*** Pat Arthur and Jennifer Horvath – attorneys for the National Center for Youth Law and the Wyoming ACLU, respectively – issued a report in June that put into numerical perspective exactly how outside the national standard Wyoming is when it comes to juvenile justice. The report finds, among other concerns, that about 90 percent of children in trouble with the law in Wyoming are processed through adult court.

It was pretty well known that Wyoming was not in lockstep with the majority of states who use juvenile court for most crimes by young people. It is the only state that does not participate in the Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act, which means that state government receives no federal formula money for JJ and therefore has no motivation to adhere to federal standards.

But 90 percent? In a Star-Tribune editorial last week, it was noted that Dave Freudenthal’s JJ advisor, Gary Hartman, believes the report could be a prelude to litigation if the legislature doesn’t act to change the juvenile justice process.

We tackled most of these issues in June of 2009. It is a state problem, but a lot would be solved by some intervention in Campbell County, which with a population of about 40,000 is responsible for the majority of juveniles held in adult jails. 

***The House Oversight and Investigation Subcommittee on Domestic Policy held a hearing this week on alternatives to incarceration. Front and center in the discussion: drugs courts, which a number of witnesses lauded for reductions in recidivism. As far as juvenile drug courts go (and they were not specifically discussed at the hearing): they vary in design and success, but one thing most have in common with each other is that they are viewed as an expendable part of the justice milieu at a shaky budget time.

***If you’re interested in juvenile drug treatment, mark Dec. 14-16 on your calendar. The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration will host the Joint Meeting on Adolescent Treatment Effectiveness (JMATE) in Baltimore. The conference is free to attend, although you will have to pay for your travel and accommodations.

***Luzerne Update! Michael Conahan, the former Luzerne County president judge who helped orchestrate the county’s reliance on a private detention center in exchange for kickbacks, pleaded guilty to racketeering conspiracy charges today. Conahan and alleged fellow conspirator Mark Ciavarella accepted a plea agreement last summer that would have put both men away for 87 months, but Judge Edwin Kosik tossed that deal because he was dissatisfied with the length of the sentence and the men’s continued protestations of innocence. Kosik accepted this guilty plea, under which Conahan can be sentenced to prison for up to 20 years.

Conahan moved “one step closer to a federal prison cell this morning,” wrote Citizen’s Voice reporter Dave Janoski.

Assuming Kosik puts Conahan away for close to the maximum of two decades, it will provide catharsis to a community that has been painted an ugly shade by the whole incident. But the real potential for closure will come when Ciavarella faces the music. He has pleaded not guilty to all of the 48 counts against him, and awaits trial.

***After a five-year battle over freedom of information, British weekly The Observer obtained documents from the Ministry of Justice that outline brutal methods of controlling and restraining juveniles in privately run jails. Reporter Mark Townsend reports on the rules of engagement inside juvenile jails there, and it is pretty unbelievable what the ministry signed off on as acceptable.

***The Ella Baker Center released Learning from Our Mistakes this month, a short film that appeals to California policy makers to move toward a system that locks up fewer youths for low-level crimes.

***The Chicago-based John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation is looking for a program officer for its juvenile justice program. That hire would answer to Laurie Garduque, who heads up JJ for the foundation, and would work with Candice Jones, the other JJ program officer.

***Judge Michael Key, a juvenile court judge in Troup County, Ga., since 1989, was installed this week as president of the National Council of Juvenile and Family Court Judges. Key, who will serve a one-year term as president, succeeds Nebraska Judge Douglas Johnson, whose term included a reversal of position by the council on one of the field’s major court debates: use of the valid court order exception.

Note: This story was updated on July 20

The reform of Washington, D.C.’s Department of Youth Rehabilitation Services -- which has garnered national admirers but caused quite a public debate inside the city limits – may have changed course today when Mayor Adrian Fenty replaced the agency’s interim director, Marc Schindler, with the city’s chief juvenile prosecutor, Robert Hildum, who also will serve as interim.

Most observers had believed Schindler eventually would be the permanent replacement for Vinny Schiraldi, who left in February. But as the 180-day deadline to name a permanent hire approached, a series of killings involving youths and adults involved with the juvenile justice system stirred new controversy in the midst of a tight re-election campaign for Fenty. Sources told JJ Today that Fenty believed he had to make the change.

DYRS Deputy Director David Brown and Chief of Committed Services David Muhammad have resigned, and sources tell JJ Today that other DYRS officials are considering leaving as well. 

The department, formerly known as the Youth Services Administration, has long been troubled. A short reprise of recent history:

*The department averaged more than one director per year for two decades, and over that period its secure facility (Oak Hill) made its way into the conversation as the worst JJ facility in the nation, sadly not an easy list to make.

*Juvenile justice advocate Vinny Schiraldi was brought in by former Mayor Tony Williams to turn things around. Schiraldi quickly added leaders under him with national advocacy experience, including Schindler, his chief of staff, who previously has served as a Youth Law Center attorney.  

*Schiraldi and Co. improved services within Oak Hill, drastically improving the education system at the facility, while designing a new facility with significantly fewer beds and a less prison-like atmosphere. The new facility, New Beginnings Youth Development Center, opened in January.

*Progress improving DYRS programs in the community, particularly the monitoring and supervision of youth offenders who were not locked up, lagged behind the developments at the secure facility, shortcomings that were often criticized by Washington Post columnist Colbert King.  Recently, King’s loud editorial voice has been raised about the recent spate of killings involving juveniles under city supervision.

*Schiraldi left in February to lead New York City’s probation department, so it fell to Schindler as interim director to improve the agency’s community portfolio.

*A new arrangement featuring two community lead entities and service providers, which kicked off this year, has been counted on to help, but there are rumblings by providers that the agency-lead entity-provider trickle down system is not fully working yet.

The choice of a prosecutor to head the department makes sense politically. Hildum has also been a criminal defense attorney, so he’s seen juvenile justice from both sides of the courtroom. He was on the executive board of the city’s Juvenile Detention Alternatives Initiative (JDAI), so he has experience with reform.

On the other hand, he has no experience running a juvenile justice agency; he is a career lawyer. And despite his time as a defender, at least one member of the DYRS staff (speaking on the condition of anonymity) expressed worries about a prosecutor taking over:

“There is healthy structural disagreement built into the system- between DAs, public defenders, and the community - over how the juvenile justice system works. This largely reflects the reality that the public wants us to help youth succeed, and protect the public. That tension is balanced by court processes. What happened today is, one part of the system swallowed the other. This may upset the balance, and if the prosecutors go too far, the public will respond accordingly.”

One thing that is more likely to change under Hildum than under Schindler: the capacity at New Beginnings. In one meeting, a source said, Hildum raved about how pleased he was with the success of New Beginnings, and wondered aloud why there wasn’t more of it. “Meaning, more beds,” the source said.

That is certain to rankle a lot of advocates who believe the city should keep a low bed-total to force what they believe to be appropriate responses to low-level offenders. Schiraldi’s team, including Schindler, was committed to keeping the capacity at 60.

But the reality right now is, New Beginnings is overcrowded because of juveniles awaiting placement vacancies elsewhere. That scenario is tough for highly secured facilities to deal with. At a place like New Beginnings, which houses its most serious young offenders in a less secure setting than most states would contemplate, such a scenario could lead to the kind of incidents that bring the entire overhaul to a screeching halt. Something has to give there: fewer kids awaiting placement, or more space to put them.

It is unlikely that Schindler will stay on in his old job as chief of staff, but Schiraldi’s other hires to top positions are expected to remain with the department.  

Hildum’s biography, courtesy of the D.C. Office of the Attorney General:

Robert Hildum
Robert Hildum brings to DYRS broad experience in the juvenile and criminal justice systems, on both the defense and prosecutorial sides.  Mr. Hildum joined the Office of the Attorney General (OAG) in February 2007 in the civil division, where his first task was to develop the exit plan for the Jerry M. case [ this case was about conditions at Oak Hill that had been ongoing for more than a decade] that was adopted by the court in the fall of 2007. In September 2007, he was appointed deputy attorney general for public safety. In that position, Mr. Hildum supervised the juvenile section, responsible for prosecuting juvenile offenders.  He has worked closely with the court and other juvenile justice stakeholders to implement the Juvenile Speedy Trial Act, which increased the efficiency of the juvenile justice system so that youth being detained pending trial spend less time in detention before resolution of the charges.  In addition, Hildum served on the Executive Board of the Juvenile Detention Alternative Initiative (“JDAI”) with District juvenile justice stakeholders.  The goals of JDAI are to reduce overcrowding in juvenile detention centers, improve key outcomes for youth, improve facility conditions and create community-based alternatives to detention.

Hildum began his legal career as an assistant attorney general in New Orleans from 1992 to 1995.  During his tenure with that office he handled hundreds of juvenile cases and prosecuted the first hate crime brought to trial in Louisiana. From 1995 to 2000, he worked as a partner in the law firm of Manasseh, Hildum & Gill in Baton Rouge, Louisiana where he specialized in criminal defense. 

In 2000, Mr. Hildum left private practice to work for the Louisiana attorney general as an assistant attorney general in the criminal section.  From 2002 to 2007, he was a senior trial attorney with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission in Washington, D.C., prosecuting civil enforcement actions for fraud and other violations of federal law.

News

***Nice resource here from the National Juvenile Justice Network on using the state budget crunch to one’s advantage as an advocate for alternatives to incarceration. The two main sections highlight the key avenues: illustrating how realigning services has helped other states save money, and demonstrating how much incarceration costs per day compared with alternatives. The latter, of course, is best served with a side dish of “incarceration doesn’t actually diminish juvenile crime,” if that is true in your state or jurisdiction.

***The state of New York entered into a settlement agreement with the U.S. Justice Department regarding mental health services at four facilities that Justice began investigating in 2008: Finger Lakes Residential Center, (formerly Louis Gossett Jr. Residential Center), Lansing Residential Center, Tryon Girls Center and the Tryon Residential Center (scheduled to close in 2011).

The settlement means New York will be under federal oversight, but will not have to relinquish control of its entire JJ system to the federal government.

The keys to the settlement are:

1)  Increased training of guards at the facilities, paid for by the state. Guards at the four facilities will be limited in terms of when and how they can restrain juveniles, and they will be trained in those specified procedures.  

2) An influx of on-site staff in charge of mental health services. New York, will hire five licensed psychologists and more than a dozen social workers and nurse practitioners, and each of the four prisons will have a full-time psychiatrist. The $18.2 million to hire all of them was in Gov. David Paterson’s 2010-2011 budget, and the state legislature has approved it; the money “is a go, it’s solid,” said Sue Steele, a spokeswoman for the Office of Children and Family Services (OCFS).

The settlement should accelerate the state juvenile justice system’s move toward an array of services that keeps more low-level offenders in the community and offers a more rehabilitative milieu to offenders in its facilities.

One thing it will need to keep an eye on here, though, will be the “if you build it, they will come” factor. These facilities likely will emerge quickly as solid options for any judge who has a juvenile in front of him who either is suspected to have, or is already diagnosed with, mental health problems. The facilities with the enhanced mental health treatment options could prove to be too tempting to a judge for a juvenile who needs psychiatric and therapeutic care – even if the offense itself is not something that might warrant secure placement.  

This happened with Missouri’s juvenile facilities once the Division for Youth Services started to post the low recidivism rates that have garnered the agency national attention. Judges knew DYS would do a good job caring for a juvenile placed in the state’s facilities, so even offenders whose charges didn’t rate confinement were sent to secure care instead of probation or a community alternative.

“There’s always the potential for that,” said Annie Salsich, director of the Vera Institute’s Center for Youth Justice. She said she supports the settlement, but believes OCFS must now focus on funding alternatives to incarcerating juveniles while avoiding a “purely mental health approach to culture change.”

“If you only look at conditions of confinement, you miss a big part of the conversation,” said Salsich. “It would be a shame if [reform] stopped here, and I think OCFS is committed to it not stopping here.”

Paterson submitted a bill this summer that would really limit which juveniles could be placed in state-run facilities by judges, reports Nicholas Confessore of the New York Times.

***Kurt Friedenauer, who has headed juvenile justice for the State of Illinois for four years, will resign his post at the end of the month. Friedenauer was the first cabinet-level JJ boss in the state’s history, and it is possible he will be the last.

He oversaw the Department of Juvenile Justice when it was part of the larger Illinois Department of Corrections, and former Gov. Rod Blagojevich (D) created an independent department in 2008. Now, Gov. Pat Quinn (D) intends to fold that department into the Department of Child and Family Services, which means whoever replaces Friedenauer will answer to the DCFS director, not directly to the governor.

WBEZ reporter Rob Wildeboer – a primary on the station’s investigation of state juvenile facilities – said Friedenauer is a “nice man” who ultimately could not affect enough change in the culture of his facilities.

UPDATE: Quinn named Arthur Bishop, current deputy director of field operations for DCFS, to lead the newly reconstituted juvenile justice department. Bishop oversees the largest and most visible aspect of the DCFS’s work (500 employees, including most of its caseworkers), and Quinn was smart to tap a guy with high profile and 15 years at the agency to take over. Bishop has no formal justice background, though, so there will certainly be a learning curve.

***Luzerne Update! U.S. District Judge Richard Caputo ruled this week that Luzerne County cannot be held liable in the civil suits involving the indiscretions of former judges Michael Conahan and Mark Ciavarella. “The executive and administrative decisions made by a president judge as the 'head of the court' are made as a state actor,” Caputo said.

***The Post and Courier (Charleston, S.C.) editorial board wants South Carolina to protect its Department of Juvenile Justice from budget cuts.

***A former juvenile judge in Los Angeles had a lot of issues with this article in the Los Angeles Times about the use of a panel lawyer system to defend juvenile offenders.

***Nice little story here by Daily Iberian reporter Jessica Goff about St. Martin Parish (Louisiana) Juvenile Training Center, a school for juveniles locked up at the adjacent detention center in the parish. No real news hook, or impetus for the story; it just profiles the staff, history and goings-on inside.

***A bit of federal news: The Coordinating Council on Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention is soliciting public comments and feedback on the four priority areas it has established for itself in the coming years: education, reentry, race and tribal youth.

The council is looking for “ideas, insights, reflections, and suggestions grounded in experience in and with federal support as to federal policies and practices that either support or act as a barrier related to juvenile justice outcomes.”

This is an excellent chance to be heard on specific policy issues. The council has always been a venue for OJJDP staff to work with people outside the traditional constraints of federal JJ policy making. But the profile of the council has been raised significantly under President Barack Obama because Attorney General Eric Holder personally has  chaired the first two meetings of the council.

***Aside from that, not much by way of big federal JJ news. Still no House bill to reauthorize the Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act; still no nominee to lead OJJDP.

The Senate has confirmed another leader in the Office of Justice Programs family: James Lynch, who is officially in as director of the Bureau of Justice Statistics. Lynch served on the National Academy of Sciences Committee on National Statistics, which is responsible for independently assessing the statistical programs at BJS. In the 1980s, he helped redesign the Uniform Crime Report, the nation’s main crime data collection.

BJS just release its report on mortality rates in local jails between 2000-2007. It doesn’t specify an exact number of deaths for people under 18, but gives a few numbers that can be used to estimate that number.

The report states that the mortality rate for juveniles in jail was 49 per 100,000 during those years. The average daily population in jails during that time period was about 700,000, and juveniles made up about 2 percent of the adult jail population. So you figure there were about 14,000 juveniles in jails each year, for a total of 112,000 over the course of the eight years (obviously, some could be the same youth held in jail more than once). Using those figures, about 55 juveniles lost their lives in prison between 2000 and 2007. Most were by suicide.

***New York Law School put out a sizeable volume of legal and policy pieces on the school-to-prison pipeline. Subjects include the use of litigation to remedy an overreliance on law enforcement, the varying ways in which school resource officers are used, and protection of students with disabilities.

***Wayne County (Detroit) Prosecutor Kym Worthy wants to arrest parents who miss parent teacher conferences, reports the Associated Press’ Corey Williams. Williams does a terrific job here explaining Worthy’s motivation, and the many potential problems with her plan. There is no chance will be happen (parent-teacher conferences aren’t even mandatory in Wayne County), but Williams lets readers see the exasperation a prosecutor like Worthy must feel when she has to deal with a 12-year-old murderer (Demarco Harris, now 13, convicted in May of murder) whose parents couldn’t account for his whereabouts when police went to their door at 2 in the morning.

***A South Carolina juvenile drug court that has shown results may close now that the judge who pioneered it has left the bench, reports the Post and Courier’s Robert Behre. That couldn’t come at a worse time, because the Department of Juvenile Justice has already been forced to cut back on treatment and alternative programs and will probably have to cut even more once federal stimulus money runs out in 2011.

Kentucky will shutter its juvenile drug court program on July 31.

***A large chunk of the sports-viewing public soured a bit on LeBron James after his self-created ESPN special to announce his basketball future; well, at least the public living outside of the Miami-Dade County area. But give him credit for this: the $2.5 million in commercial proceeds from that broadcast  is going to Boys & Girls Clubs of America, and according to BGCA it was his idea to do that; the organization did not approach him. And as any direct service nonprofit leader knows, any money coming into charity at the moment could be the difference between active programs and closed doors.

Two of the beneficiaries of the funds will be BGCA affiliates in Akron (where James grew up) and Cleveland (home to the Cavaliers, the team he just left).

NEWS

*** The Pittsburgh-based National Center for Juvenile Justice published its Juvenile Court Statistics 2006-2007 online last week, and also released four fact sheets on waivers to adult court, juvenile court cases, person offenses and probation caseloads. The research and compilation of this massive tome is funded by OJJDP.

These figures piqued the interest of JJ Today:

-Waivers to adult court are down markedly from their peak in 1994, and black juveniles now make up a smaller proportion of those being transferred. Forty-four percent of the 13,100 juveniles transferred in 1994 were black; 37 percent of the 8,500 juveniles waived to adult court in 2007 were black. Important to note, though, that waivers only count decisions by judges to move a juvenile to adult court. These statistics contain no information on the racial proportions of juveniles directly transferred by statute or prosecutorial discretion.

-From 2003 to 2007, juvenile arrests for robbery went up 35 percent. Juvenile court cases for robbery were up 45 percent in that time. Those statistics, and a 5 percent increase in criminal homicide cases, drove a 13 percent spike in violent crime cases involving juveniles during the same period.

-Simple assault cases declined 4 percent between 2003 and 2007, but the long-term increase in the use of that charge is staggering. In 1985 juvenile courts saw 3.8 cases of simple assault for every 1,000 youth between the ages 10 and 18. By 2007? The rate was 8.8 per 1,000.

***Congressional leaders received a letter from 122 professors last week, asking them to get going on reauthorization of the Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act of 1974.

Since the last substantial reauthorization of the bill, in 1992, “researchers and policymakers have learned a tremendous amount about what works to prevent and reduce juvenile delinquency,” the professors said in the letter. “From the growing body of research on child and youth development, the development of the adolescent brain, and effective programs and practices, we now know much more about what works in turning these young lives around.”

The letter was sent to: Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.); Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.); Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.); House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio); Sens. Pat Leahy (D-Vt.) and Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) of the Senate Judiciary Committee; and Reps. George Miller (D-Calif.) and John Kline (R-Minn.) of the House Education and Labor Committee.

***An additional piece of information on the Adam Walsh Act and juvenile sex offenders, which we wrote about at length on Wednesday. JJ Today asked juvenile justice analyst Nicole Pittman what might be a fair arrangement that would register juvenile sex offenders but also treat them differently than adults. Her suggestion: place misdemeanor juvenile sex offenders on a registry for two years, felony offenders for five years, and provide them with therapy. When their term ends, the offender’s progress would be reviewed.

***Expect a study from Justice Policy Institute this month that shows between 75 percent to 93 percent of youth who enter the juvenile justice system annually in this country have experienced some degree of traumatic victimization. That’s all we’ll write about it until JJ Today can see the numbers and methodology, because that is an awfully high range. This would make Attorney General Eric Holder look like a genius for initiating a project at the Justice Department that focuses in on this very subject, children exposed to violence. Obama’s budget plan called for $37 million to be spent on Holder’s Initiative on Children Exposed to Violence.

MEDIA

***Jennings Garry, supervisor of the Nurse-Family Partnership for the Buncombe County Department of Health in North Carolina pitches via op-ed the idea of NFP as a deterrent of juvenile crime. Nurse-family partnerships, which pair nurses with young, low-income, first-time moms may be one of the few avenues of youth work that sees a serious infusion of cash over the next decade.

***Juvenile justice facilities around the country are on the chopping block as states and counties struggle to address huge budget gaps. That might be a good thing in some instances: San Bernardino County, Calif., will close one of its juvenile halls next year. The closure is slated to put 32 officers out of jobs. Numbers reported by Contra Costa Times writer James Rufus Koren suggest that the county can accommodate those juveniles in open beds at other facilities (or use alternatives to incarceration).

To the north, though, Sacramento will lose a boys ranch that provided equestrian therapy, academics and job training to older male teens. Now, those youths will be placed in juvenile hall. And in Seattle, everyone seems to agree that the Youth Services Center, King County’s secure facility, needs to be replaced. But a tenth of cent sales tax bump to replace it might be too much in these days and times.

***ABC’s Nightline story on the federal grants scandal at the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, which was uncovered by Youth Today Editor Patrick Boyle, is now available on YouTube with ABC’s permission. Click here for the link.

The Justice Department proposed new rules this summer that would make it optional for states to include most juvenile sex offenders on a public database. The change was meant to assuage the concerns of some states’ officials about subjecting young offenders to being named on a public list. Juvenile justice advocates say they find the new proposal confusing, so JJ Today went looking for some answers.

“It appears the supplemental guides are contradicting the regular ones,” said Nicole Pittman, a juvenile justice analyst for the Defender Association of Philadelphia, who opposes the inclusion of juveniles on the database. “It’s getting away from the uniformity that Walsh was intending to bring.”

It is just the latest chapter in the messy saga of the Walsh Act and its centerpiece, the Sex Offender Registration and Notification Act (SORNA). The act was signed into law four years ago and originally was to take effect in 2009, but right now only three states are in compliance with Justice Department regulations. The delays arise from fiscal and ethical concerns about inclusion of some or all juvenile sex offenders on public sex offender registries and the monitoring that goes along with registration.

Walsh and SORNA: A primer

SORNA established a national sex offender database of juveniles and adults that would be compiled from databases maintained by the states.

States were required to pass their own legislation by July of 2009 that met SORNA’s guidelines about who had to be included on the national database; for juveniles, that includes any crime committed by a youth 14 or older that involves aggravated sexual assault. States were also advised they could include more sex offenders if they chose, including those convicted of lesser offenses than those mandated in the guidelines.

Failure to pass complying legislation would result in a 10 percent cut to a state’s Justice Assistance Grants.

From the beginning, some juvenile justice advocates were concerned that the new regulations would keep juveniles on public registries for decades and thus jeopardize  their ability to move with their families, get into college or land a job.

Last week, the House of Representatives voted overwhelmingly to add buying a house to that list: the Federal Housing Authority Reform Act of 2010 passed by the House this month included an amendment by Rep. Chet Edwards (D-Texas) that prohibits FHA from giving mortgages to anyone who has been convicted of a sex offense with a minor.

All of these regulations have been put in place despite research that shows juvenile sex offenders are far less likely than adults to commit a second sex offense.

It has been 1,434 days since the Walsh Act was signed into law, and just Ohio, Delaware and Florida are officially in compliance with the act’s SORNA regulations.

Other states have passed laws in efforts to put them in line with Walsh, and are awaiting determinations by Justice’s Sex Offender Sentencing, Monitoring, Apprehending, Registering and Tracking (SMART) office.

The original deadline for compliance was July of 2009, which no state met, so Attorney General Eric Holder extended the deadline by a year. Only Ohio had gained compliance as summer began; Holder allowed states to apply for extensions that would give them until July of 2011.

As of today, 35 states and the District have received an extension, according to the SMART office.

What’s the holdup?

Why have so many states been slow to embrace the spirit of such a politically popular piece of legislation? Two factors are the costs to comply and the inclusion of juvenile delinquents.

Most juvenile advocates want to see youth shielded entirely from SORNA because of their amenability to change and the damning effect of a sex offender record on them.

Some states agree. Tennessee’s legislature has gone back and forth on which juveniles to include on its registry. Ohio’s submission for compliance was originally rejected by the Bush administration, in part because it did not include enough of the juvenile sex offender population. Obama’s Justice department looked at the same submission and deemed Ohio compliant in the fall of 2009 (click here for more details).

But the biggest factor keeping states from complying with Walsh is money. State budgets are almost universally brutal right now, and the pressure is on legislators to rein in costs wherever possible.

That has rendered federal carrots and sticks aimed at shaping youth policy less effective.

The penalty for not complying with Walsh – a 10 percent cut to a state’s Justice Assistance Grants – is likely to be significantly lower than the cost of doing what the law asks of states, according to research by the advocacy organization Justice Policy Institute (JPI). JPI wants states to ignore compliance requirements completely, and sent its report on the cost breakdown to state policy makers.

The money factor is also tied to the fact the regulations deal with juveniles. Adding anyone to the SORNA registry commits a state to a very long monitoring period for that individual; the most serious offenders (Tier III) are on it for life, and the minimum length of time for Tier I offender is 15 years. Juvenile sex offenders are the most expensive additions because of their age. And with research indicating that only between 5 percent and 14 percent of juvenile sex offenders recidivate, monitoring these individuals is often the least efficient use of money and enforcement officials’ time.  

Iowa already is feeling the financial sting of sex offender monitoring, reports Des Moines Register reporter Lee Hood. Iowa overhauled its sex offender laws in 2006, before the Walsh Act passed, and the changes removed the juvenile court’s discretionary power to keep juvenile offenders off the state registry. Iowa is one of the 35 states with a compliance extension.    

New rules

Justice proposed eight supplemental guidelines in the Federal Register on May 14. One allows states the option to “exempt from public Web site disclosure information concerning sex offenders required to register on the basis of juvenile delinquency adjudications.”

Should a state accept the exemption, juvenile sex offenders would appear on a database that only law enforcement could view, which is the system currently used by Michigan and other states. Everything else would be the same: the juveniles would have to register and update information, and would be monitored by law enforcement.

“On its face, if confidentiality can be protected, it’s better [that] it’s behind the wall,” said JPI Executive Director Tracy Velazquez. “The question is, can it stay confidential? In some small jurisdictions, where law enforcement has it, sometimes everyone has it.”

Preventing juveniles from appearing on public registries can protect them during the formative years, but what about collateral consequences? Would juveniles’ names appear on a public registry suddenly on their 18th birthday? Could employers, colleges or FHA loan officers find out about their offense through a background check, even if the name never appeared on a public registry? 

The Justice Department’s Office of Justice Programs, which houses the SMART office, provided some answers. 

Would the state have to make the juvenile sex offender's name and information public once he/she turned 18 and was an adult?

A: No, unless there was a subsequent offense committed.

If a state opted to keep the juvenile's name private, would a criminal background check still identify the offense even though the person was not on a public registry?

A: Maybe. The availability of juvenile sex offense records would be jurisdiction specific, so it would depend on whether (and to what extent) the state in question seals juvenile records.

You can read the entire supplement guidelines proposal here. The public can submit comments to the SMART office until July 13.

Florida became the third state to gain substantial compliance with the Sex Offender Registration and Notification Act, part of the larger Adam Walsh Act. The Justice Department notified the state on June 19 that its compliance plan had been approved. It joins Ohio and Delaware as the only states to gain compliance.

Before compliance, Florida had 115 juvenile sex offenders on its registry, so expect that to go up. Naples News’ Elysa Batista reports that changes made to comply with the act mean the inclusion on its sex registry of juveniles above the age of 14 who are convicted of committing aggravated sexual assault.

The SORNA requirements are retroactive, too, so Florida will require any juvenile sex offender who fits that profile and who was convicted between 2007 and now to register.

Perhaps the most interesting nugget turned up by Batista, though, came from her interview with Ernie Allen, the CEO of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. Allen, who likely tracks progress on the Walsh Act mandates closer than anyone, sounded optimistic that the trio of compliant states would soon have company.

“We think there are a significant number of states that will be coming shortly,” Allen said. “There is real momentum now.”

Hope everyone’s summer is going swimmingly, pun intended! Notes has been on hiatus while Youth Today wraps up the final print edition of the summer. The July/August issue will include an in-depth look at a theory on litigating race that has been put in motion, and a breakdown of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act compliance patterns since 2000.

FUNDING

***The Justice Department was really cranking out solicitations in April and May, and it appears most of its 2010 funding announcements have been made. But here is one of note from the Family and Youth Services Bureau, a division of the Administration on Children’ and Families at the Department of Health and Human Services:

Mentoring Children of Prisoners Program: To support programs that provide one-on-one mentoring relationships for youth between the ages of 4 and 18, who have a parent who is currently incarcerated, by matching them with trained adult volunteers. FYSB expects to make about 80 awards, each between $200,000 and $1 million per year (more will be in that $200,000 range). It’s a three-year project, and winners must be able to match 25 percent of costs in the first two years and then match 50 percent in year three.

Deadline is July 30; check the resource center at www.mcpsupportcenter.com to learn about the program before you apply.

***The Washington, D.C.-based Public Welfare Foundation released a new round of grants in June, and 10 of them are directly JJ-related.

NEWS

*** Here in the capital, juvenile justice issues appeared to be in the political fast lane back in February of 2009. Now, everything appears to be stuck in neutral.

As mentioned last week, Vicki Spriggs decided to stay in Texas and withdrew her name from consideration for the administrator job at OJJDP. Gladys Carrion, another candidate Justice had in mind, does not appear interested. And JJ Today also heard this week that a third possible choice, Ernestine Gray, had not been contacted about the position in months and was not a serious candidate.

At this point, it will be shocking if there is a Senate-confirmed administrator in 2010. Meanwhile, the Office of Justice Programs just moved Cathy Pierce over to OJJDP from the Office of Violence Against Women. Pierce will serve as a deputy director.

If anyone has thoughts on whom OJJDP should consider for the job at this point, e-mail JJ Today. You don’t have to give your name, but you do have to give at least one reason why this person would make a good candidate. If we get a few legitimate submissions, we’ll run them in the coming weeks.

Reauthorization of the Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act? No news is bad news at this point for anyone who wants it to happen this year. Between Independence Day and Sept.12, Congress will only be in session from July 11 to Aug. 9. After Sept. 12, you can bet there will be a lot of work on re-election campaigns.

Rep. George Miller (D-Calif.), who heads the House Committee on Education and Labor, sent a statement to Youth Today back in October of 2009 saying he was committed to getting JJDPA reauthorized “in this Congress.” Back then, it sounded like a statement that bought a lot of time, since “this Congress” is around until the end of 2010. Now, the window is closing. 

Quick FYI on an early candidate for OJJDP administrator: David Onek, who has been serving as a fellow at the University of California-Berkeley’s Boalt Hall School of Law, where he has conducted criminal justice podcasts with the likes of Office of Justice Programs boss Laurie Robinson and W. Haywood Burns Institute President James Bell. Now, Onek appears close to a run for San Francisco District Attorney. In a letter to friends and colleagues, Onek said he will likely run if current D.A. Kamala Harris moves on to become California’s next attorney general.

***Another slow-moving justice issue related to juveniles is the Prison Rape Elimination Act of 2003 standards. The act established the National Prison Rape Elimination Commission, which spent about half a decade soliciting research and expert opinion, and presented Justice with a set of recommended standards on June 23, 2009.

The act says that “not later than one year after receiving the report…the Attorney General shall publish a final rule adopting national standards for the detection, prevention, reduction, and punishment of prison rape.” So the final rules officially became overdue on Wednesday.

It’s not surprising that the deadline was missed. The department released NPREC’s proposed standards for public comment this year with a deadline of May 10, so Justice has had just over a month to consider those comments.

Seven major youth advocacy organizations, including the Campaign for Youth Justice, submitted a list of recommended changes to NPREC’s standards. They asked Justice, among other things, to not require states to use medical staff members in detention and residential facilities to question juveniles about abusive sexual behavior the youths might have engaged in, and to limit the punishment of juveniles who have consensual sex in those facilities.

Justice submitted the NPREC proposal for comment without making any changes. Will it finalize the NPREC standards in the same fashion?

The NPREC standards are “a step in the right direction,” said Campaign CEO Liz Ryan, but “we would be disappointed if that’s all they did.”

***The Coalition for Juvenile Justice is looking for presenters for its October conference on disproportionate minority contact. Deadline is July 22.

***Condolences to the family of Rowlett Juvenile Judge Belinda Loveland, who police believe was shot by her husband, Richard, who then turned the gun on himself and took his own life. Dallas Morning News reporter Richard Abshire covered the murder/suicide, as well as Loveland’s commitment to preventing area youth from ever making it into her court room.

PUBLICATIONS

***Great summary of the Graham v. Florida case by American Bar Association writer Mark Hansen. Hansen does a particularly good job describing in plain English the evolving science around the functioning and development of youths’ brains.  

***The latest edition of “The Judges’ Page,” a newsletter on the Court Appointed Special Advocates website with support from OJJDP, features a slew of articles from judges and youth experts on the subject of youth who cross over from child welfare systems to juvenile justice (and vice-versa).

In related news, the Center for Juvenile Justice Reform will host a multi-system integration certificate program for private sector stakeholders in juvenile justice and child welfare. The session aims to “bring together current and future leaders in private organizations to increase their knowledge about multi-system reform efforts related to crossover youth.”

MEDIA

***Really fascinating (and disillusioning) coverage by Baltimore Sun reporter Tracy Bishop of the Lamont Davis trial, in which the teen was convicted of attempted murder. Davis received a life sentence and an additional 30-year sentence for shooting a young man with whom he allegedly had an argument over a girl, and a 5-year-old girl who was struck in the head for no reason (both are alive and recovering). It appears the defense may have squandered a chance to use information from the GPS monitoring bracelet Davis wore, because of a previous and unrelated charge, to show that he was not the shooter.

One thing about this story travels past the Maryland state line, and that is the length of his sentence. Davis got life for one shooting, and 30 years for the second victim, which means in theory he could be eligible for parole at some point when he is very old and grey.

The U.S. Supreme Court recently ruled in Graham v. Florida that sentencing a juvenile to life without parole is unconstitutional in non-homicide cases, and this scenario epitomizes the grey area created by that ruling. No, Judge Gale Rasin did not impose a straight-up LWOP sentence on Davis. But Terrance Graham’s lawyer in the Supreme Court case, Bryan Gowdy, talked to Youth Today about the notion that sentences that were the “functional equivalent” of life without parole should be challenged under Graham.

***Another good Baltimore Sun story: reporter Julie Bykowicz covers Maryland’s attempt to build a 180-bed pre-trial facility just for juveniles who are charged as adults. A number of advocates have opposed the building because it’s twice the amount of beds needed on a typical day to house transferred juveniles, many of whom are shuttled back into juvenile court under Maryland’s system.

***A judge-turned-legislator Frederick Kessler (D-Milwaukee), says the next step for Wisconsin after closing one of its two juvenile lockups is to raise its age of jurisdiction to 18 (it is currently 17). That could make sense, considering the state has more juvenile beds than it needs and has an overcrowding problem in its adult facilities.

Vicki Spriggs, executive director of the Texas Juvenile Probation Commission, has withdrawn from consideration for the top job at the Justice Department’s Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, JJ Today has learned.

Spriggs had been considered by some to be the frontrunner for the nomination before she withdrew her name last week. A source said she will remain in Texas because the state, facing an $18 billion shortfall for 2011, is poised to make deep budget cuts across the board and Spriggs wants to protect funding for juvenile probation as much as possible.

Texas began reforming its juvenile justice system in 2007, downsizing the role of the state-run facilities and placing more of the responsibility (and funding) with the county systems. Spriggs commission oversees those county offices, and it would seem she fears a backslide coming for them if their budgets are slashed.

It’s unclear what this means for OJJDP in the big picture. If Justice had settled on Spriggs as the OJJDP director, it could be back to the drawing board for yet another round of candidates. If the choice had been reduced to two candidates – say, Spriggs and Ernestine Gray – perhaps this eliminates any decision-making for Justice and the nomination process speeds up. Either way, with the summer recess approaching, a 100-plus nominee backlist awaiting confirmation and a Senate hearing for Supreme Court Elena Kagan on the immediate agenda, it could be 2011 before anyone could be confirmed by the Senate as OJJDP administrator.  

Update: Looks like the excellent Texas justice website Grits for Breakfast scooped us on the Spriggs withdrawl by a couple days! Grits posted this e-mail, which Spriggs sent to TJPC staff, on Friday:

In recent weeks I have shared with audiences at various conferences I've addressed and with TJPC staff that I was approached by the White House Office of Personnel to determine my level of interest in appointment to the position of Director of the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP). I was honored to be considered for this appointment and to have the opportunity to serve the nation - so my name was vetted as a nominee.

I have recently withdrawn my name from consideration due to circumstances (budget issues and Sunset review) and timing (the approaching legislative session).

Since the creation of TJPC in 1981 we (TJPC and the field) have worked to professionalize juvenile probation. Our focus expanded in 1995 when the Texas Legislature overhauled the juvenile justice system, funded the increase in local and regionally operated secure post-adjudication beds, and invested other funding for juvenile probation services.

We/the field, focused on assuring an appropriate level of system response to juvenile offenders and developing and expanding community based services. Juvenile probation has achieved all of the goals established by the state's leadership between 1995 - 2007 and, in many cases, exceeded expectations.

2007 bought unexpected information forward; abuses were occurring in the state's institutions. As a result of this information the state's leadership began to rely on juvenile probation departments to divert even more youth from commitment to the state's institutions. Funding was increased and again juvenile probation departments exceeded expectations.

All of the success of the past will be part of the record considered as we enter the next legislative session; the looming budget shortfall, state agency budget reductions, the number of youth successfully diverted from commitment and the completion of the TJPC and TYC Sunset review are just a few of the issues that will be addressed.

I look forward to being HERE to address those challenges. My roots are Texas roots and my interests are Texas children and families and Texas juvenile justice.

Working together we can continue to keep justice and children first and foremost in our thoughts and planning and find a way to create wins during the next legislative session.

To say it succinctly, I am here for a long time to come.

Vicki

***On the surface, all is quiet on the JJ front in the nation’s capital. No news on a nominee to lead OJJDP, past what we wrote here a few weeks ago. The Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act reauthorization is through the Senate Judiciary Committee, has been for months. Beltway advocates were told to expect a House version of the reauthorization by June 10. That didn’t happen, but the expectation is that a bill will be in the hopper next week.

Below the surface? Obviously JJ Today makes calls around the country, sometimes just to see what’s happening outside the capital. The most frequent answer to “What’s going on?” these days goes something like this: “Not much, just trying to stay open, working on proposals for OJJDP grant X.”

If our calls are any indication, the staff of  the Office of Justice Programs (OJP) is going to have its hands full scoring lots of grant proposals in the juvenile justice realm this summer. We would imagine the same is true of Congressional offices, where the requests for federal earmarks must be substantial.

***Two conferences of note coming up:

July 18-21, San Diego: National Council of Juvenile and Family Court Judges Annual Conference. Registration is $550 and up, get in with the early-bird discount by June 18.

October 23-25, Jersey City, N.J.: Fundamental Fairness, Eliminating Racial and Ethnic Disparities in Juvenile Justice, hosted by the Coalition for Juvenile Justice. The conference will be preceded by a one day train session on Oct. 22, offered by the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP), State Relations and Assistance Division (SRAD). Registration fee is yet to be determined.

***Not sure what to think of this meta-analysis released by the Campbell Collaboration, Formal System Processing of Juveniles: Effects on Delinquency. Admittedly we are late on this, because it was published in January.

It’s a meta-analysis of 29 studies done on the impact of processing a juvenile as opposed to either diverting him or doing nothing. The general finding is that processing has no impact on crime control, and correlates to increased delinquency. Studies that compared processing to diversion showed the largest negative effects, which suggests that processing is mildly worse than doing nothing but significantly worse than a genuine diversion to services.

On the other hand, how much stock can one put in a meta-analysis that is top-heavy with old studies? It’s not Campbell’s fault: the group decided to take any study that fit a high methodological standard between 1973 and 2008. But what they found were a lot of studies from the early 1990s, and not much afterward. And the most recent study, from 2008, finds a positive connection in one jurisdiction between processing and crime control when compared with diversion to teen courts. 

It is entirely likely that many states, cities and counties still formally process more juveniles than they need to. It is also entirely possible that what comes after processing has greatly improved for a lot of systems, and that processing leads to deep-end placement less than it did before. Anyway, JJ Today would welcome thoughts from any of our readers on the subject.

***The D.C. Department of Youth Rehabilitation Services will hold a high school graduation for 12 of its juveniles housed at the New Beginnings Youth Development Center, which replaced the city’s old debacle of a secure facility (Oak Hill) this year. 

The reform-minded leadership at DYRS (first under Vincent Schiraldi, now under Interim Director Marc Schindler) still has its critics when it comes to decisions about who is securely committed, and the diligence with which it monitors and serves youth in the community. But one thing about the reform that cannot be disputed: it securely locks up the worst offenders, does it for a longer period of time, and better educates them while they are locked up.

Consider the following:

-In 2005, 42 percent of Oak Hill’s wards were there for crimes deemed “low offense severity”; only 30 percent were Tier 1 offenders. By 2008, 61 percent of the youth placed at Oak Hill were Tier 1.

-The average length of stay for Oak Hill’s Tier 1 offenders in 2005 was just over two months. By 2008: they were all there for between nine to 12 months, according to DYRS.

-Pre-Schiraldi figures on education are pretty murky. But school attendance at Oak Hill was under 50 percent, and no tracking was done to see how many juveniles were in school a few months after release. Today: nearly 100 percent attendance, DYRS said, and the average student completes 86 of the credits available to them at New Beginnings’ high school, the Maya Angelou Academy. There is room for improvement upon release, since only six of 10 were attending school six months after release. But at least the current leadership is interested in the outcome.

Of the 900 youth committed to DYRS this year, 19 are going on to college next year. Eight of those 19 are graduating today from the city’s facility for its highest-risk offenders.

***New York Times reporter Jim Dwyer wrote this week about the state’s Tryon Residential Center, which epitomizes New York’s peculiar impasse when it comes to juvenile justice reform. The Times editorial board supports Gov. David Paterson’s plan for reform.

***Wisconsin will likely close the Ethan Allen School for Boys in the very near future. The plan seems to call for turning that campus into an adult facility while building a new juvenile detention center in the area. Wisconsin now joins the ranks of Texas, Ohio and California as states where lower incarceration and fiscal sensibility facilitated a reduction in the amount of bricks and mortar involved in the JJ system. In other states, the hard budgetary times had the reverse effect: alternative programs were shed to protect the secure facilities. 

About 15 states now have some sort of child advocacy office, an entity charged with monitoring the conditions and/or outcomes of youths who come in contact with state or county-run systems.

Some of the monitors are stand-alone offices that operate independent of the agencies they monitor. Others, like Texas’ Office of the Independent Ombudsman, are asked to investigate specific complaints or conditions. A handful of monitors are responsible for watch-dogging both the child welfare and juvenile justice systems.

Few, if any, are as prolific or periodic as Maryland’s Juvenile Justice Monitoring Unit (JJMU), which recently released its first-quarter­ report on Department of Juvenile Services (DJS) facilities. By our count from the JJMU website, it was the 63rd report in 10 years for a unit with six staff members and less than $1 million. So JJ Today figured it would be worth laying out exactly how the unit operates in the state.

JJMU was created in 1999 in response to an abuse scandal involving some of the state’s juvenile boot camps. It was first established by executive order of then-Gov. Parris Glendening (D), and gained a more permanent hold later through enabling legislation.

The staff currently includes five full-time monitors who serve JJMU Director Marlana Valdez. It is housed at the Office of the Attorney General (AG), although it is also independent of that office. An assistant AG is assigned to provide legal advice to the staff.

The mission is to report to Gov. Martin O’Malley (D), DJS Secretary Don DeVore and the Maryland General Assembly on the “treatment of and services provided to” youth under DJS jurisdiction. This includes issues such as abuse, length of stay in facilities, staff shortages and DJS monitoring.

The unit has produced at least five reports each year on Maryland’s juvenile facilities since 2003 – “at least” being the key phrase because there were a number of years when the unit cranked out a few special reports on top of its standard output.

The special reports will often come in response to a specific incident, such as the time that a juvenile lost two teeth after being pushed into a stack of chairs by a worker at the Baltimore City Juvenile Justice Center. But the quarterly reports are what really set JJMU apart from other independent monitors.

Two of the four quarterly releases include a monitor’s assessment for each of DJS’ 27 facilities. There used to be a building-by-building breakdown every quarter, but Valdez said she felt like semi-annual updates in the first and third quarters coupled with macro-view reports in the even quarters were a better use of resources.

Each of the facility reports includes a breakdown of the facility in the following categories:

• Population
• Staffing
• Safety and Security
• Physical Plant and Basic Services
• Education
• Rehabilitative and Recreational Programming
• Medical and Behavioral Health
• Youth Advocacy, Internal Monitoring and Investigation
• Recommendations

All of JJMU’s work, Valdez said, is sent to DJS for review before it is publicly released. DJS also has the opportunity to issue a public response to the report and almost always does, posting responses on the JJMU website.

The body of work is staggering when you consider that the unit’s budget is about $850,000 and it employs six people. As with most historical juvenile justice points, there is no way to prove this, but the unit could be making present-day Maryland DJS the most transparent juvenile justice system in the history of the field.

Think about it: twice a year, there is a public rundown of what is and is not happening in every single facility operated by DJS. The review is not done by the department, so there is little concern over the integrity of the facts. What’s more, there is almost always a formal response to the information by the department. And that is before the macro-reports and special reports in response to particular incidents are filed.

Judging by the sheer quantity of the information, it’s hard to imagine a statewide collection of facilities about which more is known than today’s DJS buildings in Maryland. If there is any comparable example of periodic, comprehensive reporting on a system, by all means e-mail JJ Today and we will run a list of any others that warrant study.

“I’m incredibly proud of our monitors’ work,” Valdez said. “They are all very talented and work tirelessly.”

At the end of the day, the value of such an undertaking is measured by asking: what changed? Valdez pointed to a few areas where she said she feels the unit has had an impact, starting with her belief that there is significantly “less child abuse in facilities than there was 10 or even 5 years ago.” That is, of course, a central measure because a decrease in abuse means that there were likely improvements in a number of areas, including the training of staff and the timely movement of juveniles.

“Girls’ services have improved,” she said. “There’s [funding] in the works to establish two staff-secure residential programs for girls and the Waxter population has decreased.” (Waxter is a troubled facility that nearly everyone agrees should be closed.)

Perhaps the most high-profile monitoring achievement was the finding that nearly 90 percent of youth who came through DJS’ Victor Cullen Center were rearrested shortly after release. DJS had designs on replicating the Cullen model with another facility, but those plans were tabled after the unit revealed the high recidivism rate.

In general, though, JJMU’s findings and recommendations do not carry as much innate authority as monitors in other states. That’s in part because it was not created out of a consent decree that is overseen by a judge, thus there is no person of authority who can compel DJS to act on recommendations.

That likely vexes Valdez from time to time, and is almost certainly is of constant relief to DJS Secretary DeVore. Valdez acknowledges that there is a “natural tension” between her office and DJS, which is apparent if you read the department’s responses to the JJMU reports. “And that’s the way it should be,” she added.

But assessing the system simply for the benefit of information might be what keeps independent monitoring alive in Maryland’s JJ system for the long haul. And despite the inevitable friction, Valdez said, the relationship between DJS and JJMU has greatly improved.

“We’re meeting with the secretary every six weeks and participating in strategic planning for girls’ services,” Valdez said. “I think we are seeing more of a collaborative effort, more openness to working together than in past administrations.”

DeVore said in an e-mail to JJ Today that he does recognize the value of an independent monitor, particularly in a state where reform is afoot.

“I believe that having an independent juvenile justice monitor gives the public the assurance that an outside group of experts is assessing the progress of the juvenile services agency,” DeVore said. “For that reason, I believe that there is a benefit to an independent monitoring group who provides appropriate reviews and constructive criticism to the juvenile justice agency.” 

The 2010 first-quarter report noted a high number of runaways and a low number of graduates from the Silver Oak Academy, a new DJS’ facility operating on the grounds of the now-defunct Bowling Brook Academy.

DJS agreed with the unit that things had not run smoothly out of the gate at Silver Oak, which is operated by a for-profit company called Rite of Passage. But both sides agree that the program deserves more time to develop, because few of the juveniles from year one actually were subject to Rite of Passage’s proposed nine-month plan.

One thing is certain: progress at Silver Oak – or the lack of it – will unfold in relatively plain sight.

***A couple of new solicitations from OJJDP:

Group Mentoring Research and Evaluation Program: To evaluate the effectiveness of group mentoring programs at Boys & Girls Clubs around the country. Why only BGCA programs? It’s unclear, but the organization has received more money for mentoring than anyone else.   

Deadline: June 28.

Amount: One award, $2 million over three years.

National Training and Technical Assistance Center for Youth in Custody: Establishment of a center that would assist facilities with accentuating the rehabilitative priorities of the juvenile justice system. It’s worth noting that the solicitation includes assistance to adult facilities that house juveniles.

Deadline: June 29

Amount: One award, $500,000, renewable for up to three years.

National Girls Institute: Establish a website, provide technical assistance on serving girls in the system, and help develop standards for that work.

Deadline: June 30

Amount: Could be up to $1.5 million over three years; dependent on the availability of funding past 2010 though.

Evaluations of Girls' Delinquency Programs: To measure the impact of programs around the country that target JJ-involved girls, which is something that a number of advocates felt should have been done by the Girls Study Group.

Deadline: July 8

Amount: Multiple grants, between $200,000 and $400,000.

***Luzerne Update! The Interbranch Commission on Juvenile Justice, created by Pennsylvania law to investigate the circumstances that led to the Luzerne County scandal, issued its final report today. Quite a doozy. Here is the closing paragraph of the report, which distills the essence of what the commission found after months of research and interviews:

We understand that our recommendations offer little protection against determined greed, avarice and criminality. But based on the testimony presented at our hearings, we also understand that many otherwise good and responsible people simply lost their way and chose accommodation over principle, and passivity over vigilance. To the extent that the commission’s work will lead others to reaffirm their commitment to the cause of justice, and to encourage others to take action necessary to improve and reform our legal system, then as a Commonwealth we will have redeemed ourselves in some small way for the myriad failings that undermined the rule of law.

The report details why thousands of adjudications were overturned and expunged and the effect on the victims of serious crimes for which no one is being punished – an area that hasn’t been much covered in the press. It also gives explicit information about the depth of corruption throughout Luzerne’s judicial system. The commission members are clearly embarrassed by the level of unchecked malfeasance in Luzerne County as they lay out the full picture of how that corruption led to such disregard for constitutional rights.

The 68-page report also includes new accounts of misdeeds by the two judges, Michael Conahan and Mark Ciavarella, who were at the heart of the scandal. There is an account of a 16-year-old girl, an honor student, who made a vulgar hand motion to a police office during a custody dispute between her parents and her sister, and then ended up in placement for EIGHT MONTHS.

There was the “fine court” assembled by Ciavarella, in which juveniles as young as 10 who had not paid fines associated with their cases were made to face the court with no prosecutor or defender around (just a probation officer). If they nor their parents could pay the fine,  the youth was sent to detention. So youths who owed the county about $400 were punished with a week or more in detention, which costs the county between $100 and $200 per day.

There was the anonymous complaint filed with Pennsylvania Judicial Conduct Board that identified 33 “glaring violations of ethics which are occurring at the Luzerne County Courthouse.” The complaint wasn’t looked at for seven months, was tabled by the board and never brought up again.  There was never any investigation of any of the allegations.  investigation.

The report discloses that Frank Vita – Conahan’s brother-in-law – served as the court-selected psychologist and was paid about $900,000 to evaluate court-involved youths. Former assistant defender Jonathan Ursiak recalled that Vita’s recommendations very frequently included placement.

There are the words of Public Defender Basil Russin about why his office never really felt the need to question Ciavarella’s judicial philosophy: “Everybody loved it….Schools got rid of all their problems. Parents…who had problems with the kid at home, they called the police. Police said, you want us to take him away? Sure. I can’t control the kid anymore. Away the kid would go…the DA loved it because they were getting convictions.”

Russin also said with limited staff and resources, he generally dedicated half of one defender’s time to juvenile court because Ciavarella just moved through the docket like a machine. And since so many youths were improperly waiving counsel (also covered in the report), his office did not even have to participate in a lot of the juvenile cases before the court.

The report does an excellent job narrating how one judge’s zero-tolerance philosophy, coupled with the apathy of other officers of the court including defenders, prosecutors and probation officers, set the table for one of the most shameful court scandals in United States history.

The report finishes with a litany of recommendations to improve a range of court and social service functions including probation, prosecutor monitoring and judicial conduct review. Perhaps the most important recommendation: classify all juveniles as “indigent,” create a state funding stream that would provide money to counties for juvenile defenders, and establish a Center for Juvenile Defense Excellence.

The report also recognizes local press and especially the Philadelphia-based Juvenile Law Center, for exposing the shameful operations of the court, even before the federal investigation that led to the charges against the two judges.  

***Youth Today already posted a story on the U.S. Supreme Court decision in Graham v Florida, and our subscribers can look for a more in-depth look at its ramifications in our June issue, which comes out next week. But here’s yet one more point we think should be made about the aftermath of the decision.

There are 37 states that have life without parole sentences for certain juveniles and now must replace with new sentencing provisions. The court mandated that juveniles have a “meaningful opportunity” for release.  

JJ Today has contacted many people, all of whom were willing to pontificate on what they think would be the best way for states to change those laws. Suggestions include: review sentences after inmates turn 30, review them after 10 years of the sentence, and try all juveniles in juvenile court.

Not one person wished to discuss what they felt would be the worst revision they could tolerate.  As Terrance Graham’s attorney Bryan Gowdy put it, there is a point at which a really high term of years or wait for parole would be the “functional equivalent” of a life sentence.

The lack of open discussion about what is tolerable and what is a “functional equivalent” really could affect the 129 inmates doing LWOP for juvenile non-homicides at the moment. California has four of them. It used to have five, before one inmate successfully appealed his LWOP conviction last year and won the chance to be resentenced. The judge gave him four consecutive 40-year sentences as a replacement.

This is not to say the notion of a hearing after 10 years is a bad one; it makes sense to many people. But the reality is that at least some of the 37 states who will make revisions have no intention of replacing LWOP sentences with a system that could, conceivably, place an inmate on the path to release after 10 years.

Without a public discussion about what might be an acceptable maximum threshold, it is left to  state legislatures either to figure it out or follow the standard set by the first state to act.

If that state is Florida, which has 77 inmates to resentence, advocates for early review might be very disappointed with what follows. Attorney General Bill McCollum has already said he expects Graham to “be resentenced to a very long term in prison.” Even before the Graham ruling, one Florida insider told us, there was a noticeable increase in very high term-of-years sentences in Duval County (Jacksonville).

***Other news on the Graham ruling:

-According to a letter filed with the Supreme Court this week by Acting Solicitor General Neal Katyal that there are not six federal inmates doing LWOP for juvenile non-homicides. That was the figure cited by the Bureau of Prisons, but Katyal’s letter said that each of the six got the LWOP sentence pursuant to crimes that included homicide, or a series of crimes that included acts committed as an adult.

-Former Solicitor General and current SCOTUS nominee Elena Kagan was taken to task on the Graham case by Kent Scheidegger, who writes the Crime and Consequences blog for the Criminal Justice Legal Foundation. His beef: Kagan not defending the federal law permitting LWOP if six of its inmates were sentenced to life without parole as juveniles.

-Research mentioned in the Graham ruling said South Carolina only had one juvenile LWOP inmate. But the state has found two more, reports The State’s  Noelle Phillips.

***Rep. Bobby Scott (D-Va.) went viral with his push to sell the Youth PROMISE Act last month. Scott released a YouTube video about the act that features celebrities such as actress Robin Wright and hip-hop icon Russell Simmons. Simmons also blogged about the value of the PROMISE Act on the Huffington Post.

***The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation’s Models for Change initiative released “Toward Developmentally Appropriate Practice: A Juvenile Court Training Curriculum” this week. Got a nice little plug from the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, who circulated news of the release on its JuvJust listserv. It is going to be interesting to see whether a financial relationship grows between OJJDP and the MacArthur foundation and Annie E. Casey Foundation (home of the Juvenile Detention Alternatives Initiative).

***Congrats to Campaign for Youth Justice media guru Eric Solomon, who won the Golden Thinker Award from the North American Precis Syndicate. NAPS specializes in distributing press releases and media-ready content to news services, and Solomon’s “Justice and Safety” was picked up by 191 broadcasters. So for all the advocates who would love to get their material picked up, check out Solomon’s piece as an example of what works.

This article was corrected on May 27

Sources close to the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention say three people are being considered by the Department of Justice to be recommended for the top spot at the agency, which is currently held by Acting Administrator Jeff Slowikowski.

The three:

-Vicki Spriggs, executive director of the Texas Juvenile Probation Commission.

Spriggs appears to be the frontrunner at this point, from what JJ Today hears. Her background includes one of the qualities many in the field view as critical for the next administrator: experience in running a big juvenile justice system.

Texas Juvenile Probation Commission (TJPC), with a staff of about 66, oversees the county  departments that each year handle more than 40,000 juveniles on probation. Another agency, the Texas Youth Commission (TYC), is responsible for juveniles who are incarcerated in secure facilities.

“OJJDP needs strong leadership after the long dark years of the Bush administration,” said Mark Soler, executive director of the Center for Children’s Law and Policy. “Vicky Spriggs has demonstrated dynamic and effective leadership in Texas and would bring those skills to OJJDP.”

Another national JJ figure, who believes Justice should have tapped Vinny Schiraldi for this job months ago, disagreed.

“She was not part of the reform movement in Texas,” he said. “She’s no Vinny Schiraldi.”

A Texas JJ reform advocate – Marc Levin, director of the Austin-based Center for Effective Justice – told us that while Spriggs might not be out advocating reform, her implementation of changes has been excellent.

Last year the state year approved a “committed reduction” plan to provide funds to any county that agreed to lower the number of juveniles it committed to TYC facilities. Commitments to TYCin 2010 are down 40 percent compared with the same time frame in 2009, according to Levin.

“TJPC put together the whole framework” for that concept, Levin said. “A lot of impetus for change will come from outside the system. But I certainly give[Spriggs] and the commission credit for implementing them. I would be disappointed to lose her.”

Spriggs has strong ties to some national juvenile justice organizations. She is the current chair of the National Council on Crime and Delinquency, the Oakland-based research and training/technical assistance organization that handles projects with a number of states and counties, as well was with OJJDP. She is the Texas team leader for the Mental Health/Juvenile Justice Action Network, part of the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation’s Models for Change Initiative.

Spriggs is also director of the 13-state southern region for the National Association of Probation Executives. A number of those states have some work to do when it comes to complying with the Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act.

-Ernestine Gray, chief judge of the Orleans Parish (La.) Juvenile Court

Gray has been involved in juvenile and family court since the beginning of Ronald Reagan’s second term. Though she has not run a major state or county system, she is certainly not a novice when it comes to juvenile justice.

Gray has long been involved with two organizations with close ties to OJJDP. She is the current chair of the board of trustees for National Court Appointed Special Advocates (CASA), and is a former president of the National Council of Juvenile and Family Court Judges.

An interesting side note of a Gray nomination: It would mean there would be two former presidents of the National Council of Juvenile and Family Court Judges holding senate-confirmed jobs at the Office of Justice Programs at the same time. Former council president Susan Carbon was confirmed in February to lead the Office on Violence Against Women. It would represent quite a turnaround in stature for a group that got into hot water with the last administration over use of federal dollars.

-Gladys Carrión, director of the New York Office of Child and Family Services.

That Carrión’s name is still out there surprises us, because multiple sources who work closely with her told JJ Today that she is not interested and has told Justice as much.

“I think she’s terrific,” said one source. “But she’s not a candidate.”

Carrión has presided for three years over a system with abusive conditions in its secure facilities that became such an issue, she basically instructed judges to stop placing youths in some of them. The Justice Department has investigated, and the state is hoping to stave off federal oversight with a cocktail of solutions: closure of many facilities, improving conditions in those that remain open, and larger investment in community programming and alternatives to incarceration.

Publicly, Carrión has support on that front. “We’ve got as good a commissioner as we’re gonna get,” said New York City’s new probation chief and former D.C. reformer Vincent Schiraldi, speaking at a March panel held by the Center for New York City Affairs. “We’re not gonna get any better than Gladys.”

Privately, some prominent JJ players have voiced frustration that while Carrión talks the right way, she has come up short on the first action towards reform of the state system: facility closures.

In a cash-strapped state, closure of some facilities is what can provide savings within OCFS to free money for other investments and improvements.  The main opponents of those closures are the union employees who work there and politicians who represent those workers. There are some who feel that Carrión did not reach out more to negotiate something with them, instead taking an aggressive tone about the issue in the media.

Other JJ leaders also were furious with Carrión after the New York Times exposed the haphazard mental health services provided to securely confined youth.

One leader of a group that partners with OCFS said problems with Carrión’s performance in New York might not be an issue in the federal office.

“She has great vision and philosophy,” he said. “I certainly would like her at OJJDP.”

Of course, the one time we get the Weekly Notes done early, the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention adds really noteworthy funding notices on Thursday night. Here they are:

Youth With Sexual Behavior Problems Program: Fascinating solicitation. The grants will support programs that seek to assist youth who have been charged with a sexual offense and the victim of that offense. Not surprisingly, emphasis in the solicitation is placed on working with offenders whose victim is a relative or co-resident.

The approach for each child must come from a “multi-disciplinary” team that includes (at a minimum) “social services staff, juvenile court staff, mental health personnel, victim advocate personnel, law enforcement and community-support providers.”

Part B of this will fund one organization to provide assistance and resources to winners of Part A, so this is really two solicitations in one.

The funding amount should give potential applicants pause. Winners will get about $333,000 for two years, and it is on winners to track and evaluate the work. So the likelihood is that you would need to bring in a significant amount more money from somewhere to do this work, or at least have a really good plan in place to tap existing local resources.

With this solicitation and the acceptance of Ohio’s Walsh Act compliance, there are certainly indicators that this Justice Department understands the major difference between juvenile sex offenders and adult sex offenders.

Deadline to apply: June 28.

Juvenile Indigent Defense National Clearinghouse: The administration is using what resources it can this year to make indigent defense a priority at the Justice Department. This venture is to set up a national entity that can provide technical assistance and training to lawyers of juvenile offenders, and produce publications and resources in that field.

Big note of caution for any interested party: it’s a one-year grant, probably for $500,000. The notice says future funding will be “contingent on the performance of the awardee and available funding.” The first part of that is good, because you want someone to feel pressure to get the thing up and running. But the reality is, there’s no telling if OJJDP will have enough free money to play with to fund a clearinghouse past the first year, in which case the winner will either have to chase some private funds or an earmark to keep it going.

Deadline to apply: June 24.

Safe Start Promising Approaches Project and grant to evaluate those approaches: Another pet project of Attorney General Eric Holder, this is one of the funding streams through which the department will seed efforts to reduce children’s exposure to violence. Funds from this previous solicitation will go to community-based efforts to do so, this pot will support “practice enhancements and innovations to prevent and reduce the impact of children’s exposure to violence in their homes and communities.” So winners will have to prove that the money will build on a proven approach, or that it will serve as a laboratory for a currently undervalued approach to the work.

OJJDP is looking to fund about 10 projects at $250,000 for a 18 months. The evaluation grant will go to one organization for about $760,000. Same deal with both of these funding streams by the way: no guarantee of this work getting funded long-term by Justice, so there is always the chance that this year could be seed money for a venture you will have to fund some other way going forward.

Deadline to apply for either grant: June 25.

***Luzerne Update! A brief filed this week by U.S. attorneys in the case against disgraced judges Michael Conahan and Mark Ciavarella articulates what the government hopes to prove at trial. And one aspect of the attorneys’ case could be a major boost to the class-action lawsuit brought against the judges by hundreds of youths that came before the juvenile court last decade.

The civil suit seeks damages on behalf of the youths on the grounds that Ciavarella, the juvenile judge, steered them into the newly constructed private detention center in order to justify the center’s existence. Ciavarella heavily profited through kickbacks from the center’s owner, according to prosecutors.

But heretofore, the actual filings and documentation in the criminal case against the judges had not focused on that aspect. Most earlier filings dealt with the judges’ decision to stop placing youths in Luzerne County’s public detention center and start placing them in the private one facility.

That, in and of itself, wasn’t necessarily bad for the youths in question. The old detention center looks like a mental institution from a horror flick, and by all accounts it was less than adequate inside as well. The number of youths placed in detention clearly went up after the change of detention venue. However, Youth Today learned shortly after the scandal unfurled that Ciavarella had always been quick to lock youths up for low-level offenses.

But these paragraphs in the latest proffer, if backed up by testimony in court, really could solidify the civil suit’s argument that there was a profit motive involved in detention decisions:

Testimony at trial will establish that in approximately February 2003, one or more juvenile probation officers for Luzerne County were summoned to Mark Ciavarella Jr.’s office and put on the telephone with Michael Conahan. Michael Conahan expressed displeasure with delays in admissions of juvenile offenders to PA Child Care.Thereafter, weekly reports were often provided to Mark Ciavarella Jr. indicating the number of beds utilized at PA Child Care.On a number of occasions, probation officers developed non-custodial treatment plans for juvenile offenders which were rejected by Mark Ciavarella, Jr. in favor of custodial dispositions.

Testimony will establish that Mark Ciavarella Jr. and others acting at his behest, exerted pressure on Probation Office staff to recommend detention of juvenile offenders. On some occasions, probation officers were pressured to change recommendations of release to recommendations of detention.

Another paragraph refers to a 2001 visit in which Conahan spoke with Robert Powell, the lawyer and owner of the for-profit detention centers:

During this visit, Conahan indicated to Powell that Ciavarella was going to have to be compensated in connection with the facility. Powell understood Conahan to mean that Conahan and Ciavarella wanted money in exchange for Conahan’s assistance in closing the county-run detention facility and in exchange for Ciavarella making sure that the facility was kept full of juvenile offenders.

The brief filed on Tuesday names both Conahan and Ciavarella, and responds to motions filed in their defense. But a couple weeks ago, former president judge of Luzerne County Michael Conahan entered a new plea agreement. So assuming that plea still happens, Ciavarella faces a trial on the federal charges alone.  

Here are some links to some great coverage of the new developments by local media:

Transcript of a taped conversation among Conahan, Ciavarella and Powell in the Standard Speaker

Times-Leader’s Terrie Morgan-Besecker: Conahan ran the show.

***

Mercury News (California) reporter Karen de Sa says that Santa Clara may be the first place in America to set an age minimum (13) on placements to its juvenile detention center. And since she is probably the best youth and family services reporter in the business at the moment, we’re inclined to believe her.

The rule does allow for detention of youths 12 and under if “every effort possible” to avoid that decision has been exhausted. We hope the county never has to handle a case involving a 12-year-old accused of a homicide, but it will certainly be interesting to see how they handle that.

As de Sa reports, Santa Clara probation chief Sheila Mitchell surveyed other counties about the policy and heard of one that had an 11-year-old accused of murder on home electronic monitoring.

"They cringe every single moment, hoping nothing happens while that minor is out," Mitchell said of officials she spoke to in that county.

***New York State is under pressure to get its house in order on juvenile justice, with the threat of federal involvement hanging in the balance. You may have heard about this, because the Times has been all over it, and because New York City’s juvenile justice system alone handles the largest single youth population in the country.

In an op-ed published the paper earlier this month, two of New York City’s highest-ranking juvenile justice leaders hit the nail on the head as far as what this all comes down to in the state. The state will never have the resources to change things if all the existing juvenile facilities are allowed to remain open, said New York City Administration for Children’s Services Commissioner John Mattingly and Vinny Schiraldi, commissioner of the city’s Department of Probation.

The state-run facilities (at least some of them) were home to the abuses that got the state of New York in trouble with the Justice Department. Some need to stay open, because the state does need secure options, and Office of Family and Child Services has brought in experts such as Barry Krisberg and Mark Steward to assist with reform plans.

But many of the buildings need to close for two reasons:

1) Need. There are fewer New York youths committed by judges to secure confinement than in the past, and officials in New York City have made it clear they intend to keep even more juveniles inside the five boroughs (most of the state facilities are in far-flung necks of the woods).

2) Staffing costs. The facilities are staffed at the same level regardless of how many youths are actually held in them – a 100-bed  facility costs the state the same amount whether there is one kid in it or 100.

The bottom line is: New York is in dire straits economically, and it is also using a huge part of its juvenile justice budget to pay for facilities that it is barely using. There is only one good way that equation changes in the current economy, and that is for those facilities to end. The state cannot pay for all its current facilities AND expand alternatives. 

There are some in the New York JJ community who feel that OCFS boss Gladys Carrion has come up short on this issue by not productively engaging the major players involved in the facilities (unions and local politicians).

From afar, it is hard to believe there is no middle ground to be reached here, some way to help the employees who would lose jobs at these facilities into other lines of work. If anyone has a story about a jurisdiction that has successfully re-tasked or bought out JJ union employees as part of a reform effort, e-mail us. Would love to tell that one.

***Alex Busansky started this month as president of the Oakland, Calif.-based National Council on Crime and Delinquency . When the organization announced that it hired Busansky in March, it said he was taking over for Executive Vice President Chris Baird, “who has served as president on an interim basis since December.”

Eh, not so fast. JJ Today definitely was told by NCCD during the winter that Baird was the successor to former president Barry Krisberg, and that Baird would run the organization out of the Madison office with frequent trips to the Bay Area. Baird is now back in Madison full time.

Busansky joined NCCD from the Vera Institute of Justice; he ran the organization’s Washington, D.C. office. Busansky was a prosecutor for the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office from 1987 to 1998, which means he was in that office for a couple years with Bush-era OJJDP Administrator J. Robert Flores. We’ll have to ask him about that sometime.

***Here is a column by a Washington state juvenile judge about wanting to get to the underlying reasons for a juvenile’s delinquency; and here is an article out of Massachusetts about the opposite of wanting to do that.

Big businesses have come to rely on a budding technology called predictive analytics to help them guess the likely future actions of their customer base. What customers are most likely to upgrade their service? Which insurance claims are the most likely to be used by fraud perpetrators?

One of the largest producers of predictive analysis software (PASW) is SPSS, a Chicago-based company that was bought last summer by IBM for $1.2 billion.

And why should you care about any of this?

Last month, SPSS issued a press release introducing one of its most recent clients, the Florida Department of Juvenile Justice (DJJ). Generally, such a press release is business’s way of putting like entities on notice that something is happening, and there’s a very good chance that many a juvenile justice agency was made aware about the news of the relationship.

People in Florida certainly took notice, because DJJ”s Chief of Research and Planning Mark Greenwald fielded plenty of angst-laden phone calls asking if the agency was using the SPSS software to replace Florida’s respected and long-used risk assessment instrument, Positive Achievement Change Tool Assessment (PACT), which is used to assess youths at intake and monitor their progress while involved with the department.

It’s easy to see why he got those calls. SPSS’s press release says that DJJ would use predictive analytics:

“To reduce recidivism by determining which juveniles are likely to reoffend. Identified at-risk youth can then be placed in programs specific to the best course of treatment to ensure offenders do not re-enter the juvenile justice system.”

Makes it sound like each youth’s case would be plugged into a predictor machine at intake, Minority Report style, no? But after a discussion with Greenwald, the company announcement appears to be pretty misleading.

“Some people are under the impression that we were getting rid of our screening tool; that is not the case,” Greenwald said. “I humbly think we have the best screening tool going.”

The real deal on Florida’s use of PASW seems to be a fairly low-cost, long-term investment in quality assurance, so agencies probably should take notice.

“It’s an interesting and cool endeavor,” said Greenwald.

Here’s the story:

Greenwald’s predecessor, Bob Dale, was the one who first expressed interest in predictive analytics back in 2008. And actually, the department agreed to buy the SPSS software in 2009, but only recently did Greenwald’s staff finish training by SPSS on its use.      

The SPSS brand of predictive analytics cost Florida $12,000, which Greenwald said buys the use of the software indefinitely. An annual maintenance fee buys access to SPSS product support and updates to the ­­software (Florida isn’t currently paying for the maintenance because of budget issues).

Greenwald’s research and planning staff will take data from the PACT risk assessments, such as current and past offenses and diagnosed mental health needs, and enter that into the SPSS software. Other pieces of data, not collected during risk assessment, will also be included, including information about what specific treatments and services a youth received while in DJJ custody and how frequently he received them.

DJJ has two central objectives. First, and Greenwald said his staff have already started some experimental attempts at this, is to predict future trends in juvenile delinquency.

Predicting any changes in the nature of juvenile delinquency, Greenwald said, can be help DJJ and the governor’s office determine use of resources, which is, of course, a major issue in fiscally-challenged Florida. So if the inputs predict that there will be more female offenders in the coming year, for example, the state theoretically could put more resources towards programs that serve girls. That sounds a tad more fluid than the real-life reaction of systems to trends.

The other objective, which is more evaluative than it is predictive, is to use the software to determine whether the department is making the right decisions for certain youths.

“If we find that kids with certain criteria were sent to one type of program, and the same types of kids were sent to a different program and did better,” Greenwald said, the SPSS software allows them to identify that and start sending more youth to the program that yields a better outcome.

It could drill down farther than a placement or program into derivatives. A hypothetical: how predictive of non-recidivism is multi-systemic therapy (regardless of which program conducts it) for juveniles who are found delinquent of violent offenses?

The department could start using the software to forecast delinquency trends soon, but using it to do macro-analysis of placement decisions is a few years off, according to Greenwald. After a few years of data have been input, his department will start conducting evaluations on a “semi-annual or annual” basis.

“There is nothing wrong with our screening process,” he said. “We’re looking at the aggregate level to see if we can tweak some decisions.

At $12,000 plus the man hours needed to do analysis, “you don’t have to redirect many kids before you see a return on investments.”

Note: Because little attention is being paid to this in the mainstream media, JJ Today is going to give a brief profile of the juvenile inclusion standards of each state that comes into compliance from now until the deadline this summer.

Delaware became the second state to be deemed substantially compliant with the Adam Walsh Act. The issue of compliance with the act is significant to the JJ community, because under the act states must include at least some juvenile offenders on public sex offender registries, and have the discretion to include all of them if they are so inclined.

A number of states either do not include juveniles on the registries, or include them on lists that are only viewable by law enforcement. The first state to gain compliance, Ohio, got it done with rules that would publicly list only those juvenile sex offenders who were tried and convicted by juries.

Delaware is significantly more inclusive of juveniles on its registry. The state already includes juveniles on its public registry for any offense that would land an adult on it.

“Under Delaware law, the definition of ‘sex offender’ includes juveniles as well as adults,” said Sgt. Walter Newton, public information officer for the Delaware State Police, the agency that maintains the sex offender registry. “We make no differentiation once an individual has been convicted of a qualifying criminal offense. Bottom line, age doesn't matter.”

And the state considers a finding of delinquency the same as a conviction when it comes to the registry.

Here are the criminal codes for which registration on the sex offender registry is required in Delaware:

§ 765 through 780, § 787(b)(2), all found on this list

§ 1100, §§ 1108 through 1112A, all found on this list

§ 1335(a)(6), § 1335(a)(7), § 1352(2), § 1353(2) or § 1361(b), all found on this list.

Many of the offenses pertain to rape, coercion and exploitation. But here are two examples of crimes from the above that are particularly harsh on juveniles:

--765, first degree indecent exposure, which entails exposing genitals to someone under age 16. It just seems unnecessary to treat a juvenile who does this the same as an adult, when so frequently the juvenile is making a poor attempt at humor while the adult is exhibiting actual disturbing behavior.  

--1109, which deals with the receipt and transmission of child pornography. Reading this section as a layman, we wonder to what extent “sexting” could be prosecuted under it. The technological ease with which one youth could proliferate sexual depictions of other youths has made this a real problem, and perhaps hauling some moron teen into court for proliferating graphic pictures and video from his phone is a good wake-up call. But should moron teen have his name on a sex offender registry, and have to notify the state of Delaware of his every move for 25 years?

We’ve been hard at work here on a crazy cover story for the May issue of Youth Today, and a few other projects (including the piece about compliance we posted yesterday). It’s been awhile since we did the Notes, so here’s a quick-hit version with some headlines and things that caught our eye over the past couple weeks.

***OJJDP has issued a solicitation for the Community-Based Violence Prevention program, which was proposed by Obama. Four grants for about $2.2 million will be given out for ventures that are very similar to what Rep. Bobby Scott (D-Va.) would want to heavily fund under the Youth PROMISE Act, which remains in the hopper at the House Education and Labor Committee. Another solicitation was issued to evaluate the program; deadline for both is June 18.

***Luzerne Update! Michael Conahan, one of the two judges indicted for taking kickbacks in connection with the construction and operation of two private detention centers, has entered a new plea agreement on federal racketeering charges. The other defendant, Mark Ciavarella, is “going to trial,” says his lawyer, Al Flora.

Our two cents: Ciavarella is nuts. He and Conahan could get by in the civil case against them, but to push the criminal trial to a verdict is insane. A judge threw out a plea signed by both judges because they refused to take responsibility for what they did and refused to cooperate with probation officials preparing a pre-sentence report. Under that plea agreement, both judges would have received about seven years in prison.  Now Ciavarella could be facing 25 years if convicted.  

Conahan will be the third person in the scheme to plead guilty, including two developers. And the judge has already rejected their claims that part of the money paid to the judges was a finder’s fee.

***Still no opinion from the U.S. Supreme Court on the two cases pertaining to juvenile life without parole. Next date the court may release opinions is May 3. Very likely an opinion on this issue is happening in May; the court has dealt with all of the cases it heard in October and the LWOP cases were argued in November.

***On Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act reauthorization: no bill has been submitted on the House side in the week after a hearing was held by the Education and Labor Committee to discuss the subject. Heard this though: the bill is likely to be identical in structure to the Senate version (which has the support of the White House) with some amendments.

One amendment might be language about where juveniles who are transferred into the adult system are held; possibly a mandate that they be held in juvenile facilities until they turn 18. This is an idea embraced with virtual unanimity by national-level advocates, but JJ Today has heard that this could be a really tough adjustment for some state-run and private detention centers. If a facility is accustomed to handling juveniles within a certain range of offenses, and suddenly have to incarcerate accused murderers and others, that might warrant higher security.

It might be the right thing to do, but it certainly won’t be easy.

***Colorado is poised to start educating any juveniles awaiting trial as adults in the state, reports Joseph Boven of the Colorado Independent. Opposition to the bill that would guarantee this stems from the fact that it would draw resources and teachers from local school districts This is just speculation, but it’s possible that with a mandate to educate juveniles in adult facilities, systems would respond by opting to place all pre-trial juveniles in juvenile facilities. Education is already a mandate there, so no additional money or resources are expended.

***The Chicago Tribune hosted a forum to discuss what to do about all the killing of young people in the city. CNN’s Sanjay Gupta reported on the issue as well this week. One of the few programs people feel has been effective in curbing violence in the city is CeaseFire, which uses an amalgamation of faith groups, ex-offenders and nonprofits to contain conflict in high-crime neighborhoods.

The May issue of Youth Today covers an attempt to replicate CeaseFire in another city that has developed a reputation for murder, Baltimore. Check back on Monday for that, but the gist is: It is a program that has produced results when it’s run right. But it is VERY challenging to run right.

Chicago’s struggle with violence is hardly a new thing, by the way. Add Devil in the White City by Erik Larson to your summer reading list … fascinating book, and it really drives home that Chicago came into this world as a distinctly violent place.

***Cool story on teen peer courts by Daniel Wood of the Christian Science Monitor. This approach to juvenile justice appears to be picking up steam, although the funding for it in a lot of places that use it is fickle. Teen courts were a major focal point of the discussion at this month’s Coalition for Juvenile Justice conference, particularly in regard to teen courts’ ability to dispense with school-related crimes that needn’t be placed on the juvenile court docket.

Five states and three U.S. territories were out of compliance last year with at least one of the four core requirements of the Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act of 1974. That information is not regularly publicized by the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP), but the office was kind enough to supply us with a 2009 compliance report.

One state leader told us it’s the highest number of noncompliant states – seven findings of noncompliance involving five states – in a long time.

“To have seven-plus is unheard of over the past 10 years,” he said.

A quick refresher, for those who do not follow these details:

There are four aspects of juvenile justice systems that must be maintained by states in order to be considered compliant participants in the JJDPA. If a state is out of compliance in any of those four areas, OJJDP can withhold formula funds to the state.

The four core requirements:

Deinstitutionalization of Status Offenders (DSO): Juvenile judges cannot incarcerate juveniles who are found to have committed status offenses, a litany of actions that would not be considered crimes if they were adults (truancy, incorrigibility, running away, etc).

Jail Removal (JR): Incarcerated juveniles cannot be locked up or held in adult jails or prisons, with a few rare exceptions.

Sight and Sound Separation (SEP): In the rare instances in which juveniles can be held in an adult facility, they must be kept out of sight and sound of adult inmates.

Disproportionate Minority Contact (DMC): The state must make efforts to assess and address differences in the way that minority youth are treated by the juvenile justice system.

Here are the states and territories, and the requirements for which they were of compliance:

Arkansas: DSO, JR

Mississippi: DSO, JR

North Carolina: DSO

South Carolina: JR

Washington: DSO

Virgin Islands: DSO

Puerto Rico: SEP, JR

American Samoa: DMC

You can add Wyoming to the list of states that do not comply with the requirements, too, because it chooses not to participate in the JJDPA and thus forgoes the federal formula grants every year.

A few thoughts on what this all means:

1) Congrats again to Mississippi for being the standard-bearer on juvenile justice incompetence. One of our first pieces when we started the JJ Today blog wondered aloud why Mississippi, the poorest state in the country by nearly any measurement, would jeopardize a steady stream of federal dollars by failing to live up to a few standards.

A JJ activist in the South once speculated to us that it was an anti-fed thing for the state: You don’t get to tell us how to handle our juveniles, keep your money if you want.

Why not just drop out of participation like Wyoming? At least that state is forthright in its opposition, and some of the federal allotment that would go to the state goes instead to a Wyoming nonprofit that pushes for improvements to the state system. Mississippi appears just to  go along for the ride, and get the federal money when it can do so without making much effort. Pretty weasel-ish.

But watch out Mississippi! Arkansas might soon give you a run for your money when it comes to the worst system. One child advocate in the state, Dee Ann Newell, told us that the juvenile justice system is the shame of the state. While conducting research for a still on-going JJ project, the state rejected our request for information because Youth Today is “not a citizen of Arkansas.” Que? It isn’t exactly the reaction of a state with nothing to hide.

The National Center for Youth Law’s Pat Arthur, a long-time pit bull on juvenile justice, has her sights set on Arkansas, and the center recently got sizable grants from Atlantic Philanthropies and the Public Welfare Foundation to work on reform in that state and Wyoming.

2) Compliance appears to be a larger issue for the Southern states than it is for the rest of the nation. Four of the five out-of-compliance states for 2009 are among the 10 states that make up the Southern region for OJJDP.

Mississippi, as mentioned, is a given to be out of compliance. It’s possible the rest of the southern  states out of compliance got worse all of a sudden, but it appears more likely that the compliance monitoring in the area improved.

In North Carolina, the state found itself out of compliance on DSO for 2009. State JJ people were surprised because the number of detained status offenders had gone down from previous years,  State Advisory Group Chair Sandra Reid said.

Is it good that the scrutiny was turned up?

“Certainly,” Reid said. “We’re doing our best now…to come up with a strategic plan” to get back into compliance. “We don’t want kids sitting in inappropriate places.”

She believes that, under greater scrutiny from OJJDP, the fact that the state’s age of majority is 16 might have factored into the noncompliance finding. “I’m not trying to say we don’t have kids under16 [in detention], it’s an issue,” said Reid. But part of the problem, she thinks, was that state judges are free to lock up anybody 16 or over who is arrested for underage drinking because they are not adults when it comes to drinking, but are adults when it comes to crime.

It will be interesting to see if proponents of  increasing the age of majority in North Carolina can use this finding of noncompliance as leverage next legislative session. It makes the argument fiscal instead of just moral: the state is jeopardizing federal funds by keeping the age of majority so low.

3) All monitoring may not be created equal. If the age of majority factored into North Carolina being out of compliance on DSO, why is New York not out of compliance? It basically has the same rules.

“That’s a great question,” Reid said.

It’s possible that the monitor for New York’s region found that despite the low age of majority,  judges were not locking up status offenders. Or, it could be that the monitor in that region chose not to factor in status offenders over 15 years old because of the law. If that was the case, it would mean that two monitors made different interpretations of the same basic factor.

“I do wonder if it is being interpreted the same way from monitor to monitor,” Reid said. “Does our monitor do it the same way as another region? Are we looking at this consistently across board?”

4) The problems in each of the five states are with the two most serious compliance issues, locking up status offenders and jail removal. It isn’t that sight/sound and DMC aren’t important, too. But jail removal prevents the use of adult jails for juveniles with a few exceptions, and the sight/sound requirement sets conditions for those exceptions.

Race is obviously a major issue within the framework of juvenile justice, but everyone knows that the DMC requirement as currently written is pretty toothless. States have gotten away with “studying” DMC instead of acting on it for decades now, so being DMC compliant is no big feather in the cap. Addressing DSO and jail removal do more for racial justice in the system than most of the things states do to satisfy DMC.

It’s a bad time to discover that a handful of states have judges placing status offenders in juvenile detention centers and secure facilities. Legislators are working on a reauthorization of the JJDPA that would phase out the valid court order exception, the one loophole judges can now use to detain status offenders and remain JJDPA compliant. But in Arkansas, Mississippi, North Carolina and Washington, some judges don’t even bother with the loophole.

Scott Burns, executive director of the National District Attorneys Association, submitted the following testimony for the record at last week’s House hearing on reauthorization of the JJPDA (emphasis is his own):

“One can always find an outrageous anecdote to try and make a point, in every jurisdiction I am aware of juveniles are not incarcerated or taken to detention for status offenses such as truancy or runaways; juveniles are not placed into general population with adult offenders.”

Unless Burns meant “nearly half the South” when he said “outrageous anecdote,” you have to think he’s overstating his case a little.

The New York-based Open Society Institute announced its 2010 Soros Justice Fellows, all of whom will receive a stipend between $45,000 and $109,000 to carry out justice-related projects during the year. Most of the winners will work with an existing organization on the projects.

A number of the 18 winners will focus their attention on youth:

-Dwayne Betts, a young activist who spent eight years in adult prison for carjacking, will write a book about the ways that crime and mass incarceration affect the families of both victims and incarcerated.

-Alexandra Cox will work with the Brooklyn-based Institute for Juvenile Justice Reform and Alternatives to develop and implement research and protocols for discovering and improving relationships between youth and staff in juvenile facilities.

-Activist Manuel Criollo will work with Los Angeles-based Labor/Community Strategy Center to challenge policies he believes are disproportionately punitive towards black and Latino youth.

-Laura McCargar, executive director of Youth Media Rights in New Haven, Conn., will work with Hartford’s Better Way Foundation to expose the way in which systems push older students toward a decision to enroll in an alternative school or drop out. McCargar and her youth fought the state in court to gain access (with cameras) into the Connecticut Juvenile Training School in Middletown. YRM’s film “CJTS: At What Cost?” was instrumental in bringing about change in how the facility is operated.

 -Zachary Norris, who is the field director of the Books Not Bars campaign based out of Oakland, Calif.’s Ella Baker Center, will help create the Justice for Families Alliance, a support group for families of incarcerated youth that will become a component of the Baltimore-based Annie E. Casey Foundation’s Juvenile Detention Alternatives Initiative.

-Malcolm Young, who in the past has served as executive director of the D.C.-based Sentencing Project and the Chicago-based John Howard Association, will work with the Bluhm Legal Clinic at Northwestern University School of Law to increase job opportunities for ex-offenders.

For a list of all the Soros Justice Fellows, click here.