Assessing the Mental Health Status of Youth in Juvenile Justice Settings

A timely and useful new report looks at the use of the Voice DISC-IV in juvenile justice settings and how it was received by youths and their parents as well as the agency/institutional staff who administered it. 8 page pdf file.

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Juvenile Injustice – Overcrowding, Violence, and Abuse in State Youth Corrections

The US News & World Report presents this special report on overcrowding, violence and abuse in state youth correctional facilities. The report reviews the history of the country’s juvenile courts and the changes they experienced in the 1980s and 1990s. The result is that, while juvenile crime is down nearly 50% over the past decade, juvenile facilities remain chronically short of dollars, resources, staffing and experience high staff turnover. “State juvenile corrections directors can be expected, on average, to stay in their jobs only about three years.”

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Juvenile Justice Education: Improving Chances.

The Corrections.com web site contains interesting articles on education in detention and other information of interest to the field. The link above will take you to the portion of the web site devoted to juveniles. Below you’ll find two articles and a dance program I found of interest:

• Juvenile Justice Education: Improving Chances

• New Program Helps Offenders Learn by Listening

• Dance Program Gets Juveniles Moving on the Right Track

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Sex Abuse in Ohio’s Youth Prisons

The Columbus Dispatch has just run this series about problems in the state’s juvenile facilities. Counselors and social workers do not have to be licensed or hold a college degree in their field if they work in a juvenile prison. Many of the state’s juvenile sex offenders are housed together in a single facility and locked in rooms together. The maximum security juvenile lockup has a history of one-the-job employee romances and sexual indiscretions. With graphs and chart.

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Florida Plans Major Reforms to Protect Young Offenders in Juvenile Lockups

Governor Jeb Bush conceded Monday that workers have abused children in the state’s juvenile lockups. An investigation earlier this year by the Orlando Sentinel found 661 confirmed cases of child abuse or neglect at Florida Department of Juvenile Justice facilities since 1994.At least six boys died from injuries suffered at agency facilities, including one who hanged himself and one who was crushed by a worker.

Changes will include a children’s bill of rights that set standards for how workers deal with children, exit interviews, and increased worker accountability.

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Incarceration of Youth Who Are Waiting for Community Mental Health Services in the United States

In the House and in the Senate this past week at hearings conducted by Representative Henry Waxman and Senator Susan Collins the results of a survey in which every juvenile detention facility in the United States was surveyed. Waxman’s staff heard back from more than 500 administrators in 49 states, a response rate over 75%. Key findings:

• Two-thirds of juvenile detention facilities in the United States lock up mentally ill youth because there is no place else for them to go.
• Every day, about 2,000 youth are incarcerated simply because community mental health services are unavailable. This represents about 7% of all youth in juvenile detention.
• In 33 states, juvenile detention centers hold youth with mental illness who have no charges against them of any kind.
• Over 160 detention centers report that youth held unnecessarily have attempted suicide.
• Children as young as seven years of age are incarcerated because they do not have access to care.

Below are documents with more information about the survey and the hearing:

• Incarceration of Youth Who Are Waiting for Community Mental Health Services in the United States – Report of the survey conducted at the request of Rep. Waxman and Sen. Collins. 20 page pdf file.

• Rep. Waxman’s Statement – 3 page pdf file.

• Juvenile Detention Centers: Warehousing Children with Mental Illness? – An open letter to Members of Congress signed by more than 130 national and state advocacy groups, of which NCJFCJ is one.

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ABA Report Cites Over-reliance on incarceration and calls for a new “smart on crime” approach

A year ago U.S. Supreme Court Justice Anthony M. Kennedy asked the American Bar Association to examine the country’s over-reliance on incarceration. In response, an ABA special commission has issued a set of recommendations culminating from its year-long review of the issues confronting state criminal justice systems. They address sentencing and incarceration, racial and ethnic disparities in criminal justice systems, prison conditions and prisoner reentry issues, and pardons and clemency process. For more information, a fact sheet, and summary information on each of the issues addressed, see ABA Justice Kennedy Commission Recommendations. From the fact sheet:

• The nationwide inmate population today is about 2.l million people. In California alone, there are more than 160,000 persons behind bars.
• According to the U.S. Department of Justice Bureau of Justice Statistics, the number of people incarcerated under state and federal jurisdictions per 100,000 of the total population grew from 139 in 1980 to 476 in 2002.
• In countries such as England, Italy, France and Germany the incarceration rate is about 1 in 1,000 persons.
• Between 1982 and 1999, direct expenditures on corrections by federal, state and local governments jumped from $9 billion to $49 billion, an increase of more than 440%.

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Detection and Prevalence of Substance Use Among Juvenile Detainees

To provide effective deterrence and treatment for young in detention facilities who have used drugs, juvenile justice authorities need reliable information on substance use problems. The study reported in this Juvenile Justice Bulletin confirms a high rate of drug use among juvenile detainees and identifies detainees who require special attention. The authors conclude that because cannabis use is so common and often leads to more serious drug use, most youth entering detention can be considered at risk of developing substance abuse problems. The study’s findings indicate that the best approach to detecting substance abuse is to combine self-reporting with urinalysis and also use other resources. 16 page pdf file.

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Books Not Bars

Books Not Bars is a statewide California campaign to eliminate over-incarceration of youth in California by shutting down the CYA (California Youth Authority) and replacing it with a model that works, one based on helping troubled kids instead of punishing them. This site includes footage of a video taken within one of the facilities that shows a severe beating under way. You may recall the headlines in recent months about maltreatment of youth in CYA facilities throughout the state. Thanks for the email about this, Nikki.

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Juveniles in Corrections

A special bulletin from the Juvenile Offenders and Victims National Report Series. It represents the latest available national and state-level data from the biennial Census of Juveniles in Residential Placement, conducted by the U.S. Bureau of the Census for OJJDP. The Census provides the country with a detailed picture of juveniles in custody. It includes statistics on offenders young than 18 who were held in jails and adult prisons and examines  the imposition of the death penalty for crimes committed by offenders when they were younger than 18. This is a 24 page pdf file.

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Performance-based Standards Project a Finalist in Awards Competition

OJJDP’s Performance-based Standards for Youth Correction and Detention Facilities is one of three federal programs named as finalists for the Innovations in American Government awards competition. The PbS System is designed to improve the conditions of confinement and the services provided in juvenile corrections and detention facilities. PbS sets national standards and fives facilities tools to collect and analyze data, design and implement improvements, and to measure the results. PbS is active in 26 states and the District of Columbia.

More about PbS

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Question: How many juvenile offenders become adult felons?

In answer to this question, I sent these two documents to the person who asked it:

Previously Incarcerated Juveniles in Oregon’s Adult Corrections System

This study by the State of Oregon’s Office of Economic Analysis found:

• The study found adult felony records for 41.8% of the study population.
• Just over half of the oldest cohort (those born in 1976) had an adult felony record by their 25^th year.
• The percentage of offenders with adult records is roughly consistent with findings in Washington and South Carolina.
• The percentage of offenders with adult records increased with age, consistent with the South Carolina studies.

The Class of 1988, Seven Years Later: How a Juvenile Offender’s Crime, Criminal History, and Age Affect the Chances of Becoming an Adult Felon in Washington State

In this study the Washington State Institute for Public Policy found that the more serious the crime and the greater the number of prior convictions, the greater the sentence a juvenile offender receives. The study found both these factors to be strongly predictive of future felony offending as adults. For the chronic and violent juvenile offenders in Washington, over half received a conviction for an adult felony by the time they were 25 years old.

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