• Brevity is the soul of wit.
  -- Shakespeare

Brevity on the Net

Wednesday, August 3, 2005

 A weekly newsletter about juvenile justice
from the National Council of Juvenile and Family Court Judges,
Brevity brings you news and information from around the country and on the Internet.

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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.

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No Child Left Behind Act – Most Students with Disabilities Participated in Statewide Assessments, but Inclusion Options Could Be Improved

This new GAO Report found that, during the 2003-2004 school year, at least 95 percent of students with disabilities participated in statewide reading assessments in 41 of the 49 states that provided data. For more information click on the link above which will take you to the complete report (43 pages, pdf file). Page two of the report is a one page synopsis of the contents.

Back to School Tips

The American Academy of Pediatrics has put up a back to school website with all sorts of good information in it. --  First day of school, moving/starting at a new school, backpack safety, homework and study habits are some of the kinds of information available here.

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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.

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Meth News

Mexico is Now the Top Supplier of U.S. Drugs

Mexican drug traffickers have shoved aside their counterparts in Columbia to take control of the $4 billion illegal drug trade in the United States. Mexican groups are behind much of the cocaine, heroin, marijuana and methamphetamine on the U.S. streets. Mexican enforcement agencies are viewed as either too weak or too corrupt to stop them.

According to the DEA, 92% of the cocaine sold in the U.S. in 2004 arrived from Mexico. The DEA says 14 U.S. cities are staging areas for the illegal drug trade from Mexico. They include seven cities in Texas along with Albuquerque, Los Angeles, San Diego, Oklahoma City, Tulsa, Phoenix and Tucson.


An Open Letter to the Media – Meth Science, Not Stigma

Medical and psychological researchers, treatment providers and specialists with many years of experience studying addictions and addiction treatment, have written a letter to the media to request that policies addressing prenatal exposure to methamphetamines and media coverage of this issue be based on science, not presumption or prejudice. The letter condemns the usage of such terms as “ice babies” or “meth babies” as pejorative and stigmatizing labels used in the popular media.


Missouri Initiative to Help Children Found in Missouri Meth Labs

The Children in Meth Labs project is designed to improve the safety and medical care of Missouri children under 17 who are found in or near a meth lab. The project will develop best practices policy protocols for :

Gathering information at the scene for appropriate medical care
Assessing the children’s medical needs
Gathering medical evidence to support appropriate placement,
Immediate testing for methamphetamine exposure
Ensuring long and short-term care and follow-up
Providing training to first responders, fire department personnel, law enforcement, medical personnel, child welfare, juvenile and family courts, legal professionals, foster parents, education professionals, and others.

The project is being conducted by the Missouri Juvenile Justice Association and has been under way since the first of the year.

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A Guide to Developing, Maintaining, and Succeeding with Your School Resource Officer Program

This new COPS publication addresses the difficulties SRO program have experienced in recruiting, screening, retaining, training, and supervising SROs. The report documents promising methods in use in selected SRO programs and is intended to allow new or startup SRO programs to benefit from the experiences of others. Downloadable as a series of pdf files. You might want to start with the Executive Summary which is 16 pages and gives you a review of the contents of each chapter.

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Change in Parental Warnings to Their Children – No More ‘Stranger Danger’

The Jacob Wetterling Foundation says that stranger danger is far overrated because abductors and abusers are known to the parent or child more than 80% of the time. Instead, children should be tutored to identify adults, even if strangers, who might be able to help them – any mother with children or a sales clerk, for instance. They should also be taught to resist, to fight back, to be loud and to be rude if necessary.

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First Monday

The Juvenile Sanctions Center of the NCJFCJ publishes a monthly newsletter for the participants in the Center’s communities receiving graduated sanctions training and technical assistance support. First Monday is delivered electronically and is also available to read online at our web site. Click on the link above to read the August 2005 issue.

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1,000 Suspected Gang Members Arrested by Federal Immigration and Customs Officers

Operation Community Shield is overseen by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Division, which has arrested 1,057 alleged gang members over the past five months. The operation got started in Mach as a way to target Mara Salvatrucha, aka MS-13, a violent street organization, but has expanded to encompass members of 80 gangs in 25 states.  

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Children Who Self-Injure Themselves Are Growing Younger

Professionals agree that younger and younger people are cutting their skin, burning themselves, bloodletting and in extreme cases, cutting of portions and fingers and ears. Nearly all children who cut themselves have a trait in common – they are clinically depressed.

Experts say depression is at the core of the behavior, but that a combination of modern societal realities contributes to that behavior – parents who take a smaller role in raising their children, a culture where beauty, sex, and perfection are exalted, and new technologies that allow cutters to talk to each other. Internet chat rooms allow cutters to share what used to be an isolated practice and group cutting has become more common.

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Global Differences in Drug Abuse

The latest CESAR FAX, a single page report on a single issue associated with substance abuse published weekly, shows that the primary drug of abuse among treatment clients varies widely across continents.

• Opiates topped the list in European and Asian countries,
• Cocaine in North and South America,
• Marijuana treatment admissions were most common in Africa and North America,
•  Sedative use was highest in Australia and New Zealand.,
• North America had the highest percentage of inhalant treatment admissions.

Full report is also available online.

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Alliance High School – A Special School for Students Who Have Been Bullied or Harassed

Alliance is open to all students, but the emphasis is on those who have been struggling socially or academically because of bullying or harassment. It is among a number of special new high schools to open in Milwaukee this fall as the city redesigns its high schools, breaking large schools into smaller ones, and adding new smaller specialty schools. Smaller learning environments for teenagers are intended to foster closer connections among parents, students and teachers, and to ultimately improve the district’s graduation rate. About 50 new high schools will open through the initiative.

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Inner City Students Matriculate at the French Culinary Institute to Learn How to be Career Waitpersons

A pilot program stated by the Careers Through Culinary Arts Program (C-CAP) brings inner city students into a two-week boot camp preparing them for jobs in the dining rooms of some of New York City’s mot popular restaurants. For the rest of the summer they will be working at the restaurants and when school starts back up, will ask for part time work.

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Upcoming NCJFCJ Conferences - For more details on the conferences listed below, click on this link.

• Managing Challenging Family Law Cases: A Practical Approach – August 29-Sept.1, 2005 – Reno, Nevada
• Judicial Response to Alcohol and Other Drugs – September 11-16, 2005 – Reno, Nevada
  Fall College: The Role of the Judge – September 11-16, 2005 – Reno, Nevada
• Forum on Children and Families in Court – October 16-19, 2005 – Cleveland, Ohio
• Juvenile Justice Management Institute – October 23-28, 2005 – Reno, Nevada
• Evidence in Juvenile and Family Court – October 23-28, 2005 – Reno, Nevada