D.G. - Contempt - No Boykin

D.G. v. Commonwealth of Kentucky, Court of Appeals, Fayette County, TO BE PUBLISHED

The court vacated and remanded the court’s order finding child in contempt as well as accepting the plea on the underlying juvenile status offense.  The Court held that contempt cannot be found where the underlying guilty plea did not receive the full due process rights guaranteed by the Constitution under KRS 600.020(61)(d) and 610.010(11). 

In this case, there was no Boykin colloquy at the time that D.G. entered the plea, in fact the attorney just stated that there would be a stipulation.  Thus, the court held the plea was not clearly voluntary and intelligent since there was little to no explanation of possible consequences of an admission prior to accepting it.  The court reiterated that juvenile’s should have heightened assurance of the protection of their rights. 

Since the plea was entered without these protections, the court orders that the court held D.G. in contempt of were not valid court orders and thus both findings were required to be vacated and the case remanded back to family court.

Contributed by La Mer Kyle-Griffiths

No Place for Kids: The Case for Reducing Juvenile Incarceration - Casey Foundation Report

The Annie E. Casey Foundation released No Place for Kids: The Case for Reducing Juvenile Incarceration, which examines the detrimental impact of America’s over-reliance on incarceration of youth in an in-depth analysis of its effect on youth and public safety. Combining research, data and testimony, the analysis shows that America’s reliance on incarcerating young offenders has not only failed to combat youth crime but also that reducing these rates and closing facilities does not increase juvenile crime rates. Juvenile incarceration facilities:

 •                    Do not reduce future offending of confined youth: Within three years of release, roughly three-quarters of youth are rearrested; up to 72 percent, depending on individual state measures, are convicted of a new offense.

 •                    Do not enhance public safety: States which lowered youth confinement rates the most saw a greater decline in juvenile violent crime arrests than states which increased incarceration rates or reduced them more slowly.

 •                    Waste taxpayer dollars: Nationwide, states continue to spend the bulk of their juvenile justice budgets – $5 billion in 2008 – to confine and house young offenders in incarceration facilities despite evidence showing that alternative in-home or community-based programs can deliver equal or better results for a fraction of the cost.

 •                    Expose youth to violence and abuse: Nearly 50 percent of states have been sued in the last decade alone for persistent maltreatment in at least one of their institutions.  One in eight confined youth reported being sexually abused by staff or other youth and 45 percent feared physical attack according to reports released in 2010.

The report highlights best practices that some states have implemented as alternatives to incarceration. 

 For a copy of the full report, press release and issue brief, visit: http://www.aecf.org/noplaceforkids.

Children under 10 - Interim Judiciary Hearing

Lexington Herald-Leader

No Criminal Charges for Children 10 or Younger, Officials Suggest to Legislators

Each year, the misbehavior of about 400 Kentucky children 10 or younger — some as young as 5 — results in criminal complaints on charges including harassment, assault and being beyond the control of an adult.

On Wednesday, three state officials asked legislators on the Interim Joint Committee on Judiciary for a law that would prohibit children 10 or younger from facing criminal charges. Instead, their misbehavior would be addressed through the social service system.

The legislative committee is hearing testimony to see what changes might need to be made during the 2012 General Assembly to current laws, which according to a state court official have allowed 2,704 children 10 or younger to be criminally charged from 2005 to 2010.

National Juvenile Justice Network - Safe and Effective School Disciplinary Policies and Practices

NJJN Policy Platform - Safe and Effective School Disciplinary Policies and Practices

NJJN's latest policy platform includes recommendations on safe and effective school disciplinary policies and practices.  The recommendations focus on:

Law enforcement and discipline policies
Suspensions and expulsions
Student rights and family engagement
Students with disabilities
Data and racial and ethnic disparities (Disproportionate Minority Contact

Click here to see all NJJN policy platforms.

Law Enforcement and Discipline Policies

  • Schools must reject the one-size-fits-all prearranged set of sanctions laid out in zero tolerance policies and instead promote discipline policies that provide individualized assessments and interventions that are appropriate to ensure a safe learning environment.
  • Schools must not use law enforcement as a response to non-criminal adolescent misbehavior. If students engage in criminal behavior on school grounds, schools must have graduated responses in place, reserving law enforcement for only the most serious offenses.
  • Schools must establish clear guidelines for school personnel and on-campus law enforcement officials
    regarding the role of each in responding to youth behaviors and exactly which infractions may lead to court
    referrals. Referrals to court should be reserved for only the most serious infractions.
  • To eliminate or curtail the use of mechanical restraints, chemical restraints, corporal punishment, and isolation, law enforcement and school officials must be trained on the traumatic effects of these practices, as well as child and adolescent development, appropriate methods for de-escalation, and safe and effective responses to youth behaviors.
  • Schools must focus on prevention and effective intervention as responses to disciplinary issues. Positive
    Behavioral Interventions and Supports, peer juries, restorative justice processes, diversion, mentoring, mental health counseling, and restitution can be particularly effective in improving school safety and promoting positive youth development.

Five Emerging Practices in Juvenile Reentry - National Reentry Resource Center

By Shay Bilchik, Director, Center for Juvenile Justice Reform, Georgetown University Public Policy Institute; Chair, National Reentry Resource Center Advisory Committee on Juvenile Justice

As many as 100,000 youth under the age of 18 are released from juvenile correctional facilities every year. These young people often return to their communities with complex needs, such as physical and behavioral health issues and barriers to education and employment.

The National Reentry Resource Center’s Advisory Committee on Juvenile Justice is developing resources for the field to increase the likelihood of successful juvenile reentry and promote safer communities. The Committee’s work is currently focused on five emerging areas in youth reentry policy and practice:

  1. Integrating the science of adolescent brain development into the design of reentry initiatives.
  2. Ensuring that reentry initiatives build on youths’ strengths and assets to promote pro-social development.
  3. Engaging families and community members in a meaningful manner throughout the reentry process.
  4. Prioritizing education and employment as essential elements of a reentry plan.
  5. Providing a stable, well-supported transition to adulthood that helps to create lifelong connections.

Click here to read more about these five emerging practices and the resources the National Reentry Resource Center has made available for each of them.

Resources for Graduated Sanctions and Incentives - Reframing Futures Blog Post

juvenile-drug-courts_graduated-response-gridResearch has shown that punishment alone is not the most effective way to to help a young person change his or her behavior -- the primary goal of juvenile drug courts, and, indeed, juvenile probation generally. Instead, a combination of punishment, or sanctions, with incentives, is most effective.

But if you want to act on this information, you're likely to have a number of questions. Here's just a few of the questions that commonly arise:

  • 1. Is there a ready-made list of sanctions and incentives we could use?
  • 2. Should we start out giving a strong sanction to get the offender’s attention, or should we build up to that?
  • 3. Are we coddling offenders by giving them incentives?
  • 4. Does it matter how long you wait after the behavior is detected to give a sanction or incentive?

And that's just the beginning.  To help you make sense of the options -- and to give you several lists of ideas for your own graduated sanctions and incentives grid -- I'm posting a number of resources here.

From NCJFCJ (and shared with permission):

If your team is working on implementing incentives and sanctions together, you'll probably want these as well, also from the NCJFCJ:

No list like this, however, would be complete without acknowledging the work done by Reclaiming Futures' own Justice Fellows -- the probation officers who helped develop the Reclaiming Futures model in our ten foudning sites. In 2005, they created the colorful incentives/sanctions grid you see pictured in this post.

  • The Illustrative Graduated Response Grid
  • About the grid
    • "The Illustrative Graduated Response Grid is a tool that may be used by treatment providers, corrections personnel and judicial professionals, in responding appropriately to a youthful offender’s behavior."
    • Also, please note that the incentives and sanctions listed are just suggestions. Your community way choose different items.

New OJJDP Fact Sheet - What Works with Serious Juvenile Offenders

The "Pathways to Desistance" research study is a unique study of what works in the juvenile justice system. This large, multi-site research project followed 1,354 serious juvenile offenders for seven years. An informative brief on the study findings was released in 2009 by the MacArthur Foundation; now, the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP) has released another fact sheet, titled, "Highlights From Pathways to Desistance: A Longitudinal Study of Serious Adolescent Offenders."

Here's what the study found:

  • Most youth quit or reduce their offending over time.  Only 8.5 percent of the youth in the study persisted at high levels of offending. As Dr. Mulvey explains in the OJJDP fact sheet,

"Two factors that appear to distinguish high-end desisters from persisters are lower levels of substance use and greater stability in their daily routines, as measured by stability in living arrangements and work and school attendance."

  • Providing services and sanctions based on individual need -- factors including substance abuse, mental health needs, family background -- could be more effective than providing them based on severity of the crime and prior convictions. Surprisingly, the researchers found that the youth who persisted in offending and those who reduced their offending behavior got about the same kind and intensity of services.
  • In a related finding, the study found that incarceration did not reduce offending. In fact, for the subgroup of serious juvenile offenders who greatly reduced their offending after contact with the justice system -- who spent about 30 percent of the study followup period in institutional care -- incarceration actually increased their offending to a small, but statistically signifcant degree. 

If locking them up didn't help, what did? Community-based services and probation supervision. As Dr. Mulvey writes,

"Youth who received community-based supervision and aftercare services were more likely to attend school, go to work, and avoid further offending during the 6 months after release, and longer supervision periods increased these benefits."

  • For many of these youth -- those meeting their definition of "serious juvenile offenders" -- substance abuse treatment is key, as the MacArthur Foundation brief makes clear:

"Levels of substance use and associated problems are very high in these young offenders. More than one-third qualify for a diagnosis of substance use disorder in the year prior to the baseline interview, and over 80 percent report having used drugs or alcohol during the previous six months. Moreover, the level of substance use walks in lockstep with illegal activity over the follow-up period: more substance use, more criminal offending."

Treating youth for at least 90 days, with their family members involved, cut both their substance abuse and their offending, at least during the six months after treatment.  (Tellingly, the sub-study this conclusion was based on, "Substance use treatment outcomes in a sample of male serious juvenile offenders," which appeared in 2009 in the Journal of Substance Abuse Treatment, found that only 25% of the serious juvenile offenders in its sample received treatment that included family members. The study authors speculated that this might be partly because these offenders were being treated in secure institutional environments, rather than the community.)

Drug Court Review Special Edition on Juvenile Drug Courts

A Special Issue on Juvenile Drug Courts

Introduction to Special Issue on Juvenile Drug Treatment Courts

Adolescent Outpatient Treatment

 

Melissa L. Ives, M.S.W., Ya-Fen Chan, Ph.D., Kathryn C. Modisette, M.A., and Michael L. Dennis, Ph.D

Altering Risk Processes Associated with Delinquency and Substance Abuse

Cindy M. Schaeffer, Ph.D., Scott W. Henggeler, Ph.D., Jason E. Chapman, Ph.D., Colleen A. Halliday-Boykins, Ph.D., Phillippe B. Cunningham, Ph.D., Jeff Randall, Ph.D., and Steven B. Shapiro, M.S

Hearings in a Juvenile Drug Court

Benta Samuelson Christopher Salvatore, M.A., Jamie S. Henderson, M.A., Matthew L. Hiller, Ph.D., Elise White, and

Developing Accountability in the Lives of Youth: Defining the Operational Features of Juvenile Treatment Courts

Pamela Linden, Ph.D., Shelly Cohen, Ph.D., Robyn Cohen, Ann Bader, M.P.A., and Michael Magnani,

Legislative Initiatives

Sean Clark, J.D., James McGuire, M.S.W., Ph.D., and Jessica Blue-Howells, M.S.

Featured Case - Establishing jurisdiction in habitual truancy cases

Juvenile and family courts get subject matter jurisdiction to hear complaints of habitual truancy by a complaint which complies with the requirements of KRS 630.069(2) and by the school performing an adequate assessment of the child prior to bringing the complaint.  If these requirements are not met, the courts have no jurisdiction and the court designated worker should not even receive the complaint.  N.K. v. Commonwealth, 2010 WL 4026085, Court of Appeals, decided 10/15/2010

 

Contributed by Glenn McClister

New OJJDP Report Provides Detailed Look at Juveniles in Placement

OJJDP has released findings from its “Survey of Youth in Residential Placement,” an examination of more than 7,000 young people in secure placement around the country during 2003.


Among the most significant findings:

  • Youth of color are overrepresented in residential placement: 32% of youth in residential placement are African American, and 24% are Latino.
  • Over 1,200 youth in residential placement are under 13 years old.
  • 57% of the detained youth are incarcerated for a nonviolent offense.
  • Despite evidence that girls have not become more prone to offending over the past decade, there has been a steady increase in the proportion of girls in residential placement. For some offenses, such as status offenses and assaults, girls are nearly twice as likely as boys to be in placement.
  • 25% of the youth were not raised by either parent.
  • 20% of young people in residential placement are either parents or expecting (compared to a national average of 2-6%)
  • 30% of the respondents report that they have a learning disability (compared with 5% of the general population). They have also experienced high rates of suspensions (57%), truancy (53%), and disenrollment from school (24%)
  • 30% of youth have not been informed of any post-release plan for them.