• Brevity is the soul of wit.
  -- Shakespeare

Brevity on the Net

Wednesday, March 1, 2006

 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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Teen Crime, Adult Crime

Last week the Denver Post ran a four part series on 45 young adults locked away for life for crimes committed when they were younger than 18. One young man, who was 14 at the time of the crime in 1992 and who had no previous violent offenses, describes himself, “I’m the living dead.” He and the other youths were prosecuted in adult criminal court during the past two decades as part of Colorado’s crackdown on juvenile crime. The state is among 14 states in which prosecutors can charge juveniles with adult crimes that could lead to life in prison with no chance of parole.

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Montana’s Ads For Teens about Methamphetamine

These ads are not a repeat of the eggs in a frying pan PSAs of a decade or so ago. They are hard to watch. Whether they will be effective is yet to be seen. To look at the ads produced by the Montana Meth Project which are now saturating the state, click on the link you’ll see on the left side of this article.

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Virtual Visitation

Advocates of virtual visitation want states to spell out in their laws that judges can make it part of a divorce agreement. Supporters say noncustodial parents are more likely to pay child support regularly if they can stay in touch. Parents say twice a week electronic visits maintain connections between parent and child in between in-person visits a few times a year.  Utah made virtual visitation an official option in 2004. Similar legislation is waiting the governors’ signatures in Wisconsin, Illinois, and Missouri.

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How the Justice System Responds to Juvenile Victims: A Comprehensive Model

This Juvenile Justice Bulletin identifies the major elements of the juvenile victim justice system by delineating how cases move through the system. It reviews each step in the case flow process for the child protection and criminal justice systems and describes the interaction of the agencies and individuals involved. 12 page pdf file.

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Making Early Developmental Screening Routine

A growing number of pediatricians see parental observation as a powerful tool for predicting a child’s possible disabilities, developmental delays and other challenges. In support of this cause, the Los Angeles County Early Identification & Intervention Group collaborates with roughly 100 agencies in Los Angeles County in a three-pronged approach to bring to children and their families:

• Early screening using high-quality tools based on parent observation,
• Quick follow-up from health care providers, and
• Help for families in finding and accessing resources they need.

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Bridging the Gap: A Guide to Drug Treatment in the Juvenile Justice System

A guide created through the combined efforts of researchers, specialists and experts, it details the major aspects of juvenile treatment that need to be included in any rehabilitation program. Bridging the Gap builds on the earlier work of Drug Strategies, a publicationcreated as a guide for adolescents.

Research by the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse in 2004 found that fewer than 3% of arrested juveniles receive treatment for their substance abuse issues. (You read that correctly, the number is 3 %.) You will find a link to Bridging the Gap at the end of the article.

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Lionel Tate Pleads Guilty Today

A plea bargain in which Tate pleaded guilty to robbing a pizza delivery man spared him from a possible life sentence for violating his probation in the 1999 killing of a 6-year-old playmate when he was 12. At sentencing on April 3 Tate could get 10 to 30 years in prison.

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A Request and Two Special Conferences

ABA Status Offender Project

Jessica Kendall at the ABA’s Center on Children and the Law is doing a project to gather information on legislative, policy, and practice reforms to help prevent entry, intervene early with, or divert youth away from the status offense system, while also directing them and their families toward community-based, family focused services. She would like to hear from you about any new legislative reforms regarding status offenses and/or written protocols, procedures, policies, or guidelines courts and child welfare agencies have to respond to status offenders. Contact Jessica at 202-662-1782 or via email at kendallj@staff.abanet.org

Finding Better Ways: Addressing the Needs of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and Questioning (LGBTQ) Children, Youth, and Families Involved in the Child Welfare System - This conference will be held November 13-15, 2006 in Nashville, Tennessee. The submission deadline for the conference call for papers is April 3, 2006. Click on the link above for details.

Fourth Annual Judicial Forum – Community Justice Today: A State-Tribal Judicial Perspective -  April 5, 2006, Albuquerque, New Mexico -  NCJFCJ is teaming up with the Federal Bar Association Indian Law Section, The National American Indian Court Judges Association, and the National Native American Bar Association to provide an arena for judges across jurisdictions to discuss their commonalities. This one day program will take place the day prior to the Annual FBA Indian Law Conference. Click on the link above for more information.

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Fostering Hope: Preventing Teen Pregnancy Among Youth in Foster Care

The National Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy and ucan (Uhlich Children’s Advantage Network) collaborated to produce this report which combines existing research with new qualitative research on foster care youth, foster parents, and child welfare providers as well as advice from child welfare and teen pregnancy prevention professions. 32 page pdf file

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Teen Who Killed Family Is Sentenced as a Juvenile

Cody Posey was sentenced February 23, 2006, as a juvenile and will be held in state custody until he turns 21. Posey was 14 when he shot his father, stepmother and 13-year-old stepsister on the southern New Mexico ranch where his father worked as a foreman. Judge James Waylon Courts found that the teen suffered from PTSD and that the state failed to prove Posey could not be rehabilitated.

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Women Under the Influence

The National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse in this new book reveals critical and relatively unknown facts about women and substance abuse, including differences between the sexes for using drugs, how they exhibit abuse, how drugs of abuse are metabolized, and the effects and consequences of abuse.

Compared to boys and men: girls and women --

• become addicted to alcohol, nicotine, and illegal and prescription drugs at lower levels of use and in shorter periods of time,
• develop substance related diseases like lung cancer more quickly,
• suffer more severe brain damage from alcohol and drugs like Ecstasy, and
• often die sooner.

92% of women in need of treatment for drug and alcohol problems do not get it. The book is available in hard copy and can be ordered at the web site. $20/paperback. $50/hardbound.

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The Cost of Being a Criminal

The New York Times reports on the fees associated with almost every encounter with the criminal justice system. The fees are intended to help offset some of the enormous costs of operating the criminal justice system, but can be devastating for people who emerge from prison with no money, credit or prospects, and who live in fear of being sent back for failing to pay.  ( This article will be available to read online free for one more day. If you want to read it and you're too late, get in touch with me and I'll send you a hard copy from my files.)

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Las Vegas’ Fire Starter Intervention Program

This program begun five years ago to teach kids the consequences of starting fires has changed substantially as the organization has become aware of the volume of kids who are in a crisis situation who start fires. Courts and schools mandate that children attend the fire starter intervention class if they are caught playing with fire, pull a fire alarm, or make a false alarm call to 911. Since last year the class sizes have tripled. At the end of this article you can take the Youth Fire Starter Family Risk Survey and see how you do.

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The Judges’ Page Mental Health Issue

The latest issue of The Judges’ Page is devoted to mental health issues and the dependency courts. Subjects include dual diagnosis, children and youth with ADD and ADHD, infant mental health, psychological assessments, and more.

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Co-Offending and Patterns of Juvenile Crime

This NIJ Research in Brief addresses a particularly important aspect of juvenile crime.  Ignoring co-offending when computing crime rates may produce severely misleading reports about crime and the effects of incarceration. Co-offenders provide a basis for multiple reports of single crime events (for recordkeeping purposes, each participant is shown as a single criminal event, not as one among a number of participants in a single crime.) Does that make sense? The report does it better. 20 page pdf file.

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A Worrisome New Legal High

Salvia Divinorum is a cousin of the flowering sages enjoyed by backyard gardeners. It also contains the world’s most potent natural hallucinogen, as strong as LSD. The drug is legal in most states and easily available through hundreds of Internet sites. Recently, in Delaware, a straight-A high school senior committed suicide after using salvia over a period of time.

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School Bullies Can Land in Court

In Cleveland, parents whose children are beaten of bullied are suing their attackers’ families or schools, according to court filings and experts on school violence. Some want money to pay for injuries. Others look for a sense of justice they didn’t get from criminal trials and school discipline.

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Millions of Young Americans are Misusing ADHD Drugs

A new study from the National Institute on Drug Abuse estimates that more than 1.6 million American teens and young adults misused these drugs during a 12-month period, and 75,000 became addicted. ADHD drugs allow users to stay awake longer and finish work more quickly.

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The World of Sibling Violence

In a study published last year in  the journal Child Maltreatment, a group of sociologists found that 35% of children had been “hit or attacked” by a sibling in the previous years.

14% of the children were repeatedly attacked by a sibling,

4.55% were hit hard enough to sustain injuries like bruises, cut, chipped teeth and occasional broken bones, and

2% were hit by brothers or sisters wielding rocks, toys, broom handles, shovels and knives.