State officials say it will be a while before the Swannanoa Valley Youth Development Center sees a new facility. “We thought about building a new facility, and then the economy went south, and we lost all our funding,” William Lassiter, spokesperson for the N.C. Department of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, said. Reported in the Black Mountain News.

The center still needs to be either replaced or upgraded to bring it up to modern standards, but Lassiter doesn’t see that happening “for at least two or three years.” The most recent state budget has the facility remaining in its current home for this fiscal year, which ends June 30, 2011.

When a move or upgrade does finally happen, Lassiter said the department would prefer to keep the site in Buncombe County. The department needs a facility in Western North Carolina to keep inmates close to their families, and the county is seen as the hub of the region, he said.

It’s also possible a new facility could be in the Swannanoa Valley.

“It might be right there on campus, or it might be a couple miles down the road,” he said.

Either way, he said, the department will work with current employees to find them employment at a new youth center or elsewhere.

Some employees of the youth center could potentially move to the Swannanoa Correctional Center for Women, which opened at the youth center campus in July 2008. When construction finishes in September, the women’s prison will house 356 inmates.

That’s a substantial increase from the 90 inmates housed at the old women’s prison off North Fork Road.

The old women’s prison was converted into the Black Mountain Women’s Susbtance Abuse Treatment Center, which opened in April this year and celebrated a grand opening last month.

In an interview at the grand opening, Jennie Patterson, the chief deputy secretary of North Carolina’s Department of Corrections said workers at the Swannanoa Valley Youth Development Center would be given priority employment rights for openings at the Swannanoa Correctional Center for Women.

State laws require state employees be given priority for open state employment positions, and also requires departments to help employees when a branch or facility is closed, she said.

“I really think there’s no reason to be worried about jobs,” Patterson said.

jchev Community Corrections, Economic Issues, Juvenile Justice, North Carolina

A Hillman Street center for juvenile offenders, slated for closing last month but then given an at-least-temporary reprieve by the state, remained empty last week, leaving its staff concerned about the program’s status.

“Our concern is really about the facts on the ground right now,” said Andy Pond, president of Justice Resource Institute Inc., which contracts with the state to run the New Bedford center and a second center in Boston. “We’re not serving kids right now.” News reported in South Coast Today.

The New Bedford and Boston programs are two of four Juvenile Resource Centers across the state that provide direct supervision and clinical services to adolescent boys sentenced there from the juvenile court system or the state Department of Youth Services. The others are located in Brockton and Worcester.

Program officials were informed last month that they would be closed down by Sept. 30 at the latest due to budget constraints.

However, the state changed course a week later, stating that an assessment of the operations of the state Office of Community Corrections, under which the centers sit, would be conducted before any programming decisions were made.

“The message from (Probation) Acting Commissioner (Ronald) Corbett … is: open pending a serious review,” said Pond. “But what we’re experiencing doesn’t seem to be congruent with that.”

All of the adolescents enrolled at the New Bedford center when initial word to close came down have been reassigned elsewhere despite the state’s change in position, according to Pond.

The center has been told it will continue to receive new referrals, but no boys have been sent to the New Bedford program recently, leaving it empty as of Wednesday afternoon, said Pond.

According to Patricia Horne, deputy director of operations for the Office of Community Corrections, the adolescents enrolled at the New Bedford center were brought back to court for new assignments after it was announced the future of the centers might be in jeopardy due to budget concerns.

Horne did not provide a direct answer when asked why the boys who were discharged from the New Bedford center in the wake of the initial closure announcement have not been re-enrolled at the center.

According to Horne, the Suffolk County center has 13 boys enrolled, the Brockton center has six boys, and the Worcester program has 15 participants. There are no adolescents enrolled in New Bedford. The programs have a maximum capacity of about 25 participants.

Meanwhile, the Boston and New Bedford centers are still fully staffed, according to Pond.

“I know in New Bedford, they’re actually painting the office, just trying to do something to feel that their situation is worthwhile,” he said.

Pond said the messages he has received from the state have reassured him as to its commitment to conduct a serious review and not to act precipitously. However, he said, there is a gap between what he’s hearing from the state and what he’s seeing happen at the centers.

“I think the lack of clarity has been part of the challenge,” said Pond.

Horne said programming decisions will be made based on the review of the fiscal 2011 budget deficit and its effect on the probation and community corrections departments; once the review is complete, the status of future placements in the juvenile centers will be more clear, according to Horne.

The departments “want to minimize disruption in the educational placements for the young men who were being served by the centers, since decisions may not be finalized before the beginning of the school year,” she wrote in an e-mail.

While the JRI staff are, obviously, concerned about their jobs, Pond said they are also very worried about the adolescents they are committed to helping.

“This is one of our favorite programs because it really pulls together such a great combination of services,” he said. “It isn’t just keeping kids off the street. It’s really aiming kids in a new direction.”

jchev Community Corrections, Juvenile Justice, MA Bristol County

Three weeks after the director of the Illinois Department of Juvenile Justice announced his resignation, two different studies are calling for major changes in the troubled agency’s operations. News in the Illinois Times.

Kurt Friedenauer announced his resignation as IDJJ director on July 14, having served in that position since the department’s creation in 2006. Friedenauer oversaw IDJJ’s slow separation from the adult-oriented Department of Corrections and the beginnings of a merger with the Department of Children and Family Services, but persistent recidivism and bouts of violence called into question the IDJJ’s effectiveness during his tenure.

The American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees Local 31, which represents state employees such as those at IDJJ, blasted the merger with DCFS last week, calling it a “bureaucratic solution to a programmatic problem.”

“There is widespread agreement that the current juvenile justice system is not fulfilling its mission of reducing the recidivism rate of juvenile offenders,” AFSCME says in a report released July 27. “But the merger appears likely to merely replicate the mistakes of the past, offering only cosmetic change when what is required is a serious commitment of new resources to revitalize the programs essential to ensure that youth have the opportunity to rebuild their lives and to make the facilities safe.”

The juvenile justice system was never given a chance to succeed, AFSCME says, pointing to a “woefully inadequate” budget, inadequate staff, lack of training and teacher levels that hover below state standards. The union surveyed 239 members who work in the juvenile justice system and developed a list of reforms AFSCME asserts could “reverse a nearly decade-long slide in juvenile justice outcomes in Illinois.”

Among the recommendations are larger staff numbers, more teachers and better staff training. IDJJ shouldn’t have to share parole officers with the Department of Corrections, AFSCME says, and treatment programs for substance abuse and mental health should be expanded.

“Yet another structural reorganization should not be allowed to substitute once again for meaningful reinvestment,” AFSCME says, “or for a true and productive partnership between the administration of the juvenile justice system and the frontline employees … who are striving to bring about the safe and successful rehabilitation of young offenders in Illinois.”

Two days after the AFSCME report, Illinois Models for Change released a report on behavioral health in IDJJ, calling for better mental health assessments in youth prisons. The report says existing assessments aren’t adequate, and often aren’t incorporated into juvenile inmates’ treatment plans, while staffing levels and training are a critical issue.

“In many facilities the current caseloads of youth and family specialists and mental health professionals are unmanageable and do not allow for meaningful monitoring, treatment or provision of vital case management functions,” the IMC report states. That report was in response to a request for technical assistance from IDJJ.

Meanwhile, Quinn seems to be pushing ahead with the merger, creating “interagency workgroups” to study the benefits and impacts of joining the two agencies. He recently signed legislation allowing IDJJ and DCFS to share resources, and on July 16, Quinn appointed Arthur Bishop, who currently serves as deputy director of field operations for DCFS, to take over IDJJ and oversee the DCFS-IDJJ merger. Friedenauer was scheduled to leave July 31.

“This merger will ensure that at-risk youth have access to the services and support they need to become positive, productive members of society and move IDJJ to a child welfare-based system,” Quinn said in a public statement.

IDJJ holds approximately 1,500 youth offenders between ages 13 and 20 in eight youth prisons across the state.

jchev Illinois, Juvenile Justice, Personnel Issues

More money or a philosophical change in rehabilitating youths in detention facilities are needed if Illinois officials want to end the problems of suicide and rampant recidivism, according to a team of experts. Reported in the Daily Herald.

Illinois Models for Change, a 16-state juvenile justice systems reform initiative, released a study of the problems at Illinois’ eight youth detention centers, and voiced those conclusions Thursday. Low staffing, lack of training and a flawed approach to rehabilitating the troubled youths is endemic in nearly all of the state’s eight youth detention centers, experts said. The result is youths who don’t make much progress toward rehabilitation.

“Often there is no assessment or an inadequate assessment of youth mental health needs,” said Edward Loughran, executive director of the Council of Juvenile Correctional Administrators, and who led the team of experts. “We saw a real shortage of well-trained behavioral health staff skilled in identifying and helping with behavioral health problems in the facilities.”

However, the group had no answers for exactly how many new staffers are needed, how much their recommended changes will cost, or where the money will come from to pay for the improvements.

Illinois politicians are considering shifting the Illinois Department of Juvenile Justice, which oversees the youth detention centers, under the overall umbrella of concerns overseen by the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services. Experts said Thursday the danger of that plan is repeating the mistakes of the past when juvenile justice was part of the Illinois Department of Corrections. Chronic underfunding and using rehabilitation and screening programs designed for adults is a still a flaw at the youth detention centers even though juvenile justice began separating itself from the department of corrections in 2006, experts said. DCFS would be another large bureaucracy for juvenile justice to get lost in, they added.

The report indicates young adults are already being lost in the system, leading to two recent suicides in the youth detention centers. The youth center in St. Charles, in particular, is so short on staff that caseloads for staff trying to correct behavior is “unmanageable and foreclose the opportunity for any meaningful treatment for youth.” Meanwhile, the youth center in Warrenville is one of the only facilities not viewed as being understaffed. The main problem there is lack of training and resources that results in minimal help to the residents in the facility.

“Staff also reported … that they believed no real programming exists at the facility and that the transition (away from the Department of Corrections) resulted in a loss of resources,” the report reads. “The youth were described as having more freedoms and fewer consequences.”

Those comments fuel the fact that more than 35 percent of youths released from one of the youth centers end up back at the center or in an adult prison within one year. That reality may also support a suggestion in the study that detention facilities, in general, might be the wrong way to help nonviolent youth offenders. It costs Illinois taxpayers about $80,000 annually for each person housed in a youth detention center. There are currently about 1,200 youths in eight detention centers.

“A more progressive, best-practice approach would be to fund local, community-based services capable of meeting the behavioral health needs of justice-involved youth, while keeping them in their communities and maintaining public safety,” the report stated.

Loughran said several states are already experimenting with different approaches by closing some youth detention centers and shifting the dollars.

“Youth move from that high-intensity, and high-cost program to, let’s say, a group home that may be half the cost,” Loughran said. “Then the youth goes home with functional family therapy. There is a better bang for the state’s buck there in terms of the rehabilitation. My hope is that Illinois would move in that direction in the next couple of years.

Calls made directly to superintendents of the individual youth centers for comment were transferred to the agency’s headquarters in Springfield. No one answered the agency’s phones despite repeated calls throughout the day.

jchev Illinois, Juvenile Justice, Mental Health Issues

A pair of longstanding academic programs for young inmates on Rikers Island, including one dating to the Koch administration that was a first for a United States correctional facility, are being merged into a single system, city officials said. The move is aimed in large part at recalling the roots of the policy’s educational mission from the mid-1980s: It will reintegrate curriculums so that students can stay on track to recover credits, take Regents exams and earn high school diplomas or equivalency diplomas in their time behind bars. News from the New York Times.

As a practical matter, blending the two programs — known as the Horizon and Island Academies — will also involve consolidating an array of disparate classroom spaces at the jail, in part to give more students greater access to core schooling materials, like computers, officials said.

Currently, many of the 13 locations around the nine jails on Rikers Island where teachers are assigned are “under capacity,” said Timothy F. Lisante, the deputy superintendent of District 79, who said that consolidating would also cut costs.

Under the plans, the merger will be completed in time for the start of the new academic season in September. Summer classes will not be affected.

Michael Mendel, the secretary of the United Federation of Teachers, the union representing teachers, said he was loath to criticize the substance of the policy changes and voiced support for any effort by the city’s Department of Education to improve the program.

But the process was flawed, he said.

In particular, he said the timing of the announcement, with the news circulating at the close of the school year, was jarring to many educators who did not see it coming.

The teachers, who are part of the staff of roughly 200 serving both schools, were notified of the planned merger last Monday, after administrators were told the preceding weekend, Mr. Mendel said.

“It is irresponsible to do this the last day of school,” Mr. Mendel said. “They did not wake up and decide these programs were no good in June.”

Consequently, he said, teachers will have to reapply for their positions on Rikers Island, and there will be a hectic time over the summer to prepare for the new system.

Also, the consolidated classroom space and academic curriculum will require a smaller staff, so some teachers will have to move to other schools within the district, officials said. While Mr. Lisante said there would be an effort to staff the new programs with as many current educators as possible, he said, “We want the best and brightest teachers.”

Mr. Lisante defended the timing of the announcement, saying it was meant to minimize distractions and to “keep the focus on the students and use the summer to plan the redesign.”

Dora B. Schriro, the commissioner of the Department of Correction, said a better educated population in the jail contributes to the “day-to-day safety and security of the correctional system.”

While head of corrections in Arizona, she said, she found higher educational achievement linked to less recidivism.

She said the new city program would offer a “richer and more sophisticated set” of academic offerings. Longer school days are being contemplated, she said.

When Island Academy opened in 1986, it was in response to parents who did not want jail to derail the high school education of children sent there, Mr. Lisante said. That program serves students 16 to 19. The Horizon Academy was set up for 19-to-21-year-olds, with an emphasis on equivalency diplomas.

Under one combined program, all students, regardless of age, will have more seamless experiences during usually brief incarcerations, he said. Credits will be earned in a more concentrated period, he said. And admissions will be more tightly controlled, to assess individual inmates’ language, academic and other needs.

Jessica Scaperotti, a spokeswoman for the Bloomberg administration, hailed the collaboration by officials from the city’s education and correction departments to revamp a school system she characterized as not working properly.

“What the city was looking to do was overhaul the system so that we could bring together the expertise of educators, youth development specialists and correction professionals so they can better support the distinctive academic and social needs of students that are incarcerated,” Ms. Scaperroti said.

jchev Inmate Education, Juvenile Justice, New York

The Louisiana Legislature has passed a bill that would set standards for juvenile detention facilities, one of the long-deferred promises from the state’s landmark juvenile justice reform legislation. Report from The News Star.

House Bill 1477, introduced by Rep. Damon Baldone, D-Houma, and passed by the state Senate last week, would establish statewide standards for the safety and secure custody of juveniles while they await a court’s decision on their case. The bill directs the Louisiana Juvenile Detention Association to conform with nationally recognized standards and best practices. Detention facilities around the state would uniformly run their day-to-day operations, hire and train staff, according to certain qualifications, and maintain a staff-to-child ratio.

The legislation creates a task force that would guide the creation of the standards. The task force is composed of the Louisiana Public Defender Board, Louisiana District Attorney’s Association, Louisiana Department of Social Services, Louisiana Council of Juvenile and Family Court Judges, Louisiana Commission on Law Enforcement, Louisiana Sheriff’s Association, Office of Juvenile Justice, Juvenile Justice Project of Louisiana and the MacArthur Foundation’s Louisiana Models for Change.

The bill also sets a firm time line to determine the standards. By July 1, 2011, the state’s Detention Association is ordered to develop and recommend uniform standards for local juvenile detention centers, with guidance from the task force. By July 1, 2012, the Department of Social Services will develop rules to govern the licensing of facilities, and by Jan. 1, 2013, all juvenile detention facilities must be licensed.

Mike Rhodes, juvenile services director at Green Oaks Detention Center in Monroe, said Baldone’s bill would affect the area’s major juvenile detention center.

“We would fall under those standards and would have to have an operations manual to match those standards,” Rhodes said. “For the last several years we haven’t been under widespread standards or any agency to inspect us.”

Rhodes said he is looking forward to putting the standards in place. “It just makes us run the facility better,” Rhodes said. “It makes sure we can do our job.”

The establishment of juvenile detention standards was a key component in Act 1225, a broad overhaul of the state’s juvenile system in 2003. Following controversial reports of abuse among juvenile delinquents and squalid conditions in youth prisons, legislators passed a law that successfully removed juvenile incarceration from the adult-focused Department of Corrections, closed the infamous youth prison in Tallulah and eventually established an objective measure of a juvenile’s needs and risks before they were sentenced. Other key provisions of Act 1225 never materialized as intended, and for seven years a standard for detention facilities was one provision that never came together.

Dana Kaplan, executive director of the Juvenile Justice Project of Louisiana, said she expects the bill to be signed into law and called the legislation a success.

“I think it is a great step for juvenile justice efforts, and I think it will be an even bigger step once standards are in place,” Kaplan said.

jchev Juvenile Justice, Louisiana

After struggling for years to treat young criminals in razor wire-ringed institutions, states across the country are quietly shuttering dozens of reformatories amid plunging juvenile arrests, softer treatment policies and bleak budgets. News and additional photos from the Associated Press.

In Ohio, the number of juvenile offenders has plummeted by nearly half over the last two years, pushing the state to close three facilities. California’s closures include a youth institution near Los Angeles that operated for nearly 115 years. And one in Texas will finally go quiet after getting its start as a World War II-era training base.

The closures have juvenile advocates cheering.

“I can tell you it’s the best thing they can do,” said Aaron Kupchik, a University of Delaware criminologist. “Incarceration does nobody any good. You’re taking away most of their chance for normal development.”

Several factors have pushed states to close facilities. In stark contrast to the growing adult prison population, the number of juveniles in state lockups has dropped dramatically, partly because there are fewer juvenile arrests and more offenders in county-based treatment programs. States grappling with busted budgets can’t afford to operate facilities with so many empty beds.

State reformatories are typically reserved for serious criminals, such as sex offenders and other violent offenders. Unlike the punishment-oriented adult system, juvenile justice focuses on rehabilitation.

During the early 1990s, though, tough-on-crime legislators turned to the juvenile system. Nearly every state lowered the minimum age for kids to be tried as adults or increased the kind of crimes that land kids in the adult system.

But juvenile arrest rates dropped, falling 33 percent between 1997 and 2008, according to the latest U.S. Justice Department data.

Criminologists aren’t sure why fewer kids are getting in trouble. Some believe more kids are avoiding drug trafficking. Others think programs such as group homes, halfway houses and after-school tutoring closer to kids’ homes have reduced recidivism.

“No fancy stats suggest this is a cure-all, but what I think you do see is the accumulation of those small results of people doing this increasingly in cities and towns all across the country,” said Elliot Currie, a University of California-Irvine criminologist.

Those reforms have gained momentum as studies found teens sent to adult court often got in worse trouble after they were released and lawsuits emerged over poor conditions at state lockups. Many states have tweaked their juvenile polices so only the most serious offenders land in their systems.

“We’re locking up the right kids,” said Bart Lubow, program director for the Annie E. Casey Foundation, which helps fund such juvenile offender programs. “It’s about making smarter decisions.”

As a result, the number of juveniles in state institutions has dropped. According to the Justice Department, the number of juvenile offenders declined 26 percent between 2000 and 2008, from about 109,000 to 80,000.

All the empty beds offer states struggling with budget deficits a way to save money — downsize juvenile justice systems.

The number of kids in state residential custody in California peaked at 10,000 in 1996 but now stands at 1,500, said state Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation spokesman Bill Sessa. The state has closed six institutions since 2003, most notably the Fred C. Nelles Youth Correctional Facility, which had operated just outside Los Angeles since 1890. State officials keep the institution clean for film crews; the paranormal research television series “The Othersiders” investigated reports of bangs and voices there in an episode last year.

The closings have generated as much as $40 million in savings for the state’s juvenile justice department through job reductions, Sessa said.

In Texas, the state’s residential juvenile population has dropped from 5,000 kids in 2007 to about 1,900 this spring, said Texas Youth Commission spokesman Jim Hurley. His state has closed three facilities since 2007 and plans to close two more. Hurley said it was unclear how much money that saved.

In Ohio, the state’s residential youth population has fallen from about 1,730 kids as of mid-2008 to about 950 today. Its three closures over the last year should save about $40 million annually, according to juvenile corrections officials.

Some of the closed reformatories around the country will become adult prisons. Others are up for sale, like the one in Kansas that closed in 2008 saving the state $3.7 million.

In Wisconsin, state corrections officials are considering closing the Ethan Allen School, a former tuberculosis sanitarium near Wales, about 25 miles west of Milwaukee. The school’s population has dropped from 460 in 1998 to 195 in May.

Since counties generally pay the state to house juvenile offenders from their area, the overall decrease in Wisconsin’s jailed juvenile population has created a $25 million budget shortfall. Ethan Allen officials worry about what will happen if it closes, but they’re trying to stay focused on their kids.

It was life as usual on a recent spring day at Ethan Allen. Sunshine sparkled on the concertina wire that topped the fence surrounding the sprawling campus.

In one class, social worker Melinda Aiken discussed emotion management.

“Why does it take courage to make a positive change?” Aiken asked.

“If you’re scared,” a boy replied, “you ain’t never going to get anywhere.”

Aiken nodded.

“It’s going to take a lot of strength,” she said. “You guys can do it. Tap into that.”

jchev Juvenile Justice, United States

Campaigners today welcomed a Government decision to scrap the construction of a new prison for children. The Ministry of Justice said proposals to build a 360-bed juvenile centre at Glen Parva, near Leicester, will be binned. . News from the The Independent.

Officials said the decision forms part of the £325 million the department will save as part of the Government’s £6 billion efficiency drive.

A spokesman said an equivalent number of adult prison places will instead be created on existing prison sites.

The move reflects the falling number of young people in custody. There are 1,707 15 to 17-year-olds in custody, compared with 2,156 12 months ago.

Frances Crook, of the Howard League for Penal Reform, said violence and reoffending linked to Britain’s youth prisons are a “national scandal”.

She said: “Prison is no place for children and this was a mistaken plan that would have endangered children and the public.

“Sending children into large, violent prisons miles away from their home does not address offending behaviour and fails to make society safer, as the 75% reoffending rate demonstrates.

“Given the current financial climate and welcome decrease in the number of children being sent to prison, it is ludicrous that the new titan prison for children was ever suggested.”

Penelope Gibbs of the Prison Reform Trust added: “The challenge is now to keep the child custody population down by reducing the overuse of remand and preventing the courts imprisoning so many under 18-year-olds for non-violent offences.”

Prisons minister Crispin Blunt said: “Meeting the demands of the prison capacity programme more efficiently allows us to play our part in contributing savings to reduce the budget deficit.

“The number of juveniles in custody is falling so it makes financial sense for us to boost the adult prison capacity by increasing the number of prison places available on existing sites – an alternative that provides substantially better value for the taxpayer.

“This Government is committed to reforming the youth justice system to ensure reoffending rates are as low as possible while also dealing with serious offenders.”

jchev England & Wales, Juvenile Justice

There are currently four youths serving life-without-parole sentences in California for non-homicide cases, said Elizabeth Calvin of the advocacy group Human Rights Watch. The Supreme Court ruling, which the organization supported, makes those inmates eligible for parole in the future. News in the San Francisco Chronicle.

About 250 prisoners in California are serving life-without-parole sentences for homicides committed when they were under 18, Calvin said.

State Sen. Leland Yee, D-San Francisco, said the court’s reasoning Monday supports his bill, SB339, which would give such youths a chance to have their sentences reduced to 25 years to life. The bill would allow most juveniles sentenced to life without parole to seek a new hearing before their sentencing judge after 10 years of imprisonment.

The judge would review arguments by the prosecutor and the victim’s family and decide whether the inmate showed enough potential for rehabilitation to qualify for possible parole in another 15 years. Any parole decision would be made by the state parole board.

jchev California, Juvenile Justice

The Supreme Court on Monday ruled that juveniles who commit crimes in which no one is killed may not be sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. The ruling expanded a principle the court has never endorsed outside the death penalty — that an entire class of offenders may be immune from a given form of punishment. Reported in The New York Times.

Five justices, in an opinion by Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, agreed that the Eighth Amendment’s ban on cruel and unusual punishment forbids sentences of life without parole as a categorical matter for juvenile offenders who do not participate in homicides.

“A state need not guarantee the offender eventual release,” Justice Kennedy wrote, “but if it imposes the sentence of life, it must provide him or her with some realistic opportunity to obtain release before the end of that term.”

Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. endorsed only a case-by-case approach, but he voted with the majority in saying that the particular inmate in question had received a sentence so harsh that it violated the Constitution.

The case involved Terrance Graham, who in 2003, at age 16, helped rob a Jacksonville restaurant, during which an accomplice beat the manager with a steel bar. Mr. Graham was sentenced to a year in jail and three years’ probation for that crime.

The next year, at 17, Mr. Graham and two 20-year-old accomplices committed a home invasion robbery. In 2005, a judge sentenced Mr. Graham to life for violating his probation.

In the context of capital punishment, the Supreme Court has carved out categories of offenders and crimes that are not subject to the death penalty, including juvenile offenders and those who do not take a life. Monday’s decision applied those two decisions in Venn diagram fashion to life-without-parole sentences.

Justice Kennedy, who was joined by Justices John Paul Stevens, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen G. Breyer and Sonia Sotomayor, said both national and international consensuses supported the court’s ruling.

Justice Clarence Thomas, joined by Justices Antonin Scalia and Samuel A. Alito Jr., said the majority was wrong about the facts in both cases and wrong as a matter of principle to take account of the international opinion.

Thirty-seven states, the District of Columbia and the federal government have laws allowing life-without-parole sentences for juveniles convicted of nonhomicide offenses. That represents, Justice Thomas said, a super-majority of states in favor of the punishment.

Justice Kennedy responded that a study relied on by Mr. Graham and supplemented by the court’s own research located only 129 juvenile offenders convicted under such laws. Seventy-seven were in Florida, the rest in 10 other states. Those numbers, Justice Kennedy said, make the sentence “exceedingly rare” and demonstrate that “a national consensus has developed against it.”

Justice Kennedy added that the sentences at issue had been “rejected the world over.” (Indeed, only the United States and perhaps Israel, he said, impose the punishment even for homicides committed by juveniles.)

“The judgment of the world’s nations that a particular sentencing practice is inconsistent with basic principles of decency,” Justice Kennedy wrote, “demonstrates that the court’s rationale has respected reasoning to support it.”

Justice Thomas disputed Justice Kennedy’s math, saying 11 nations seem to allow the punishment in theory. More important, he said, “foreign laws and sentencing practices” are “irrelevant to the meaning of our Constitution.”

He added that most democracies around the world remain free to adopt the punishment should they wish to. “Starting today,” Justice Thomas wrote, “ours can count itself among the few in which judicial decree prevents voters from making that choice.”

Although the majority limited its decision to nonhomicide offenses, advocates may try to apply its logic more broadly to the some 2,000 inmates serving life-without-parole sentences for participating in killings at 17 or younger.

Justice Kennedy noted, for instance, that juveniles serving life will typically spend more years and a greater percentage of their lives in prison than people who commit the same crime later in life.

The case decided Monday, Graham v. Florida, No. 08-7412, was argued in November along with a companion case, Sullivan v Florida, No. 08-7621. The court declined to decide the second case, which involved Joe Sullivan, who raped a woman when he was 13.

Instead, the court dismissed the case as improvidently granted, probably because it was beset with procedural difficulties. Mr. Sullivan’s lawyer, Bryan Stevenson, said his client and everyone else in his situation would be entitled to challenge their sentences under the Graham decision.

jchev Juvenile Justice, Sentencing, United States

What do you do when you catch a criminal? Conventional wisdom says you lock them up and hope prison scares them straight. But what if that doesn’t work, and what if that criminal is only 13 years old? Complete story in the Illinois Times.

That’s what Illinois lawmakers thought they were providing four years ago when they established the Illinois Department of Juvenile Justice. It was to be a place, separate from the prison system, where kids gone wrong could be steered right. But, like Eve from Adam, IDJJ was created from the proverbial rib of the Illinois Department of Corrections, and though the two are now separate agencies, they are still entwined by their shared resources and attitudes toward corrections.

Legislators who pushed for a separate juvenile system hoped to move juvenile justice away from punishment toward a rehabilitative system that has shown promise in other states. The theory is that delinquent kids commit crimes because of exposure to violence, a lack of positive role models or a variety of other factors. Providing a safe, instructive and remedial environment is supposed to change their thinking and turn them into productive members of society, rather than hardening them into career criminals. So far, that dream hasn’t been realized, says Betsy Clarke, president of the Juvenile Justice Initiative, based in Springfield at 413 West Monroe St.

“Nearly four years following its creation, the Department of Juvenile Justice remains disturbingly far from embracing the treatment mission envisioned by the legislature,” Clarke told the Illinois House Appropriations Committee in an April 14 hearing.

She says many of the problems present in the juvenile justice system – understaffing, high recidivism, lack of training, inadequate mental health treatment, poor education and disproportionate minority incarceration – stem from the fact that the system is set up like a miniature version of IDOC, largely focused on punishment instead of rehabilitation. What was supposed to be a therapeutic environment has become a microcosm of the system it was meant to avoid.

IDJJ holds approximately 1,500 youth offenders between ages 13 and 20 in eight “youth centers” – essentially junior prisons – across the state. Young people can land in these prisons for practically any crime from theft to murder, and a disproportionate number of them are minorities, just like in the adult system. Once they are released, they often are sent back for violating parole, just like in the adult system. In fact, about half of the kids who leave IDJJ will return within three years, 40 percent of them for violating the conditions of their release – numbers strikingly similar to the adult system. Their post-release “aftercare” is not handled by parole officers trained in dealing with youth offenders, but by already overburdened officers from the adult correctional system. They are more accustomed to dealing with hardened criminals than with kids who might have made some bad choices.

Understaffing and Lack of Training
The John Howard Association of Illinois released a study of the juvenile justice system in January 2010 saying staffing levels in IDJJ are too low; counselors, administrators, teachers, clerics and even maintenance staff have dwindled due to retirements and transfers, hindering the effectiveness of youth prisons. Staff-to-youth ratios are 1/24 in some facilities and can reach 1/60 at night, the study says.

“It is difficult to imagine effecting change in a youth’s thinking and behavior with such high ratios,” the study says. “In order to impact youth behavior, one must be aware of the youth’s ongoing behaviors and respond appropriately. … This requires staff-to-resident ratios that are much smaller than in current practice.”

How much smaller? The study says a ratio of one adult to eight youth is most effective, “although 1 to 10 is do-able with well-trained staff.”

But training for IDJJ staff is sparse. Many of the staff in the juvenile justice department are transplants from the Department of Corrections, lacking training in youth rehabilitation and bringing with them the attitudes prevalent in the adult system.

“While the agency has recently utilized outside resources to train a few staff, the majority of staff members remain untrained in juvenile treatment policies and practices,” Betsy Clarke says. “The failure to train all staff in treatment-oriented approaches to youth corrections renders it impossible to fulfill the treatment mission of the new department.”

Education and Programming
While youth are incarcerated in Illinois, they are supposed to receive education so they don’t reenter the outside world lagging behind their peers in learning. Sometimes they receive that education, but often they don’t.

Clarke says at least one youth prison offers only half-day education, and the John Howard study says the department’s schools – District 428 – are funded at only one-third the minimum level of normal public schools. IDJJ is working on educational improvements to better train teachers, keep in contact with parents and create a uniform calendar for the whole district, the study says. But still nearly two-thirds of the department’s youth have educational disabilities, and 65 percent don’t even finish the eighth grade. Meanwhile, a lack of consistent educational programming keeps kids from developing real-world skills.

“Vocational programs are a key weakness of the system. They are not consistent through the facilities, often utilize outdated equipment and may not be training youth for jobs which exist within their home communities,” the study says.

Clarke says the lack of adequate programming undermines the reason for the department’s very existence.

“Without a comprehensive range of programming, youth are simply warehoused, and leave without adequate skills to reenter school or enter the job market,” she says.

Much more in the Illinois Times.

jchev Illinois, Juvenile Justice

Gov. David Paterson’s juvenile justice task force was on the mark when it advised him to stop sending low-risk young offenders to faraway lockups and place more of them in lower-cost community-based programs. Editorial in The New York Times.

These programs closely monitor and mentor troubled children with curfew checks, reviews of their school performance, and after-school activities. They have been shown to get low-risk young offenders back on track without institutionalizing them. Instead of taking that advice, the governor’s budget virtually guts an already underfinanced effort intended to encourage localities to develop high-quality alternatives to detention programs.

Senator Velmanette Montgomery, Democrat of Brooklyn, is trying to fix that. She has introduced a bill that would require the state to begin reimbursing localities that keep children in effective local programs.

The current system encourages officials to do exactly the wrong thing. For example, the state reimburses localities for about 50 percent of the cost of operating centers for pretrial detention. And it pays 50 percent of the cost (which can go as high as $200,000 per child per year) for incarcerating children sent to far-flung juvenile facilities. The state gives localities nothing when they place children in community-based programs that can cost as little as $5,000 per year.

The Montgomery bill realigns state priorities. In addition to preserving about $12 million to encourage more community-based programs, it would require the state to provide a 65 percent reimbursement for community-based, alternative-to-detention programs. This proposal has already been included in the Senate budget. The Assembly should embrace it and so should Governor Paterson. It makes good sense for the children and for New York’s taxpayers.

jchev Juvenile Justice, New York

Nearly 10 percent of the inmates in Illinois’ juvenile prisons have essentially completed their sentences — in some cases more than a year ago — but are stuck behind bars because they have no place to go, state records show. Reported in the Chicago Tribune.

Many of the youths are being held longer in one of the state’s eight juvenile prisons because officials cannot find an appropriate placement in a transitional living program or other kind of facility. Others are still in prison because officials found the homes of families or friends to be unacceptable, or because families simply refuse to take them back, according to records obtained under the Freedom of Information Act.

Notes in the records tell sad stories. “Youth has no family that will take him,” reads the comment in the case of one downstate boy who was sent to prison for aggravated robbery and was still there two months beyond his scheduled release.

“Placement denied 5X w/relatives,” reads the status report on another case. The names of the youths were redacted by state officials because of their age.

As of Tuesday, 104 of the 1,107 inmates in the state’s juvenile prisons, or 9.4 percent, were still behind bars even though their expected parole dates had passed.

The percentage has remained relatively steady since the department began tracking the figures in September 2005, though at times it has crept higher than 10 percent.

The issue underscores a persistent problem that Department of Juvenile Justice director Kurt Friedenauer has made a priority to tackle: a lack of aftercare for some of the state’s most troubled youths.

“Our goal is not to keep kids for the sake of keeping kids,” Friedenauer said. “Our goal is to prepare them for re-entry back to the community and for them to be successful there. But you have to have a (placement) to do that. … We simply do not have the financial resources to purchase the appropriate services.”

A youth’s administrative review date, or ARD, is a guideline for when he or she is expected to be approved for parole by the state Prisoner Review Board. But without a plan in place for where the youth will go upon release, youths either are held back from appearing before the board or are approved for parole pending a placement, according to Friedenauer.

Many youths kept beyond their ARD remain in prison for months. In some of the more extreme cases, youths have been held for close to a year, with a handful held for more than a year after their ARD. Two youths were held for 1,000 additional days, or nearly three years, according to the most recent figures available, which date to January.

The Department of Juvenile Justice is responsible for finding placements for nearly all the youths. A small number of cases involve wards of the state, and as a result the Department of Children and Family Services is responsible for finding homes for those youths.

Some cases appear complicated by family and friends whose homes are deemed unsuitable because of their own legal problems or because they do not have the means to accommodate a youth. The documents suggest that officials, over time, make several efforts to find homes for the youths, often approaching various relatives and friends to try to find an appropriate placement.

“Aunt denied by parole. Uncle has refused. Working on other (extended) family,” one document reads.

In another case, in which a 20-year-old was more than a year past his ARD, the comment reads: “Youth had approved parole site; mother had change of heart, site denied. Mother seeking other resources.”

Advocates for the youths and observers of the system say the shortage of community placements is real. But they also say the department could take better advantage of resources to shift the system from a focus on prison and punishment to a more community-rooted approach involving a range of facilities and services. It is cheaper, they say, to spend money on community facilities than on keeping kids behind bars.

“It’s completely unfair to keep these youths in prison simply because they don’t have the resources for what is supposed to come next,” said Benjamin Wolf, associate legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Illinois.

“There’s just no excuse for that whatsoever,” said Elizabeth Clarke, president of the Illinois Juvenile Justice Initiative.

Friedenauer said most of the youths require a transitional living program, a place where they are housed and supervised but leave for school or work and also get treatment. The department’s goal, he said, is to have more places in the community for these youths. That, he said, would move inmates out of the department’s prisons at a quicker pace once they have completed treatment.

“One of the visions we have for the department is that we get to the point where we never have a youth in one of our facilities because there’s not an appropriate aftercare service for them,” Friedenauer said in an interview.

But the department, which was split from the Department of Corrections in 2006 and now is poised to be folded into the Department of Children and Family Services, has struggled to meet its goals, including developing transitional facilities for youths. Part of the problem has been neglect; the juvenile department has been underfunded. Funding for aftercare has been flat for four years, Friedenauer said.

The youths trapped in the system are, for the most part, held in four of the eight youth prisons. Many are sex offenders, whose placements often are more difficult and more expensive than for other inmates.

While in prison, these youths continue to get treatment and schooling. If they have earned a high school diploma or GED, they attend vocational classes. Nevertheless, Friedenauer said, the youths and staff become frustrated and risk backsliding in whatever progress the youths have made while incarcerated.

“It’s discouraging for us that we don’t have the ability to move these young people into a community setting,” said Friedenauer. “And certainly it’s discouraging for them. … We have to keep their hopes up.”

jchev Illinois, Juvenile Justice

More than five years after California agreed to a court-monitored overhaul of its troubled juvenile justice system, corrections officials say they have completed more than 80 percent of the required policy changes, resulting in more education and less violence. News from the San Francisco Chronicle.

The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation’s Juvenile Justice Division was ordered to make more than 8,000 policy and program changes by a court-appointed monitor after agreeing to settle a class-action lawsuit in 2004.

The suit accused the agency, then called the California Youth Authority, of warehousing juveniles in prison-like facilities that had too much violence and too few educational opportunities. The conditions, the suit said, made it impossible for the state to meet its mandate of helping youths turn their lives around.

Studies at the time found that 10 assaults were reported per day, that troublesome wards were housed in cages, and that inadequate mental health treatment often made conditions worse. About 71 percent of youths were re-arrested within three years of their release, the studies determined.

Last week, state officials said a revised disciplinary system had resulted in a 134 percent increase in credit for good behavior and a nearly 73 percent decrease in time added to sentences for bad behavior.

They also touted a 300 percent increase in the number of youths who are accessing educational and vocational programs, and said the reforms have resulted in better mental health and medical treatment, including new assessments to identify the suicidal.

The progress was detailed in an annual report filed with the Alameda County Superior Court, and represents a 23 percent jump in compliance since the prior year.

“Over the last four years we have instituted policies for staff that emphasize intervention and counseling over the use of force, reinforced our education curriculum and created programs to encourage more family participation,” Bernard Warner, the juvenile division’s deputy secretary, said in a written statement. “Our youth are spending more time in classrooms and are receiving better treatment and counseling services than ever before.”

Critics, however, said much hard work remains. Don Specter, who directs the Prison Law Office and was involved in the class-action suit, said the state had tackled some of the easiest reforms first.

“They have made substantial improvements – things are a lot better now than when we filed and settled the case, but they still have major hurdles to overcome that are central to reform efforts,” Specter said. “Treatment and rehabilitation is very haphazard, there’s not a singular model and there’s no requirement that they get a specific amount of rehabilitation programming.”

The rate of violence, he contended, has not decreased significantly. In general, Specter said, the state still needs to abandon a punitive model in favor of one focused on rehabilitation and treatment.

jchev California, Juvenile Justice

Deep in rural Pennsylvania, some 300 miles from Providence, The Glen Mills Schools appears to offer much to troubled teenaged boys. The school’s glossy brochure depicts a lush, green campus with neat athletic fields, a football stadium and an Olympic-sized swimming pool. Vocational programs range from auto body repair and landscaping to dentistry and golf course management. News in the Providence Journal.

Glen Mills has so impressed Chief Family Court Judge Jeremiah S. Jeremiah Jr. that he recently referred a dozen delinquent boys there.

But state child welfare officials say no matter how good the school may be, troubled teens generally do better when they stay close to their families and communities. More than a decade ago, officials at the state Department of Children, Youth and Families concluded that juveniles with behavioral or emotional problems could be helped more cheaply, and with better results, closer to home.

Now, state child welfare officials and the Family Court’s highest judge are at odds over how best to treat juvenile delinquents in state care.

“If there’s nothing in the state, fine, we look outside of Rhode Island,” Patricia Martinez, director of the state Department of Children, Youth and Families, said. “The question is: What is [the child] going to get out of state that he’s not going to get in Rhode Island?”

Glen Mills has been recruiting juvenile offenders from Rhode Island at least since the late 1990s, when Jeremiah and then-director of the DCYF, Jay G. Lindgren Jr., climbed into a borrowed Department of Corrections van and drove 300 miles to visit the school.

“They toured us around, spent a lot of time talking with us,” Lindgren recalled. “It all looked very good.”

Back then, the courtship produced only a handful of enrollments for the school. The distance was a big reason, Lindgren said. Glen Mills is so remote, he said, it was hard for teenagers to maintain family and community ties. And keeping in touch with youths so far away is time consuming and expensive.

“Too often,” Lindgren said, “the kids were kind of out of sight, out of mind.”

Then, in late January of this year, Jeremiah suggested that Andrew J. Johnson, a lawyer and director of the Rhode Island Court Appointed Special Advocate’s office, visit Glen Mills to see what their program has to offer. Johnson flew to Philadelphia, at the school’s expense, where a school van drove him the 22 miles to the school in Concordville, Pa. He met with admissions officials, toured the campus and talked to students.

“It’s a remarkable place,” Johnson said after he returned. “Step on the campus and it’s like a prep school or a university … .”

Glen Mills houses up to 900 juvenile offenders, ages 14 to 18. The school does not admit fire setters, sex offenders or children who take psychotropic medication for behavioral or mental health problems. (The school is not licensed to provide mental health services.) Students live in unlocked, dormitory-style housing and move freely around the campus; behavior is managed through a system of “peer pressure” and “group confrontation,” a promotional booklet states.

Graduates with good grades can qualify for college scholarships of up to $3,000 per semester.

It costs Rhode Island about $134 per day to send one teenager to Glen Mills. (Last year, it sent seven.) That’s substantially less than the roughly $370 per diem cost of operating the state training school, a high-security facility with mandated staffing levels. It’s also about $20 to $80 per day less than three of the four residential programs — all of which are staffed with licensed mental health counselors — for delinquent boys in Rhode Island.

The DCYF also normally does not pay travel expenses for parents to visit their children in out-of-state facilities. But last year, Jeremiah ordered the DCYF to reimburse four family members who couldn’t afford the travel expense; the air fare cost the state just under $1,700.

Glen Mills will cover families’ travel expenses for an additional per diem cost of $20, though state officials here have not agreed to the higher rate.

The DCYF is required to visit juveniles placed out of state “at least once per month, or more frequently as needed” to ensure their safety and well-being. But since last December, neither DCYF staff nor anyone from the agency’s private contractor, which visits youths in out-of-state programs, has been monitoring the teenagers at Glen Mills.

“Obviously we should be doing this,” Jorge E. Garcia, the DCYF’s deputy director, said. However, he said, the policy covers only treatment facilities, not schools. And he acknowledged visits “will be another cost…”

In Rhode Island, as in other states, child welfare agencies have been trying to reduce their reliance on residential programs.

A 2003 report commissioned by former Gov. Lincoln Almond said that Rhode Island had become dependent on “expensive out-of-state” residential treatment programs at the expense of more effective –– and less costly –– community-based programs. Keeping children with families, whether biological, adopted or foster parents, is far preferable, the report said, than placing them in group homes, residential programs, or other institutions.

Their findings echoed a U.S. Surgeon General’s report released in 1999, which concluded that there was “weak evidence” that residential treatment programs helped improve the well-being of young people — and growing evidence that they actually do the opposite.

“All the research tells us that one of the drivers of delinquent behavior is association with delinquent peers,” Patrick McCarthy, president-elect of the Annie E. Casey Foundation, a private, nonprofit agency, said. “So the notion that the best way to respond to delinquency is to put the child with other children with delinquent behavior challenges everything we know about delinquent behavior.”

Nationally, the average rate of juvenile offenders living in publicly and privately operated facilities between 1997 and 2008 declined 26 percent, according to a report from the U.S. Department of Justice’s Office of Juvenile Delinquency Prevention. During that same period in Rhode Island, the rate fell 31 percent.

The population of Rhode Island juveniles in private and public residential facilities, including out-of-state programs, averaged 312 in 2007, the report said.

Rhode Island also is sending fewer juveniles out of state. The number of Rhode Island juveniles in out-of-state programs in fiscal 2009 averaged 108 per day, compared with 160 per day in fiscal 2008, according to the DCYF. The decline in out-of-state placements last year saved Rhode Island about $3.8 million.

Almost all of those juveniles, with the exception of those placed at Glen Mills, were diagnosed with complex behavioral or mental health conditions, Garcia said, and needed care not available in Rhode Island.

Efforts by child welfare agencies around the country to reduce their reliance on residential programs, coupled with a weak national economy, have heightened competition among private providers to fill beds.

Until last year, for example, Ocean Tides, which operates a residential treatment program for male juvenile offenders in Narragansett, had a three-year contract with the DCYF, which guaranteed a steady stream of revenue. If a bed was empty for a few nights it didn’t matter, because the state was still paying for it. (Jeremiah joked that he has referred so many teenage boys to Ocean Tides that the staff has dubbed him “Director of Admissions.”)

But last year, to save money, the DCYF switched to paying some of its providers per day, per bed.

Ocean Tides wound up with empty beds that nobody was paying for. So it closed some of its units and reduced its available beds from 65 to 57 beds, said Ocean Tides’ president, Brother Brendan Gerrity.

“You’ve got to make sure you keep the beds filled,” he said, “Right now, we have a waiting list with about seven boys on it.”

At Glen Mills, just under half of the beds are occupied by juveniles from Pennsylvania; the rest come from outside the state, said the school’s admissions coordinator, Andy Shirlow. Glen Mills’ enrollment in February was down to about 740 students, leaving 160 beds empty.

In February two admissions officers from the school came to Rhode Island at the request of Jeremiah. They interviewed more than a dozen teenage boys at the state training school for possible admission to Glen Mills.

The waiting lists at local programs, such as Ocean Tides, are one reason why Jeremiah says he turned to the school in Pennsylvania.

“If they don’t go to Glen Mills,” he said, “they stay at the training school.”

Jeremiah said the DCYF officials have a “Rhode Island mentality” that 300 miles is too far away to send these teenage boys. “Kids grow up and they go away to college, right?”

The Rhode Island Training School’s intake center is where teenagers who have run afoul of the law eat, sleep, and attend classes while the adults –– lawyers, judges, probation officers, case workers –– decide where they go next. Each week, admissions officers from residential providers from around the state, and sometimes beyond, visit the intake center to interview young offenders for their programs. They show the teenagers brochures with photographs of ocean surf and kids canoeing on pine-rimmed lakes. “Teaching minds, touching hearts, changing lives,” reads one brochure from Ocean Tides.

Of the 12 teenage boys Jeremiah referred to Glen Mills, only three teens (ages 14, 15 and 16) have been admitted to the Pennsylvania school, according to the DCYF. Glen Mills rejected four teens who were taking prescription medications. Of the five others, one was accepted into a local residential program, one is on home confinement awaiting trial and the two others have been sentenced to the training school until they turn 19.

Though the average length of stay in the intake center is 30 days, 70 percent of the juveniles leave within two weeks, most of them for home, the Training School’s acting superintendent, Kevin Aucoin, said.

Michael Gingras, a clinical social worker at the intake center, said some providers spend a half-hour or more talking with the juveniles at the intake center and showing them brochures.

“It’s not unusual for kids to get interviewed at lunchtime and say, ‘I want to go there!’ Gingras said. “Then they get interviewed [by someone again] at dinner time and say, ‘I want to go here!’ ”

jchev Juvenile Justice, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island

The Conservative government hopes changes proposed Tuesday will make “protection of society a primary goal” of the Youth Criminal Justice Act. Reported by The CBC.

Justice Minister Rob Nicholson said he wants to give judges the power to consider non-criminal behaviour when sentencing Canadians under age 18.

Such behaviour would include a “casual attitude to the law [and] complete lack of empathy for the victim,” said Nicholson, flanked by the mothers of two youths who were killed by young offenders.

The changes would also permit sentencing judges to take into account evidence of previous brushes with the law that did not result in charges or convictions.

The amendments are dubbed “Sebastien’s Law” in memory of Sebastien Lacasse, a 19-year-old Quebecer stabbed to death by a group of youths after making racially charged comments about his ex-girlfriend’s new boyfriend at a house party in 2004.

The 17-year-old ringleader pleaded guilty and was sentenced as an adult.

The proposed changes come as youth crime is on the decline in Canada. In 2006-2007, the most recent year for which statistics are available, 56,463 young offenders were convicted across Canada, according to Statistics Canada.

That represented a slight rise — 0.34 per cent — over 2005-2006 but was a 26 per cent drop from 2002-2003, when 76,153 young offenders were convicted.

The Conservatives vowed in 2008 to reduce protections under the Youth Criminal Justice Act for young people convicted of serious crimes.

jchev Canada, Juvenile Justice

Acknowledging that teenagers in correctional facilities suffer from trauma and mental health issues and that the state has fallen short in helping them, Illinois officials announced Wednesday that the Department of Juvenile Justice will be folded into the Department of Children and Family Services. Story from the Chicago Tribune.

For more than three decades, the Illinois Department of Corrections had been responsible both for the state’s adult convicts and for juveniles serving time. In 2006, Illinois created a new Department of Juvenile Justice.

Kurt Friedenauer, the juvenile agency’s director, acknowledged earlier this year that staffing and funding troubles contributed to a decline in the quality of education at the prisons, putting the roughly 1,100 youths in custody at a disadvantage once they are released.

Toni Irving, a deputy chief of staff in Gov. Pat Quinn’s office, said Wednesday that the merger of the agencies is expected to save money, bring new expertise in winning federal grants and help build a much-needed program to support young inmates once they are released from state correctional facilities.

“There are a variety of needs that aren’t being met. DCFS has a youth focus that we haven’t really been able to achieve with the separation of the Department of Juvenile Justice,” Irving said. “The department has used the Department of Corrections for their shared services. … We are still relying on services that are adult-focused. This change will allow us to start relying on DCFS for shared services so there are people in place used to thinking what youths’ needs are.”

Cook County Public Guardian Robert Harris, whose office represents kids in juvenile court, said it often seemed unfair that children involved in the child protection side of juvenile court have access to services absent on the juvenile justice side.

“They are often confronted with the same issues — neglect, abuse, no family or parents involved in drugs,” Harris said. “It makes sense.”

Benjamin Wolf, associate legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Illinois, said the children within DCFS and the Department of Juvenile Justice face similar challenges. But success for both agencies will depend on how much funding they can get, Wolf said. “We need to fund both adequately, and right now neither one is funded adequately,” he said.

jchev Illinois, Juvenile Justice

There is strong reaction to a proposal to get rid of the entire juvenile department of corrections. News reported by the AZ Family.

Critics say it will make kids more likely to commit more crimes. The idea is to close the Arizona Department of Juvenile Corrections and send the thousands who are served by the department each year to county jail facilities.

This is part of the proposed state budget expected to Gov. Jan Brewer’s desk later this week.

Prisoner advocate Donna Hamm says she fears it will turn troubled youth who go to places like Adobe Mountain School for rehabilitation into career criminals. “This is supposed to be a chance for offenders to feel someone cares about their well-being, cares about their future. None of that is present in county jails.”

There is also the issue of the cost, which is a savings of nearly $70 million for the state. Under the latest agreement, the state would provide some money but it would still cost the counties millions of dollars.

County Supervisor David Smith says, “This doesn’t work. It’s a bad policy and it should be thought of more carefully.”

Sen. Ron Gould (R-Ariz.) adds, “Yet they had plenty of money to build a new Taj Majal court house but don’t have the money to do what they’re supposed to do?”

Sheriff Joe Arpaio has offered to take all of the offenders from DJC into his jails. He says, “We can make room in our jail system for 700 tomorrow.”

Despite Arpaio’s promise to spare additional cost to the counties, it too is drawing opposition.

Smith says, “J-A-I-L. That’s what he’s proposing when they really need a secure facility that provides for education. The long-term cost to Arizona and the future of kids is going to be something we’re very very sorry about if this happens.”

jchev Arizona, Juvenile Justice

A juvenile corrections administrator with 33 years of experience was named today as superintendent of the 295-bed MacLaren Youth Correctional Facility in Woodburn. Reported by the Woodburn Independant.

Isidro “Sid” Thompson, superintendent of the 50-bed RiverBend facility in La Grande for the past two years, will start the new job Feb. 22. MacLaren serves male sex offenders, violent offenders, those with substance abuse issues, older male youth and the majority of the male Oregon Department of Corrections population committed to OYA facilities.

“Sid Thompson’s three decades of diverse responsibilities in juvenile corrections have made him an effective and respected leader,” said Colette S. Peters, OYA director. MacLaren youth and staff will benefit from the wealth of experience, knowledge and compassion he brings to the job.”

MacLaren, serving nearly a third of OYA youth in close-custody facilities, plays a major role in the agency’s mission to protect the public and reduce crime by holding youth offenders accountable and providing opportunities for reformation in safe environments.

Thompson joined the Oregon Youth Authority in February 2008 after a 31-year career with the Arkansas Division of Youth Services, where he was assistant director of residential operations. He also managed juvenile correctional facilities and residential treatment facilities in Arkansas and consulted with five states.

OYA will begin a recruitment for a permanent superintendent at RiverBend in approximately three months. Brian Blisard, treatment manager at RiverBend, will serve as interim superintendent of that facility.

At MacLaren, Thompson succeeds Mike Riggan, who resigned to accept a position with the Washington County Juvenile Department as juvenile division manager in charge of the Harkins House juvenile shelter in Hillsboro.

“Washington County has recruited a professional who has proved himself as an organizational leader who has the support of his staff and whose work benefits youth in OYA’s care and custody,” Peters said.

OYA has custody of approximately 900 youth offenders ages 12 to 24 in correctional and transitional facilities in Albany, Burns, Florence, Grants Pass, La Grande, Salem, Tillamook, Warrenton and Woodburn. The agency also supervises approximately 1,100 youth on parole and probation in communities throughout Oregon.

jchev Juvenile Justice, Oregon, Personnel Issues

Gov. Brian Schweitzer’s decision to halt construction of a new Great Falls Youth Transition Center will not have a major effect on the existing program, a corrections official said. News from the Great Falls Tribune.

Steve Gibson, administrator of the Montana Department of Corrections Youth Services Division, said the agency will continue to run the program out of the rented residential home that it has used for more than a decade.

Earlier this year the Legislature appropriated $1.31 million to upgrade the prerelease-style program for juvenile offenders. The current facility on 3rd Avenue South is a converted former private home, which the state leases for $36,500 per year.

Schweitzer announced late last month that he was ordering the agency to hold off on building the new facility as part of his plan to save the state money. However, because the new building was funded through the state’s long-range building program and not the state general fund, Schweitzer needs the Legislature’s approval before the savings can be transferred to the general fund.

During the last legislative session, agency officials told lawmakers that the current building doesn’t meet local and state building regulations and that it needs to be replaced. The plan for a new facility included replacing the 3,600-square-foot existing home with a 4,600-square-foot state-owned building.

Of the $1.31 million the Legislature appropriated for the project, about $60,000 already was spent on architects hired to design the new facility.

Gibson said the department temporarily reduced the number of individuals on probation using the facility and modified the existing house to meet some of the building code concerns. Still, the new building would be a better long-term option for the program, he said.

“It’s an older residential house that obviously does not ideally meet the needs of a facility of this nature,” Gibson said. “With the new facility, we would have had such things as cameras on the outside for security (and) an alarm system for the windows. It would have been more of a residential placement center that would be better designed to meet the needs for these kids.”

The Great Falls Youth Transition Center is the only program of its kind in the state. It serves as a stop-over for troubled youth who recently were released from one of the state’s two juvenile detention facilities.

“Initially, it was for kids who it was difficult to find other placements for when they came out of either Pine Hills or Riverside (youth correctional facilities),” Gibson said. “It kind of operated in the sense of a half-way house.”

He said the center recently has served more like a “short-term revocation center.” In that capacity, the center takes in youths who have “slipped up” while in placement elsewhere, Gibson said.

“We can place them in the Great Falls Youth Transition Center for a period of time with certain sanctions, more restrictions, more intense counseling and more checking as far as (urinary analysis), etc. If they continue to progress and the other placement is still available, then we can transition them out,” Gibson said.

The program has operated in Great Falls in one form or another since 1970, Gibson said, and will continue to do so, with or without the new building.

“The program will continue,” Gibson said. “Hopefully if things become better economically, this can still go forward.”

jchev Economic Issues, Juvenile Justice, Montana