Restraints in Juvenile Court

On April 5 we posted about the new restraints policy in Massachusetts, limiting the use of shackles for juveniles in court.  On Monday, Suffolk Law School professor Kim McLaurin spoke on NECN about the new policy and how legal advocates were instrumental in its adoption.  See the video here.

Debunking the Myth of More Violent Girls

We recently explored the misconception that girls are more violent than ever before. Initial findings from the Girls Study Group, a team of multidisciplinary experts convened by the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, further dispel this myth and “suggest that girls are not more violent than before and confirm that girls engage in far less crime and delinquency than boys for nearly every offense.” The group also observed that changes in arrest and other juvenile justice policies have contributed to an increased number of girls entering the juvenile justice system. How do we reconcile the media’s frequent portrayal of a new breed of violent girls with these research findings? Is the myth of a big new wave of violent girls changing how we view and respond to girls’ behavior?

Dismal Outcomes for Former Foster Children

Researchers at the Partners for Our Children program at the University of Washington and Chapin Hall Center at the University of Chicago have released a large, long-term study showing that, by many measures (including educational attainment, employment, family formation, connectedness and involvement with the criminal justice system ) former foster children do poorly as they transition to adulthood. Given that many children in the juvenile justice system have previously been involved in the child welfare system, it is likely that their outcomes would be similar, or even worse. It is rare, however, that any measure other than recidivism is used when gauging the "success" of the juvenile justice system. Shouldn’t we really be looking at a wider range of criteria?

See the full report at http://www.chapinhall.org/research/report/midwest-evaluation-adult-functioning-former-foster-youth

New Restraints Policy

One of the topics to be featured at the Suffolk Law School Juvenile Justice Conference on April 30  is the use of restraints  (i.e. shackles) on children when they are in court – and the new policy, which became effective March 1, limiting their use. While we have requested an official copy of the new policy from the Juvenile Court and the Trial Court, we have not yet received it. However, we have received a copy from other sources.

The policy is available as a pdf here:  New Restraints Policy

DYS Budget

The current budget crunch is a serious concern for the Department of Youth Services. FY2010 and proposed FY2011 funding for DYS has dropped below what is needed just to maintain current programs. Moreover, DYS needs additional funds to enable it to oversee secure Alternative Lock-up Programs for youth arrested when courts are closed. Please see CfJJ’s DYS Budget Fact Sheet 2010 for more details.

Myth of Mean Girls

On April 2 the New York Times published an Op Ed arguing that the media depiction of a modern epidemic of increasingly violent girls is a hoax. The Myth of Mean Girls points out that “every reliable measure shows that violence by girls has been plummeting for years”. (That’s certainly the case here in Massachusetts where, for example, the number of girls formally charged with crimes has been declining for at least a decade and where the number of girls adjudicated delinquent and sentenced to the custody of the Department of Youth Services — the most serious disposition imposed on a child adjudicated a delinquent — has declined by 45% since 2000.)  It also argues that the mythical wave of girls’ violence and meanness has the unfortunate result of spurring “more punitive treatment of girls, including arrests and incarceration for lesser offenses like minor assaults that were treated informally in the past, as well as alarmist calls for restrictions on their Internet use”.  What’s the source of this disconnect between image and reality?

The Myth of Mean Girls

By MIKE MALES and MEDA-CHESNEY LIN
NY Times OP-ED CONTRIBUTORS

If nine South Hadley, Mass., high school students — seven of them girls — are proved to have criminally bullied another girl who then committed suicide, as prosecutors have charged, they deserve serious legal and community condemnation.

However, many of the news reports and inflamed commentaries have gone beyond expressing outrage at the teenagers involved and instead invoked such cases as evidence of a modern epidemic of “mean girls” that adults simply fail to comprehend. Elizabeth Scheibel, the district attorney in the South Hadley case, declined to charge school officials who she said were aware of the bullying because of their “lack of understanding of harassment associated with teen dating relationships.” A People magazine article headlined “Mean Girls” suggested that a similar case two years ago raised “troubling questions” about “teen violence” and “cyberspace wars.” Again and again, we hear of girls hitting, brawling and harassing.

But this panic is a hoax. We have examined every major index of crime on which the authorities rely. None show a recent increase in girls’ violence; in fact, every reliable measure shows that violence by girls has been plummeting for years. Major offenses like murder and robbery by girls are at their lowest levels in four decades. Fights, weapons possession, assaults and violent injuries by and toward girls have been plunging for at least a decade.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Uniform Crime Reports