Tagged With "Crime Report"
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Through Restorative Community Meetings, Juveniles Repair Harm And Avoid Lockup [WitnessLA.com]
In a new report , the non-profit Impact Justice explored the effects of a program in Alameda County that employs restorative justice techniques to keep juveniles out of lockup. Community Works West’s Restorative Community Conferencing (RCC) program diverts more than 100 young people away from the juvenile justice system each year, according to the report. The program brings the youth—supported by their family and community—face to face with their crime victims to engage in a dialogue to...
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Trump Will Appoint Caren Harp to Lead Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (socialjusticesolutions.org)
President Trump announced his intention to appoint former Arkansas prosecutor Caren Harp to serve as administrator of the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, the division of the Justice Department that oversees federal funding and standards related to juvenile justice. Harp has been an ardent supporter of the community prosecution model, which eschews adjudication as an end goal. According to Harp’s own work on the issue , community prosecution is defined by three things:...
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When a Sibling Goes to Prison [TheAtlantic.com]
Over 5 million kids in the United States currently have or have had a parent in prison. That works out to about one in 14 American children—a majority of whom are under age 10. Broken down by state, children with incarcerated parents can represent 3 to 13 percent of the population, according to “ A Shared Sentence ,” a report by the Annie E. Casey Foundation. The unusually intense stress that these children face has been well documented and studied. That’s mostly due to researchers’ emphasis...
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A Trauma Primer for Juvenile Probation and Juvenile Detention Staff
A Trauma Primer for Juvenile Probation and Juvenile Detention Staff August 12, 2015 Juvenile justice probation and detention workers play an important role in helping system-involved youth and families navigate justice and social service...
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Ambitious New Report Says It’s Time To Rethink The Nation’s Juvenile Probation Systems [witnessla.com]
For more than a decade, the nation’s juvenile justice systems have steadily cut back on unnecessary use of incarceration for young people. The reduction in the use of youth lock-ups have been good for kids and for public safety. Reforms that resulted in incarcerating fewer kids, statistically improve the chances of success for youth when they become adults, while also corresponding with the steady decline in juvenile crime during the same period. Yet, according to an important new report...
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An Unusual New Program Seeks to Cut Urban Crime by Pushing Gang Members into College [psmag.com]
This story was produced in collaboration with the Hechinger Report . When Matt Jackson's girlfriend was killed in gang crossfire in 2014, leaving him a single father to a three-year-old girl, he knew it was time to do something different with his life.* Jackson, who grew up surrounded by drugs and violence in Boston's South End neighborhood, had been getting into trouble since he was a kid. Locked up at 14 for possessing crack cocaine, he spent what might have been his college years in...
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Association of Childhood History of Parental Incarceration and Juvenile Justice Involvement With Mental Health in Early Adulthood (JAMA Open Access)
Question Is a childhood history of parental incarceration and juvenile justice involvement associated with mental health conditions in early adulthood? Findings In this nationally representative cross-sectional study, young adults with a history of both parental incarceration and juvenile justice involvement reported more mental health conditions compared with peers with no justice system exposure during childhood. Meaning Parental incarceration and juvenile justice involvement may be...
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Better Solutions for Youth With Mental Health Needs in the Juvenile Justice System
An estimated 70 percent of youth involved in the justice system have a diagnosable mental health disorder. The Mental Health and Juvenile Justice Collaborative for Change has released a new report which discusses challenges with inadequate...
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Can New Zeland Provide the U.S. With a Model for Juvenile Justice Reform [psmag.com]
Skyrocketing incarceration rates, over-representation of ethnic minorities, a fixation on punishment rather than rehabilitation—this isn't describing the modern criminal justice system in the United States. It's New Zealand's in the 1980s. After watching its criminal justice system devour six times more indigenous Maori youth than their white counterparts, New Zealand passed the Children's and Young People's Well-Being Act in 1989. The legislation, which limited police power to arrest youth...
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Charging Youth as Adults has Public Health Impact, Report Says (socialjusticesolutions.org) 56 page report
Advocates in California say that for too long the hazardous health consequences of incarcerating juveniles in the state’s justice system have been obscured by overly punitive rhetoric around public safety. The authors describe a court process that offers few opportunities for youth to deal with childhood trauma that often leads to involvement with the justice system. When it comes to transfers of youth to the adult system, racial disparities are widespread . As a result, they say, high rates...
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Chronicle investigation spurs calls to close foster care shelters (sfgate.com)
The state attorney general's office is looking into hundreds of dubious arrests at California's shelters for abused and neglected children that were detailed last week in a San Francisco Chronicle investigative report . A County officials have called for immediate reviews of the newspaper's findings that shelter staff contacted the sheriff an average of nine times a day last year, with children booked at juvenile hall nearly 200 times in 2015 and 2016. The county shelters are the first stop...
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Collaborating for Successful Reentry: A Practical Guide to Support Justice-Involved Young People [jjie.org]
“Collaborating for Successful Reentry: A Practical Guide to Support Justice-Involved Young People Returning to the Community” from the Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice is a resource to help practitioners reform how youth reenter society and connect with their community. Traditionally, the justice system has used remedies that require youth to go to several classes, complete community service and have frequent meetings with different case managers. This system of reentry can be...
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Column: I Went Through the Juvenile Justice System. It Isn't Working [qctimes.com]
By Jeff Wallace, Quad-City Times, February 2, 2020 Juvenile crime is at an all-time high in the Quad-Cities. Unfortunately, however, how juvenile crime is handled in the Quad-Cities isn’t the most proactive and solution-focused. Juvenile justice often focuses on juveniles after they have committed crimes rather than providing an intervention before the crime is ever committed. In our community, we know that poverty, trauma and lack of resources are high indicators of whether a youngster will...
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Dream Beyond Bars report offers a new way to study the effects of youth incarceration [Oakland North]
About two years ago, when Xochtil Larios was in Alameda County Juvenile Hall in San Leandro, she decided to do more than just participate in classes and programs. “I didn’t feel like it was enough for me. I felt like the girls in there deserved better,” she said. During a session on vision boarding, Larios met staff members from Communities United for Restorative Youth Justice (CURYJ), an Oakland nonprofit that works to empower young people affected by the criminal justice system. At CURYJ,...
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Early, Individualized Interventions Key to Reentry Success, Report Says [JJIE.org]
Former offenders need timely, individualized reentry paths that focus on career development, a new report by ICF International says. Too often, the hundreds of thousands of people returning from prison each year are unable to find employment, a situation compounded by trouble securing housing, health care and transportation — all factors that increase the likelihood of recidivism. “All they’ve got is a criminal record. That’s all anyone can see,” said Brent Orrell, a family and economic...
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Effort to Reduce School-Based Arrests Benefits Nearly 15,000 Additional Students This Year in Connecticut (cmhnetwork.org)
Eighteen Connecticut schools in six districts are participating in the Connecticut School-Based Diversion Initiative (SBDI) during the 2016-17 school year bringing the total number of schools served by SBDI to 37. SBDI is a school level intervention designed to prevent youth from entering the juvenile justice system by connecting students to community-based mental health services as an alternative to arrest. Among schools participating since 2010, the average reduction in court referrals...
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Ella Baker Truth and Reinvestment Justice Teams underway in 8 CA Counties
There are various forms of emergency preparedness for natural disasters. From an early age, one learns how to put out a fire, board up their home if a hurricane or tornado is coming, or drop under a desk if an earthquake hits—but low-income communities of color have little to no response to more frequent incidences of state violence in the streets and inside of jails. The Justice Teams for Truth and Reinvestment will be the local rapid response networks inside of eight different counties...
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GENDER & TRAUMA Somatic Interventions for Girls in Juvenile Justice: Implications for Policy and Practice (40 pages - Georgetown Center on Poverty and Inequality)
The impact of gender on the experience of trauma is less widely discussed, though it is significant in scope. In multiple studies, girls have reported higher rates of adverse childhood experiences than boys in all categories, especially girls in the juvenile justice system. Girls report sexual abuse at particularly disproportionate levels and are more likely than boys to experience such violence within intimate relationships. Girls are also at greater risk of developing negative mental...
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Here’s another thing about millennials – they get in less trouble with the police [Sacramento Bee]
Members of the millennial generation live with their parents more, have less sexual interaction and start families later than prior generations. Turns out they also got in less trouble with the law as teenagers. On average, 5 percent of Californians born between 1982 to 2004 were arrested while younger than the age of 18, according to a new report by the national Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice, a nonprofit. That compares with 11 percent of those born between 1943 and 1960 and 8...
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Homelessness Leads to Justice System and Vice Versa, New Report Details [JJIE.org]
You’re 16, homeless and sleeping on a park bench when police grab you at 3 in the morning. Vagrancy, trespassing or a host of minor offenses send you tumbling into the juvenile justice system. Or you’re 16, do something stupid with marijuana, get caught trespassing, missing curfews or skipping school. You have a home but no true family support system, and suddenly, with a criminal record, nobody’s hiring, school expelled you and your family tossed you out of the house. You too wind up...
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How an Intervention Program Stops the Revolving Door of Violent Injuries [KQED California Report]
Pictured: Darius Irvin, a sophomore at San Francisco State University, has survived three separate shootings. The Wraparound Project helped him get out of the line of fire and go back to college. (Laura Klivans/KQED) Darius Irvin grew up in violent neighborhoods in Oakland and San Francisco. While Irvin was never in a gang, he was around them a lot. One winter when he was back home in Oakland from his freshman year of college up in Chico, he knocked on the door of his barbershop. He wanted a...
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How Mass Incarceration Pushes Black Children Further Behind in School [TheAtlantic.com]
In the summer of 1963, Martin Luther King Jr. delivered the closing remarks at the March on Washington. More than 200,000 people gathered to cast a national spotlight on and mobilize resistance to Jim Crow, racist laws and policies that disenfranchised black Americans and mandated segregated housing, schools, and employment. Today, more than 50 years later, remnants of Jim Crow segregation persist in the form of mass incarceration —the imprisonment of millions of Americans, overwhelmingly...
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How School, Family, and Community Protective Factors Can Help Youth Who Have Experienced Maltreatment (childtrends.org)
Youth involved in both the child welfare and juvenile justice systems—a specific high-needs population—often experience a host of negative outcomes beyond those experienced by their peers involved in only one (or neither) system. These outcomes include higher rates of homelessness, mental health problems, and joblessness. These “dually involved” youth are also more likely to engage in both nonviolent (such as stealing) and violent (such as fighting) delinquent or criminal behaviors in...
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How The Juvenile Justice System is Failing Girls [yr.media]
By Susie Armitage, YR Media, October 16, 2019 When Bree was booked into a juvenile detention center as a teen, they were subject to a strip search. “The staff had to take off my clothes and started patting me down, touching me, and making me feel uncomfortable,” said Bree, who asked that their last name not be used for privacy reasons. As a youth advocate with the Philadelphia-based Juvenile Law Center, Bree recounted their experience of incarceration in a report. “I felt violated, like I...
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Incarcerating Youth Should Be 'Last Resort' During Pandemic [thecrimereport.org]
By Andrea Cipriano, The Crime Report, May 7, 2020 On any given day, approximately 43,600 people younger than 18 years of age are held in youth detention facilities across America. Even under normal circumstances, many detention facilities are unable to provide a clean and safe environment for these young individuals, and the coronavirus pandemic has exacerbated the trauma these children experience in detention, according to the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP). Incarcerating young people...
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It’s self-defeating to bill parents for their children’s jail time (www.sacbee.com)
California law allows counties to charge parents for every night their child is locked up, for renting ankle monitors, for alcohol and drug tests, for public defenders and for other costs. The fees are meant to help counties recoup their costs, without being excessive or unfair. State Sens. Holly Mitchell, D-Los Angeles, and Ricardo Lara, D-Bell Gardens, have put forward Senate Bill 190 , which has a hearing Tuesday before the Senate Public Safety Committee, to end these fees. They say the...
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"Justice and Recovery" (2017) Pathways RTC
FOCAL POINT IS PRODUCED BY THE PATHWAYS RESEARCH AND TRAINING CENTER (RTC) AT PORTLAND STATE UNIVERSITY IN PORTLAND, OREGON Research demonstrates that the prevalence of mental health conditions among justice system involved youth is alarmingly high, coupled with a strong likelihood of multiple traumatic exposures. Unfortunately, while the need for appropriate and timely treatment is acute, the juvenile justice system seems challenged in meeting it. The authors of this issue of Focal Point...
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Juvenile jail fees may be eliminated by Sonoma County Board of Supervisors (pressdemocrat.com)
Millions of dollars of debt carried by parents and guardians of children who have been committed to juvenile hall could be erased under a proposal up for review today by Sonoma County supervisors. The Board of Supervisors will consider voting to absolve the debt and stop charging a $32 daily fee to families of incarcerated children. The plan also includes ending fees for probation supervision and the $50 charge for those represented by a public defender. A Press Democrat report in May found...
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Juvenile Justice Resources
7 Common Characteristics of Juvenile Mental Health Courts Source: Gains Center, SAMHSA Description: Identifies seven common characteristics of Juvenile Mental Health Courts (JMHCs) as part of a National Institute of Justice – funded study,...
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Kids Under 12 Can No Longer be Sent to Juvenile Hall for Most Crimes Starting in 2020 [capradio.org]
By Steve Milne, Capital Public Radio, December 20, 2019 One of the last pieces of legislation from former California Gov. Jerry Brown’s final year in office would end the prosecution of pre-teens who commit crimes, other than murder and forcible sexual assault. Right now, California has no minimum age for sending children to juvenile hall. Beginning in the new year, counties will no longer be allowed to process kids under 12 years old through the juvenile justice system. Instead, they will...
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L.A. County severely restricts solitary confinement for juveniles [LATimes.com]
Los Angeles County on Tuesday approved sweeping restrictions on the use of solitary confinement for juvenile detainees, joining a larger movement against a practice that some consider cruel and unproductive. The Board of Supervisors' action bans solitary confinement at youth camps and halls except “as a temporary response to behavior that poses a serious and immediate risk of physical harm to any person.” In those cases, the supervisors said, the isolation should be only for a brief “cooling...
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LA County Supes Seek Better Care And Outcomes For Pregnant And Post-Partum Incarcerated Women And Girls And Their Babies (witnessla.com)
On Tuesday, the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors voted to identify ways to better support pregnant women and girls in the county’s jails and juvenile lockups. The motion, authored by Supervisors Hilda Solis and Janice Hahn, directs the Department of Health Services and the sheriff’s department, in coordination with other relevant county departments to report back to the board in 90 days with data on the number of pregnant women and girls in sheriff’s department or probation custody,...
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LGBTQ, Traumatized Homeless Youth More Vulnerable to Being Trafficked, Report Finds [jjie.org]
By Stell Simonton, Juvenile Justice Information Exchange, October 21, 2019 Understanding how homeless youth are trafficked is important information for the organizations offering them services. That’s the conclusion of a report released today based on a 2018 count of homeless and runaway young people ages 14-25 in Atlanta. “Clearly, talking about trafficking is critically important,” said Eric Wright, chairman of the sociology department at Georgia State University, who led the survey and...
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More than eight in 10 men in prison suffered childhood adversity – new report [phys.org]
Male prisoners are much more likely than men in the wider population to have suffered childhood adversities such as child maltreatment or living in a home with domestic violence, according to a new report by Public Health Wales and Bangor University. The findings suggests that preventative action and early intervention to tackle Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) could prevent crime and reduce costs for the criminal justice system . In this new survey of men in Her Majesty's (HM) Prison...
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Moving into Adulthood: Implementation Findings From the Youth Villages Transitional Living Evaluation
This report from MDRC presents program implementation and participation findings from an evaluation of the Youth Villages Transitional Living program, which is designed to help youth who were formerly in foster care or juvenile justice...
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Nevada County Probation Department implementing Transitional Age Youth Program in Juvenile Hall
By Michael Ertola, Chief Probation Officer California State Assembly Passed Public Safety SB 1004 on June 28, 2016, to allow five California counties to implement a pilot program to house Transitional Age Youth (18-21 years old) in their Juvenile Halls. The five counties include Nevada, Napa, Butte, Santa Clara and Alameda. The Chief Probation Officers of California (CPOC) sponsored bill SB 1004 to provide appropriate housing, programs and services needed by Transitional Age Youth. SB 1004...
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New Hub Resource: Smart, Safe, and Fair: Strategies to Prevent Youth Violence, Heal Victims of Crimes, and Reduce Racial Inequality (jjie.org)
“Smart, Safe, and Fair: Strategies to Prevent Youth Violence, Heal Victims of Crimes, and Reduce Racial Inequality,” published through a collaboration between the Justice Policy Institute (JPI) and the National Center for Victims of Crime (NCVC) addresses how to help youth involved in violent crime — both offenders and victims. Confinement of youth convicted of crimes has decreased; however, violent crime convictions have not. The report shows that confinement of youth is more expensive and...
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Parole Boards Bar Young Offenders From Chance of Release, ACLU Report Says [JJIE.org]
In the wake of Supreme Court decisions that have limited extreme sentences for juveniles, states are relying on parole boards to put those rulings into effect. But those boards operate with little transparency, rarely focus on how a prisoner has changed while serving their time and ultimately seldom grant parole to serious offenders, the ACLU researchers said. “It’s wonderful there is attention on making sure juveniles and other young people aren’t going to die in prison, but all the...
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Past trauma causes many women to wind up in jail [thehill.com]
As a trauma psychologist and researcher, I applaud the article in "The New York Times" this morning, on how providing incarcerated mothers the opportunity to interact and play with their children during visits may reduce the trauma of separation. But, as the Senate thinks about bipartisan prison reform , I urge them to take a broader trauma-informed approach. This is necessary for effective correctional management, prisoner health and successful re-entry to our communities, particularly for...
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Real Resilience is now a PODCAST
Women who support an incarcerated loved one finally has a place to share their stories on the Real Resilience P.W.L. Podcast.
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Report Offers Insights For Trading Juvenile Incarceration For Community-Based Strategies [witnessla.com]
Over the last 20 years, youth violence dropped precipitously (and unexpectedly) in California. Law enforcement arrested minors 22,601 times for violent crimes in 1994. That arrest rate dropped 68 percent, to 7,291 arrests two decades later, in 2017. In addition, a collective turning away from harshly punitive incarceration for kids, and a movement toward community-based diversion and services, have helped keep kids out of juvenile lockups. (But not all kids—racial disparities in the juvenile...
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Report Outlines New Therapeutic Approach Coming to L.A. County Juvenile Detention Facility (chronicleofsocialchange.org)
A new report outlines a roadmap and summary of the “L.A. Model,” a collection of therapeutic-based practices aimed at improving care for youth in Los Angeles County juvenile detention facilities. Using the L.A. Model, the Kilpatrick campus offers a chance to “bring L.A.’s juvenile justice system into the 21st century.” The new approach calls for a facility based on small group arrangements in a therapeutic environment with an emphasis on creating a culture of care and respect among all staff...
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Reversing the Pipeline to Prison in Texas [texascjc.org]
From Texas Criminal Justice Coalition, February 2020 Today in Texas schools, students at every grade level face disciplinary methods that can land them behind bars. School administrations have implemented punitive “zero tolerance” policies and have increased on-campus policing in response to various incidents over past decades; this has led to negative, unintended consequences and has pushed many students — particularly those most vulnerable — out of the classroom, where they can be subject...
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SF’s juvenile hall would shut down within 3 years under proposal [SF Chronicle]
San Francisco’s juvenile hall would close within three years under a proposal heading to the Board of Supervisors on Tuesday with a majority of elected officials on board, backed by prominent supporters. Six of the 11 supervisors, the district attorney, public defender and other local officials have thrown their support behind the measure requiring the youth detention facility to close by the end of 2021. It would also create a working group to oversee the process and come up with...
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Solitary Confinement of Youth Used Frequently, Unfairly, New Report Says [JJIE.org]
Solitary confinement in juvenile facilities remains too widespread, is unnecessary and counterproductive, is unfairly applied and is harmful, a new report says. In addition, experts lament the fact that there’s “a desperate need for better data on disparate treatment within facilities,” said Jessica Feierman, associate director of the Juvenile Law Center and one of the report’s authors. In the report, which aims to bridge the information gap, the center presents raw testimony from people who...
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Some 350 Florida Leaders Expected to Attend Think Tank with Dr. Vincent Felitti, Co-Principal Investigator of the ACE Study; Expert on ACEs Science
Leaders from across the Sunshine State will take part in a “Think Tank” in Naples, FL, on Monday, August 6, to help create a more trauma-informed Florida. The estimated 350 attendees will include policy makers and community teams made up of school superintendents, law enforcement officers, judges, hospital administrators, mayors, PTA presidents, child welfare experts, mental health and substance abuse treatment providers, philanthropists, university researchers, state agency heads, and...
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States That Raise the Age See Less Recidivism, Cost Savings, JPI Report Says [JJIE.org]
More states are getting rid of laws that automatically bump teenagers from juvenile courts when they reach a certain age, abandoning a model of punishment proven to be expensive, ineffective and not flexible enough to improve outcomes for offenders or society, a new study says. The Justice Policy Institute focused on national trends and on what it called positive results in states that have most vigorously adopted policies designed to help teenagers and not send them to adult prisons.
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Stopping School Pushout for: Girls Involved in the Juvenile Justice System (nwlc.org)
Girls are the fastest growing population in the juvenile justice (JJ) system, with girls of color, LGBT and gender nonconforming youth, and girls with disabilities being overrepresented relative to school enrollment or share of the overall population. For instance, Black girls make up 15 percent of girls enrolled in public schools but 30.8 percent of girls in juvenile justice center schools. Girls who enter the juvenile justice system are likely to have suffered sexual abuse, violence, and...
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The Road to Adulthood: Aligning Child Welfare Practice With Adolescent Brain Development
In 2011, the Jim Casey Youth Opportunities Initiative launched Success Beyond 18, a campaign to raise the age of foster care to 21 nationwide while making the foster care system better and more supportive of adolescents and emerging adults. The campaign began with the publication of a summary of n ew research on the remarkable period of brain development that occurs during adolescence and young adulthood , and the opportunity of that developmental period to help young people who have been in...