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Advances in Juvenile Justice Reform: An interview with Sarah Bryer

In conjunction with the release of Advances in Juvenile Justice Reform: 2009-2011, we sat down with Sarah Bryer to discuss the report and the future of juvenile justice reform. Sarah is the director of the National Juvenile Justice Network (NJJN) and has worked in the juvenile and criminal justice fields for more than 20 years.
RECLAIMING FUTURES: Your organization, the National Juvenile Justice Network (NJJN), has just released a great report on recent work to reform the juvenile justice system in states across the country. Tell us about it — what spurred you to put it together?
SARAH BRYER: It’s called, Advances in Juvenile Justice Reform: 2009-2011, and it’s actually the fourth in a series of similar publications that we’ve done since 2006. It was a lot of work — after all, it’s 63-pages of capsule summaries of reforms from 47 states in 24 categories. It’s not exhaustive, but it’s still fairly representative. But we put it together — thanks to support from the MacArthur Foundation’s Models for Change initiative — because we wanted to document that jurisdictions all over the country are finding ways to roll back punitive, ineffective approaches to youth in trouble with the law, and redirect resources to cost-effective, community-based alternatives, including treatment services.
RF: Who is Advances for? What audiences did you have in mind?

King County, Washington, Celebrates Recovery Month

king county proclamations
Many of the 29 Reclaiming Futures sites helping communities break the cycle of drugs, alcohol and crime celebrate Recovery Month, hosted by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) each September. They, along with our King County site, which includes Seattle, Washington, are spreading the positive message that prevention works, adolescent substance abuse treatment is effective and people do recover. 
King County convenes a multi-disciplinary planning committee (chemical dependency, mental health and community mobilization) to reach people across cultures and disciplines to reduce the stigma for people in recovery.
They actively develop the Recovery Oriented System of Care model, starting with mental health and gradually including substance use disorders. This year, King County is working with their County Council to include substance abuse disorders in the recovery ordinance so that it becomes a behavioral health recovery oriented system of care. (The recovery ordinance ensures that the publicly funded mental health system in King County is grounded in mental health recovery principles.)

OJJDP Bulletin: Underage Drinking Still a Major Problem for Teens, Society

OJJDP posted findings from an underage drinking literature review in their September Juvenile Justice Bulletin. The review focuses on how drinking can affect teens’ mental and physical well being--highlights from the bulletin are included below (emphasis mine):

  • The human brain continues to develop until a person is around age 25. Underage drinking may impair this neurological development, causing youth to make irresponsible decisions, encounter memory lapses, or process and send neural impulses more slowly.
  • Underage drinking cost society $68 billion in 2007, or $1 for every drink consumed. This includes medical bills, income loss, and costs from pain and suffering.
  • In 2009, 19 percent of drivers ages 16–20 who were involved in fatal crashes had a blood alcohol concentration over the legal adult limit (0.08).
  • Alcohol use encourages risky sexual behavior. Youth who drink may be more likely to have sex, become pregnant, or contract sexually transmitted diseases.

The Unique Challenge of Georgia Juvenile Repeat Crime

The devil is always in the details and sometimes details are like trying to put lipstick on a pig. The recidivism rate for Georgia juveniles is a case in point.
One-in-two juveniles leave the system and do not return within three years. But one-in-two are back within three years, usually because of a new crime, violation of a court order or a probation offense. There is a cash cost for that level of failure and there also is a human cost.
When the Special Council on Criminal Justice Reform convened this summer it heard primarily generalities about juvenile justice from expert analysts. When the Council met this week it was taken into the weeds, deeper into data, and some members had their eyes opened a bit wider.
“The question is what do we do from here and how do we improve the recidivism rate,” said Hall County Superior Court Judge Jason Deal. “The recidivism rate is around 50 percent and that’s not acceptable.” State Rep. Mary Margaret Oliver described the one-in-two recidivism rate as “very scary” and Douglas County District Attorney David McDade asked, “Are we spending our dollars in a way that protects public safety? That’s the whole driver for me.”

Popular Teens Pressured to Smoke Cigarettes

The more friends a student has, the more likely s/he is to smoke cigarettes. Findings from a recent report show that popular teens are succumbing to peer pressure to smoke cigarettes at a younger age.
Researchers from the Journal of Adolescent Health surveyed 1,950 ninth and 10th grade students to determine their personal thoughts about smoking and their thoughts about peers smoking. Report data show that a student’s risk of smoking is increased by the level of popularity s/he holds among peers. Popularity was measured by the number of times a student’s name was mentioned as a friend. An egocentric measure of behavior also proved that having friends who smoke leads to a strong association of individual smoking habits. Survey results found friend selection to be a major factor behind behavior habits; teens with friends who smoked were more susceptible to becoming a smoker themselves.
Continual evidence shows that popular kids choosing to light up are using their popularity to pressure other students to do the same. Peer pressure is a large indicator in adolescent behavior and “we haven’t done enough to make smoking un-cool” said study author Thomas Valente. Studies show that students will try what the majority is doing in order to be liked, and smoking is a popular, but negative, product of that behavior. If teens think smoking is the popular behavior among their peers, they will be more likely to try smoking.

[infographic] Children's Exposure to Violence

Millions of children are exposed to violence in their schools, homes and communities each year. A new infographic from the Safe Start Center takes a look at the numbers and shares ways to recognize and help traumatized kids at school.
Research has shown that the earlier a child is exposed to traumatic events, the less s/he will be able to cope and the greater the likelihood for developmental problems. There's also an increased chance of aggressive behavior which can lead to the juvenile justice system. A recent study found that 92% of incarcerated teens experienced traumatic events in their childhood. 
In addition to the infographic, the Safe Start Center has an entire toolkit for school administrators and educators that includes tips, practical tools and information on how to help children exposed to violence.

Topics: No bio box, Trauma

Tampa Targets Juvenile First-Timers

Just six years ago, Hillsborough County and its county seat, Tampa, led the state in the number of juveniles arrested for nonviolent or minor offenses. County commissioners were dismayed by not only the costs this created for their court system, but also for the rap sheets now carried by thousands of juveniles–arrest records can sometimes create obstacles to college education or employment.
To ensure that the juvenile justice system was focused on delinquents in true need of intervention, in 2011 the county created a diversion program specifically for first-time juvenile offenders accused of one of eight low-level misdemeanors.
Eligible juveniles must not have any prior delinquency issues, take responsibility for their actions, and comply with the program’s requirements, which can involve restitution or formal apologies.

Imprisoned Teens Found More Likely to Re-offend and More; News Roundup

Juvenile Justice Reform

  • Illinois to Improve Conditions at Youth Prisons (St. Louis CBS Local)
    Illinois is promising to improve safety at its youth prisons and offer inmates better educational and mental health services. The Department of Juvenile Justice agreed to the improvements after the American Civil Liberties Union of Illinois threatened to sue.
  • U.S. Families Fret at Juvenile Justice System in Crisis (The Raw Story)
    Relatives of jailed young Americans called Tuesday for reform of a juvenile justice system they say fails to help young people and is biased against youth of color. “More than two million children are arrested every year in the United States and the numbers continue to rise, despite the decreasing incidence of true criminal offenses,” according to the study released by the Justice for Families program at the research organization DataCenter.
  • Imprisoned Teens Found More Likely to Re-offend (Jacksonville.com)
    A new report shows that children and teenagers locked up for breaking the law have become 6 percent more likely to commit another crime than they were in 2003. The figures come from a study conducted by the Pew Center on the States at the request of a commission appointed to propose an overhaul to the juvenile-justice system in Georgia.
  • GIVING BACK - Troubled Youths get Chance to Serve Community through DJJ Initiative (TheTandD.com)
    A group of local youths spent Friday morning working with officers at the Orangeburg County, SC Department of Juvenile Justice as part of Restoring Carolina Through Youth Service. The program is a statewide initiative that gives young people who have made poor choices an opportunity to give back through community service.
  • Juvenile Court Records can Follow Kids to College (The Morning Call)
    Juvenile court records could begin following youthful offenders to college after a state appeals court decision in the child pornography case of a Whitehall Township teen. The Pennsylvania Superior Court upheld a Lehigh County judge's decision to notify the boy's university that he had admitted looking at and trading child pornography over the Internet.
  • Michael Griffiths: The TT Interview (The Texas Tribune)
    Michael Griffiths never really retired after 15 years as head of juvenile services for the Dallas County Juvenile Department. He taught online courses at his alma mater, Sam Houston State University, and consulted on juvenile issues, and he even handed out programs at Texas Rangers games. On Monday, Griffiths will become the new executive director of the Texas Juvenile Justice Department.

Families Unlocking Futures: Solutions to the Crisis in Juvenile Justice

In 2001, my 13 year old son, Corey, was sent to what the New York Times called, “the worst juvenile prison in the country.” What crime had he committed that earned him this hellish journey? He stole a $300 stereo out of a pick-up after he smashed out the window with a crowbar. His sentence was 5 years in the one of the most brutal facilities in the U.S.
The families of children who are system involved are often thought of as “lazy,” “uneducated,” “uncaring” and worse. But a new report by Justice for Families (J4F) gives us a much different picture of families and relies on substantial data rather than outdated myths and stereotypes. I was given a second chance to make different decisions for my youngest daughter, nearly seven years later. Today, that daughter is in her second semester of college, having earned a 3.7 GPA in her first semester and has never again been involved in the system. Sadly, for my son that second chance never came. Today, he is living on taxpayer money, serving a 12 year sentence in a state prison.
In 20 sites across eight states, Justice for Families, the Data Center and our local partners led by families of kids involved in the system, conducted two dozen focus groups and took exhaustive surveys from more than 1,000 families who were involved in the juvenile justice system. We conducted a media review that looked at hundreds of articles discussing families and juvenile justice. Lastly, we conducted an extensive literature review of promising approaches led by systems and community based organizations. Families designed the focus group and survey questions and collected and analyzed the data, proving that families are capable, they do care and they do, indeed, want to be involved.

Celebrate Recovery Month

For the 29 Reclaiming Futures sites using evidence-based practices to break the cycle of drugs, alcohol and crime, September holds special promise. This is the 23rd year the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) has designated September Recovery Month to promote the message that prevention works, treatment is effective and people recover. 
This year's Recovery Month theme is "Join the Voices for Recovery: It's Worth It." The theme emphasizes the benefits of preventing and overcoming mental and/or substance use disorders and the importance of involving everyone in these efforts.
Please visit Recovery Month on SAMHSA.gov to find events, planning tools and other resources to help your community participate. Involvement can be as simple or robust as you choose. 
A few ideas include:

How do you celebrate Recovery Month? We appreciate hearing from you. Please share your ideas and comments below.  

A New Program to Reduce Truancy: Washington DC’s Case Management Partnership Initiative

The DC Crime Policy Institute recently released an interim evaluation on a new truancy intervention program (direct download the PDF here). The program, called the Case Management Partnership Initiative (CMPI), aims to reduce truancy by connecting truant students and their families with applicable services and case management. The assumption is that by helping to alleviate the underlying issues causing truancy, such as family problems, truancy as a whole will go down.
While the program has not yet shown that it reduces truancy, CMPI has ideas on how to improve the program moving forward. Via the report:

The CMPI does not seem to be reducing truancy on a scale that would warrant expanding the program in its present form. The program is promising, but warrants modification, enhancement, and further experimentation. Among many possible modifications that might strengthen the program, this evaluation suggests several for consideration.

  • The program may be starting too late to improve the chances for improved attendance in ninth grade, and may need to start months to a year earlier.
  • The program may want to explore modifications to its eligibility criteria. This may involve additional assessments to identify key drivers of truancy before participation in the program, exploring full attendance histories (rather than prior year only), and/or targeting the program to students with a narrower range of prior truancy. Other student and family characteristics, such as academic need and performance, may also be incorporated into existing criteria.
  • Additional program components may be beneficial. For example, the program’s family focus could be supplemented with a component that focuses intensively on the student’s academic performance. Family mental health needs may also warrant increased attention.

Phoenix House Uses the West Side Story Project to Disrupt the Cycle of Youth Violence

In September 2011, Phoenix House, one of the nation’s leading non-profit providers of substance abuse treatment, received a two-year grant from the Department of Justice to address the issue of youth violence using a curriculum called the West Side Story Project. For the past year, Phoenix House has been working with young adults at six of our program sites to deconstruct cultural stereotypes, build relationships with members of law enforcement, and promote peaceful conflict resolution – using themes and content from the musical West Side Story.
Funded via the Office of Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS), the West Side Story Project got its start in Seattle in 2007, with the goal of increasing the capacity of law enforcement agencies to positively interact with at-risk kids through community partnerships. Phoenix House is fortunate to have had the project’s creator, Anna Laszlo, guiding our implementation of the grant across the country. Our work would not be possible without the participation of police departments in Arlington, Virginia; Dallas, Texas; Los Angeles and Santa Ana, California; and New York City and Suffolk County, New York.

Illinois Supreme Court: Hybrids Don't Work in Juvenile Court

The Illinois Supreme Court issued a strongly worded endorsement this week for zealous lawyering for kids—the same kind of zealous lawyering that adults routinely expect for themselves. In In re Austin M., Austin M. successfully appealed his delinquency adjudication, convincing a majority of the Illinois Supreme Court that a lawyer cannot simultaneously assert and defend his juvenile client's innocence and also claim to be seeking the truth "the same as the court and the same as the prosecutor." Characterizing this dual mission as "hybrid representation," the Court held that a lawyer cannot serve as both defense counsel and a guardian ad litem on behalf of a child charged with delinquency.
Since the time that Juvenile Law Center opened its doors, we have worked to prevent lawyers from betraying their young clients. While this is important for all defendants, it is particularly so for youth in whom we want to instill a belief in fairness and the rule of law. These kids must also know that they have an advocate that they can confide in—and that the lawyer won't breach confidentiality in the lawyer-client relationship. They must have a lawyer they can return to when they have complaints about the system—this won't happen if they perceive the lawyer as just another arm of the system. A society that has granted children constitutional rights should be concerned when lawyers themselves undermine those rights.

The High Stakes of Child Poverty

I met Amber at a tutoring program for inner city children. It was 1966, my senior year in high school, and the war on poverty was on, a war we’ve failed to win.
At nine years old Amber looked like a scarecrow, an old scarecrow at that, bird-picked, weather beaten. She was stick thin. None of her clothes fit, hand-me-downs from her sister Bunny who quickly outgrew her clothes while her younger sister didn’t seem to grow at all. Her eyes were dark circled; her hair, straw and falling out.
Saturday mornings she was one of the first kids through the church basement doors. My friends and I weren’t naïve. We knew that that gaggle of children who showed up each week wasn’t there for the mandatory hour of instruction. They put up with our drilling them on the timestables or helping them parse a paragraph. They were really there for the cookies and milk, and the tables spread with art supplies and games. It wasn’t until years later that I realized that they may have been just as eager for our attention, our reliability, and perhaps even our youthful faith in the future as for those treats.
I worked with Amber all that year. She didn’t progress much. But that didn’t seem to matter. She was always there. Besides, there was something else going on: I was being tutored in what poverty was really all about.

Coordinating Case Files in Milwaukee

Juveniles slipping through the cracks and missing out on opportunities that could curb their delinquency plague every jurisdiction in the country. This cohort of juveniles is often most at risk for recidivism, giving Milwaukee officials good reason to attempt to nip the cycle in the bud.
Milwaukee’s police department, prosecutors, criminal justice officials, and even school and health and human service agency representatives are meeting up and sharing the information they have on a select number of juveniles in Milwaukee at highest risk for continued delinquency issues.
Sharing the information, the group hopes, will ensure that key data and underlying issues are not overlooked by any one of the agencies. Sometimes it’s the little things—such as information regarding a substance abuse issue known to the schools but not to the prosecutors—that can play a major role in curbing delinquency.

Reflections on the Juvenile Justice System

Over the past couple months I’ve had the privilege of contributing weekly to Reclaiming Futures Every Day. I’ve learned about a majority of topics pertaining to the juvenile justice system including how genders are treated differently throughout the system, how illegal substances play a role in adolescents’ lives, the importance of attending school regularly and even the prevalence of illegal substances in our nation’s schools.
Above all, I learned just how complex the juvenile justice system is. There seems to be countless different influences impacting children’s futures from their economic status to educational circumstances. And the circumstances leading up to arrests are not the only factors influencing youths’ futures in the juvenile justice system. How adolescents were treated throughout processing and sentencing played significant roles as well.
Providing reliable positive role models is one simple method that contributes to juveniles being successful throughout and after they make it through the system. In addition to creating positive relationships with adults, it’s important to address the basic needs of the children processed in the juvenile justice system because those unmet needs can often lead to larger issues. Providing needed resources can alleviate pressures that lead to kids committing violations that land them in trouble.

From Detention Cells to the Stage and More; News Roundup

Juvenile Justice Reform

  • Cops Fan Out To Schools (New Haven Independent)
    For three days last week cops all over New Haven, CT descended on every school for the beginning of the academic year. It was a new push to connect cops with kids—one that Assistant Chief Luiz Casanova pledges to make a year-round citywide campaign.
  • New Juvenile Justice Program Shows Early Promise (Statesman.com)
    Texas officials call them the worst of the worst. But at first glance, the eight teenage boys slouched at stainless steel tables, in gray polo shirts and khaki pants, might pass for a bunch of sullen high-schoolers almost anywhere in Texas. The youths are the focal point of an initiative by state officials to curb violence inside Texas' state-run youth lockups.
  • Sweet Tweet: Keri Hilson Inspires Girls at Juvenile Justice Center (act.MTV.com)
    Keri Hilson wants to make a difference! We all remember when she got involved with AIDS Walk New York for the MTV Staying Alive Foundation team, and now Keri has Tweeted about her latest do-gooder act. 
  • From Detention Cells to the Stage (CNN.com)
    Over the past decade, the Synchronicity theater group has returned to Georgia juvenile detention centers several times a year to help girls write plays about drug addiction, rape, abusive parents and cheating boyfriends, but also plays about finding love and making amends.
  • After Supreme Court Ruling, PA Grapples With Juvenile-Lifer Questions (TheCrimeReport.org)
    With more juvenile lifers in prison than any other state, Pennsylvania lawmakers are taking the first steps to consider what changes are needed in state law now that the U.S. Supreme Court has struck down laws that require juveniles convicted of homicide to be sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole, reports the Scranton Times-Tribune.

After Treatment: The Role of Community-Based Partnerships in Substance Abuse Recovery

In honor of Recovery Month, I'm sharing the Road to Recovery's latest video on the importance of community-based organizations. Reclaiming Futures is a huge believer in connecting young people with long-term community supports so that teens don't find themselves in the same situations that got them in trouble. 

From the Road to Recovery:

REPORT: “Boys Will Be Boys” (Unless They’re Black, In Which Case Lock them Up)

In “Criminalizing Normal Adolescent Behavior in Communities of Color: The Role of Prosecutors in Juvenile Justice Reform,” Kristin N. Henning focuses on the disparity of treatment of youth when race is a factor.
Youth have long held special status in the justice system. Teens tend to make questionable decisions which can lead to very negative outcomes, due to their difficulty weighing both short and long-term consequences. But, via the report:

As youth mature, they age out of delinquent behavior and rarely persist in a life of crime. Because children and adolescents are more malleable and amenable to rehabilitation than adults, the Supreme Court has recognized youth as a mitigating factor in the disposition of even the most serious criminal behavior by adolescents.

Pilot Juvenile Reentry Program in Illinois

Parts of Chicago and surrounding suburbs are taking steps to reduce the number of youths who cycle through the doors of the state juvenile lockups.
Officials estimate that they see about 50 percent of released youths returning to incarceration at some point following their initial stay. That rate is simply too high, given the societal costs of their continued delinquency as well as the taxpayer costs for repeated bouts of secure confinement. A year in a secure facility in Illinois costs over $80,000 per year.
A non-profit has recently begun a three year program under a grant from the Illinois Juvenile Justice Commission, which aims to slash recidivism rates by targeting the underlying issues, whether related to substance abuse or family problems.

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