Juvenile Justice Information Exchange (https://jjie.org/tag/ohio/)
Since 2020 juveniles were defended by court-appointed lawyers who lacked state-mandated qualifications. How will juveniles get the qualified legal defense they deserve?
On Tuesday, Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine announced that the state will try to shut down its three large youth correctional facilities in favor of building smaller and less centralized units. The decision came at the urging of a working group assembled by the governor that also recommended the state stop incarcerating teenagers convicted for the first time of non-violent crimes and children under 14 in state youth prisons.
Charged with possession and use of marijuana and cocaine, destruction of property, disorderly conduct and assaulting a police officer, John stood before a juvenile court judge imagining that he’d be sentenced to years of incarceration. Instead, the judge sent him to drug court, a 15-month program providing medical treatment for substance abuse; psychological counseling; mediation and relationship-building services for substance abusers’ families; and assistance seeking education and employment.
Death rates were 5.9 times higher for previously incarcerated 11- to 21-year-olds in Ohio than in that state’s general population of youth enrolled in Medicaid health insurance for low-income people, according to a study recently published in the Journal of the American Medical Association’s JAMA Open Network.
In a finding researchers said was especially startling, formerly incarcerated females died at nine times the rate of the general population.
“More than half of all deaths were among youths convicted of crimes against persons,” wrote the researchers, who examined 3,645 formerly incarcerated youth. “More deaths occurred in youths who were incarcerated for the first time and in youths who spent less than or equal to [one] year in custody.”
When the Annie E. Casey Foundation launched the Juvenile Detention Alternatives Initiative (JDAI) in the tough-on-crime era of the early 1990s, politicians were labeling teenage offenders “superpredators” and states were passing laws making it easier to prosecute kids as adults. Rates of juvenile detention were skyrocketing.
Over the past several decades, researchers have studied and debated the complex pathway between school truancy, delinquency and involvement with the adult criminal justice system.
Commercial sexual exploitation of children (CSEC) has recently received much needed attention, but is by no means a new issue. Researchers have tried to approximate the scope of the problem, but it has proven extremely difficult to produce an accurate estimate of children who are victims of or at risk for CSEC in the U.S. State-level prevalence rates are equally difficult to produce, but a recent report estimated that more than 1,000 U.S.-born minors are sex trafficked in Ohio annually and thousands more are at risk for victimization.
Becoming a father for the first time can be difficult for anyone, but when you do so in your teens or early 20s and have been incarcerated, it can be overwhelming. The right supports — stable housing, reliable networks, ties to employment, knowing how to build skills in fatherhood and healthy relationships — are essential.
Solitary confinement in juvenile facilities remains too widespread, is unnecessary and counterproductive, is unfairly applied and is harmful, a new report says.
Earlier this month, in a narrow 4-3 decision, the Ohio state Supreme Court ruled juveniles are not entitled to the many of the same legal protections as adults, including the right to counsel during police interrogations that occur before charges are filed. Now, several state legislators are responding, proposing a law that would overrule the high court’s decision. Ohio state Minority Whip Rep. Tracy Maxwell Heard, a Columbus-area Democrat, began drafting the proposed bill a year before the Oct. 3 Supreme Court ruling, The (Cleveland) Plain Dealer reports. The General Assembly proposal, co-sponsored by Rep. Ross McGregor, a Republican from Springfield, requires juveniles be informed of their right to counsel - either with an attorney or a parent or guardian - prior to police interrogations.