Juvenile Justice and the War on Drugs

By: 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. 

Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention

The 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

The 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.

Contact Your Senators for Juvenile Justice!

Please 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

Judges Forced to Revisit Juveniles’ Life Sentences

The Wall Street Journal recently (10/29/10)  featured an article on states’ responses to the Supreme Court’s decision in Graham v. Florida, which ruled life sentences without parole (LWOP) for juveniles to be unconstitutional for non-homicide cases.  Although a number of states are reviewing sentences that fit narrowly into this category, others are examining the larger issue of whether juveniles should ever be sentenced to LWOP.  Massachusetts currently has at least 57 people serving life without parole for crimes committed when they were under 18.

By NATHAN KOPPEL

Judges are grappling with whether it is ever proper to sentence a juvenile to life in prison without parole in light of a Supreme Court decision that such a punishment for non-murderers is cruel and unusual.

Arts Programs Help Break the Cycle of Delinquency and Violence

The Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention‘s September/October “News @ a Glance” highlighted arts programs working with juveniles.  Massachusetts is home to Shakespeare in the Courts, one of these creative programs.

Originally posted on OJJDP News @ a Glance, September/October 2010

 

©Shakespeare Festival/LA
Youth from Richmond, VA, performing in Will Power to Youth's production of Romeo and Juliet in August 2007.

A growing body of research indicates that arts programs can play a vital role in improving academic performance, school attendance, and critical life skills for youth across the socioeconomic spectrum. For at-risk youth, participation in arts programs can interrupt the drift to a negative lifestyle, helping to replace destructive behavior with positive activities and interests. In one research initiative sponsored by OJJDP and the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), arts programs for at-risk youth in three cities were found to reduce court referrals for delinquency while increasing school achievement, effective communication, and teamwork.

Another OJJDP Candidate: Jane Tewksbury

CfJJ is excited to share the news that Jane Tewksbury, Commissioner of the Massachusetts Department of Youth Services (and one of CfJJ’s founders)  is among the top candidates for Administrator of the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention.  CfJJ Executive Director Lael Chester and other advocates quoted in the blog post from Youth Today (please see below) praise her leadership in Massachusetts and her qualifications to head OJJDP.

October 20, 2010 by John Kelly

California judge and former prosecutor Kurt Kumli was the only name that had reached  JJ Today from the recent round of interviews by the Justice Department of Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention candidates. But it appears that Jane Tewksbury, commissioner of the Massachusetts Department of Youth Services, has interviewed for the job, too,  and is at least as likely as Kumli to get the nomination.

Sources close to Tewksbury said that, like Kumli, she is committed to going becoming OJJDP administrator if she is the Obama administration’s choice.

Tewksbury, by any measure, is a well-rounded candidate. She has served as commissioner of DYS since 2005, which for a modern state-level JJ director is a lifetime. Tewksbury was nominated by then-Gov. Mitt Romney (R) but was kept on by current Gov. Deval Patrick (D).

It’s Time to Quit Putting Kids in Adult Prison

Written by Liz Ryan, President and CEO of the Campaign for Youth Justice. This post first appeared on Change.org’s Criminal Justice Blog (7/16/10).

Five years ago this week, 17-year-old David Burgos took his life at Manson Youth Institute, one of Connecticut’s adult prisons for younger offenders. David had been detained on a simple probation violation.

The Connecticut General Assembly immediately responded with legislation to end the practice of automatically prosecuting all 16- and 17-year-olds in adult criminal court and to ban the placement of most of these youth in adult facilities.

In 2006, David Burgos’ mother, Diana Gonzalez, testified before the Connecticut about the danger of treating youth like adults. As she stated, “I know first-hand the consequences…Whose child is next? It could be my neighbor’s child, it could be your neighbor’s child, it could be your child. Put yourselves in these shoes. What decision would you make for your child? How would you want your child treated?”

Juvenile Justice Reform: A Law Congress Needs to Pass

This post first appeared on Beacon Broadside (6/25/10).  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 below about the need for Congress to quickly re-authorize the Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act:

When you go to jail you feel like everybody’s in your business but nobody cares. You get cuffed, shoved into the back of a squad car. The police blotter broadcasts to the world what you did. You get booked, fingerprinted, photographed, everything about you fed into “The Man’s” hungry computer. You’re watched—by correctional officers, wardens, nurses, other inmates; even the kitchen workers warily scope you out. Bars instead of doors.

At least that is how you feel if you’re a kid doing time in an adult county prison like the teenagers I taught for ten years.

The Cost of Confinement

Dear CfJJ Members and Friends:

In case you haven’t read it yet, we suggest looking at the Justice Policy Institute’s report The Costs of Confinement: Why Good Juvenile Justice Policies Make Good Fiscal Sense. The report highlights the high rates of youth incarceration across the country and describes how relying on confinement is both costly and ineffective at reducing recidivism. The report goes on to identify the progress that a number of states have made in reducing confinement of youth and highlights several effective community-based alternatives.

It should be noted that Massachusetts has been experiencing substantial decreases in the number of youth held in secure confinement. Detention admissions (youth held in secure facilities while awaiting trial) was 22% lower in 2009 than 2008, and new commitments (youth adjudicated and sentenced to the Department of Youth Services) went down 13% within this one year period as well.