Today, we release the Multi-System Youth Report! Join us at 1 p.m. at the @MassBar http://ow.ly/SLOMz
Schools, photo IDs and privacy
June 6, 2012This post first appeared on the Parent/Professional Advocacy League (PPAL) blog on May 28, 2012. Lisa Lambert is the director of PPAL, a statewide, grassroots advocacy organization working to improve access to mental health services for children, youth, and their families. We highly recommend the PPAL blog for Lisa’s thoughtful take on current issues surrounding children’s mental health. We thank her and PPAL for letting CfJJ share the post below.
Every year when children return to school, parents wade through and sign a stack of forms. Buried in the middle is a form where you check off one box giving permission to have your son or daughter’s picture taken for a student ID and another for the school to take or use their photo if the media should need it. What if you discovered the school offered that photo to the police for a photo line up?
This is exactly what happened to one student at a Boston high school. Here are the facts. The student left the school and got on a public bus to return home. Later in the day, police allege that he robbed another student of his cell phone and ipod. The detective on the case went to the police officer at the school to see if he could obtain a student photo. This police officer, in turn, went to school staff who handed him the student ID, which had a photo, name and date of birth. The police did not have a search warrant and no one had asked for or received parental consent.
However, the background of the ID was quite different from other photos the detective had. So the police officer assigned to the school went back to school staff and asked for and received several more student photo IDs. These other students probably bore some resemblance to the suspected student (no doubt they were all male) and all their pictures had been taken in front of the same background. Again, there was no search warrant or parental notification or consent. The photos were enlarged and the names and birth dates were removed.
The victim made an identification, charges were filed and the case went to court. The judge in juvenile court barred the police and district attorney’s office from using the photo array as evidence saying the student had a “reasonable expectation of privacy.” An appeal was filed and it was heard before the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court. Last week, the court sent the case back to the juvenile court saying there wasn’t enough evidence presented in the case on how student ID cards are created and used in order for them to made a decision. “In ruling as he did, the judge made certain assumptions about the photograph that may well be correct, but evidence supporting the assumptions is not in the record before us,” Justice Margot Botsford wrote for a unanimous court.
After many well-publicised school shootings, beginning with Columbine in 1999, towns and cities across the U.S. began locating police officers in schools. Administrators, staff, parents and the community were worried about safety. Today, many schools have police or school resource officers located on school grounds. Unsurprisingly, when school resource officers are co-located they are often treated as fellow school staff. The boundaries can blur.
A parent’s job is to keep their child from harm. We do this because we love our children and know that while we can’t keep every hurt at bay, we can try to shield them from a great deal. When we sign those permission forms for a photo to be taken or used for media purposes, none of us imagine we are agreeing to let the police use those photos. Besides the student who the police suspected, there were 6 or 7 other students whose photo IDs were pulled by the resource officer and handed over to the detective. These students were guilty of nothing more than bearing a resemblance to the student suspected of robbery or having their picture taken in front of the same background. What if any of them had been mistakenly identified? For a parent to willingly agree to have their child’s photo in a police line up qualifies as putting their child in harm’s way.
Schools often take on the task of teaching students to be wary of sharing personal information on the internet, facebook or by texting. Parents often worry about their child’s personal information being used for some nefarious purpose but also know that a photo ID can benefit their child as well. We all recognize the need for the school to have information about our children. What should be our expectation of privacy?
Lisa Lambert is the director of the Parent/Professional Advocacy League.
What Every Reader Asks: ‘What’s It Got to Do With Me?’
October 5, 2011This post first appeared on Beacon Broadside (9/28/11). David Chura, a writer and educator, worked with at-risk youth for many years and shares the voices of young people that he met as a teacher in a New York prison in his new book I Don’t Wish Nobody to Have a Life Like Mine: Tales of Kids in Adult Lockup. We highly recommend David’s excellent blog, Kids in the System, and are so grateful to him for letting CfJJ share his post.
She was pretty upfront about it: she didn’t want me there.
“It’s not you personally,” Marge explained. “It’s the book.”
Marge was the moderator, researcher, engine, really, of a local reading group. She was good at what she did, I was told, and I believed it. She was pretty thorough at listing all the reasons why she didn’t want to read or recommend to the group my book, I Don’t Wish Nobody to Have a Life Like Mine: Tales of Kids in Adult Lockup, about my ten years teaching teenagers in adult detention. Read the rest of this entry »
Kids in the System
August 11, 2011This post first appeared on Beacon Broadside (7/20/11). David Chura, a writer and educator, worked with at-risk youth for many years and shares the voices of young people that he met as a teacher in a New York prison in his new book I Don’t Wish Nobody to Have a Life Like Mine: Tales of Kids in Adult Lockup. We highly recommend David’s excellent blog, Kids in the System, and are so grateful to him for letting CfJJ share his post.
A Different Kind of Commencement
Now that all the high school graduations are over and the backyard barbecues celebrated, I’m finally coming down from the contact high of all that youthful exuberance and optimism.
It’s easy to get swept up into those good feelings. But now as I move into summer’s quieter months, I can’t help thinking about the high school students I taught in a county penitentiary and what “commencement” meant for them. Read the rest of this entry »
Teen Prostitution–Criminal Behavior?
August 4, 2011By: Madeline Levitt, CfJJ Intern
The number of children who become victims of sexual exploitation in the country is truly shocking. The Children’s Defense Fund estimates that about 100,000 American children between the ages of 11 and 14 enter into prostitution each year. Sadly, the average age of these girls has been declining, the number of girls involved is increasing, and the problem is spreading to more towns and cities annually.
Society’s response has traditionally been to prosecute both these girls and the men who take advantage of them. But in the last decade, new attention has been drawn to the issue and multiple states have begun to consider teen prostitution as a child welfare issue: Why are these girls living on the street rather than with a loving family in a safe home? Furthermore, will criminal prosecution help or will it simply traumatize them further and hamper their reintegration into society? Just recently, Connecticut, Washington, Illinois, New York, California, and Texas have passed legislation to decriminalize teen prostitution. Read the rest of this entry »
Juvenile Justice and the War on Drugs
June 9, 2011By: Julia Quinn, CfJJ Intern
After more than three decades of prohibitionist and militaristic rhetoric surrounding efforts to combat illegal drug availability and consumption, it appears that world leaders and drug experts have acknowledged the need to reframe the debate. Yesterday, NPR’s Tom Ashbrook convened a discussion about the Global Commission on Drug Policy’s claim that the war on drugs has failed. The participating experts called for a dramatic shift in the way Americans think about drug use, urging the government and the public to shift from an emphasis on incarceration to a focus on prevention, education, treatment, and rehabilitation, addressing nonviolent drug use as a public health problem. Read the rest of this entry »
Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention
April 14, 2011The following excerpt comes from “JJ Today”, the juvenile justice blog of Youth Today.
***Day number 809 without a nominee from the Obama Administration to serve as administrator of the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention. When the administration decides on an appointee, according to David Baumann of Main Justice, it could result in a quick movement from nominee to administrator.
Update on Federal Funding in Juvenile Justice
April 7, 2011The following post originally appeared in “JJ Today”, the juvenile justice blog of Youth Today.
UPDATED Weekly Notes: White House stands down on juvenile justice overhaul; new trainings; and more
April 01, 2011 by John Kelly
[Note: The first entry in this column was updated after additional information was announced by the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevetion].
***The big news: Veteran juvenile justice reporter Ted Gest broke the story on The Crime Report today that the Obama administration has backed off its proposal to change the way the Justice Department would offer funds to states for juvenile justice purposes.
Traditionally, a sizable amount of the juvenile justice funds from the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention goes directly to states, partially in a formula grant and partially in a block grant. The formula funds are to a large extent contingent upon compliance with the four core requirements of the Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act; the block grant is given out each year to every state, regardless of how good or lousy they are on juvenile justice.
Obama’s initial proposal was to take all of that money ($120 million for 2012), make it a competitive grant process, and make compliance with JJDPA the criteria just to compete for some of it.
Gest reported this morning: “Assistant Attorney General Laurie Robinson told the House subcommittee that funds the Justice Department on Wednesday that the White House would come up with a new plan that allocates 90 percent of federal aid to improve juvenile justice by formula to the states.”
OJJDP clarified the revisions in a statement on its website this afternoon:
“The Administration has developed an alternative to its original Race to the Top-style incentive grants program and is now proposing that the $120 million in the budget could be allocated in the following fashion:
- $110 million as formula funding
- $80 million under Title II, Part B of the JJDP Act–Formula Grants program
- $30 million under the Juvenile Accountability Block Grants (JABG) program
- $10 million in a demonstration program to encourage innovation and juvenile justice system improvements.
Amazing turn of events. About a month ago, there was panic that attention to JJDPA compliance would wither. Now, compliance might become more important than it was before the proposal.
The Enemy Within–Toddler Edition
February 17, 2011Monday’s Colbert Report tackled the issue of how we treat young people who break laws. Check it out!
Contact Your Senators for Juvenile Justice!
February 4, 2011Please join advocates around the country in asking for an Administrator for the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP), the main federal agency for juvenile justice. Go to change.org and send a letter to your Senators! The following piece introduces the letter campaign on change.org:
Make Juvenile Justice a Priority: Appoint an OJJDP Administrator
CfJJ: Juvenile Justice News 