Criminal Law

Gone Fishing

Posted on July 28, 2008
After 388 posts in less than 365 days, nearly 40,000 visitors and 191 comments, I have decided to put Juvienation on hiatus until further notice. Please feel free to rummage through the archives, refer to the blogroll and further reading page and use this post as an open thread...

Juvienation on Vacation

Posted on July 06, 2008
I’m off to Italy this afternoon and won’t be posting any updates while I’m traveling. Please feel free to comb through the archives and hit the links on the blogroll while the site is on hiatus. If you’re looking for updates on the OJJDP scandal, the best resource is Youth Today; the good folks at [...

NYT on JJDPA Reauth

Posted on July 03, 2008
An editorial in today’s Times offers strong support for the “comprehensive approach” to juvenile justice reform that informs the Senate’s JJDPA reauthorization bill (background here). “This bill represents an important step toward rational and compassionate justice for troubled children,” the editorial states...

Registering at Blawg.com

Posted on June 27, 2008
Juvienation is now registered in the blawg.com directory, in the “Family Law” subsection of the “Legal Subjects and Areas” section. Lots of good company in there–check it out.

To access blog feed reader register for free. (You will also learn about new ways to read and access the freshest law blogs.)

George Will v. Sentencing Project

Posted on June 27, 2008
Last Sunday George Will, the bowtie-wearing dean of conservative punditry, published an op-ed in the Washington Post called “More Prisons, Less Crime.” In the piece Will gave prominent attention to his colleagues and fellow travelers Heather Macdonald and James Q...

General-Election Obama and the Death Penalty

Posted on June 26, 2008
Why did Barack Obama disagree with the Supreme Court’s decision in Kennedy v. Louisiana? “I have said repeatedly that I think that the death penalty should be applied in very narrow circumstances for the most egregious of crimes,” Obama said at a news conference yesterday in response to the Justices’ 5-4 decision to ban [...

TPM on DOJ Investigation

Posted on June 25, 2008
In today’s episode of TPM TV, Josh Marshall (who won the prestigious Polk award for exposing the US Attorneys scandal) explains why yesterday’s report on illegal hiring practices at the Justice Department, though focusing narrowly on a small part of a wider investigation, should be read as an “ominous sign” for those who were involved [...

Midday Grab Bag

Posted on June 25, 2008
From the Baltimore Sun, news that the Justice Department filed motions yesterday to end federal oversight of two dysfunctional juvenile justice facilities in Maryland. From the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, an op-ed by Sara Totonchi, public policy director at the Southern Center for Human Rights in Atlanta, on why “Kids Don’t Belong in Adult Court System...

OJJDP Chief of Staff: You?re Fired!

Posted on June 25, 2008
Youth Today’s Patrick Boyle, who broke the story on the scandalous OJJDP grantmaking process, has an update following last week’s oversight committee hearings. OJJDP chief of staff Michele DeKonty, who took the Fifth rather than submit testimony at the hearings (and who apparently didn’t alert her higher-ups about that decision), has been dismissed...

Illegal Hiring at the Justice Department

Posted on June 25, 2008
The Justice Department’s inspector general and the Office of Professional Responsibility released a joint report yesterday investigating allegations of politicized hiring at the DOJ. The report, according to the introduction (a PDF of the whole document is available here), looked into whether “political or ideological affiliations of applicants were improperly considered in the selection [...

Backlash in Kansas?

Posted on June 24, 2008
Judging by these two short pieces–one yesterday, one today–the Kansas Supreme Court’s decision last Friday to extend to juvenile defendants the right to a jury trial has prompted some concerns among legal professionals who fear they’ll need to absorb an increased caseload without being given the necessary resources...

Coming of Age at Guantanamo Bay

Posted on June 24, 2008
As part of an ongoing series of comments from Human Rights Watch staffers on the dark goings-on at Guantánamo Bay, Jo Becker, advocacy director for the Children?s Rights Division at HRW, has filed an impassioned piece for Salon called “The War on Teen Terror...

State Budget Crisis, Cont.

Posted on June 20, 2008
More on the impending state budget crisis: The next fiscal year, which begins July 1, will be “one of the bleakest for state governments in the last three decades,” according to this article in Stateline, citing a new report from the the National Governors Association and National Association of State Budget Officers...

Kansas Supreme Court Grants Juvs Right to Jury

Posted on June 20, 2008
The Kansas Supreme Court ruled 6-1 today to grant all juveniles facing prosecution the right to a jury trial. ?We are undaunted in our belief that juveniles are entitled to the right to a jury trial guaranteed to all citizens under the 6th and 14th Amendments to the United States Constitution,? Justice Eric Rosen wrote...

Investigating Justice

Posted on June 19, 2008
Today’s newspapers may be heading for the great bird cage in the sky by now, but it’s not too late to point out that the Washington Post ran a big piece this morning on investigating the Justice Department’s grantmaking, ahead of Waxman’s hearing...

OJJDP Hearing Update

Posted on June 19, 2008
ABC News, which covered the OJJDP grantmaking scandal in a segment on Nightline last week, has posted an online update about today’s oversight committee hearing. It seems that Henry Waxman isn’t only interested in how OJJDP administrator J...

Senators Introduce JJDPA Bill

Posted on June 19, 2008
Democratic Senator Patrick Leahy, Republican Senator Arlen Specter and Democratic Senator Herb Kohl, the senior members of the Senate Judiciary Committee, introduced a bill yesterday to reauthorize the Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act, the key piece of federal legislation guiding juvenile justice funding and management in the states...

House Committee Discussing OJJDP Grants Today

Posted on June 19, 2008
The House Committee on Oversight and Government reform is holding its hearing today, just over a week delayed, to discuss grantmaking procedures at the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention. For background on this critical hearing, check previous Juvienation coverage here, here and here, and be sure to visit the Youth Today website here...

NYT Praises Bloomberg for Weekend Processing Move

Posted on June 17, 2008
The New York Times ran an editorial this morning praising Mayor Bloomberg’s recent decision to process juvenile delinquency arrests on weekends. Mayor Michael Bloomberg has set a welcome national example by opening a juvenile court that sits on Saturdays and Sundays and creating procedures that have already begun to cut down on unnecessary detentions while improving [...

JJ Activists March on Maryland

Posted on June 16, 2008
A group of about 120 juvenile reform activists marched from the Baltimore City Juvenile Justice Center to the Maryland state Department of Juvenile Services headquarters on Saturday. According to the Baltimore Sun, “The march’s organizers, Advocates for Children and Youth, said they want the state to spend money improving community-based services for juvenile delinquents instead [...

WaPo on Kids Count Report

Posted on June 13, 2008
The Washington Post, reporting on the release of the Annie E. Casey Foundation’s annual KIDS COUNT report, writes, The nation’s juvenile justice system metes out harsher punishment to black and Latino youths, locks up thousands of children for relatively minor offenses and ultimately makes them more dangerous, according to a national study released yesterday…...

Tennessee Budget Crunch

Posted on June 12, 2008
There’s no doubt that as the economy contracts and the belt tightens on federal grants, states are facing a massive budget crunch. As this recent article in the New York Times pointed out, the crisis hasn’t fully hit yet–in fact, states have “quietly maintained their spending at pre-crisis levels even as they warn of numerous [...

SCOTUS Grants Gitmo Detainees Right to Appeal in US Court

Posted on June 12, 2008
Justice Anthony Kennedy has flexed his muscle as the crucial swing vote on the Supreme Court, ruling with the 5-4 majority to allow foreign detainees at Guantanamo the constitutional right to challenge their detention in US court. From the AP: The Supreme Court ruled Thursday that foreign terrorism suspects held at Guantanamo Bay have rights under [...

Kids Count Data Book, Essay Released

Posted on June 12, 2008
From the Campaign for Youth Justice: Today, The Annie E. Casey Foundation released its 2008 KIDS COUNT Data Book essay, “A Road Map for Juvenile Justice Reform.” The essay looks at the nearly 100,000 children confined to juvenile facilities on any given night in the United States and what can be done to reduce unnecessary [...

Herbert on Jobless Youth

Posted on June 10, 2008
New York Times columnist Bob Herbert on the 4 million “disconnected youth” in America: “These are the teenagers and young adults ? roughly 16 to 24 years old ? who are not in school and basically have no hope of finding work. The bureaucrats compiling the official unemployment rate don?t even bother counting these young [...

Flores in the Spotlight

Posted on June 10, 2008
Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention administrator J. Robert Flores didn’t look very comfortable in the spotlight on ABC’s Nightline last night. Which is understandable, considering investigative correspondent Brian Ross tracked him down on the sidewalk, after Flores denied several interview requests, and put a microphone in Flores’s face, asking him why he saw [...

Weekend Processing for NYC Juv Arrests

Posted on June 09, 2008
Thanks to a recent decision by Mayor Michael Bloomberg, New York City has become the first jurisdiction in the state that can process juvenile delinquency arrests on weekends. Until May 31, processing in Family Court was available only on weekdays; a teen brought in on Friday night would be held until Monday morning, regardless of [...

FBI: Violent Crime Down

Posted on June 09, 2008
Reuters: “U.S. violent crimes like murders and rapes decreased by 1.4 percent in 2007 after two years of increases that caused concern among criminal justice experts, the FBI reported on Monday.”

House Committee, ABC Nightline, to Discuss OJJDP Grants

Posted on June 09, 2008
The House Committee on Government Oversight, headed by good-government top cop Henry Waxman, will hold a hearing tomorrow morning to discuss the grantmaking process at the federal Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP). The hearing was prompted by the top-notch reporting of Youth Today editor Patrick Boyle, who deserves a great deal of [...

Lithwick on ?Dual Nature? of US Teens

Posted on June 07, 2008
One of the country’s best legal journalists, Dahlia Lithwick, has written a great, all too short, piece in Slate (cross-published in this week’s issue of Newsweek) on the parallels between two of the most pressing juvenile cases in today’s headlines: the removal of children by the Texas Child Protective Services from the Yearning for Zion [...

TYC Drops Isolation

Posted on June 06, 2008
Citing this article in the Waco Tribune Herald, Grits for Breakfast brings the promising news that the Texas Youth Commission will no longer house violent youth in solitary confinement for extended periods of time, a punitive practice more appropriate for adult prisons than for juvenile offenders, who are ostensibly supposed to receive treatment in the [...

Cali Grants Basic Rights to Juv Parole Violators

Posted on June 05, 2008
Settling a federal class-action lawsuit in Sacramento yesterday, the State of California agreed to extend basic constitutional rights to juveniles charged with parole violations. The LA Times reports, “The lawsuit, filed nearly two years ago by former wards of the state’s Division of Juvenile Justice, alleged that the state was violating youths’ rights to due [...

NPR on Frost Vandals

Posted on June 04, 2008
NPR’s All Things Considered took up the Robert Frost vandalism story yesterday. Take a listen.

Youth Crime Wave in Daytona?

Posted on June 03, 2008
Here’s a curious AP article (unsigned and, I would argue, unfocused and possibly misleading) on the alleged uptick in felony crimes committed by young people in Daytona Beach. “Daytona’s crime rate is more than double Florida’s and the nation’s, having jumped 13 percent in 2006 alone,” the article states...

Favela Blues

Posted on June 03, 2008
Check out this short review in Salon of City of Men, the TV miniseries by Fernando Meirelles (who directed the 2002 hit City of God)–which, like the film, aims its unflinching lens at teen culture in the mean streets of Rio de Janeiro. The series aired in Brazil from 2002 to 2005 and is now [...

Hearing to Discuss Runaway/Homeless Youth in NYC JJ System

Posted on June 03, 2008
New York readers, mark your calendar for June 11, next Wednesday, when the City Council’s committees on juvenile justice and youth services will hold a joint hearing on the links between runaway and homeless youth and the juvenile justice system...

Poetic Justice

Posted on June 03, 2008
Stopping by woods on a possibly snowy evening last December, a large group of young people broke into the Homer Noble Farm in Ripton, Vermont, the former summer residence of the celebrated American poet Robert Frost, and trashed the place. This was the scene as imagined by New York Times reporter Dan Barry in his January [...

In Good Company

Posted on June 03, 2008
Memo from the department of self-promotion: Juvienation has been included on the Criminal Justice Degree Guide’s list of the Top 100 Criminal Justice Blogs. There doesn’t seem to be an order of rank on this most distinguished of lists; rather, the blogs have been organized by type...

Court to Consider Takeover of California Youth Prisons

Posted on June 02, 2008
Is receivership imminent for the California Division of Juvenile Justice? Could be. Advocates at the San Francisco-based Prison Law Office, who filed a major taxpayer lawsuit in 2003 alleging abuse and institutional incompetence in the state’s youth prisons, have filed a follow-up complaint alleging that the comprehensive reforms Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger promised when he settled the [...

Welcome, and Welcome Back

Posted on June 02, 2008
Please welcome a new blog put together by the Families & Allies of Virginia?s Youth, which is “a statewide family-driven organization that engages youth and families of all races, ethnicities, and economic status.” Its mission, according to the website, has two central planks: We work to empower and support [...

NYT to Jindal: Go Missouri!

Posted on May 30, 2008
From the New York Times editorial page: Two years have passed since the federal courts relinquished control of Louisiana?s notoriously troubled juvenile justice system. The state regained its autonomy by reducing the number of children held in detention and by promising to embrace reforms based on Missouri?s system, which long ago abandoned sprawling, prison-style facilities in [...

NYT on JJDPA

Posted on May 23, 2008
Editorial in today’s New York Times: Children in Adult Jails Children who are confined to adult jails are at greater risk of being raped, battered or pushed to suicide. They also are more likely to become violent criminals than children handled through the juvenile justice system...

Texas Potheads Smoke Pot From Head

Posted on May 09, 2008
Well, I guess it’s less likely to shatter than glass, but still…

Settlement Reached in TYC Case

Posted on May 07, 2008
From the AP via Houston Chronicle: AUSTIN ? A federal judge has approved a settlement between the Texas Youth Commission and the Justice Department over inmate safety at the state’s juvenile prison in Edinburg. U.S. District Judge Ricardo Hinojosa signed the settlement Monday and it was announced by the TYC on Wednesday...

Jena Six Update

Posted on May 07, 2008
Remember the Jena Six? Almost a year and a half after the school fight that set this national scandal in motion, and more than half a year after an estimated 20,000 civil rights protesters descended on the small Louisiana town to demand justice for the black defendants, only one of them has faced trial...

Cross-Examining the Adolescent Brain

Posted on May 06, 2008
“Should young people who are accused of a crime receive the full force of laws intended for adults, given accumulating evidence that their brains are not fully matured?” This is the question that an interesting article in the health section of today’s Washington Post attempts to address...

Anti-Bullying Bill Passes Florida Senate

Posted on May 02, 2008
From the Miami Herald: For the last several years, proponents of anti-bullying legislation have fought for a state law that would prohibit harassment of students. Every year, the bills failed. But on Wednesday, supporters were cheering after the Jeffrey Johnston Stand Up for All Students Act unanimously passed the Florida Senate; it previously got unanimous support in [...

The JJ Channel

Posted on April 30, 2008
From the Campaign for Youth Justice April newsletter: The Campaign for Youth Justice now has a presence on YouTube! We have created a channel called “jjreform” which can be accessed at www.youtube.com/jjreform. Currently, there are several videos that represent the juvenile justice issue of transfer and youth in adult prisons and jails, including a success [...

Captain Kangaroo Court

Posted on April 30, 2008
Col. Peter Brownback, the US military judge presiding over the trial (if you can call it that) of Canadian-born Omar Khadr, has rejected a bid by Khadr’s attorneys to dismiss the case on the grounds that it contravenes international law. Khadr, who has been held at Guantánamo Bay since 2002, was 15 years old when [...

Missing: Public Defenders in Washington State

Posted on April 30, 2008
From Pennsylvania to Washington, where, the Olympian reports, legal aid for indigent juvenile offenders is similarly absent. Citing the 2007 “Status Report on Public Defense in Washington State,” the paper notes that “seventeen counties never or only sometimes make public defense attorneys available to children and teenagers during their first appearance in juvenile court...

JLC Files Petition to Protect Youth Without Counsel

Posted on April 30, 2008
The Juvenile Law Center has sent a petition to the Pennsylvania Supreme Court requesting immediate relief for the approximately 200 youth in Luzerne County who, records show, have appeared in the county’s juvenile court without representation since 2005...

Tapping the Medicaid Pipeline

Posted on April 25, 2008
I have to admit, at first I was a little intimidated by John Kelly’s article in the April issue of Youth Today (subscription only). For starters, it’s about Medicaid, a knotty subject I’ve never been able to untangle. Kelly is a clear writer, though, and I know from chatting with him that he’s got [...

Victoria Lindsay and the ?Powder Puff? Girls

Posted on April 23, 2008
The videotaped beating of Victoria Lindsay, the 16-year-old from Lakeland, Florida, who was assaulted on March 30 by six girls she knew at Mulberry High School, seemed to many people to come out of nowhere. When did girls become so violent, so cruel and so savvy about using images as a means of humiliation? Isn?t [...

The Dock and the Bay

Posted on April 23, 2008
A few weeks ago, I wrote a short post about underage prostitutes in Las Vegas in which I cited some eye-opening statistics from a report that had just been released: more than 400 minors were found working as prostitutes in the city in May 2007; almost 1,500 minors have faced prostitution-related charges in the area [...

Lost Boys in Baltimore

Posted on April 23, 2008
Caseworkers in Baltimore have lost track of more than 100 of the young offenders they are supposed to be supervising, an internal review by the Maryland Department of Juvenile Services has found. Baltimore Sun reporter Julie Bykowicz broke the story yesterday and ran a follow-up today with responses from local and state lawmakers...

Willie-Hortoning Obama

Posted on April 23, 2008
Check out this new anti-Obama attack ad set to run in North Carolina ahead of the May 6 primary. It was put together by Floyd Brown, the genius who brought us the Willie Horton smears against Michael Dukakis back in 1988, so that should give you a sense of what to expect...

Houston (Palm) Oilers

Posted on April 21, 2008
When you think of cronyism, you don’t immediately think of public defenders. They just don’t seem to fit the profile, for some reason. But an analysis by the Houston Chronicle has found that an elite, favored inner circle of local public defenders, all of whom provide financial contributions to support the judges who dish out [...

Girl Fight

Posted on April 21, 2008
I neglected to cover plenty of important juvenile justice stories in the past week, I realize. But the one that jumps out concerns the arrest of eight Florida girls (ranging in age from 14 to 18 ) for their alleged role in the kidnapping and assault of another girl, a 16-year-old classmate...

Catching Up?

Posted on April 21, 2008
OK, time in. This blog, an unpaid labor of love, sometimes has to take a back seat to bacon-bringing freelance work. Hence the lack of posts in the past week, while I copy-edited a funny tell-all memoir by a young guy who got swept up in the UN Oil-for-Food scandal...

Pittman Postscript

Posted on April 15, 2008
The Sentencing Law and Policy blog weighs in with the post-Supreme Court prospects in the Pittman case: This case will now likely head to a federal district court through a habeas action; it will be very interesting to see if any lower federal court might find merit in the constitutional claims made in Pittman...

Supreme Court Turns Down Pittman Case

Posted on April 14, 2008
The Supreme Court opted today not to hear the case of 19-year-old Christopher Pittman, who was 12 years old on November 28, 2001, when he shot his grandparents, set fire to their home and stole their car to make a getaway with his dog. Pittman was tried as an adult in 2005; his attorneys unsuccessfully [...

JPI Opposes Clinton?s Anti-Crime Plan

Posted on April 14, 2008
According to the Justice Policy Institute, Hillary Clinton’s anti-crime package (see my earlier post here) “ignores critical research that finds that investments in employment, education, housing and treatment for those who need it is the most effective and fiscally-responsible way to improve public safety...

Upstate Prisons Update

Posted on April 14, 2008
New York Times Metro reporter Jim Dwyer filed a column on Saturday that does a good job of summing up where we’re at, and where we’ll probably stay, on the proposed plan to shut down underused/empty prisons (on both the juvenile and adult side) in upstate New York...

Clinton Unveils Anti-Crime Agenda

Posted on April 11, 2008
Stumping in Philadelphia ahead of the April 22 primary election, Democratic presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton unveiled a $4 billion plan to combat crime today. Most important, aside from the fact that she injected the topic into a campaign season that has essentially avoided it, is her call to do away with mandatory five-year sentencing for [...

Philly Inquirer Commends JLC?s ?Dedicated Lawyers?

Posted on April 11, 2008
More praise, much deserved, for the Juvenile Law Center: the Philadelphia Inquirer ran a congratulatory editorial today praising the organization and celebrating its MacArthur Foundation award. Here it is, in full: The $500,000 grant from the MacArthur Foundation to the Juvenile Law Center is just the latest confirmation of the good and important work the [...

LWOP Progress in California

Posted on April 11, 2008
Baby steps. On Tuesday the Public Safety Committee of the California State Senate voted 3 to 2 in favor of the Juvenile Life Without Parole Reform Act (Senate Bill 1199), written by State Senator Leland Yee, a Democrat representing San Francisco/San Mateo...

On Kunzru?s Revolutions

Posted on April 10, 2008
For those who might be interested: here is a link to my latest published piece, a longish review of British novelist Hari Kunzru’s new book, My Revolutions, which appears in the current issue of The Nation. Not much in the way of juvenile justice policy, though it does touch on themes concerning violent youth and [...

JLC, Prizewinner

Posted on April 10, 2008
Congratulations to the Juvenile Law Center, which has just won the third-annual John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Award for Creative and Effective Institutions. The prestigious $500,000 prize, which went to eight organizations worldwide this year, honors small nonprofits (i...

Privacy Rights and Wrongs in Wisconsin

Posted on April 08, 2008
Wisconsin Governor Jim Doyle, a Democrat, vetoed a bill yesterday that would have stripped privacy rights from juveniles who come into contact with the law. As this brief AP report explains, the proposed measure would have made juvenile court records available to law enforcement officers, judges and district attorneys, as well as employees in [...

Support for TYC Shutdown: Overstated?

Posted on April 06, 2008
Following up on that Austin American-Statesman article I mentioned yesterday, which cited “very broad-based support” for an incipient plan to do away with the Texas Youth Commission: Here’s Grits for Breakfast with some commentary: In related news, the Austin Statesman’s Mike Ward and Senate Criminal Justice Chairman John Whitmire tag teamed again today for another story [...

Wyoming Prison Stats Tell the Tale

Posted on April 05, 2008
State population in 1982: 510,000 State population in 2006: 515,000 Increase in state population from 1982 to 2006: ~1 percent Number of inmates in state prisons in 1995: 1,300 Number of inmates in state prisons in 2008: 2,043 Increase in prison population from 1995 to 2008: 57 percent Number of employees managing/working in local jails and state prisons in 1982: 583 Number [...

Texas State Senator: ?We Need a Clean Start?

Posted on April 05, 2008
Close TYC? That’s the gist of a plan that’s being discussed by state legislators, who hope to write it up and present it this summer. As the Austin American-Statesman reports, State Senator John Whitmire is stepping out as unofficial spokesman for the plan, which would call for a total makeover of the state’s troubled juvenile [...

CJJ: Kohl Amendment ?Promising?

Posted on April 04, 2008
News brief from the Coalition for Juvenile Justice April/May e-newsletter: Promising Federal Juvenile Justice Appropriations Cycle Gets Underway in Congress The Fiscal Year 2009 federal juvenile justice appropriations cycle is off to a promising start, despite the President?s Budget Proposal and anticipated challenges related to the election year...

CNN on Juv Prison Abuse

Posted on April 04, 2008
Check out this long article by CNN writer Ashley Fantz on widespread abuse in US juvenile prisons. It’s not a pretty picture–in fact, it’s quite dark. But as Jerome Miller, a psychiatric social worker and co-founder of the National Center on Institutions and Alternatives, tells Fantz, “It’s a nationwide crisis that has been going on [...

Revisiting Those Byrne/JAG Cuts

Posted on April 03, 2008
A few months ago, when I first learned that President Bush’s federal domestic spending bill for 2008 included a 67 percent reduction in appropriations (from $520 million to $170 million) for the Byrne Memorial Justice Assistance Grant (JAG) program, which funds local crime control initiatives and drug task forces, I wasn’t sure how to respond...

Meet J. Robert Flores, OJJDP Chief (Underminer)

Posted on April 03, 2008
Juvienation reader Bill Bush writes in with this comment in response to my post from a few days ago on cronyism at the OJJDP. Who is Flores? What is his background prior to OJJDP? I read his bio on the agency web site but it isn?t all that illuminating...

12-Year-Old Boy Kills His Mother?s Assailant

Posted on April 02, 2008
This page-one story in today’s Washington Post describes the terrifying scene that confronted Cheryl Stamp and her 12-year-old son Monday night. When the boy heard his mother screaming in the kitchen of the boarding house where they live (in Prince George’s County, Maryland), he rushed in and found her being strangled by a fellow resident, [...

New JPI Report on Overuse of Jails

Posted on April 02, 2008
A new report by the Justice Policy Institute, “Jailing Communities: The Impact of Jail Expansion and Effective Public Safety Strategies,” documents the heavy toll paid by communities that have seen a massive expansion of their jail populations in the past twenty years...

Colorado Enacts Restorative Justice Law

Posted on April 01, 2008
Signaling his support for the restorative justice approach to juvenile crime, Colorado Governor Bill Ritter signed House Bill 08-1117 into law yesterday. The innovative measure, which passed with overwhelming bipartisan support in both the State House (63-1) and Senate (33-0), is designed to create an alternative to incarceration that is neither punitive nor lenient...

Cronyism at the OJJDP

Posted on March 31, 2008
More federal news. Well, maybe it’s not news, exactly–Youth Today reported on it back in January, with an update in early March, and I’ve sat on it for a little while without commenting. Which shouldn’t reflect on the quality of the story, since it’s such a good scoop, but rather on my scattered brain...

Leahy on JJDPA: ?It Should Be Reauthorized?

Posted on March 29, 2008
Ah, good. We’re one step closer toward reauthorizing the federal Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act (JJDPA). Senate Judiciary Committee chairman has announced that hearings will be scheduled following Easter recess, and he’s officially on board...

Mishi Faruqee on Closing NY Youth Prisons

Posted on March 28, 2008
This week’s guest on Radio Civil Liberties–a weekly broadcast produced by the New York Civil Liberties Union, which airs live every Saturday at 11 a.m. on WBBF AM 1120 in Buffalo–was Mishi Faruqee, director of the Juvenile Justice Project at the Correctional Association of New York...

Violence Up at Baltimore Youth Prison

Posted on March 28, 2008
Violence involving inmates at the Baltimore City Juvenile Justice Center has spiked in recent months, according to data released this week by the state’s juvenile justice monitor. As the Baltimore Sun reports, “In the first three months of the year, there have been 155 youth-on-youth assaults and 28 youth-on-staff assaults at the Baltimore City Juvenile [...

Justice Dept. Unveils New JJ Blog

Posted on March 28, 2008
The National Institute of Corrections (NIC), an agency within the US Justice Department’s Federal Bureau of Prisons, has set up a new blog, Juvenile Justice Connection, to “facilitate the exchange of information among juvenile justice professionals,” according to the press announcement...

Readers Respond to Billy Wolfe Article

Posted on March 27, 2008
Ever since I posted on Dan Barry’s article about Billy Wolfe on Monday, I’ve been getting an impressive and sustained amount of traffic to the site, which has been accompanied by a noticeable uptick in comments. Check out the comments here and add one of your own; there’s a lively discussion going on among Juvienation [...

NYT: Shut ?em Down

Posted on March 27, 2008
Editorial in today’s New York Times: New Day, Line by Budget Line Moving beyond the steamy executive headlines, the New York Statehouse had better show taxpayers something more promising than business as usual as it tackles the deficit-threatened state budget...

Abortion Battle in Arizona

Posted on March 26, 2008
In Arizona, teenage girls are getting caught in the crossfire of the abortion wars. The State Senate voted 18-12 yesterday in favor of a bill that would add additional barriers to teenagers seeking abortions in the state without the consent of a parent or guardian...

Vegas Girls

Posted on March 26, 2008
The focus in Nevada on juvenile sex offenders (see yesterday’s post below) might be a tad misplaced. Sex, yes; juveniles, yes. But the offenders–in Las Vegas, at least–are more likely to be adults than teens. As this AP report notes, Las Vegas has become a hub for underage prostitutes...

NYT Metro on ?Ghost Jails?

Posted on March 26, 2008
Don’t miss this strong piece from the New York Times Metro section on the struggle over the proposed plan to close the “ghost jails” in upstate New York.

Nevada Judge to Rule on Juv Sex Offender Laws

Posted on March 25, 2008
The new juvenile sex offender laws in the state of Nevada, as laid out in Assembly Bill 579, are so Byzantine and so poorly worded that when a case landed in family court last week, the Las Vegas Sun reports, “the district attorney, who is fighting for stricter legislation, and the public defender, who is [...

Juv Arrests Drop in Wisconsin

Posted on March 25, 2008
The number of juvenile arrests in Wisconsin dropped noticeably from 1997 to 2006, according to state officials. The La Crosse Tribune reports that When it comes to those 17 and younger, three broad categories of arrests are tabulated and reported by the state Office of Justice Assistance: index arrests, for serious offenses such as murder and [...

Dallas Morning News: Get Tough Doesn?t Work

Posted on March 24, 2008
Editorial in today’s Dallas Morning News (thank you, Grits for Breakfast, for pointing it out): Texas’ Pipeline to Youth Prison When a teenager waves a gun in your face and steals your wallet, it’s hard to think empathetically about a time when he was just a little boy with dreams of being an astronaut or firefighter...

NY Prison Shutdown Update

Posted on March 24, 2008
On Sunday the Albany Times Union ran a page-one story about the struggle in the State Senate over the Office of Children and Family Services proposal to shutter six underused juvenile prisons. “Every empty bed costs the state between $120,000 and $200,000 per year, according to OCFS,” reporter Irene Jay Liu writes...

The Bullies of Fayetteville

Posted on March 24, 2008
Dan Barry writes a weekly column for the New York Times called “This Land,” and this week’s entry tells the sad story of Billy Wolfe, a 15-year-old in Fayetteville, Arkansas, who has endured constant bullying from his classmates for the past several years...

Good Feeback on Barry

Posted on March 24, 2008
Good feedback on The Bullies of Fayetteville post from earlier: check out the comments section for two thoughtful comments on Dan Barry’s piece in Monday’s New York Times.

Kentucky May Collect DNA From Some Teens

Posted on March 21, 2008
The Kentucky Senate Judiciary Committee has approved a plan to broaden the state’s DNA database to include all adult and some juvenile felony offenders, the Louisville Courier-Journal reports. The state currently gathers DNA “only from adults who commit violent felony offenses, sex offenses or burglaries, and from youths 13 or older who commit sex offenses...

Lower the Drinking Age?

Posted on March 21, 2008
Debate over lowering the drinking age is heating up in several states, says USA Today.

Wash State: No Jury Trial Rights for Violent Juvs

Posted on March 21, 2008
The Washington State Supreme Court ruled yesterday that a juvenile charged with a violent crime has no constitutional right to a jury trial. The case centered on Azel Chavez, who was 14 in 2004, when he hatched a plot to kill three high school football coaches he was angry with...

El Diario: Shut ?em Down

Posted on March 18, 2008
Editorial from today’s issue of El Diario, the largest Spanish-language daily in New York City, courtesy of (and translated by?) the New York Juvenile Justice Coalition: Closing the door on juvenile facilities EDITORIAL - 03/18/2008 One of the fights that Governor David Paterson must gear up for is around the closing of under-used facilities for juvenile offenders...

HuffPo: Missouri Works

Posted on March 17, 2008
Marian Wright Edelman, president of the Children’s Defense Fund, sings the praises of the Missouri Model in this dispatch at The Huffington Post.

Policy Dialogue on NY JJ Reform

Posted on March 14, 2008
Press release from the New York Office of Children and Family Services: FYI - you may be interested in attending: New York State Juvenile Justice Reform “A Policy Dialogue” March 17, 2008 10-12 pm FIRST LUTHERAN CHURCH 181 Western Avenue Albany, New York Speakers: Gladys Carrión, Commissioner, NYS Office of Children & Family Services Ray Schimmer, Executive Director, Parsons Child and Family Center Katharine Briar-Lawson, Dean, [...

?Emily?s Law? Moves Forward in Minnesota

Posted on March 14, 2008
The Minnesota House Public Safety and Civil Justice Committee held a hearing yesterday to consider the so-called “Emily’s Law” (HF699), which would lower the age of adult certification for violent juvenile offenses to 13. The bill is named after Emily Johnson, a 2-year-old who, in June 2006, was sexually assaulted and killed by the 13-year-old son [...

Trouble in the Shaloh Joseph Case

Posted on March 13, 2008
Yikes. Here’s the first line of an article in the South Florida Sun Sentinel about a troubling development in the Shaloh Joseph case (background here): “A Broward Circuit judge today banned the mother of a 12-year-old murder suspect from having any contact with her son after she was overheard encouraging him to kill himself and likening [...

Spitzer?s Fall = Prison?s Rise?

Posted on March 13, 2008
This article from the Albany Times Union, courtesy of the Real Cost of Prisons blog (the newest addition to the Juvienation blogroll), provides a partial answer to one of the week’s burning questions: How will New York Governor Eliot Spitzer’s resignation affect Office of Children and Family Services Commissioner Gladys Carrion’s plan to shut down [...

Louisiana: Jindal vs. Landrieu

Posted on March 12, 2008
Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal has proposed an $11 million cut in spending for juvenile justice programs. Lieutenant Governor Mitch Landrieu, who’s been working on this stuff for a lot longer than newcomer Jindal has, thinks that’s a lousy idea...

Trouble in Albany

Posted on March 12, 2008
No, not the Spitzer thing–although perhaps it’s related; I still don’t know. Read this urgent message from Mishi Faruqee, who directs the New York Juvenile Justice Coalition: Dear Friends: As you know, the New York State Office of Children and Family Services (OCFS) has proposed closing six youth prisons as part of a larger effort to reform [...

Sanity on Youth Gangs in Wash State

Posted on March 12, 2008
A column by Janice O’Mahony, chair of the Juvenile Justice Advisory Committee in Washington State, appeared yesterday on the Seattle Post-Intelligencer’s opinion page and led with this friendly statistic: “Since 1996, there has been a 40 percent decrease in juvenile arrests in Washington...

Criminal Record

Posted on March 12, 2008
On February 28 I posted a brief note about a new report from the Pew Center on the States that brought some startling statistics to the public eye. With a record-high population of more than 2.3 million adults behind bars, the report found, America now incarcerates more than one in every 100 adults...

Juvie LWOP Update: Stalling in IL?

Posted on March 12, 2008
The Christian Science Monitor ran a good piece yesterday on the movement across various states to do away with life without parole sentences for juvenile offenders. Much is familiar, but important nevertheless and certainly worthy of update: primarily, legislation pending in Illinois, Michigan, Florida, Nebraska and California to allow parole hearings for this category of [...

Against Florida HB 273

Posted on March 12, 2008
On Monday Sandra Adams, a Republican State Representative in Florida, gave the first reading of a proposed measure she’s sponsoring, House Bill 273, which Permits court to retain jurisdiction over child or child’s parent or legal guardian until certain costs & fees are satisfied; provides for preadjudicatory release conditions; provides additional use of certain types of [...

CDC: One in Four Teen Girls Have an STD

Posted on March 11, 2008
A new report out today from the US Centers on Disease Control and Prevention–the first of its kind–has found that 25 percent of teenage girls carry some form of sexually transmitted disease. That is, according to this summary in Reuters, an estimated 3...

ATTN: Reclaiming Futures Applicants

Posted on March 11, 2008
Reclaiming Futures, a five-year, $21 million project of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, has been developing new models for juvenile justice at ten pilot sites across the nation (locations here). A new grant is allowing the program to expand to six new communities, and the program is inviting prospective 2008 participants to a one-hour [...

CJJ RFP: JJDPA Survey

Posted on March 10, 2008
The Coalition for Juvenile Justice is seeking proposals from independent research consultants to develop, conduct and write up a survey among the nation?s 56 state juvenile justice advisory groups on the JJDPA (questions about compliance, challenges, successes)...

Defendant in Shaloh Joseph Case to Stay in Juv Detention

Posted on March 10, 2008
The 12-year-old Florida boy charged with fatally beating his 17-month-old cousin will spend at least two more months in the secure juvenile detention center where he’s been held since he was arrested January 4, a Broward County judge ruled today...

Catching Up With the JJDPA Reauthorization Campaign

Posted on March 10, 2008
From the March issue of Youth Today (the link is unavailable, so the text is posted below in full): Advocates Seek to Reform JJDP Act by Erika Fitzpatrick Federal juvenile justice reauthorization should for the first time encourage states to address conditions in youth jails and residential facilities, in light of recent abuses in such places as Texas [...

Breaking News Update

Posted on March 10, 2008
If you happen to go to that JJ briefing in Albany tomorrow, ask the “high-level” officials in attendance how this might affect the proposed prison reforms.

New York JJ Briefing Tomorrow

Posted on March 10, 2008
Who: Advocates for juvenile justice reform in New York What: Briefing with a ?high-level? administration official Where: Flag Room of the Capitol Building, Albany, New York When: Tuesday, March 11, 1:45 PM (tomorrow!) Why: The New York State Senate and Assembly are considering an ambitious proposal from the state?s Office of Children and Family Services to enact long-sought reforms [...

Ellen: We Need to Change the Message

Posted on February 29, 2008
Ellen DeGeneres opened her show this morning with a few minutes of emotional commentary on the murder of Lawrence King. “A boy has been killed and a number of lives have been ruined,” she said. “And somewhere along the line the killer, Brandon, got the message that it’s so threatening and so awful and so [...

Highest Rate of Incarceration in US History

Posted on February 28, 2008
A new report published by the Pew Center on the States reveals that the jail and prison population in the United States is 2.3 million people. That’s more than one in every one hundred adults, the highest rate at any time in US history. Last year alone the population grew by 25,000...

Torture in Ohio

Posted on February 27, 2008
When Sheila Clark came home from work last Friday in Hanover Township, a rural town near Cincinnati, she found her disabled 18-year-old daughter, Ashley, bound, gagged, bruised and bleeding. Her hair had been cut off. Her assailants had doused her with water and forced her to walk barefoot through the snow in the yard...

New York Numbers Game

Posted on February 26, 2008
Matthew Schwarzfeld, a reporter at the New York-based urban policy magazine City Limits, looks at the costs associated with implementing the ambitious state plan, put forward by Office of Children and Family Services (OCFS) commissioner Gladys Carrión, to shut down six youth prisons next year...

The Murder of Lawrence King

Posted on February 25, 2008
On February 12, Brandon McInerney, a 14-year-old at E.O. Green Junior High School in Oxnard, California, walked into his computer lab and shot 15-year-old Lawrence King (pictured above) in the head in front of two dozen classmates. Lawrence was declared brain dead a day later and taken off life support on February 14...

Grits for Breakfast: TYC Can Learn From NYC

Posted on February 22, 2008
Scott Henson at the Texas-based blog Grits for Breakfast read Wednesday’s New York Times story on the Juvenile Justice Initiative and thinks officials at the Texas Youth Commission should, too. When it comes to developing cheaper alternatives to youth prisons, he suggests, the TYC can learn a lot from NYC...

Promising Incarceration Alternatives in NYC

Posted on February 21, 2008
The New York Times Metro section took a look yesterday at the city’s Juvenile Justice Initiative, a promising alternative incarceration program that keeps medium-risk offenders at home and provides intensive therapy. “Until the Juvenile Justice Initiative, family court judges had few options for dealing with youngsters convicted of less-serious crimes,” the paper reports...

Defendant in Shaloh Joseph Case Enters Not Guilty Plea

Posted on February 20, 2008
The 12-year-old Florida boy facing second-degree-murder charges for killing his 17-month-old cousin, Shaloh Joseph, entered a not guilty plea in Broward County juvenile court on Monday. News here. Background here.

Mississippi to Shutter Notorious Girls? Prison

Posted on February 20, 2008
Some successes are measured; others are unqualified. This one is the latter. Seven months ago the Southern Poverty Law Center filed suit against the State of Mississippi, citing abusive conditions at the Columbia Training School, a notorious girls’ prison...

Time In

Posted on February 20, 2008
As many have I’m sure noticed, the lights at Juvienation have been turned off for the past few days. Blogger’s prerogative: this is not my full-time job, and it’s not my only freelance gig, either. I’m trying to keep a lot of balls in the air, and sometimes that requires scaling back on the time I [...

File Under ?Fargo?

Posted on February 20, 2008
From the AP: A high school senior accused of trying to pay hit men $260 to kill his adoptive parents had always been a ”very good child,” his mother said through tears Wednesday. Jacob A. Jett, 18, allegedly gave the money and three handguns to two men as part of the plot to kill Richard and [...

NC Conference: Update

Posted on February 15, 2008
More on the powwow in Greensboro to consider raising the age at which teens can be tried as adults, from the Raleigh News & Observer: The Greensboro gathering, which continues today, brought together more than 200 juvenile justice practitioners for the N...

NC Considers Raising JJ Age

Posted on February 14, 2008
Officials in North Carolina are meeting today to discuss raising the age of criminal responsibility to 18. Cross your fingers…

New Report on LWOP in Illinois

Posted on February 14, 2008
Progress on the campaign to abolish life without parole in my home state: the Illinois Coalition for the Fair Sentencing of Children, a group that includes lawyers and academics and advocates, put out a report yesterday that calls for doing away with LWOP sentences for juvenile offenders...

USA Today: Time for Change on JJ Policy

Posted on February 13, 2008
Annette Fuentes, a top journalist on the national youth advocacy beat, takes a big-picture look at trends in juvenile crime and policy and borrows a line from presidential hopeful Barack Obama. In “Give the Kids a Break,” an op-ed in today’s edition of USA Today, she argues that “the time for change is right”–particularly on [...

Stonewalling in Connecticut

Posted on February 13, 2008
A tip of the hat to John Kelly at Youth Today, who points me to this interesting story out of Connecticut: Governor Jodi Rell, who promised in August 2005 to shut down the Connecticut Juvenile Training School (CJTS) in Middletown, has decided instead to expand its population–by more than 100 percent...

TYC Scandal of the Day: Pope Resigns

Posted on February 12, 2008
Dimitria Pope, the troubled acting executive director of the Texas Youth Commission, resigned late last night. As the Houston Chronicle reports, Pope has been a lightning rod for controversy since her appointment last spring to an agency that was then being ripped apart by one of the worst abuse scandals to ever hit juvenile corrections...

The Colbert Report

Posted on February 12, 2008
A few weeks back I pointed out that Washington Post columnist Colbert King “has been on a bizarrely impassioned tear in recent months, attacking the DC Department of Youth Rehabilitation Services and its head, Vincent Schiraldi, a nationally renowned expert on juvenile justice reform who founded the Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice and was until recently [...

NY Daily News on NYU JJ Panel

Posted on February 12, 2008
There’s much to be said about the lively, exciting ?Transforming Juvenile Justice in New York State? panel discussion that took place at NYU on Friday. If and when I pinch away some time to comment, I will. For now, though, I’ll turn it over to Errol Louis, a columnist at the New York Daily News, who [...

Strong Winds in Kentucky and Ohio

Posted on February 12, 2008
The winds of change are blowing through the bluegrass region. In mid-December Kentucky Juvenile Justice Department commissioner Bridget Skaggs Brown–who presided over a punishment-first network of prisons and brought a troublingly punitive, one-size-fits-all approach to sex offenders (see earlier posts here)–stepped down to chair the state’s Parole Board, to the delight of reform advocates...

JJDPA Reauthorization: Draft Bill Coming Soon

Posted on February 12, 2008
Act4JJ just sent around an e-mail blast announcing that a draft of the bill to reauthorize the federal Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act is due shortly. “The Senate Judiciary Committee and the House Education and Labor Committee are actively working to craft legislation for the JJDPA reauthorization,” Act4JJ says, “and we expect to see a [...

Florida Gov Names New JJ Secretary

Posted on February 08, 2008
Big week for juvenile justice in Florida. On Tuesday the Blueprint Commission submitted its report on “getting smart” about its response to delinquency, and on Thursday Governor Charlie Crist appointed St. Petersburg State Representative Frank Peterman to head the Department of Juvenile Justice...

Reminder: New York JJ Panel Tomorrow

Posted on February 07, 2008
Just a friendly reminder to all New York-area readers: From 8:30 to 10 tomorrow morning (breakfast at 8:00), the Wagner School at New York University will host a panel called ?Transforming Juvenile Justice in New York State.? Hot topic of discussion, of course, will be the proposed shutdown of six facilities around the state and redirection [...

New Assault Charge for Jena Six Defendant

Posted on February 07, 2008
Jena Six defendant Bryant Purvis, 19, who will head to trial at the end of March to face charges of aggravated second-degree battery and conspiracy, now has an assault charge to deal with in an unrelated case. Purvis, who since the Jena incident has been living in the Dallas area with his uncle, Dallas Cowboys defensive [...

Launch Room Missile Crisis

Posted on February 07, 2008
Liz Ryan at the Campaign for Youth Justice tipped me off to this outlandish story from Laramie, Wyoming: three 13-year-old girls were charged with violating a city ordinance against “hurling missiles.” Thanks, Liz, for the tip! And, please, pass the ketchup…

Rhode Island to Dismiss, Transfer 17-Year-Old ?Gap Kids?

Posted on February 06, 2008
Last year, during the nearly five-month span after Rhode Island Governor Don Carcieri passed a law that lowered the age of adult court jurisdiction to 17 but before he was forced to repeal it, about 100 17-year-olds were charged as adults for their alleged crimes...

Masked Marauder, Unmasked, Strikes in Gotham

Posted on February 06, 2008
I don’t know how this happened, but the copy of the New York Times that arrived on my stoop this morning does not include this editorial on juvenile LWOP, “A Shameful Record.” I found out about it during my daily visit to Sentencing Law and Policy, and followed the link to the Times’s website, where [...

Florida Blueprint Commission Submits Report: ?Get Smart, Not Tough?

Posted on February 06, 2008
The Blueprint Commission of the Florida Department of Juvenile Justice presented its findings yesterday in a much-anticipated report, “Getting Smart About Juvenile Justice in Florida.” The report follows a series of statewide hearings and reflects the recommendations of the twenty-five-member commission that was tasked last summer with charting a new course for the state’s troubled [...

NCJJ Looking to Fill Top Spot

Posted on February 05, 2008
Press release from the National Center for Juvenile Justice: The National Council of Juvenile and Family Court Judges has issued a position announcement for the Director of its National Center for Juvenile Justice. The Center, which serves as the Council’s research arm, concentrates on providing research and statistics relating to the juvenile justice system and the [...

Kos on Khadr

Posted on February 05, 2008
Hina Shamsi, an attorney with the ACLU’s National Security Project, filed this dispatch from Guantánamo Bay on yesterday ’s military commissions hearing in the case against Omar Khadr. It’s the first of a series of posts Shamsi will file on Daily Kos this week...

Gitmo ?Justice? for Khadr?

Posted on February 04, 2008
Is there such a thing as a child terrorist? That question was posed at a hearing today in Guantánamo Bay, when Navy Lieut. William Kuebler asked a military judge, Army Col. Peter Brownback, to dismiss charges against Omar Khadr, a Canadian citizen and accused Al Qaeda fighter who was pulled off the battlefield in Afghanistan in [...

10-Year-Old Girl Arrested, Detained in Illinois

Posted on February 04, 2008
The Chicago Sun-Times reports that a 10-year-old girl who allegedly hit her teacher was arrested Friday in Will County, Illinois, on charges of aggravated battery. The Illinois Department of Children and Family Services stepped in immediately to secure her release from the River Valley Juvenile Justice Center in Joliet, where she was being held until [...

High Recidivism Rate for Wisconsin Teens in Adult Prison

Posted on February 02, 2008
A report from the Wisconsin Legislative Audit Bureau found that 17-year-old offenders released from prison in 2002 and 2003 were reincarcerated at more than double the rate of adult offenders released during those years, and at nearly twice the rate of offenders released from juvenile institutions in the state at that time...

The Bully Profile

Posted on February 01, 2008
This little rascal accompanies a story from MSNBC.com about a new study, published in the February issue of Developmental Medicine & Child Neurology, showing that children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder are almost four times as likely as others to be bullies...

Catching Up With the SPLC School-to-Prison Reform Project

Posted on February 01, 2008
In September, when the Southern Poverty Law Center announced a new national initiative designed to keep at-risk youth out of the “school-to-prison pipeline,” I wrote a short post expressing hope that the program would have enough money and support to get results...

First Edwards, Now This

Posted on January 31, 2008
Pour one out for Corrections Sentencing, folks. One of the best blogs on the block is folding up its tent. Thanks for everything, Michael, and best of luck on those dance steps!

Cali to Provide Lawyers for Juv Parolees

Posted on January 31, 2008
If you thought today’s top story out of California was Governor Schwarzenegger’s endorsement of John McCain… well, you’d be right. But this is important, too: On Tuesday, US District Judge Lawrence Karlton of Sacramento ruled that the state must provide lawyers to juvenile offenders facing hearings for parole violations...

NYU to Host JJ Panel

Posted on January 30, 2008
For all you New York-area readers: Next Friday, February 8, from 8:30 to 10 in the morning (breakfast at 8:00), the Wagner School at New York University will host a panel called “Transforming Juvenile Justice in New York State.” Here’s the info: Location: Robert F...

Corrections Sentencing Re: Prison Shutdowns

Posted on January 30, 2008
Michael Connelly of the essential blog Corrections Sentencing writes in with a thoughtful comment on the economic impact of upstate New York prison shutdowns. It’s in the comments section on yesterday’s post re: Simple Justice, but I wanted to highlight it here because a) he makes an excellent point, b) it gives me [...

Charges Dismissed in Isaiah Simmons Case

Posted on January 30, 2008
Almost exactly one year ago, on January 23, 2007, Isaiah Simmons, a 17-year-old convicted of armed robbery, died at the Baltimore-area Bowling Brook Preparatory School, a privately run residential program for juvenile offenders. Following an outburst that day, Simmons was set upon by a group of counselors, who, according to the Baltimore Sun, “pinned him [...

New OJJDP Fact Sheets

Posted on January 29, 2008
The Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention has published three new fact sheets: ? Delinquency Cases in Juvenile Courts, 2004 Summary: The number of delinquency cases handled by juvenile courts decreased 7 percent between 1995 and 2004. During this period, public order offense cases increased 41 percent, drug law violation cases increased 19 percent, person offenses [...

JLC Files Amicus Brief on LWOP Case

Posted on January 29, 2008
The Juvenile Law Center has filed an amicus brief in Massachusetts in support of Patrick Powell, a 16-year-old charged with murder, who is facing a mandatory, unreviewable sentence of life without parole. Powell and two other boys allegedly stabbed 21-year-old victim Daniel Columbo to death on January 6, 2006...

Simple Justice on Prison Shutdowns

Posted on January 29, 2008
Scott Greenfield at Simple Justice, responding to a post by Jamie Spencer at Austin Criminal Defense Lawyer, takes another look at the New York Times article regarding the proposed shutdown of prisons in upstate New York. (Jeez, the blogosphere gets tangled quickly, doesn’t it?) Greenfield’s take is snarkier than mine, and more charged up...

Study Links Depression and Risk Behaviors in Detained Youth

Posted on January 29, 2008
The Bradley Hasbro Children’s Research Center has released a new study, published in the January issue of the Journal of Studies on Alcohol and Drugs, which found that, according to Science Daily’s summary news report, “kids who have been arrested and are depressed are more likely to use drugs and alcohol and engage in unsafe [...

Deposing King

Posted on January 28, 2008
As some Juvienation readers may know, those in DC in particular, Washington Post columnist Colbert King has been on a bizarrely impassioned tear in recent months, attacking the DC Department of Youth Rehabilitation Services and its head, Vincent Schiraldi, a nationally renowned expert on juvenile justice reform who founded the Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice [...

Northern Irish Prison Guards Threaten Strike

Posted on January 28, 2008
It’s always a good idea to track how other juvenile prison systems roughly similar to ours handle adversity; we can learn something, I think, from the similarities and differences, and the distance affords a fresh perspective on the way our own system runs...

When the Prison Bubble Bursts

Posted on January 27, 2008
How will New York Governor Eliot Spitzer’s plan to shut down a good-size chunk of the state’s correctional system affect the people whose livelihoods depend on the prison industry? The Sunday Metro section of the New York Times takes a look at the community around the upstate Camp Gabriels facility, in the northern Adirondacks, to [...

Plea Deal Offered in Shaloh Joseph Case

Posted on January 26, 2008
At a hearing in Broward County yesterday prosecutors in the Shaloh Joseph case presented a plea deal that would allow the 12-year-old boy accused of killing his 17-month-old cousin to be tried as a juvenile if he agrees to plead guilty to second-degree murder...