Blog

Editor's note: This story is part of a 10-part investigative series: Lessening the impact of incarceration in Oakland.
Eunique is a vibrant 18-year-old African-American student at Oakland’s Fremont High whose Dad was incarcerated when she was seven years old.
“I’ll be honest with you,” she said as her broad smile stopped in its tracks. “I didn’t get any help from anybody during all of the years that my Dad was in prison. No one ever asked me how I was doing.”

During the nine years that her Dad was away, Eunique said she felt like an outcast.
“I felt like I was all alone and different than all of the other kids and families,” she said. ”It was awful.”
Studies show stories like Eunique's are the norm.
Teens face unique challenges, according to "Children on the Outside: Voicing the Pain and Costs of Parental Incarceration," a Justice Strategies report published in 2011. Like other children of incarcerated parents, they often face separation from siblings, having to move from place to place and increased poverty. Teens have an increased risk of delinquent behavior and an increased likelihood of school failure along with a sense of stigma and shame that impacts on their sense of who they are in the world.

The National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University (CASA Columbia) released a new five-year national study on addiction treatment, finding that despite overwhelming evidence that addiction is a disease, treatment options don’t follow the same methodologies that we currently use to treat other diseases like cancer, diabetes and heart conditions. Treatments for each of these diseases of course differ, but doctors still use the same process of evidence-based diagnosis followed by appropriate treatment.
Although addiction to nicotine, alcohol and other substances affects over 40 million Americans--more than cancer, diabetes and heart conditions--most medical professionals aren’t qualified to treat addiction. The study found youth who begin smoking, drinking, or using other drugs before the age of 21 are at higher risk for addiction. In 96.5 percent of cases, addiction originated with substance use before the age of 21 when the brain is still developing. Via the press release:

“The report finds that while doctors routinely screen for a broad range of health problems like high blood pressure or high cholesterol, they rarely screen for risky substance use or signs of addiction and instead treat a long list of health problems that result, including accidents, unintended pregnancies, heart disease, cancers and many other costly conditions without examining the root cause.”

Most students entering Anne Donohue’s narrative radio class had no idea how to record and edit audio, nor did they have an ear for what makes a good story. But that didn’t stop the Boston University (BU) College of Communication (COM) associate professor from handing them a tough assignment: analyze all angles of juvenile life-without-parole sentences, and come back with a story.
The results were impressive—Donohue’s students produced a six-part series titled “Life Without Parole: Juvenile Justice?” which this spring won the Associated Press award for best college documentary. And the subject was timely, as the Supreme Court ruled last week that juvenile life-without-parole sentences violated the Eighth Amendment’s ban on cruel and unusual punishment.
“Teenagers should not be locked up for life, at great expense to the taxpayer, if there is a chance they can be rehabilitated or mature into productive members of society,” says Donohue (COM’88), an award-winning radio producer and editor. “If a teen who kills is psychologically damaged and is a truly dangerous sociopath, he belongs in a mental health facility, not a prison. And some of these kids who have been locked up for life were not even the killers, but accomplices who drove cars or were in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

Juvenile Justice Reform

• Youth Court: Students Dispense Justice to First-Time Juvenile Offenders (Tulsa World)
  In the Youth Court program, student volunteers serve as the prosecutors, defense attorneys, judges and bailiffs on cases involving first-time nonviolent juvenile offenders. The program operates in courts in Tulsa, Owasso and Broken Arrow, Oklahoma.
• Juvenile Justice: Courts Turn Focus to Rehabilitation (CoshoctonTribune.com)
  In Coshocton, many first-time juvenile offenders are placed in a diversion program rather than having an official complaint filed right away. If a juvenile is caught stealing, for example, his diversion program might include a theft-specific counseling program along with a special class for him and his parents.
• Juvenile Crime Dips in Iowa (KCRG.com)
  Juvenile crime is down in Iowa and officials are crediting research and justice system alternatives. Earlier this week, the Iowa Department of Human Rights’ Division of Criminal and Juvenile Justice Planning released a report, showing a more than 20 percent decrease in juvenile arrests between 2007 and 2010. Juveniles also made up a decreasing percentage of the state’s total arrests during those years.
• The Unfair Criminalization of Gay and Transgender Youth (Center for American Progress)
  Though gay and transgender youth represent just 5 percent to 7 percent of the nation’s overall youth population, they compose 13 to 15 percent of those currently in the juvenile justice system. These high rates of involvement in the juvenile justice system are a result of gay and transgender youth abandonment by their families and communities, and victimization in their schools—sad realities that place this group of young people at a heightened risk of entering the school-to-prison pipeline.

The Journal of Adolescent Health recently published a study in its June issue titled, Mental Health Disorders and Long-term Opioid Use Among Adolescents and Young Adults With Chronic Pain. This study concluded that adolescences and young adults with preexisting mental health conditions are 2.4 times more likely to be prescribed opioids over extended periods of time for chronic pain. The most common documented chronic pain complaints included back pain, neck pain, headache and arthritis or joint pain.

Researchers from Seattle Children’s Research Institute and the University of Washington looked at 13 to 24 year-olds across the West, Midwest and Southwest United States to examine the association between long-term opioid use and mental health disorders. They found that older male youth who live in low-income communities with fewer residents who attended college, were even more likely to use opioids for extended periods.

In Snohomish County, Washington, troubled teens attend music classes and transform from "youth offenders" to "musicians." This is part of a partnership between the Snohomish County Music Project and Reclaiming Futures Snohomish County.
The Music Project is a nonprofit organization that came into being after the Everetty Symphony fell on hard times. The Symphony board decided to change its mission from an arts organization to a human service organization with music-therapy programs.
From the Daily Herald:

How do you bankrupt a brimming system of incarceration that is perversely incentivized to grow? According to New Orleans Parish Sheriff Marlin Gusman, “you have to go to the source, and whether the source is education or whether it’s legislation, you really have to go to the source.” Gusman provided an upstream suggestion at the Loyola University New Orleans’ event, Louisiana Incarcerated: An Evening with Cindy Chang on June 26, 2012. However, many of the panelists pointed specifically to job training and employment as essential parts of the solution.
The event was centered around an acclaimed 8-part Times-Picayune series titled “Louisiana Incarcerated,” by reporter Cindy Chang. For the series, Chang talked with the formerly incarcerated and criminal justice reformers to get a complete story of the juvenile and criminal justice systems. The town hall styled symposium provided opportunities for panelists to offer their thoughts on the sources of Louisiana’s incarceration problems as well as potential solutions.
Concurring with Gusman’s perspective of root causes, U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Louisiana Jim Letten said, “the most important part of our jobs is education and prevention. I wouldn’t have told you that 13 years ago.” Letten iterated what several panelists expressed during the panel sessions, which took place over the course of two hours.

Juvenile Justice Reform

• High court ruling on juvenile life sentences means a chance at freedom (Orlando Sentenial)
  In more than two-dozen states, lawyers can now ask for new sentences. And judges will have discretion to look beyond the crime at other factors such as a prisoner's age at the time of the offense, the person's background and perhaps evidence that an inmate has changed while incarcerated.
• RExO Grants: Reduce Recidivism and Build Lives (Huffington Post)
  This month, the Department of Labor announced grants of nearly $50 million to 25 organizations under two different grant programs that serve juveniles under our Re-Integration of Ex-Offenders initiative.
• Juvenile Justice: A Move Away From Detention For Some (NorthEscambia.com)
  Florida law enforcement and criminal justice officials say the use of civil citations for troubled youth, rather than a lock-up, is slashing costs, and giving kids a better chance of a turn-around, and they want the practice to become more widespread.
• L.A. School Police, District Agree to Rethink Court Citations of Students (Juvenile Justice Information Exchange)
  In the wake of critical news reports, Los Angeles school police and administrators have agreed to rethink enforcement tactics that have led to thousands of court citations yearly for young students in low-income, mostly minority neighborhoods.
• Officials: Mentally ill children who don't get help can end up in criminal justice system (CrownPointCommunity.com)
  To child welfare advocates, the plights of families with mentally ill children demonstrate the state's failure to protect its most vulnerable children. Parents, judges, prosecutors, and other officials in Indiana say there is a multi-agency failure to provide mental health services to the children who need it most.
• Juvenile justice changes cutting costs (Herald Tribune Politics)
  Florida law enforcement and criminal justice officials say the use of civil citations for troubled youth, rather than a lock-up, is slashing costs, and giving kids a better chance of a turn-around, and they want the practice to become more widespread.

As Professor Dan Filler (Drexel) points out so well in a recent post on Miller v. Alabama on the Faculty Lounge, the decision’s direct effect on those currently serving juvenile life-without-parole (JLWOP) may be less dramatic than first imagined. Sentencing rehearings during which mitigating evidence is considered could lead merely to a reimposition of LWOP or a lengthy term of years sentence (40, 50, 60 years) that is the practical equivalent of LWOP. This is not to diminish the value of giving these 2100 prisoners an opportunity for review, reduction of their sentences, and the possibility of eventual release., although as Professor Filler also observed, much will depend there on the quality of defense counsel.
Instead, as I wrote two years ago in regard to Graham v. Florida, which struck down the practice of JLWOP for non-homicides, the ultimate impact of Miller will be seen in its precedential effect: