Blog: Juvenile Justice Reform

Background: On May 18 and 19, 2011, Reclaiming Futures hosted its biannual Leadership Institute for its participating sites. Held in Miami, the Institute featured presentations from leaders in the fields of youth work and juvenile justice. 

About This Video: On May 18, 2011, Karen Pittman, a national leader in youth development work, gave a one-hour presentation on positive youth development—what it is, what it means, and how it can help communities make better decisions about their young people, including those in the juvenile justice system.  It was broadcast live and then posted as an archived video. 

Part two -- about the last three minutes of Karen's speech -- is below the break:

• Filmed Proceedings from Child Welfare, Juvenile Justice to Be Offered for Research, Training
  The Institute for Juvenile Court and Corrections Research (IJCCR), a partnership of the Indiana University Research and Technology Corp. (IURTC) and Calamari Productions of Austin, Texas, plans to offer thousands of hours of film from juvenile court and child welfare proceedings to researchers -- and to train probation officers, child welfare case workers, lawyers, and judges.  The film will be made available on a subscription basis. (Calamari Productions also created the six-episode documentary, "Lockup," about youth in the juvenile justice system in Lake County, Indiana, which aired on MSNBC.)

  >>Check out sample footage of juvenile corrections, child welfare case work and more from the new institute.

• Without A Smoking Gun: Chicago Hammers Kids with Adult Court, Adult Time 
  In an attempt to get a handle on rising gun violence, Chicago cracked down on youth found possessing guns, and automatically transferring them to adult court.  But an investigation by a Chicago paper (and passed on via The Crime Report) of 90 cases from 2009 (or 57 percent of the cases) showed that about 25% of the youth were never shown to have a gun at all; and police recovered weapons less than half the time. Yet 87 percent of the teens --overwhelmingly black -- pled guilty and were sentenced to a combined total exceeding 4,606 years in prison. 

 
The following post is reprinted with permission of the Vera Institute of Justice, which created the Adolescent Portable Therapy program, depicted in this video below, from 2006. - Ed.

 
I joined the Adolescent Portable Therapy program in 2001, just after its launch. At that time there was a total of four clients in the program. APT was created to fill a need for flexible substance abuse treatment for young people involved with the New York City juvenile justice system. Because that population is so fluid—kids moving between facilities and between city and state stakeholders—Vera’s innovation was to make the therapist portable. We began working with young people in detention shortly after their arrest, following them as they moved through the juvenile justice system and ultimately home to their families.

 

Want to increase your knowledge about how to reform the way the juvenile justice and child welfare systems work together to help young people who are involved in both systems?  
Want to network with other professionals working toward the same goal?
 
Then consider applying to attend the 2011 Juvenile Justice and Child Welfare: Multi-System Integration Certificate Program for Private Sector Leaders, sponsored by the Center for Juvenile Justice Reform and held November 2-8, 2011 at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C.
 
According to the program sponsors, it's "geared toward service providers that work with youth known to the juvenile justice and child welfare systems, as well as advocates, academicians, foundation staff and others whose work is closely related to improving service delivery for crossover youth and relationships between the private and public sectors."
>>More information about the curriculum for the program, the selection criteria, tuition and access the application. Applications are due July 27, 2011.
>>Questions? Email Kristina Rosinsky.
>>Apply Now

From the Council of State Governments' Criminal Justice/Mental Health Consensus Project comes news of a webinar you might be interested in. Here's the press release:
 


Webinar - Maximizing The Impact Of Juvenile Justice Interventions: The Importance Of Risk/Needs Assessment

 
Emerging research demonstrates that punishment and sanctions do not deter juvenile reoffending and, in some cases, may even increase it. This research shows that juvenile justice agencies are more effective when they base interventions on a youth's level of risk for re-offending and specific "criminogenic needs" (factors that contribute to the youth reoffending that can change over time), and apply these interventions in a way that is responsive to individual learning styles. This is known as the "Risk-Needs-Responsivity" principle. To promote this principle, agencies should identify youths' level of risk for reoffending and specific criminogenic needs by adopting and properly implementing an evidence-based risk assessment tool.
 
This webinar will review the foundational concepts of risk assessment and its implementation in juvenile justice agencies. Topics to be covered include how to select a tool, how risk assessment differs from mental health screening, how the approach should differ depending on the juvenile justice setting, and some key points for effective implementation.
 
 
Presenter
Gina M. Vincent, Ph.D. Dr. Vincent is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Massachusetts Medical School, and Co-Director of the National Youth Screening and Assessment Project. Dr. Vincent has received funding from NIDA, NIMH and the MacArthur Foundation for studies relevant to youth risk for reoffending, mental health problems, and substance abuse. She has published, lectured, and presented research at over 100 international and national conferences and juvenile justice facilities in the areas of juvenile callous-unemotional traits, implementing risk/needs assessment, and mental health symptoms in juvenile justice.
 
 
Date: Thursday, May 5th, 2011, 2:00-3:00pm EST
 
To register, please click here.
  

 
 
I've written before about CeaseFire, an organization funded by The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation that approaches violence as a public health problem. It uses "violence interrupters" -- individuals who've been in gangs and involved in street violence themselves -- to work the streets to learn about potential trouble and intervene with the individuals where possible.
Now a film, "The Interrupters," has been made about the work of three of CeaseFire's staff. Check out the trailer above -- I think you'll find it riveting, scary, and inspiring.
[UPDATE May 5, 2011: The film was not a production of CeaseFire, but was made independently by Steve James and Alex Kotlowitz.]

 
Last fall, youth in the Juvenile Recovery Court in Clark County, WA, got a chance to tell their stories on film. Six participants received training in "digital storytelling" and, with the help of court staff and a prevention specialist, they turned their 250-word personal stories into powerful video presentations. Check out the video above for an example.
You'll notice that the youth, "Mitchell," didn't choose to talk about recovery, but chose to explore instead a religious split in his family, and what it means to him. To learn more about how youth chose topics or the strategy the staff used in helping youth with their stories, check out my interview with them.
And don't forget, we have a webinar next week on this topic:

I doubt that there is an influence on the development of antisocial behavior among young people that is stronger than that of the family. (Steinberg, 2000)[i]
 
The most successful programs are those that emphasize family interactions, probably because they focus on providing skills to the adults who are in the best position to supervise and train the child. (Greenwood, 2009)[ii]
 
Thanks to many independent reviews, consensus documents, and meta-analyses of the evidence base on how to work effectively with juvenile offenders, there are numerous signs that the specialty has achieved a certain level of maturity.[iii]
 
A significant part of this new generation of work in the field pertains to the accumulated and rigorously derived findings about the role of families, family relationships, and parenting practices as key aspects of the creation and maintenance,[iv] as well as the reversal of antisocial and other problem behaviors.[v]
 
For some time, we’ve “known” that it can be beneficial to involve families more substantively and consistently in working with juvenile offenders, as evidenced in this quote: “In this era of an increased focus on public sector accountability, one of the important questions posed to policymakers and elected officials may be ‘Why are you waiting so long to support families?’ ” (Duchnowski, Hall, Kutash, & Friedman, 1998[vi]).

Last fall, youth in the Juvenile Recovery Court in Clark County, WA, got a chance to tell their stories on film. Six participants received training in "digital storytelling" and, with the help of court staff, and a prevention specialist, they turned their 250-word personal stories into powerful video presentations. Their efforts were given great coverage in the Dec. 27, 2010 issue of The Columbian. 
Below is a joint interview with the three people who made this amazing project happen for these youth: Bradley Finegood, LMHC (at left, above), who coordinates Clark County's Superior Court therapeutic specialty courts; Angela Zahas, a county prevention specialist (far right, above); and Anna Lookingbill, the Juvenile Recovery Court's resource coordinator (see middle, above). 
 
 
Q: What is digital storytelling? How is it different from making a video?
 
Anna:  There's two layers to digital storytelling. The first is the technical component, such as learning the software. (We used low-cost or free software, such as a free audio program called Audacity, and Microsoft's photo editing program.)
 
But there's also a pretty significant component around, "What's the story you want to tell?" How do you tell it in a way that has emotional impact on people? 
 
So when you teach it, it’s a layered thing – there's a technical piece, plus storytelling.
 
Brad: It was a small initial investment that will continue to pay dividends. Once Angela was trained on digital storytelling, it could be replicated. We could train others at a low cost – outside of human capital – for what could be an extremely powerful project. There's no fees we have to pay, no manuals we have to buy – so it just made a lot of sense. It's a long-term buy-in to people’s recovery.
 
On a side note, the kids who went through this started out extremely closed, but they opened up, smiled, they shared – so that’s something priceless when you talk about youth from the juvenile justice side of it.