Youth Radio - Topic: juvenile justice

D.C.’s Juvenile Justice System Sees Real Change

brett — Wed, 04 Jan 2012 17:01:37 -0600

In Washington D.C., the Oak Hill juvenile detention center was well-known for its decaying interior, rampant drug-use, and abusive guards. As part of sweeping reforms, Oak Hill was closed in 2009 and replaced by a smaller and dramatically different facility, appropriately-named New Beginnings Youth Development Center. We interviewed Daniel Okonkwo, founder and the Executive Director of DC Lawyers for Youth (DCLY), which provides legal representation to young people and works to reform juvenile justice policy. DCLY partners with the New Beginnings Youth Development Center, where many of the changes detailed in the report have been seen firsthand by Okonkwo.

Sayre Quevedo: So it’s been almost two years since Oak Hill was closed and New Beginnings was opened. Are there any tangible changes you have seen in the community and among youth since this has happened?

Daniel Okonkwo: Yes, absolutely. There have been a lot of real changes. I think most noticeably, and the crown jewel in the juvenile justice agency’s crown, is that there are over 19 young people who are in college right now who have come through New Beginnings.

At Oak Hill, that was impossible. A lot of the kids at Oak Hill were actually suspended from the school [within the facility], so not only were they ripped from their communities and taken away from their community schools and isolated, they weren’t even getting an education at Oak Hill. But now we have young people who are coming out [of New Beginnings] and getting reconnected to school and reconnected to the degree that they’re going onto college.

There are also young people that are learning trades. There’s a metal workshop that New Beginnings has that teaches kids vocational work. No thought was given to the reentry of young people [back into their communities] during the days of Oak Hill. Or if there was any thought it was, “just give them some schooling and they’ll be okay on their own.” New Beginnings actually tracks them 6 months out to make sure they’re still connected to school.

Read the full interview...

Realignment Leads to a Reformed Alameda County Justice System

squevedo — Mon, 13 Feb 2012 17:43:17 -0600

Alameda County is leading the way in reforms following California’s Public Safety realignment, says an article in the Wall Street Journal. While some counties are spending nearly all their state funds on incarceration Alameda county is only using only a small percentage, 4 million of 9.2 million dollars, for those same purposes. Instead $2.2 million dollars of the money is being used to help fund local organizations that provide ex-offenders with resources for housing and work. The rest of the money is being divided among the probation department, the office of the district attorney and public defenders.

That’s not to say that the county’s plan is without problems. Alameda County hasn’t yet contracted with any local organizations; instead it is giving money to county agencies that provide services for ex-offenders.

Officials say they may have to delay contracting until July 1st, the start of a new fiscal year, when they'll have a better idea of how much money the state will continue to provide for taking over responsibility for juvenile incerceration and refo. This is a result of two things: One, the myriad hoops that are required when contracting with non-government groups; and two, upcoming shifts in the allocation of funds to different counties. If California does change where it's allocating funds it may make major decisions, like which organizations to contract with, irrelevant later on.

Youth At High Risk For Arrest

squevedo — Mon, 19 Dec 2011 15:52:57 -0600

One in three young people in the United States are arrested by age 23, finds a study published this week in the journal, Pediatrics. Researchers analyzed data collected by The Bureau of Labor Statistics’ National Longitudinal Survey, which tracked approximately nine thousand youth 12-16 years old beginning in 1997. The number is up nearly eight percent from the 1960’s when roughly 1 in 5 young people reported being arrested.

According to a Reuters piece on the study, “Those arrests are for everything from underage drinking and petty theft to violent crime, researchers said. They added that the increase might not necessarily reflect more criminal behavior in youth, but rather a police force that's more apt to arrest young people than in the past.”

While many of the young people will likely never see the back of a squad car again, a story in the The Daily Mail underscores that even a small criminal record can present major challenges. "In days gone by fines and citations might have been deemed acceptable. Now many will find their employment prospects damaged by an arrest on their record - even for a minor offence."

From the NYTimes: “The researchers found that the probability of a first arrest accelerated in late adolescence and early adulthood — at 18, 15.9 percent of the participants reported having been arrested — and then began to flatten out as the youths entered their 20s.” Below chart illustrates the pattern.

D.C’s Juvenile Justice System Sees Real Change

dnewson — Thu, 01 Dec 2011 20:00:42 -0600

A report released this week titled, “From Notorious to Notable,” authored by Liz Ryan from the Campaign For Youth Justice and Marc Schindler from Venture Philanthropy Partners, details the transformation of Washington’s D.C.’s juvenile justice system in the years since 2000 when then Mayor Anthony Williams’ appointed a Blue Ribbon Commission to reexamine the issue.

We interviewed Daniel Okonkwo, founder and the Executive Director of DC Lawyers for Youth (DCLY), which provides legal representation to young people and works to reform juvenile justice policy. DCLY partners with the New Beginnings Youth Development Center, where many of the changes detailed in the report have been seen firsthand by Okonkwo.

SQ: In the report, “From Notorious to Notable” it says that beyond fixing the facility, there was a focus on more community resources for youth. What sort of resources are there now?

DO: Right now we have a system where kids are connected to community-based services such as mentoring, workforce development, art education, and athletics trainings, and other vocation skill-building. So what happens when a young person comes out of New Beginnings is that there’s a meeting between them, the counselors at New Beginnings and the community organizations, to connect them to those services.

In 2009, only around 12 percent of young people were connected to any service, whether it be mentoring, after-school programs, coming out of New Beginnings. But now, over 88 percent are connected to two or more services. That means that young people when they come out don’t just come back to their community and aren’t just left dangling on their own, trying to find ways to fill their time, they’re connected to services that engage them. And also are able to kind of monitor their behavior without the stigma of being locked up.

SQ: How are the transitional programs at New Beginnings different from what was in place before?

DO: What would happen before was that a young person would come out and if there were any services they were connected to, they wouldn’t know about them until they left the walls of Oak Hill. Right now those meetings happen while they’re still in the facility.

There isn’t a lag time, if you will, in-between them getting out and them getting connected to services. They know about the services as they’re walking out. There’s this whole idea that reentry planning should start when they enter the facility. And that’s what’s happening at New Beginnings.

SQ: Where do you see it going from here? Do you seen any national reform on the horizon?

DO: D.C. is part of a national movement to start closing down big, megalithic, juvenile jail-type facilities. It’s happening in Louisiana. It’s happening in New York State.

As far as what is coming next, what I think what D.C. needs to do, and any other state that is going towards a community-based model of supervision, is that we need to continue to invest in these organizations that are doing this community work. It’s important that city governments, even in tough budgetary times, continue to value this work and fund it because it’s much more fiscally responsible to fund these community-based organizations than it is to put money into incarceration or building new youth facilities.

SQ: What sort of change has the juvenile justice system in D.C. seen as a whole, if any?

DO: It’s seen significant changes. By no means are these reforms complete or has any job been accomplished but I think we are moving in the right direction. We’ve seen re-offending rates drop, we’ve seen the overall arrests of juveniles drop to their lowest rates in a very long time, certainly a lot lower than when Oak Hill was being used.

And those are two really big changes because the community needs to feel like these reforms are working and they need to feel safe, and they should. I think with crime rates and arrests going down that’s one accomplishment.

I also think one of the big changes is that people, not only advocates like myself, but I think community based organizations as well as the city government, are realizing that juvenile justice work is not just having a youth jail, it’s really making sure that young people have communities that have organizations, that have services and programs in them that keep kids either one, from not coming in contact with the system or two, if they do come into contact with any system there are the resources that make sure they don’t do it again.

SQ: What sort of work is DC Lawyers for Youth doing right now?

DO: Right now we’re working on a number of fronts. We started as an organization that was primarily concerned with insuring that the D.C. Juvenile Justice System is one that is treatment based rather than punishment based. And so we did that through a lot of legislative advocacy, so weighing in on legislative proposals that affect juvenile justice policy.

Right now we’re doing that but we’re also doing a lot of coalition building. So we bring in organizations of people who work with youth generally, <em>and</em> youth in the juvenile justice arena, to try and make sure that our coalition is working to ensure a rehabilitative system is more than subject matter. We’re trying to get people to understand that juvenile justice work is not just justice work, it’s youth work.

Meet David Muhammad: Alameda County's New Chief Probation Officer

denise — Mon, 16 May 2011 14:47:37 -0500

By: Marcellus Campos-Reese

2,572. That’s the number of young people who have been in custody in Alameda County’s Probation Department from March 2010 until March 2011. The department -- which covers the cities of Oakland, Berkeley, Hayward and others -- estimates that on average as many as 270 young people come through its offices each day.

David Muhammad is the department’s new chief probation officer, and brings a lot of experience with him, some highly personal. Muhammad grew up in Oakland and went through the juvenile justice system himself. Eventually, thanks to what he calls “luck”, he ended up going to college. He went on to work in New York and Washington DC to reform those cities’ juvenile justice systems and served as the executive director of the Mentoring Center in Oakland.

As the new chief, Muhammad wants to encourage young people on probation to do better: “What I want to do is incentivize achievement. If you have a 1.0 grade point average and you raise that by one point, to 2.0, we want to get you 6 months off probation,” said Muhammad.

Muhammad wants to give the same incentives to adults in the system. “So if you are 19 in adult probation and you don’t have your high school diploma? You get your high school diploma (and) we want to get you 6 months off probation. For every six month of steady employment, we want to get you 3 months off probation.”

With this new approach, Muhammad wants to change the old mentality, in place since the 1990’s, of what he calls “trail them, nail them, and jail them.” He says he wants young people to have a real fighting chance of turning their lives around once they leave the system.

In order to do that, he wants to create holistic achievement plans for youth before leaving juvenile hall, from academics to counseling. To do that, he tries to answer a series of questions for each young person: “What they need from their family around education; what they need from employment and any special services/ mental health, or drug treatment.”

Once those needs are identified, it’s up to the probation officer to execute the individual achievement plans for the young people. To make that easier, Muhammad wants to bring probation officers to where youth are already spending quality time, like youth centers and community centers “I want to place a probation officer there so when young people come to check in with their probation officer they can have access to that organization.”

The plans are ambitious in a time of budget cuts. The probation department expects a cut of 10 million dollars in the upcoming fiscal year. But Muhammad remains hopeful.

“In a time where we’re broke, as difficult as it is, you are forced to be more creative. We can’t afford to not work with each other anymore, so we need to use that towards our advantage and leverage the resources we all have individually to a good effective system.”

CJNY Pushes For Juvenile Justice Reform

rgee — Mon, 06 Dec 2010 11:28:33 -0600

This weekend, advocates from all over the country traveled to Washington D.C. to show their support for reauthorizing the Juvenile Justice Delinquency and Prevention Act (JJDPA) and passing the Youth PROMISE (Prison Reduction through Opportunities, Mentoring, Intervention, Support, and Education) Act. The Community Justice Network for Youth held a two-day conference on Saturday and Sunday, and a press conference this morning to urge the Obama administration to change the disciplinary system for young people.

Youth, parents, and advocates will visit their individual legislators after the press conference and show their support for these issues. The overall message of the weekend is that youth are being mistreated while incarcerated, when incarceration is not the most productive solution. In addition, money is being spent in the wrong places.

The speakers at the conference consisted of people with personal testimonials, policy advocates, and directors of youth support services. Youth Radio spoke with two of them to get their personal perspective on the issue.

Rev. Ruben Austria founded the first and only community-based alternative to incarceration program in the Bronx, called BronxConnect. “We took kids with open cases in court, and we convinced the judges to keep them in their own communities in our 12-month program. We got 84 percent of these kids to complete the program, and five years later, these kids were half as likely to get re-arrested, and those who did, were half as likely to commit felonies.” He recently established a new nonprofit, Community Connections for Youth, which will provide support to nonprofits that are interested in serving as alternatives to detention or incarceration.

Austria began doing this work twelve years ago, and soon saw many faults in the juvenile justice system. “Kids who had committed very minor offenses, like hopping the subway turnstyle, shoplifting, or simply being in their own housing projects without proper identification were being incarcerated and never getting out. I saw how the system was so punitive, and targeting only certain young people from low income communities.”

Austria said that when young people are incarcerated in New York, 89 percent of boys reoffend and 81 percent of girls reoffend. He also said that it costs around 240,000 dollars per year to incarcerate one young person. “The money is going to support prisons in upstate New York where the communities are economically dependant on the incarceration of young people from low-income communities. Last month, one young person was killed while being restrained by staff, and another young person hung himself from his shoelaces in New York prisons. It’s a pattern.”

Austria said he was at the conference to support the movement of the people. “The conference has been phenomenal. There are so many people here struggling to do this work in their own corners, who might feel like there are overwhelming odds. But this has created a sense of momentum. We will starve this beast that has been devouring our children.”

Vicky Gunderson is a leading advocate in Wisconsin for keeping kids out of jail. She told the story of her son, Kirk.

“In 2005, when I was out of town, my 17 year-old son stabbed his younger brother and his father multiple times. His father and son were taken to the Intensive Care Unit. I convinced my son to turn himself in to the county police. He was incarcerated in the La Crosse County Prison.

He was supposed to go to court in November, but it was postponed. We had just cut a deal - we weren’t going to be going to trial. However, in jail, the other inmates told Kirk that he needed to give himself a tattoo. They were teaching him how to self-tattoo using a diabetic needle and ink pens. But they got caught. Kirk was taken to the hold. He was feeling anxious and told the guards he didn’t want to be left alone. But they left him alone anyway.

In those isolation cells, they had smoke detection grates. On December 27, Kirk took his own life by tying his sheets to the detection grate and hanging himself.

There are so many other ways that we could be handling juveniles in the system. What my son did was very serious, but when you do assessments and figure out why he took that path, you would see so much more. Kirk had concussions form playing football, and hockey. He was also addicted to oxycotin. He also drank alcohol. Yes, he needed to be accountable, but there were things that led him down that path to start with."

No More Life Without Parole - It's About Time

wilmer — Thu, 20 May 2010 17:22:44 -0500

The following was broadcast on NPR’s All Things Considered

On Monday the U.S. Supreme Court ruled it cruel and unusual punishment to sentence juveniles to life without parole for cases not involving murder. Reginald Dwayne Betts’ story was included in an amicus brief in the case. At 16 years old he was found guilty for carjacking and spent more than nine years in adult prisons. But his sentence could have put him behind bars for life. Youth Radio sent us his story.

By: Reginald Dwayne Betts

I remember meeting a guy even younger than I was, waiting for the bus to go to prison. I'll call him Rashid. His voice still carried the cracks and high notes of adolescence, and his smooth face had never seen a razor. We were headed to Southampton Correctional Center in Virginia.

No fewer than a dozen of us were teenagers, all with peers at home waiting on driver licenses, graduations and proms - while we waited for a prison cell. Rashid's time was legendary: three life sentences with no chance for parole. It meant he awoke each morning knowing he would one day flatline in a cell.

IN PRISON, GUYS told me that Rashid robbed and raped an old lady. His crime had no explanation, and everyone I ever talked to about it thought it was wild, heinous, and unfathomable. Rashid didn’t talk about his charges, and I couldn’t look at him without thinking how his sentence would last until his final breath. In the visiting room, I caught glimpses of his family and it almost seemed normal. Except that Rashid, the youngest among them, rarely smiled. And in prison, surrounded by the violence cells inspire in men, he was just a kid. There was no meanness about him, just the fragility of someone in the deep end, arms flailing, unable to swim.

When I looked at him, I remembered the judge looking down at me, asking if I understood my charges carried a possible life sentence. Rashid wasn't old enough to drive, vote, or serve on a jury of his peers - but he was old enough to walk out of a courtroom with a sentence that ends in a casket. After I met him, my nine-year sentence for carjacking seemed like a gift.

Everything I did while incarcerated meant something because I could envision a day when I'd be free, and that vision pushed me. Because I had a release date, I recognized that the time was a way for me to improve myself. Seventeen hours each day to read, study and exercise - to think and become a man far different than the sixteen-old boy who plead guilty to carjacking.

As teenagers, our lives are impulse and reaction. I'm not the same person I was at 16. No one is. Juvenile offenders who are years away from the maturity and sensibility of a 25 or 30 year old, need to know that society believes they can be more than their crimes. They need to know we believe rehabilitation is NOT ONLY POSSIBLE BUT real.

All any incarcerated minor wants to believe, is that life can be more than a series of cell doors.

Editor’s Note: Since being released from prison, Reginald Dwayne Betts graduated from the University of Maryland where he served as the commencement speaker. He’s published two books, and this year is the recipient of the NAACP Image Award and a Soros Justice Fellowship.

New York's Juvenile Prisons in Crisis

rpereira — Mon, 14 Dec 2009 16:30:33 -0600

New York’s system of juvenile prisons is broken, with young people battling addiction or mental illness held alongside violent offenders says a new report out by a state panel. The report outlines how juveniles are held in abysmal facilities where they receive little counseling, can be physically abused and rarely get even a basic education.

The state agency overseeing the prisons has asked New York’s Family Court judges not to send youths to any of them unless they are a significant risk to public safety -- recommending alternatives, like therapeutic foster care.

The report, comes three months after a federal investigation found that excessive force was routinely used at four prisons, resulting in injuries as severe as broken bones and shattered teeth. The situation was so serious the Department of Justice, which made the investigation, threatened to take over the system.

According to the task force, the problems uncovered at the four prisons are endemic to the entire system, which houses about 900 young people at 28 facilities around the state.

While some prisons for violent and dangerous offenders should be preserved, the report calls for most to be replaced with a system of smaller centers closer to the communities where most of the families of the imprisoned youth live.

(via The New York Times)

Previously:

U.S. Shouldn't Jail Youth For Life

brett — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 19:36:09 -0600

By: Reginald Dwayne Betts

Monday the U.S. Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in two cases concerning juvenile incarceration. The ruling could determine if it should be unconstitutional to sentence juveniles to life without parole for non-homicide offenses on the grounds of cruel and unusual punishment. The United States is the only country in the world that sentences juveniles to life in prison without the possibility of parole.

My story is part of an amicus brief asking justices to reverse the harsh sentences, and give young offenders an opportunity to become productive citizens. I was a juvenile offender who spent more than nine years in adult prison, and my offense could have put me in there for life. Since I've gotten out of prison, I delivered my college commencement address at the University of Maryland, I published my memoir A Question Of Freedom, and I entered grad school. I'm making the most of my freedom, but I know others who will never have the same shot at redemption.

I met guy even younger than me waiting for the bus to go to prison. I'll call him Rashid. His voice still carried the cracks and high notes of adolescence, and his smooth face had never seen a razor. We were headed to Southampton Correctional Center in Virginia.

No fewer than a dozen of us were teenagers, all with peers at home waiting on driver's licenses, graduations and proms - while we waited for a prison cell. Rashid's time was legendary: three life sentences with no chance for parole. It meant he awoke each morning knowing he would one day flatline in a cell.

I looked at him, and I remembered the judge looking down at me, asking if I understood my charges could carry a life sentence. Rashid wasn't old enough to drive, vote, or serve on a jury of his peers - but he was old enough to walk out of a courtroom with a sentence that ends in a casket. After I met Rashid, my nine-year sentence for carjacking seemed like a gift.

Everything I did while incarcerated meant something to me because I could envision a day when I'd be free, and that vision pushed me. There were others who guided me: Jose who helped me teach myself Spanish, Mike G who pushed me to study law. They, too, could see a life not defined by bars and cuffs - but for too many people the violence of prison stifled dreams. Over six months I watched Rashid experience things that would leave anyone lost in depression: theft, beatings, the cloud of rape. A life sentence makes that permanent.

There is an absolute loss of hope for juveniles sentenced to life in prison. A life sentence without parole makes it far too easy to become a part of the violent world of prison, as predator or prey.

I can't imagine what I would have done had the judge sentenced me to life. I can't imagine walking around daily knowing a grave was my only way out. Because I had a release date, I recognized that the time was a way for me to improve myself. Seventeen hours each day to read, study and exercise - to think and become a man far different than the sixteen-old boy who plead guilty to carjacking.

As teenagers, our lives are impulse and reaction. I'm not the same person I was at 16. No one is. The difference between a person at 16 years old and 25 or 30 years old is huge. Juvenile offenders, who are years away from the maturity and sensibility of a 25 or 30 year old, need to know that society believes there is a possibility that they can be more than their crimes. They need to know that society believes rehabilitation is real.

All any incarcerated juvenile wants to believe is that their life can be more than a series of cell doors.

Previously:

Legally Enforced Corruption

austin — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 19:05:26 -0500

On Thursday the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania overturned the sentences of thousands of juvenile offenders due to a recently discovered corruption scandal.

Judge Mark A. Ciavarella, who passed sentence on the overturned cases, was discovered to have accepted $2.6 million from the owner of two privately run youth detention centers. In return, the judge would send more teens to these facilities.

Judge Ciavarella and his accomplice, Michael T. Conahan, would routinely hold hearings that lasted only minutes. And they would fail to inform the juvenile defendants before them of the consequences of pleading guilty. Judge Conahan helped to attain contracts for the private jails, granting them state-funded payment for the number of inmates they housed.

The New York Times has been covering the details of the courrption case:

“The judge’s whim is all that mattered in that courtroom,” said Marsha Levick, the legal director of the Juvenile Law Center, a child advocacy organization in Philadelphia, which began raising concerns about the court to state authorities in 1999. “The law was basically irrelevant.”