2009; Correction officials in California have worked directly with Facebook to thwart inmates from accessing social profiles while behind bars; And police in New York formed a special unit to monitor social channels for gang-related and other potential criminal acts.

The Continuing Problem of Child Poverty in the South

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If you are a child in the United States living in poverty you probably live in the South. According to U.S. census data from 2009 (the last year data are available) the 10 states with the highest rates of child poverty were all in the South. All 10 states had child poverty rates more than 20 percent. In Mississippi, one out of every three children lives in poverty.

A look at teen birth rates reveals a similar cluster. The South is home to all 13 states with the most teen births.

For those who have watched Southern society for many years, the problem is as much cultural as it is economic.

According to Dr. Harvey Jackson, an expert on Southern history and Eminent Scholar in history at Jacksonville State University in Alabama, the statistics are not surprising.

“There are more children in poverty because there are more adults in poverty,” Jackson said. “This is a region of the country in which adults are poor and yet adults continue to have children even though they are poor.”

The problem is social, he says, especially concerning teen births.

“There are real cultural attitudes [in the South] that have to do with large families and premarital sex,” Jackson said. “And it is less condemned in certain communities in the South, particularly among the poor.