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What Works, Wisconsin: What Science Tells Us About Cost-Effective Programs for Juvenile Delinquency Prevention This report reviews primary prevention, secondary prevention and juvenile offender programs in place in Wisconsin. Within each category the report highlights one or two evidence-based programs, including cost-benefit information whenever it is available. The report also discusses the practices and approaches that appear to increase program effectiveness within each category. The report concludes with a set of 10 recommendations that strongly support the use of evidence-based programs and practices. See especially, Appendix A, a chart of program details. 70 page pdf file. Three page Executive Summary up front. ++++++++++ Stop Prisoner Rape Website for SPR, an organization that seeks to end sexual violence committed against men, women, and youth in all forms of detention. Information and resources on the site includes fact sheets, special reports, research, and resources. Click here to read Juveniles in Adult Facilities are Vulnerable to Sexual Assault. From that fact sheet: Male victims of prisoner rape are most often young, nonviolent, first-time offenders who are small, weak, shy, and inexperienced in the ways of prison life. Studies suggest that a typical male prison rapist chooses a victim on the basis of “the weakness and inability of the victim to defend himself.” Among female inmates, who are most typically abused by correctional staff, youth is also a risk factor for being victimized.
++++++++++ Alternatives to the Secure Detention and Confinement of Juvenile Offenders This new Juvenile Justice Bulletin promotes reducing the court's reliance on detention and confinement through administrative reforms and special program initiatives informed by an objective assessment of a youth’s risk level. The Bulletin recommends developing objective, valid, and reliable tools to make placement decisions among alternative programs and expanding the existing range of alternatives to ensure that evidence-based programs with varying levels of restrictiveness and types of services are available. 40 page downloadable pdf file. ++++++++++ Learning Behind Bars
The American School Board Journal presents an article on education in state juvenile justice programs around the country and finds that educational requirements vary widely state to state. ++++++++++ Newspaper Series on Pennsylvania’s Care of Children in State Institutions Barbara White Stack, a reporter for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, reports on the conditions of care of children in state custody in Allegheny County, Pennsylvania in a series of articles about child abuse, physical injuries, and other abuses in group homes and correctional institutions. With recommendations for change. This is a four day series of articles that ends today. ++++++++++ Corrections Learning Network
CLN is a distance learning initiative funded through the U.S. Department of Education. It provides interactive instructional programming for correctional facilities. At this web site find out what course offerings CLN provides and details about the organization and how it operates.
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Screening and Assessment Tools
In fulfilling a request for technical assistance this week I turned up these sites with information about screening and assessment . There were many more, but I thought these three were particularly helpful: Risk and Assessment Instruments – From the NHTSA Implementation Guide for Juvenile Holdover Programs, an appendix that provides links to specific instruments and/or protocols and a list of additional instruments.
++++++++++ Florida Institute for Girls Closes Five Years After It Opened
At one time nearly 100 girls lived behind barbed wire and clanging doors at the maximum security prison. Juvenile justice officials now believe that large, prison-like warehouses don’t work with girls. The state will probably spread out high risk girls among a number of facilities rather than concentrating them at one site. The Florida Institute for Girls was supposed to get the toughest girls in the state – those charged with crimes such as manslaughter, carjacking and rape, but some of the girls sent there were not hardened or violent offenders.
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Bethlehem Declaration: No Kids Behind Bars
The Bethlehem Declaration is a statement by the International Executive Council of Defence for Children International based on presentations and discussions at an international conference in Bethlehem, Occupied Palestinian Territory, June 30- July 2. The declaration consists of a series of recommendations for removing children from prison and detention.
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Juvenile Arrests 2003
Summary and analysis of national and state juvenile arrest data presented in the FBI report “Crime in the United States 2003.” Findings include the following:
Juvenile violent crime arrests in 2003 reached their lowest level since 1980. The juvenile arrest rate for each of the offenses tracked in the FBI’s Violent Crime Index (murder, forcible rape, robbery, and aggravated assault) has been declining steadily since the mid-1990s. For murder, the rate fell 77% from its 1993 peak through 2003.
12 page pdf file.
++++++++++ Planning Community-based Facilities for Violent Juvenile Offenders as part of a System of Graduated Sanctions.
This new OJJDP Bulletin from the Juvenile Justice Practice Series discusses the use of small, secure, community-based or regional facilities to house, serious, violent, and/or chronic juvenile offenders. It presents essential information regarding planning community-based or regional facilities to provide secure confinement for serious, violent, and chronic juvenile offenders and outlines a process for their development. 39 page pdf file.
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The Juvenile Justice Professional’s Guide to Human Subjects Protection and the IRB Process
An online guide to the law and regulations that govern research involving human subjects prepared by our research branch, the National Center for Juvenile Justice. This will be particularly valuable to juvenile justice professionals in protecting and rights and ensuring the well-being of youth under the supervision of the juvenile justice system. Those who plan to establish an Institutional Review Board (IRB) will find the guide to be a practical resource as well.
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Connecticut Governor Closes Boys’ Prison
A juvenile facility designed to hold 240 boys under 16 who have been convicted of largely nonviolent crimes, has been closed. Governor Rell says she is shutting down the four-year-old facility and replacing it with two smaller regional facilities for boys and one for girls that advocates say are long overdue. ++++++++++ Sexual Violence in Prisons is Reported in Juvenile Prisons at a Rate 10 Times that of Adult Facilities
A government study released July 31, 2005, found 10 reported incidents for every 2,000 youths at state-run juvenile facilities. Sexual assaults and other illicit sexual contacts are reported at juvenile prisons 10 times more frequently than at adult prisons. Better reporting was one factor contributing to the higher rate at the juvenile prisons. State laws require staff members to report sexual accusations involving minors.
In 2004, more than 8,200 accusations of sexual violence were reported to corrections officials. About one-third of the complaints were substantiated, and 15 percent were still being investigated. The Bureau of Justice Statistics looked at more than 2,700 prisons holding 1.7 million inmates – 80 percent of the prison population. Click on the link above to read the story.
Click here to listen to an NPR report on the study.
++++++++++ The Mathematics of Risk Classification: Changing data into Valid Instruments for Juvenile Courts This report, written by Don Gottfredson and Howard Snyder as part of the National Center for Juvenile Justice National Juvenile Justice Data Analysis Project, is intended to help courts classify youth into risk groups as an aid to program assignments. It compares statistical methods for classifying risk and offers recommendations for selecting classification procedures. 44 pages. Downloadable. ++++++++++ Theatrical Therapy for Juveniles Good behavior at Camp David Gonzalez in Los Angeles County, California, earns juveniles the right to participate in a theater group made possible for a partnership between the Los Angeles County Department of probation and the professional writers and actors of the Unusual Suspects Theater Company. Unusual Suspects is a non-profit organization that trains juveniles offenders to write, produce and act in plays that encourage nonviolent resolution to conflict and addresses experiences with poverty, abuse, drugs, parental abandonment and racism. ++++++++++ Mentally Ill Kids Will Be Behind Bars for Three More Months The State of New Jersey needs another three months to find enough treatment beds to accommodate about 50 mentally ill children on any given day who remain in county-run detention centers despite judges’ orders that they be moved to treatment facilities. ++++++++++Juveniles Who Think in Pictures Get a New Approach to Learning A pilot program in Iowa aimed at helping justice-involved youth with learning difficulties improve their thinking and reading skills gives youth the tools they need to improve their reading abilities. Seventeen adjudicated juveniles, visual-spatial learners, who primarily think in pictures, were taught a variety of techniques geared toward their learning style. ++++++++++Educational Quality Assurance Standards for Day Treatment Programs: Juvenile Justice Prevention, Intensive Probation, and Conditional Release 2002
Florida’s JJEEP (Juvenile Justice Education Enhancement Program) published these standards for day treatment juvenile justice programs. JJEEP has also published standards for residential commitment programs and detention centers in separate documents at its web site. 57 page pdf file. ++++++++++ Evaluation of the Juvenile Breaking the Cycle Program
Breaking the Cycle grantee, Lane County, Oregon, was a demonstration program with a juvenile arrestee population in an ambitious effort to effect major changes in their lives. The demonstration enlisted a spectrum of county and state agencies to identify substance abuse problems at the time of arrest, provide an assessment, deliver services, and use sanctions, incentives, and rewards to encourage compliance with treatment and desistance from criminal involvement. This is a lengthy report on the evaluation of that program.. I downloaded the first 11 pages, which include the Executive Summary. ++++++++++ Juvenile System Under Fire
Wayne County, Michigan (Detroit) was one of the first in the state to hire private companies to care for delinquent youths. Audits of the privatized program show overpayments, conflicts of interest, and hackers have gained access to a computer program containing personal and financial information about Wayne County juvenile delinquents. On this page you will find links to a series of articles about the beleaguered Detroit juvenile system and accusations of financial mismanagement, cronyism and fraud – and FBI involvement. ++++++++++ Juvenile Crime Innovations in Indiana This article describes the successes of several programs in counties in Indiana. Initiatives include a formal risk assessment for each juvenile offender in Fort Wayne, a shared database of comprehensive case information in Kokomo, and a day treatment program in Bartholomew County. ++++++++++ Educating Chicago's Court-Involved Youth: Mission and Policy in Conflict This report from Chapin Hall examines the educational options for court-involved youth in Chicago, how these options work, and the policy context within which school and students operate. One key finding is that educational options designed expressly for court-involved youth who are not incarcerated or detained are limited to transitional programs that grant neither a high school diploma nor a GED certificate. At the same time school accountability and zero-tolerance policies create incentives for schools to exclude low performing or troublesome students. 56 pages, downloadable pdf file. ++++++++++ |
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