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For its most recent episode, the Juvenile Justice Matters Blogtalk Radio Show has a new episode, now available online, highlighting a new national poll commissioned by the Campaign for Youth Justice.
The Pollster and Founding Partner at GBA Strategies poll reveals critical and timely information on youth in the justice system, showing overwhelming public support for treatment and rehabilitation of youth over incarceration and automatic prosecution in adult criminal court.
You can listen to new and archived episodes of the Juvenile Justice Matters show online here.
For more information about the national poll, visit www.blogtalkradio.com/jjmatters.

Tina Rosenberg, writing in the New York Times' online Opinionator column in a piece published last week, voiced support for the Youth Court of the District of Columbia, while also dissecting public misconceptions surrounding it:

While most commenters praised youth courts for taking a humane approach, reader Beliavsky from Boston wrote, "Letting young criminals (excuse me, 'troubled youths’) be judged by other young criminals does not seem right to me. There should be a real, non-criminal, adult, judge." 
Beliavsky is assuming that Youth Court is the soft option. It’s often not so.  As reader Andrew Rasmussen of New York said:  "The appropriate comparison would be kids who do something and are taken home by the cops to their parents."

Rosenberg contends the DC Youth Court is about more than just bypassing a broken system:

There is evidence that youth courts do more than simply divert teenagers from juvenile justice: they actively create pro-social behavior.  The Urban Institute study  found a clue:  the courts that give the most autonomy to the teenagers themselves work best ... Youth court is one of the few places where teenagers hear disapproval of their behavior from people whose respect they crave the most: their peers.

You can read the entire post here.

• Join the CyberShoutout October 28: Making Smart Choices Kicking off National Drug Facts Week, the CyberShoutout is a day-long special event featuring discussions in social media by bloggers, organization leaders, and other stakeholders on the topic of youth drug abuse. The Shout is hosted by the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), part of the National Institutes of Health.
• National Drug Facts Week is October 31-November 6
  Hosted by the National Institute on Drug Abuse, National Drug Facts Week is a health observance week for teens that aims to shatter the myths about drugs and drug abuse. Through community-based events and activities on the Web, on TV, and through contests, NIDA is working to encourage teens to get factual answers from scientific experts about drugs and drug abuse.
• Abstracts Due November 1 for JMATE
  The Joint Meeting on Adolescent Treatment Effectiveness offers a unique opportunity for for practice, research and treatment communities to exchange ideas and data, thereby moving the field of adolescent treatment toward effective, evidence-based and promising practices. The conference is Tuesday, April 10 through Thursday, April 12, 2012 in Washington, DC.

The National Center for Juvenile Justice has published a new report, "Juvenile Court Statistics 2008," developed with funding from the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP).
Drawing on data from the National Juvenile Court Data Archive (the myriad data sets include age, gender, race, entry and detention rates, etc.), the report profiles more than 1.6 million delinquency cases that U.S. courts with juvenile jurisdiction handled in 2008. It also describes the trends in delinquency cases processed by juvenile courts between 1985 and 2008 and the status offense cases they handled between 1995 and 2008.
You can read and download the report (PDF file) here.

• New National Poll: Strong Support for Youth Rehabilitation Over Incarceration
  Poll highlights critical and timely information on youth in the justice system, showing overwhelming public support for treatment and rehabilitation of youth over incarceration and automatic prosecution in adult criminal court. This survey, a sample of 1,000 American adults, was commissioned by the Campaign for Youth Justice.
• Sustainability: Impact Beyond Grant Programs
  These slides and guides from Pennsylvania State University are very helpful for juvenile justice programs and prevention work. (Hat tip to Paul Savery)
• Feds Tell California Marijuana Dispensaries to Shut Down
  U.S. attorneys say they will prosecute landlords who rent space to operators of medical marijuana dispensaries. The attorneys said they suspect these dispensaries of using the state’s medical marijuana law to profit from large-scale drug sales.

“They can’t do that!”
This quickly became my mantra when I started as a juvenile defender nearly a year ago.
My colleagues heard it so often they joked about recording me and just playing it back while I was observing court proceedings so that I wouldn’t have to speak. Unfamiliar with the differences between how the criminal justice system treats juvenile and adult offenders, I was clearly unprepared for some of the things I witnessed when I first arrived in juvenile court.
You see, juvenile courts are quasi-criminal, meaning many of the aspects I expected to see in a criminal court are present, but the result of juvenile delinquency proceedings is supposed to be more rehabilitative than punitive, and “in the best interest of the child.”
What I learned this to mean is that prosecutors, judges, and a state’sdepartment of juvenile justice have much more latitude to make recommendations for a child’s “best interests.”  Because of this latitude, I have actually heard a judge say, “Don’t even think about requesting bond until you tell us where the weapon is,” at a detention hearing.
What happened to the presumption of innocence, or the right to avoid self-incrimination?  Decidedly, this judge believed it to be in the child’s best interest to explain what had happened, even if doing so would implicate the child’s own involvement.

I'm from a small town in Missouri. It all started when I was 13. I started rebelling, and I ended up stealing my dad's car.
I then got put in juvenile. Two weeks after being on probation for that, I stole another car... I was then placed in a treatment center which did nothing for me.
After I got released from there, I was still on probation. I then started smoking pot, drinking, fighting, and skipping school. So I continuously and gradually got into more trouble.
My juvenile officer had me do the "Scared Straight" program, which also didn't work at all. [The inmates] only made me mad by yelling in my face and telling me that if I didn't stop, I'd be where they were. The more everyone tried to tell me what to do, the more I felt I had to rebel.... I didn't understand why I wouldn't listen to them then, because I didn't want to be locked up, but I definitely didn't want everyone telling me what to do. I thought I was grown... But I know now that I wasn't.
My judge gave me too many chances. Finally, the last time I was in there, she placed me in Division of Youth Services custody. I no longer had a probation officer. I had a service coordinator. I was placed in juvenile [detention] until an opening at a girl's facility was open. A grand total of 7 months.
From there, I went to a girls' group in Poplar Bluff, Missouri. I could not leave there till I completed the program. You had to start as a level 1 and earn your level 4, which was really a blessing in disguise. Ever since my first day there, my life has not been the same.

• Why Are All the Black Kids in Special Ed?
  Minority students (and especially Black students) are disproportionately diagnosed with disabilities and placed in special education or lowest-level courses. The Public Interest Law Center of Philadelphia makes the case for seeking a second opinion.
• Lasting Drop in Smoking, Delinquency, Drug Use
  Study shows that tenth-graders in towns using Communities That Care, a prevention system developed by University of Washington researchers, are less likely to have tried drinking or smoking compared with teens living in towns that had not adopted the system. Delinquent behavior, including stealing, vandalism and physical fights, decreased too.
• Kids-for-Cash Sentencing Set for November 4
  Robert J. Powell, the former co-owner of two juvenile detention centers in Pennsylvania who testified he paid kickbacks to two judges, may serve 21 to 27 months in prison for failing to report a felony and abetting tax evasion.

If you're lucky enough to attend the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention's (OJJDP) conference on juvenlie justice in Maryland next week, October 12-14, 2011, then you might just be lucky enough to win a free iPad.
Make sure you stop by the Reclaiming Futures booth (#209) in the exhibition hall at the conference, where we'll be showing off our blog (ahem) and answering your questions about Reclaiming Futures. We'll be there:
Tues 10/11 - 10/11 1pm-6pm
Wed 10/12  - 7:30am-6pm
Thur 10/13   - 7:30am-6pm
Leave your business card with us to subscribe to our e-newsletter -- (and what the heck - you may as well sign up all your co-workers and friends, if they're willing) -- and you'll be entered in a drawing to win a free iPad! (If you're already a subscriber, your entry will still count in the drawing.)
 
Photo: mikepetrucci under Creative Commons license/edits Benjamin Chambers