Attorney, successful businessman, & ACLU president Vance Opperman gave a spirited and informative talk at the Stone Arch DFL meeting in Minneapolis this morning.  He is a very smart and insightful fellow with a terrific grasp of so many critical issues, but not this one.

Unfortunately, like 99% of the nation, he has very little comprehension of why America has 25% of the world’s prison population, charges 25% of juvenile justice youth in adult criminal court, and is the world leader with five to ten times the murder and crime rates of any other *industrialized nation (for many years now).

On the plus side, Vance did speak to the African American Men’s Study & the importance of the institutionalized racist fact that 50% of Black Men are either in prison, on the way to prison, or on parole.

But when I asked him a question about how to solve the conundrum of preteen moms and adolescent felons, he said he was not very familiar with the issues.

I had hoped that Senator Amy Klobuchar would back me up.  She was in the audience and had worked in juvenile court when I was a guardian ad-Litem and she saw what I saw when she was a public defense lawyer in the court system that is child protection in our community.

Senator Klobuchar was in the Juvenile Court system when MN Supreme Court Chief Justice stated that 90% of the youth in Juvenile justice had come through Child Protective Services & the same time Hennepin County arrested 44% of the adult Black Men (2001, with no duplicate arrests).  Google “Rich Stanek Resigns” to find out more about how the appointed Police Commissioner made that happen.

Unfortunately, I did not get to ask the question about preteen mom’s (Industrialized World’s Leader) and STD’s (another World Leading category for America).

If communities were to foster conditions that lead to healthy children; our streets would be safer, more kids would graduate, we’d save money on police, prisons, and insurance.  It would also make for a happier and more knowledgeable citizenry, save tax dollars, and it would be the right thing to do.

* there are 24 other industrialized nations with great wealth and advanced infrastructures that the U.S. has compared itself to for many years.  Recently, due to America’s poor rankings, some journalists have begun comparing this nation to third world and emerging economies.

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Add this to the fact that American youth (as young as 11) are routinely charged as adults (25% nationally) and that cities around the nation arrest extremely high percentages of their minority populations (in 2001 Hennepin County – Minneapolis MN) arrested 44% of it’s adult Black Men – no duplicate arrests/58% of those men were rearrested for a second crime within two years making Minneapolis the Jail & Prison capital of the world.

Many states have funded their prison and jail systems at far greater rates of increase than their schools, daycare, or health systems, any of which could reduce the stresses driving the extreme growth in crime and courts.

A pathological lack of empathy is driving parts of our political body and ensures that generation after generation of dysfunctional families will continue to maintain the statistical truth that the U.S. has five percent of the world’s population and twenty five percent of the world’s prison population.  This scorched earth capitalism is now converting jails, prisons, and juvenile detention centers to money making operations with the attendant problems of brutal and illegal conditions (that have sent some judges to prison).

Add that to the mental health issues addressed in the thirty years of study conducted by Dr. Bruce Perry & his conclusion that 25% of Americans will be special needs people by the end of this generation, & the Federal Reserve Boards study and argument for investing in children begins to look like a pretty good return on capital (not to mention it’s the right thing to do).

Not addressing these issues can only continue to make our streets dangerous, schools fail, and quality of life a shadow of what it has been.

Support day care, educators, social workers and early child initiatives.  Make mental health programs a mainstay of the juvenile justice system.  It is a proven improvement over the punishment model.

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Many in U.S. Are Arrested by Age 23, Study Finds

By ERICA GOODE

Published: December 19, 2011

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I was only one of five hundred MN guardians IN 2005, and knew this number to be just a fraction of the true number as I personally counted fifty sexually abused children in my caseload & the court system I was working in at the time.

Here’s what I’ve learned about child sex abuse in Minnesota & how it applies to child sex abuse at Penn State.

1)       No One Wants To Talk About It.  Even trained social workers are uncomfortable with this topic and reporting it can mean the fall-out impacting them – it’s easier to let it go.  I have witnessed non-reporting & under-reporting by people working in the field of policing, education, child protection & a friend who admitted years after the fact that he lived near a five year old girl that was being prostituted.  I tell the story in my book of a seven year old girl that was prostituted and not taken out of the home during 48 police calls to her home.

2)     No One Understands.  Very few people understand the lifelong impact the rape of a child has on that child and the adult that child becomes.  Suicides and dysfunctional lifelong lifestyles are common to untreated child rape victims. I have visited 4 year old’s in suicide wards & written about a 7 year old who hung himself and left a note.

3)      This May Surprise You; Our courts are almost incapable of dealing with child rape.  Children make a less than useless witnesses in their own defense.  Brain development of a child guarantees that a good defense attorney will “confuse the witness” which destroys the case.  I have attended conferences at both William Mitchell law school & Hamline University on this topic and listened to judges & prosecuting attorneys (the child’s defender) also admit to confusing the witness in these cases. *In none of the child rape cases in my caseload (about 25) were the molesters ever brought to trial (because the child is not a useful witness – no witness, no case).  If it is not seen and reported (it did not happen—see the problem?)

I predict that many of Jerry Sandusky’s sodomized victims will not come forward because of the serious stigma attached to rape and sex abuse in this nation.

A friend bought me lunch when I wrote INVISIBLE CHILDREN and told me why he had never talked about and would never report his being molested by a priest when he was a young boy.  He also told me what it was like to discover at age 45 the impact of that rape and how it had wrecked two marriages and three business partnerships before he realized his need for help.  He began therapy at 45 & now 70, still seeing the same therapist.

Americans don’t like to talk about sex in even a healthy manner & will further punish people that come forward to talk about it.  Boys almost never do, and only a small percentage of women do.  The stigma is real & we fear becoming part of a messy deal.  Then there’s the history of blaming the victim (even when she’s seven years old) makes reporting so much harder than it should be – see Penn State.

Children don’t have much of a chance in America.

Molesters like Sandusky destroy the lives of hundreds of children over their lifetime.  The child remains severely damaged year after year until help comes from somewhere (usually nowhere). I’ve said about several of the sex abuse children in my caseload that this child has never had a nice day in her life.

Anxiety, terror, Prozac & Ritalin are predictable parts of the life of an abused child.  They feel dirty and often blame themselves for the crime.  Not being able to function normally in school makes life miserable and too often criminal or sexually active & a preteen mother or father.  Just how does one un-teach sexual behavior to a nine year old without professional help?

Predicting the impact in human life years for each Sandusky type abuser, using my 70 year old friend as an example, if only 33 of my friends years are considered (from age 12 to 45), multiplied by just 100 victims (not a high estimate in a case like Sandusky’s) = 3300 years of damage & pain that is rarely reported and even more rarely treated.

In my 12 active years as a guardian ad-Litem, there was almost no effective therapy for the sexually abused children I worked with.

One sad family of four very young and sexually abused children, each had to be placed in separate foster homes because when they were together, the children would sexualize their behavior & at the time, nothing could be done about that.  These children were terribly abused in their birth homes & again by a court system that offered them a fig leaf.  The molester was left in the home and continued his evil behaviors.  The pain these children suffered was immense; the molester once kicked the seven year old so hard she went into convulsions.

How many children had been victimized by Sandusky before 1998 when he was first questioned by police for molesting a boy in a shower?  How many children did he molest from 1998 to today?

Child sex abuse in our communities  is a huge problem that affects many of the three million children reported to child protection services in America each year.  Cases like Sandusky are rarely identified and even more rarely reported.

Millions of children are impacted for life and this will continue until you and I began to better understand its impact and find our voice for reporting and helping children recover.

*I’ve had extensive arguments with a judge & my supervisor about a singular violent and extended rape of young children in a family and the cruelty of leaving this molester in the home (8 years later he was still practicing his criminal behaviors on a four year old boy).

**National  Center For Victims Of Crime www.ncvc.org

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http://boingboing.net/2011/11/03/twin-rivers-police-association-stops-selling-t-shirt.html

I’ve written on the police tasering ten and twelve year olds, the growing movement to try very young children as adults, and the chronic over representation of African Americans in jails & prisons everywhere.

In my experience as a guardian ad-Litem, all children want to be “normal” and lead nice lives, but too many of them are born into toxic homes and their communities are quick to punish and incarcerate instead of nurture & enhance their lives.

How can America’s youth ever hope to lead normal lives when so many of them have serious criminal records & drug problems (legal and illegal) by the time they are eighteen?

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http://boingboing.net/2011/11/02/video-judge-beats-disabled-daughter-for-using-the-internet.html

Pass this on & support public advocacy for at risk children (they need your help).

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A few years ago, one of my guardian ad-Litem cases walked about thirty miles on a ten degree night when he was sent outside wearing only jeans and a T shirt at a privatized juvenile detention center.

That he did not die or suffer permanent physical damage was a miracle.

Last year, a Pennsylvania judge was incarcerated for sending youth to prison for profit (he behaved as a commissioned salesman – selling innocent youth into jail).

The following article brings to light the commonality of for profit youth prisons and I think the abundance of meanness and poor management that combine to further damage the lives of America’s youth.

Reading the Class Action lawsuit that this report is based on is moving, and deserves to be made known to a larger public audience. That this nation supports the intensity of abuse to youth that it does explains the crime rates, prison rates (13 million prison and jail releases last year) and failing schools.

https://docs.google.com/viewer?url=http://www.bettermsreport.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/12/Walnut-Grove-Complaint1.pdf

Federal Lawsuit Seeks to End Years of Physical, Sexual Abuse of Teenage Inmates

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State’s child, family welfare reforms collapse
by George Lauby (North Platte Bulletin) – 10/1/2011

Gov. Dave Heineman

First, three top private companies backed out of their deals to provide child and family welfare services in Nebraska.

Second, the Nebraska State Auditor found severe financial problems with the two-year-old “privatized” program.

Third, the man at the top resigned.

That was how a sweeping state welfare reform collapsed in just two years.

Director Todd Reckling announced his resignation one week after a state audit of the program’s finances reported serious problems.

Reckling, 44, said he is resigning for health reasons effective Oct. 14. Already thin, he had been losing weight, coworkers told an Omaha news reporter.

Reckling was in charge of Nebraska’s controversial child welfare privatization, which put the child welfare system in the hands of five privately-owned “lead” agencies.

The system-wide reform was aimed at decreasing the Nebraska Department of Health and Human Services’s hand, while allowing the department to retain oversight.

The idea was capitalism and competition, with government supervision, would drive costs down while ensuring the quality of care stayed high.

It never worked in most of Nebraska.

Early on, trouble appeared. Only one company applied to lead the programs in central and western Nebraska, so there was no competition.

Small-scale group homes for vulnerable children were closed in western and central Nebraska, such as the Alliance Boys Ranch, North Platte’s Boy’s and Girl’s Home and two Salvation Army group homes.

When the North Platte group homes closed, employees told the Bulletin that the program was taking a giant step backward — eliminating existing programs and moving already alienated children to new and strange places.

Officials, including Reckling, were reassuring. When the Salvation Army homes closed, officials said children would be cared for in an expanded Boys and Girls Home in North Platte, or in Cedars Home near Broken Bow.

But those homes closed too.

In contrast to small group homes, the Nebraska division of children and family services is a large unit — employing more than 1,800 people.

It is the largest of six state health and human services divisions, including not only child welfare and juvenile services, but also adult protective services, economic assistance/welfare programs, the refugee program and child support enforcement activities.

As the privatization got underway, Reckling signed contracts with five large companies in 2009 to oversee those programs. The state program came to be called “Families Matter.”

The program suffered an astonishing drop out rate at the top level. By October 2010, three of the five lead companies had withdrawn, including the agency handling all of central and western Nebraska, the Boys and Girls Home.

Prompted by complaints, Nebraska State Auditors investigated the Families Matter program during the summer, and released their findings Sept. 7.

They found the costs of the program had gone up 27 percent in two years, with millions of dollars improperly accounted. At the same time, the top agencies said they didn’t have enough money to operate.

The audit made headlines all over the state. Democrats pointed blame at Gov. Dave Heineman, who made no comment for several days. But eight days after the audit was released, Reckling announced his resignation and Heineman spoke.

Heineman said the state will continue trying to privatize Nebraska’s child welfare system, but must do better.

“I want to help our children and families, but this reform effort has not been easy to implement,” he said in a news conference. “We can and we must do better.”

“I believe in accountability, so I’m not going to make excuses for what has occurred. I expect better results and I expect them soon,” he said.

Heineman expressed special disappointment with Boys and Girls Home of Sioux City, Iowa, which failed to pay subcontractors after it dropped out of the program last October.

Boys and Girls Home was in charge of central and western Nebraska, including North Platte.

Heineman said BGH’s failure to pay its bills was “irresponsible and very disappointing.”

And he compared the failure to a bad performance on the football field.

“I think we have the right idea, but we’ve got to execute it better,” Heineman said. “It’s like a football team. If you don’t execute the play, you don’t score a touchdown. Well, we’ve lost a lot of yards here lately because we’re not executing as well as we should have. But I still believe we can make this work.”

When the BGH pulled out, local providers scrambled to come up with alternatives. The North Platte School District created an educational program for students in grades 6-12 during the school year, hiring a teacher and an aide and setting up a classroom at the high school.

The county sheriff made plans to transport kids across the state to the nearest place, in Columbus.

In June, Family Skill Building Services re-opened one of the Salvation Army homes that had been closed during the reshuffling and now operates the Nebraska Youth Center, a home for about a dozen boys on the north side of town.

Not in these parts

Sen. Tom Hansen of North Platte said privatization shouldn’t be tried again now in central and western Nebraska, and never have been tried throughout the state in the first place.

“It probably should have been done on a smaller level (in southeastern Nebraska). Out here, we don’t have a lot of providers,” Hansen said. “Out here, Boys and Girls Home was the only bidder for lead agency. Looking back, that was a clue that we had a problem.”

Profiteering

It seems logical that the Boys and Girls Home building on 2300 E. Second might reopen for vulnerable children under better management, but the price of the empty building is too high, Hansen said. The Boys and Girls Home, Inc. inherited the building, and is now asking $1 million for it, even though its taxable value is about $400,000.

Among the financial scandals, as private agencies failed to deliver and collapsed, foster parents were not paid or were underpaid, especially those with children with special needs, Hansen said.

Foster parents dropped out in droves. For example, the number of foster homes in Dawson County dwindled from 45 to 11, according to the Legislature’s Health and Human Services Committee.

“There are lots of upset foster parents,” Hansen said. “These are wards of the state. The state needs to take responsibility.”

State auditors also found that some subcontractors – smaller companies with workers on the front lines – hired workers with no experience or education and paid them around $10 an hour.

However, the subcontractors turned around and billed the state $47 an hour for the work.

Staggering along

How it is all reformed will “depend on what the governor wants to do,” Hansen said, but he and some other senators think the HHS child and family division should be separated from the overall HHS department, so authorities can keep better watch.

Auditors complained of their struggle to get facts and figures from HHS, even though state law explicitly requires state departments to open their books for a public audit.

Hansen has often experienced the same problems — it is difficult for legislators to study the HHS operation, even a legislator such as Hansen on the health and human services or appropriations committees, which have the duty to oversee the HHS.

Hansen said breaking up the Health and Human Services department would make it more transparent.

“As legislators, we don’t think we’re being very accountable,” he said.

Local critics

Counselors, clients, parents and foster parents have long expressed dissatisfaction with HHS services.

Ongoing dissatisfaction led them to go to lengths to arrange a meeting in early August with Todd Reckling and other state officials.

Lisa Zlomke of North Platte’s Aurora Counseling and Jenny Olson of Liberty House in North Platte attended. The meeting was arranged by Melanie Williams-Smotherman, the owner of Family Advocacy Movement, headquartered in Lincoln.

The meeting lasted three-and-a-half hours, and “we had the ability to share examples of specific cases to illustrate points and to show three short videos during that time, including two regarding the harmful practice of drugging foster care children – which is becoming quite routine,” Williams-Smotherman said afterwards.

At the meeting, Williams-Smotherman said the number of Nebraska children taken from parents and put into the foster care and group home system is too high.

Most of those cases do not involve abuse, she said, but rather alleged neglect, she said.

Richard Wexler of the National Coalition for Child Protection Reform in Alexandria, Va. also says that too many children are taken from too many homes in the state.

According to the organization’s numbers, Nebraska removed 3,373 children from their natural homes last year. That’s nearly 7.5 of every 1,000 children, based on 2009 population numbers.

The national average is 3.4 per 1,000.

The only state that rates higher than Nebraska, according to Wexler, is West Virginia with a rate of 7.7.

Zlomke and Olson also said that HHS officials in the North Platte region do not contract services with private companies such as theirs.

Zlomke and Olson allege that Region II officials keep welfare recipients – particularly those with mental and behavioral disabilities — in a tight circle of select caregivers who really don’t have any competition, don’t do a good job, but are well paid.

This report was first published in the Sept. 21 print issue of the North Platte Bulletin.

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Christian is being charged as an adult with first degree murder & his hearing is coming up in just a few days.

He is a boy that has been living an awful life & deserves to be treated as a child not a hardened criminal.

Sign the petition;

http://www.change.org/petitions/reverse-decision-to-try-12-yo-cristian-fernandez-as-an-adult?utm_source=action_alert&utm_medium=email&alert_id=GJYIyADOMy_iDDPglQkDX

Read the story;Tell Florida State’s Attorney Angela Corey not to try a 12-year-old as an adult.

Cristian Fernandez is only 12 years old. And if Florida prosecutor Angela Corey has her way, he’ll never leave jail again.

Cristian hasn’t had an easy life. He’s the same age now as his mother was when he was born. He’s a survivor of physical, emotional, and sexual abuse. In 2010, Cristian watched his stepfather commit suicide to avoid being charged with abusing Cristian.

Last January, Cristian was wrestling with his 2-year-old brother, David, and accidentally broke David’s leg. Despite this, their mother left Cristian with his brother again in March. While the two boys were alone, Cristian allegedly pushed his brother against a bookcase, and David sustained a head injury. After their mother returned home, she waited six hours before taking David to the hospital. David eventually died.

Now Cristian is being charged with first degree murder — as an adult. He’s the youngest person in the history of his Florida county to receive this charge, and his next hearing is coming up in a just a few days.

Melissa Higgins works with kids who get caught up in the criminal justice system in her home state of New Hampshire. When she read about Cristian’s case, she was appalled — so she started a petition on Change.org asking Florida State’s Attorney Angela Corey to try Cristian as a child. Please sign Melissa’s petition today before Cristian’s next hearing on October 5.

As part of his prosecution, Cristian has been examined by two different forensic psychiatrists — each of whom concluded that he was “emotionally underdeveloped but essentially reformable despite a tough life.”

Cristian has already been through more than most of us can imagine — and now the rest of his life is in the hands of a Florida prosecutor who wants to make sure Cristian never leaves jail.

The purpose of the juvenile justice system is to reform kids who haven’t gotten a fair shake. If Cristian is sent to adult prison, it will be more than a tragedy for him — it will also be a signal to other prosecutors that kids’ lives are acceptable collateral in the quest to be seen as “tough on crime.”

Cristian’s next hearing is coming up quickly on October 5. State’s Attorney Angela Corey needs to know that her actions are being watched — please sign the petition asking her not to try Cristian as an adult:

http://www.change.org/petitions/reverse-decision-to-try-12-yo-cristian-fernandez-as-an-adult

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I forgot to tell him that well over 50% of the youth in juvenile justice suffer from diagnosable mental health issues, and fully half of those children suffer from multiple, chronic, serious problems.

The amount of psychotropic medications provided to very young children and juveniles is not in dispute, but the results are.

My experience with children receiving adequate therapy for the severe trauma and resulting behavior problems that were so indelibly a part of these very young children’s lives was almost non existent.

Once these very troubled children become old enough to impact their surroundings they do so in a most troubling manner. That’s why our jails are full and our schools are troubled.

From the study; “In other words, by one mechanism or another, more than 200,000 individuals under the age of 18 are prosecuted in criminal court each year. There are three trends in the data worth noting.

First, the proportion of juveniles prosecuted as adults is growing, primarily because states are adding more and more offenses to the list of crimes that are excluded from the juvenile court.

Second, a very large number of these cases — about one-third — are for non-violent offenses, such as burglary or drug charges. Finally, Black and Hispanic offenders are more likely than White offenders to be
transferred, even when they have committed the same crime.

The greatest disparity is in the processing of drug charges.

Finally, Black and Hispanic offenders are more likely than White offenders to be transferred, even when they have committed the same crime. The greatest disparity is in the processing of drug charges.”

We are very familiar with the results of juveniles incarcerated as adults.

Many years of being in and out of jail & prison, high cost of crime & families impacted by crime. There is no upside in creating lifelong offenders which is exactly what we do by charging eleven and twelve year olds as adults.

“Children that are the victims of failed personal responsibility are not my problem, nor are they the problem of the State Of Minnesota” MN Past Governor Tim Pawlenty.

No one wins when we abandon five year olds to be brutalized by abusive families.

As Supreme Court Chief Justice Kathleen Blatz so aptly stated, “the difference between that poor child and a felon is about eight years”

Vote for child friendly programs and call your state legislators and tell them to do the same.

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There is very little sympathy for felons in our nation and very few people stop to question why there is so much crime and so many criminals.

Not me.

I know that MN Supreme Court Justice Kathleen Blatz is accurate when she says that 90% of the youth in our juvenile justice systems have come through child protection services & that Minneapolis MN arrested 44% of its adult African American men in 2001 (no duplicate arrests).

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I also know that we so dramatically under – serve abused and neglected children that most of them never recover from their childhoods. The most recent big study of children aging out of foster care shows 80% leading dysfunctional lives.

Three million children per year are reported to child protection systems in America. About 500,000 children are under court protection.

Almost all felons have come through the juvenile justice system. We have had a recent run of white collar crime in the U.S. but I am certain that it is still a tiny percent of the 1.5 trillion dollars in insurance estimate cost of crime in this nation each year.

Anyone reading the biographies of criminals executed in the U.S. each year will find that they are all very disturbed, and that the majority of them were horribly abused as children. Not addressing the mental health needs of terrifically abused children to terribly dysfunctional adulthood.

Can we help abused children to lead normal lives? Yes, we can.

Would it be less costly to invest in troubled children than it is to wait until their criminal histories are significant enough to place them into second chance programs?

Yes, it would; the cost of each juvenile in the juvenile justice systems of New York and California now exceeds 240,000 dollars per year. It is not uncommon for re-offenders to spend 25 to 35 years in and out of prison (66% recidivism is considered the average in America).

The Missouri model of ten years ago proved that treating juveniles as youth instead of criminals turned their recidivism rates from 90% to under 20%.

It seems doubly wrong that our system spends more money to ruin children for life than it would to facilitate their training and needs to become coping, capable citizens. We have the technology and the money to do this, I have seen it done.

The rest of the industrialized world does it pretty well – note our falling quality of life indices internationally.

What we have instead is a push for privatizing prisons and jails, squeezing the last oversight of non financial incentives out of an already underfunded, dysfunctional, and by many interpretations, cruel system; http://spectator.org/archives/2011/03/11/juvenile-abuse

“Children that are the victims of failed personal responsibility are not my problem, nor are they the problem of the State Of Minnesota” MN Governor Tim Pawlenty quoted to Andy Dawkins and David Strand.

In the execution referred to in the headline, Republican Gov. John Kasich last week rejected Baston’s plea for mercy.

Baston asked for clemency based on the victim’s family’s opposition to capital punishment and his chaotic upbringing, with his lawyer saying he was abandoned as an infant and would wander the streets with his dog trying to find his mother when he was a boy.

12 years in child protection has changed the way I look at grown up abandoned children.

There is not a religion on the planet that would abandon children a second time.

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The children that commit these crimes have almost all come out of horribly abusive homes. As a nation, we have avoided even a basic effort to ensure that American youth have at least a small chance to lead a normal life. The rest of the industrialized world has left us behind in this measurement.

The last MN governor (Tim Pawlenty) was quoted as saying that “children that are the victims of failed personal responsibility are not my problem, nor are they the problem of the state of MN”

After many years of working with abused and neglected children, I have witnessed the grim reality of MN Supreme Court Chief Justice Kathleen Blatz statement that “90% of the youth in the justice systems have come through child protection services”.

Not many Edina or Suburban MN youth end up in County Child Protection (their families have insurance, day care, and mental health programs for troubled youth).

The children in Child Protection are there under the federal “Imminent Harm Doctrine” and have been removed from their homes because their lives have been endangered by their birth parents.

As a volunteer guardian ad-Litem, I can testify to the trauma abused and neglected children live with every day. The World Health Organization defines torture as “extended exposure to violence and deprivation”. This is exactly what I have witnessed happening to the children in my case load in Hennepin County MN.

Hating the parents solves nothing. They were almost all abused themselves as children. Many of them are preteen moms with no parenting skills and their own dysfunctional lives.

It’s horrid enough to witness the abuse these children live with all of their young lives. To think that five and ten year old children have not been punished enough by living with sex abuse, neglect, and other unspeakable act, that we must try them as adults and make sure that they never have any chance of living a normal life is just awful.

There is not a religion in the world that sanctify’s discarding ten year olds.

Once these children enter a criminal adult system they are ruined forever. The rape and insanity of youth entering the criminal justice system is well documented.

It is extremely costly to our state to try and solve these problems with more prison building (it’s also immoral).

It is common that these children will spend 30 to 60 years as returning felons, wards of the state, and dysfunctional citizens unable to hold a job or avoid drug dependency. Consider also the many years of violence and perpetual criminal behavior our prison system fosters.

MN spent 500 million on prisons last year. New York and California spend $250,000 per year on each youth in their juvenile justice systems.

It would be far less costly to our communities to provide resources to young and troubled families to insure that young children receive what they need to lead a normal life.

Just a few years ago a federal mandate forbid the the execution of youth that had committed crimes as juveniles.

Representative Westrom’s bill to try 10 year olds as adults is a step backwards and completely destroys any chance that an already abused and neglected child will ever have the opportunity to lead a normal life.

I write the following while remembering the unspeakable things that happened to the children in my caseload.

While this is harsh, I see the motivation for Jonathon Swift’s Modest Proposal;the children he speaks of lead such miserable lives, that killing them early would reduce their suffering.

Abandoning children to a criminal justice system that rapes and destroys them may be worse than death.

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Last year, a Pennsylvania judge was incarcerated for sending youth to prison for profit (he behaved as a commissioned salesman – selling innocent youth into jail).

The following article brings to light the commonality of for profit youth prisons and I think the abundance of meanness and poor management that combine to further damage the lives of America’s youth.

Reading the Class Action lawsuit that this report is based on is moving, and deserves to be made known to a larger public audience. That this nation supports the intensity of abuse to youth that it does explains the crime rates, prison rates (13 million prison and jail releases last year) and failing schools.

https://docs.google.com/viewer?url=http://www.bettermsreport.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/12/Walnut-Grove-Complaint1.pdf

Federal Lawsuit Seeks to End Years of Physical, Sexual Abuse of Teenage Inmates

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From the Better Mississippi Report:
SHEILA BEDI

JACKSON, Miss. (Monday, Dec. 20, 2010) – A recent class-action lawsuit filed in federal court could finally end years of abuse to teenage prisoners – by fellow inmates and prison staff – at the Walnut Grove Youth Correctional Facility.

Sheila Bedi, the deputy legal director of the Southern Poverty Law Center, filed the lawsuit Nov. 16, 2010, in federal court in Jackson. Bedi said the lawsuit is needed to send years of serious abuse that has seen teenage prisoners tied, beaten and raped.

“In many ways the crisis at Walnut Grove is a re-tread of the crisis that plagued the training schools for so many years,” Bedi said in a recent interview. “Children were shackled, hogtied, beaten, sexually abused, forced to exercise until they vomited and then forced to eat their own vomit.”

You can download a copy of the federal lawsuit by clicking here.

Bedi said part of the problem is that the Walnut Grove youth prison was managed by a for-profit prison company, the GEO Group — the second largest for-profit prison company in the country. She said the company has a long track record of abusing the people in its custody.

The Walnut Grove prison opened in 2001 with 500 beds and was authorized to house “juvenile offenders” ages 13–19. Since then, approximately every two years, the Mississippi Legislature has amended the prison’s authorizing legislation to increase its bed capacity and to raise the maximum age of those who are eligible to be housed in the facility.

Abuse has been a problem at the prison for years. Bedi discussed the lawsuit and the problems at the Walnut Grove prison in an in-depth interview with the Better Mississippi Report. Here is the complete interview:
Better Mississippi Report: As a longtime advocate of juvenile justice, you and others made the decision to sue those involved in the running of the Walnut Grove Correctional Facility. What do you hope to achieve with this lawsuit?

Sheila Bedi: A for-profit youth prison, like Walnut Grove, has a strong financial incentive to imprison as many young people as possible on the cheap – cutting essential safety, health and educational services in order to increase profits. In Mississippi, youth as young as 13 can be tried and convicted in the adult criminal justice system – and eventually thrown away into abusive prisons. This combination of a profit-hungry private prison and a bad law that allows too many teenagers to enter the adult justice system has created a public safety crisis in Mississippi. This is a crisis that destroys young lives and has wasted more than $100 million in taxpayer dollars over the past 9 years.

But this crisis can be resolved. Over the past several years, juvenile justice officials, Commissioner Epps, legislators and the governor’s office have all collaborated to develop significant reforms to Mississippi’s criminal and juvenile justice systems. Hopefully, these officials will now turn their full attention to the youth imprisoned at the Walnut Grove Youth Correctional Facility.

Better Mississippi Report: How is the Walnut Grove lawsuit different from the suits involving the Oakley and Columbia Training Schools?

Bedi: In many ways the crisis at Walnut Grove is a re-tread of the crisis that plagued the training schools for so many years. In 2003, the U.S. Department of Justice uncovered unspeakable abuses at the Oakley and Columbia training schools. Children were shackled, hogtied, beaten, sexually abused, forced to exercise until they vomited and then forced to eat their own vomit. The George W. Bush Department of Justice called these facilities the worst juvenile prisons the Justice Department had investigated in decades.

The Southern Poverty Law Center and the Mississippi Center for Justice filed multiple lawsuits over conditions in the training schools. Additionally, we had incredibly strong leadership on juvenile justice issues from state legislators—including Sen. Gray Tollison and Reps. George Flaggs, Earle Banks and John Hines. As a result of these efforts, Mississippi has drastically reformed its juvenile justice system. The Columbia Training School has been closed down; community-based sanctions have been created in all 82 counties; and the Oakley Training School is a safe, humane place for our children. It’s a place that we need in order to keep our juvenile justice system functioning. I never thought I would be able to say that seven years ago.

With the Walnut Grove crisis, there are many similarities: there’s a prison that is subjecting young people to unspeakable abuses, a U.S. Department of Justice investigation and a private lawsuit. We have also strong leadership from some of our local legislators. But there is an important difference – Walnut Grove is a for-profit prison. The Walnut Grove Youth Correctional Facility is operated by the GEO group, the second largest for-profit prison company in the country; it has a long track record of abusing the people in its custody. The GEO group has projected that its 2010 income will exceed $1 billion. Some of that comes directly from Mississippi taxpayers – who pay more than $14 million annually to operate Walnut Grove.

Better Mississippi Report: Please explain how the city of Walnut Grove gained oversight of a state juvenile correctional facility. Is this arrangement repeated anywhere in the state? Or in the nation? If so, is this a better way of providing for juvenile correctional facilities than the state government route?

Bedi: The town of Walnut Grove created the Walnut Grove Youth Correctional Authority specifically for the purposes of administrating a private, for-profit youth prison. This is a highly unusual arrangement. It appears that the facility was built purely to provide additional profits to the Correctional Authority and the private prison operators. Mississippi taxpayers pay Defendant Walnut Grove Youth Correctional Authority $31.40 per youth per day to operate the Walnut Grove Youth Correctional Facility.

The facility opened in 2001 with 500 beds and was authorized to house “juvenile offenders” between the ages of 13–19. Since then, approximately every two years, the Mississippi Legislature has amended the facility’s authorizing legislation to increase its bed capacity and to raise the maximum age of those who are eligible to be housed in the facility. In 2002, the Legislature amended the law to allow 20 year olds at the facility.

The legislature then doubled the facility’s size in 2004 – allowing it to house 500 more for a total capacity of 1,000 beds. In 2005, lawmakers raised the maximum age and the facility began housing people until shortly after their 22nd birthdays. The facility’s capacity was expanded again in 2007, when the Legislature added another 500 beds. The facility is currently authorized to house 1,500 individuals between the ages of 13 and 22. These amendments have significantly increased its income and tripled the size the prison.
In 2004, the Walnut Grove Youth Correctional Authority subcontracted with Cornell, a for-profit corporation, for the management and operation of the Walnut Grove Youth Correctional Facility. Under its contract with authority, Cornell had responsibility for providing humane care and treatment consistent with all constitutional and ACA standards. In violation of these duties, Cornell incarcerated youth in extremely dangerous conditions, resulting in the serious injury of numerous young prisoners and the death of two youths.

Until its recent acquisition by the GEO Group Inc., Cornell was a for-profit corporation incorporated and existing in the state of Texas and maintaining a principal place of business in Houston. Upon assuming control of the youth facility, GEO management retained almost all of the employees who were formerly employed by Cornell. The management structure and staffing assignments remain identical to those in place before the acquisition.

A for-profit youth prison, like Walnut Grove, has a strong financial incentive to imprison as many young people as possible on the cheap – cutting essential safety, health and educational services in order to increase profits. In Mississippi, youth as young as 13 can be tried and convicted in the adult criminal justice system – and eventually thrown away into abusive prisons.

This combination of a profit-hungry private prison and a bad law that allows too many teenagers to enter the adult justice system has created a public safety crisis in Mississippi.

This is a crisis that destroys young lives and has wasted over $100 million in taxpayer dollars the past nine years.

Better Mississippi Report: Why was this suit filed in federal court, rather than state court?

Bedi: This is a class action and the majority of the claims included in the complaint are federal claims. In this case we are only seeking an injunction – a court order requiring the facility to operate in compliance with state and federal law.

Better Mississippi Report: Was there a “tipping point” in events at the facility that led to this lawsuit?

Bedi: Two youth have lost their lives in this facility over the past three years. Countless others endure daily threats to their safety as a result of the prison’s dangerously deficient security policies and the abusive prison guards who torment the youth in their custody. Many judges order youth to finish their high school education at Walnut Grove. But less than half the youth imprisoned in the facility attend school.

Better Mississippi Report: The State Superintendent of Education is named as a defendant in this suit. Can you explain why?

Bedi: The Mississippi Legislature established the Walnut Grove Youth Correctional Facility with good intentions: to ensure that young men in the custody of the Mississippi Department of Corrections would have a second chance and receive rehabilitative services. Unfortunately, these good intentions were never realized. While state law requires that all young men at Walnut Grove receive educational services throughout their incarceration, less than half of the youth actually attend school. Youth with disabilities are also denied the special education services to which they are entitled under federal law.

As the superintendent of education, defendant Tom Burnham is responsible for ensuring education services for all youth in Mississippi – including those youth who are imprisoned.

Better Mississippi Report: Are there other alternatives to incarceration for juvenile offenders? If so, what evidence is there to support these alternatives as being more beneficial than the “jail” model for these juveniles?

Bedi: There is no justice, or should you say “logic,” in treating a 13-year-old child as if he were a 30-year-old man. Yet Mississippi courts are prohibited from making any distinction between adults and children in criminal matters. Mississippi’s laws ban children from voting, entering into contracts, getting married, or dropping out of school. But the law often treats children as adults in the criminal justice sphere. Neither science nor common sense justifies this paradox. Recent brain science research proves that, compared to adults, children’s brains are underdeveloped.

This is particularly true for the part of the brain children use to weigh the future consequences of their decisions and to navigate complex legal process. Common sense tells us that society does not benefit when a child spends his most formative years behind bars – influenced not by teachers and parents, but by hardened adult criminals.
These laws don’t even effectively reduce crime. Many studies, including one commissioned by Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, have concluded that children tried and punished in the adult system have recidivism rates up to 40percent higher than youth sanctioned and rehabilitated in the juvenile system. Intending to keep us safer, the laws that try children as adults do just the opposite.

U.S. Department of Justice research shows that youth incarcerated in the adult criminal justice system are eight times more likely to commit suicide than in youth locked up in juvenile facilities. Youth housed in adult correctional facilities are nearly five times more likely to be sexually assaulted, three times more likely to be assaulted by prison staff and 50 percent more likely to be assaulted with a weapon than youth in a juvenile facility.

Better Mississippi Report: What kinds of offenses qualify a juvenile offender to be placed at Walnut Grove? What ages and genders are housed there?

Bedi: Walnut Grove is a prison for youth ages 13-22 located in Leake County, Miss. Sixty-seven percent of the young men at Walnut Grove are incarcerated for committing non-violent offenses. It is a facility for youth who are tried and convicted in the adult criminal justice system.

Better Mississippi Report: In a perfect legislative session, what kinds of changes to the statute would you recommend to improve the administering of justice for juvenile offenders in Mississippi?

Bedi: We’re collaborating with the legislators to develop a number of measures that would, No. 1., put some additional judicial controls on the process that allows children to be transferred into the adult criminal justice system; No. 2, reform some of the laws governing Walnut Grove that force youth into a paramilitary program that contributes to abusive conditions; and No. 3, create comprehensive standards for juvenile detention centers.

Better Mississippi Report: Although you no longer live in Mississippi, please describe your previous role here in the state as it relates to juvenile justice issues.

Bedi: Previously, I was lucky enough to serve Mississippi’s youth as the co-founder and co-director of the Mississippi Youth Justice Project, a project of the Southern Poverty Law Center. In that capacity, I worked with Mississippi’s youth, families, legislators and juvenile justice stakeholders on a number of initiatives that improved Mississippi’s juvenile justice system – including the Juvenile Justice Act of 2005, the Mississippi Juvenile Delinquency Prevention Act of 2006 and several class action lawsuits over conditions. In 2008, I left Mississippi to work in Washington, D.C., for the Justice Policy Institute, a criminal and juvenile justice policy organization. I quickly realized that I missed the work in the Deep South, and I rejoined the Southern Poverty Law Center as a deputy legal director in 2009.

I live in New Orleans and I supervise the work in SPLC’s New Orleans and Jackson offices. I spend a lot of time in Mississippi and work with our amazing Jackson-based staff on reform campaigns throughout the state. It’s great to be home. I spend a lot of time of the road, but I’m energized by my incredible colleagues, (many of them who live here in Mississippi), and the inspiring youth and families we work with and for.

pamReply21. Dec, 2010 at 2:11 pm
Gladiator School

by Pam Kulig on Sunday, November 28, 2010 at 10:26pm

WGYCF, a goldmine of despair, is no place for kids. It’s known as a “gladiator school”. I’ve been supporting an inmate at Walnut Grove for the past 4-1/2 years and have “watched” him grow up and adapt to the depraved and inhumane conditions at this facility he calls home. He’s serving life. He arrived there at age 15. He says the place is like a cancer of the soul.

He says he’s seen and heard things he’ll never forget, things he said no one should ever see, let alone someone his age. He’s never been to high school, yet he longs for his innocence. We talk almost every day. For the past 4 years I’ve experienced through him life at Walnut Grove: violence; the constant THREAT of violence; non-existent and mediocre medical help; sexually charged environment between inmates and female guards; dishonest, brutal and vengeful officers; indifferent captains, majors and wardens; corrupt company officials; cover-ups of inmate deaths; mace attacks; inmates left to burn after the attacks; and the daily fights, stealing and predatory behavior of inmates toward other inmates; loose security; inmate-run zones; gangbanging; shabby visitation schedule and shabby treatment of visitors. And much more. From what I can tell, it’s a warehouse where teenage males with raging hormones are sent for punishment, living in deprivation with nothing to do and no rehabilitative services, anger and resentment bubbling and building like a time bomb.

It’s a recipe for disaster (or more disaster). Rehabilitation? Non-existent. Psychological help? No way, partly because most inmates believe everything they tell the psyche doctor will be held against them and partly because there IS no psyche doctor. Without gang protection or affiliation, an inmate is screwed, literally. Even some of the officers are affiliated. Drugs? as available as on the streets. Contraband? for sex. Weapons?

Most of these kids would make good ironworkers. Yes, Walnut Grove YOUTH facility (correctional n/a), is a really good place to sink millions and millions of taxpayer dollars if you are GEO where half the kids leave without a GED and a new violent criminal mindset making guaranteed repeat customers.

The taxpayers paid $41 million to build a facility that a private company has mined for gold ever since on the backs of the youth of Mississippi (mainly black youth, based on the fact that I can count on two hands the number of white inmates at visitation in a room with at least 100 inmates).

A cellmate of the young man I’ve been helping had a similar experience to the inmate in the complaint who had activated the sprinklers to get medical attention who was then charged with a crime. Apparently necessary destruction of property for medical attention is not an isolated incident. In this case, the cellmate had a severely infected spider bite and was ignored for weeks without the antibiotic treatment he was prescribed.

Unable to walk and vulnerable in GP, he was wheeled to the “hole” because the medical unit was full. Left in the hole for over a week, suffering in 24 hour isolation, in excruciating pain, in fear of losing his leg and no working panic button, he eventually resorted to starting his mat on fire to create smoke to set off the smoke alarm. It worked, the guards came, beat the crap out of him, brought him to medical, and over 2 years later as he was about to go home he received an indictment for 3rd degree arson.

A jury convicted him and the judge, while admitting Walnut Grove wasn’t fit for anyone, gave him the max, 3 more years at Walnut Grove. Among the many things that didn’t seem to matter were his medical intake form which we obtained for trial that noted he was severely allergic to spider bites having spent 2 weeks as a child hospitalized and an employee at Walnut Grove who falsely testified that the panic buttons worked fine.

The result of WCYCF unchecked negligence is that a $25 mat cost the taxpayers another $33,000 and this young person 3 more years in maximum security prison. That’s on top of the $10,000 it cost to defend him and who knows how much to prosecute him. The judge and jury took it out on him and the taxpayers, not the facility at fault. I had heard from other inmate accounts that spider bites were rampant that year and many inmates had infections that they took care of themselves mainly by having other inmates squeeze the pus out in the showers while they screamed in agony. That’s because immediate medical care was non-existent. This is the WGYCF that I have been exposed to and have been dealing with for over 4 years. This is a place that has contempt for the inmates, contempt for their visitors and contempt for basic human decency.

When I go down there I see kids sitting at those tables, not adults that look like kids. I don’t see menacing hardened criminals. I see young people and kids. Some of the kids are small, immature and I shake my head in disbelief, I just can’t imagine what in the hell they are doing there. They still have baby faces, don’t even shave, are short, seem to be only interested in the pile of snacks and candy piled up on the table in front of them.

I’m puzzled and confused. These kids wearing stripes and MDOC shirts look like they haven’t taken a shower in weeks. Kids whose whole bodies fit into their Daddy’s arms, who look like they are going to cry when they leave. I say to myself, WTF? Is this the best we can do? Whatever these kids have done to society, society has done worse to them and this is the lesson they have learned at Walnut Grove.

http://www.myspace.com/savebrettjones Walnut Grove Survivor Brett Jones-5 1/2 years and counting-actually innocent

pamReply21. Dec, 2010 at 2:21 pm
October 23- Visit to Walnut Grove and the New Stip Search Policy

It’s been four long months since Brett had a visitor. I try to see him every season. Tis the season, so over the meandering river and through the woods I go, past the prairies, farms, and fields of Illinois Missouri, Arkansas, Tennessee and Mississippi, an overnight in the birth place of the King, and on into the deep South to the sleepy hollow called Walnut Grove. At the end of a winding road, beyond the Fish House, nestled in the tall trees and surrounded by a double row of fences topped with a halo of razor wire stands Brett’s home. It’s a gated community.

Every visitor is greeted personally by The Devil in Blue with a Shotgun. She’s a small white woman, a white helmet of hair, who drives a small white truck with a spinning light on the top. Believing it’s strictly a privilege to go beyond the razor wire, she works the gate like St. Peter. Swift consequences are handed down for any perceived disobedience. She forewarns, she’ll shoot any kid in stripes who tries to escape. I don’t doubt she’s a dead eye.

The Devil likes to have fun and the fun starts right away. The games are always different and of course seasonal. In the summer she enjoys herding the visitors-grandmothers, infants and small children alike-into the broiling hot parking lot to wait in the drenching heat. The shade is only a few steps away at the entrance, but baking us in the sun is much more fun.

If anyone wrongly speaks, we start all over back in our cars, or worse, banished from the premises. What crime have we committed? The Devil only knows.

In the fall, when the parking lot is nice and cool it’s a different game. Instead of lining us up in the cool parking lot, The Devil orders us to sit in our hot cars. Anyone who dares step out of their vehicle is quickly ordered back in faster than you can say Mississippi justice. Eventually, 20 minutes after we are supposed to be inside visiting, she signals that we can leave our cars. Hundreds of anxious people, infants, children, grandmothers, grandfathers, moms, dads, girlfriends, friends, sisters and brothers pour out into the parking lot.

Everyone jockeys for position in a line that will move slower than a clipper ship on a windless day. Running of course is against the rules and equals either back to the car, to the back of the line, or total banishment. The Devil watches in glee. See, The Peoples aren’t allowed to bring anything into the party and since boys love sweets it takes a long time to check everyone for pies, cakes and cookies. I’ve never seen a happier person than The Devil.

See, this is the only place of its kind in the land of Mississippi so people come from all over hill and dale to enjoy a few short hours with a loved one. I come from over yonder 900 miles, due north as the crow flies, so become anxious when I see rare visitation minutes senselessly ticking away in the parking lot. Where’s the sympathy Devil?

I noticed the decor in the lobby had changed slightly since the last time I was there. The pictures on the wall had changed. Gone were the colored pictures of the wardens, majors and captains who work at the facility. Even Epps, the Big Boss, was gone. Black and white photographs of eight smiling white guys now hung there. Ahh, the hosts of this evening’s soiree; pleased to meet you. As I stood in a sea of sadness where no one was smiling, I wondered what they were so happy about. Maybe they had just seen the quarterly reports; proof that other peoples’ disasters and devastation equal sparkling profits for them. Illegal aliens, war on drugs, and crime sure make these guys all smiley faced.

As I stood there in a gold mine of despair, the photographs on the wall reminded me of a song from the children’s tale Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, “hi- ho, hi- ho, it’s off to work we go…..”, and there they were- Dopey, Sleazy, Doc, Happy, Creepy, Crappy and Greedy- la,la,dee,da, la,la,dee,da, hi- ho, hi- ho.

Past the pictures, beyond the wall, through the sliding gate, lives the Prince. The Prince of Walnut Grove. I feel safe. He carries himself like a warrior; his face as serious as a soldier guarding the tomb of the unknown. Proud and strong and tall he stops to give me a warm hug before he takes his seat on the opposite side of the table. He’s not smiling but he seems happy. He informs me that I’ve woken him from his sleep. It’s so good to see him.

The room starts to fill to over-flowing. Soon we can’t hear. Children are everywhere. Children of the children who live there; brothers and sisters of the children who live there; daddies, mommas, step-dads, step-children, grandparents and God-parents of the children who live there. A little girl with beads in her hair sitting next to me grows restless in her seat and starts to dance as she sits there. The Prince does the party-boy dance with her from across the table. It made her giggle. It made me smile. Her little brother wore a t-shirt with hot rods on the front and wrestled with a big bottle of soda as he sat on the table facing his big brother with his feet dangling over into his lap. He sat that way for hours.

Enjoying candy, bakery, snacks and pop together, they seemed like a happy family. Next to me on the other side, were a grandmother and a teenage girl who were visiting the boy sitting next to Brett. Occasionally, he and Brett would lean together and talk. I think it was some kind of insider business.

Brett’s caretakers come over to say “hi”. Most are friendly, some are not. He points out one hugely obese caretaker wondering the room in black rubber gloves. The Prince says he’s the one who conducts the strip searches. I looked over; he definitely didn’t look friendly. The new rule is that every inmate who enters and leaves the visitation room is strip searched.

Brett is very squeamish now about getting visits because he doesn’t like that guy violating him. This could be the reason for the warrior look when he comes in. He’ not guarding the tomb of the unknown, he’s guarding his ass. Since most of the inmates are minors, we both agreed it’s just a little creepy. A reasonable person knows it’s highly unlikely that an inmate will want to stick anything up his butt during visitation especially when most everything and anything can be brought in through the back door by the caretakers. And it’s pretty impossible to stick anything up one’s rear with all the cops swarming the room. Plus every visitor goes through a metal detector and a pat down before entering. At the end of visitation they hold the visitors until every inmate has been strip searched so that if anything is found, the visitor of that inmate can be charged with a crime. This started when GEO took over…it must be those new smiling white guys’ idea. Maybe that’s why they are smiling; it can’t be straight money that makes these guys happy.

We talked for 3-1/2 hours. It’s funny how the voice I hear on the other end of the phone doesn’t match the voice in person. It’s strange how Brett sits so still for all that time never appearing restless. He remarked that free world people move strangely, their bodies so free flowing. He says we move without purpose. I think he means we move freely without every movement needing purpose. We eventually talked about the copy of the AG’s response to our appeal which he had just received the day before.

It depressed him. He felt discouraged and defeated. He said it repeated the same old wrong and twisted facts that they referred to as “chilling”. There was hurt in his eyes. I told him those same wrong facts have been argued over and over at every stage. His lawyer has said they keep arguing the facts because they can’t argue the law. She said what’s chilling is the jury never heard the facts. I agree, chilling indeed. He told me about his job and that he cleans the place from top to bottom every week. Who would have thought concrete could shine like marble. He takes extreme pride in his job. He does all kinds of maintenance around there. When something is broken, he fixes it.� He gets privileges for working so he works as much as he can. Very few in there carry as much time as he does. He struggles with that every day. He does his time honorably, like a man; he’s fought to survive since he was barely 15 years old.

He’s made more out of nothing than anyone I know. Confined to an 8×10 concrete box he’s accomplished more than some people who have the world at their feet. I’ve been told I’m his ray of sunshine. He calls me “citizen soldier”. Yes, were shining the light and the hope is that the liars, cheaters and bluffers will be held accountable.

As we sat there, Brett pointed out his enemies in the room. He’s been there longer than most and has acquired enemies. He pointed out his worst enemy. He didn’t look so bad to me. I suggested we go sit out in the sunny courtyard to get away from them. He said the tables had bird poop on them so I wouldn’t want to sit there. So we stayed inside. His enemies didn’t look menacing at all compared to the strip search dude. I would have risked sitting in bird turds to get away from that guy.

We shared a Dr. Pepper and a bag of Skittles, pretzels and Sweetarts. (I gave the rest of my quarters to a little boy in the lobby on the way out. He smiled and quietly thanked me. I wish I could have given him more). I told Brett in the future he should ask for Vitamin water since he helps fill the vending machines. He said, no, we were lucky to have bottled water. He said The Peoples want soda. But I need vitamins because that place is so draining. Except for him of course, he’s life-giving. I feel a certain sense of happy fulfillment when I visit him. All too soon the lights flash.

It’s time to say goodbye. We avoid goodbyes, we just say see ya later. He tells me to have a safe trip back. I give him a hug and he’s gone. He disappears back into the secret gulag where he’s been non-existent since 8th grade. Hated and forgotten by society he’s grown up like an orphan in the Warsaw ghetto. Carrying a sentence that would break a Spartan, he isn’t even close to being broken. In fact, he gives me strength.

As I leave I tell him everything will be okay and try not to look back. I look forward, towards the gate. Back in the lobby I tear up. There are those dwarfs again. Maybe a picture of Jesse Jackson or Martin Luther King or Honest Abe or Clarence Darrow or Jesus Christ would be enlightening. Ahh, well, it’s no secret justice, hope, faith and love don’t inspire these creatures; disaster, devastation and destruction are their compass.

Have a nice day and come again. Pam-zilla

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Ruben’s statistics;

85 percent of all juveniles who come into contact with the juvenile court system are functionally illiterate. So are 60 percent of all prison inmates.

Inmates have a 16 percent chance of returning to prison if they receive literacy help, as opposed to 70 percent for those who receive no help. This equates, according to the study, to taxpayer costs of $25,000 per year per inmate and nearly double that amount for juvenile offenders (California & New York spend over $200,000 per year on juveniles in their juvenile justice systems).

Other related information;

Over 50% of the youth in the juvenile justice system suffer from diagnosable mental illness & fully half that number have serious multiple diagnosis. Today’s

Michael Swanson’s Star Tribune headlines drive home the sad and murderous points that 13 year youth with serious criminal records need intervention and therapy not jail time. The Missouri miracle (juvenile justice transformation) makes this argument well.

Over 25% of American juveniles in the justice system are tried as adults,

Almost all youth in the juvenile justice system have passed through child protection services (MN Supreme Court Chief Justice Kathleen Blatz).

Over 70% of the serious and violent crime committed by juveniles in Ramsey County in the year of the ACE study, was perpetrated by youth from less than 4% of the families in the county.

We know who these children are and we have programs that work to make their lives more successful.

Minnesota spent half a billion dollars on its prison system last year. The money would be far better spent on early childhood programs allowing at risk youth a better chance at leading a normal life.

Ruben Rosario: Troubled youths get a message of hope
By Rubén Rosario
Updated: 11/13/2010 09:58:36 PM CST
Pioneer Press

Award-winning writer Jimmy Santiago Baca recently talked to students at Stadium View School in Minneapolis about the importance of personal expression. He is photographed talking to school administrators about the experience with with this kids on November 11. (Pioneer Press: Ashley Halbach)
He came last week to the little-known jail school with the grand view of the Metrodome, not to preach but to connect.

None of the 52 youths — juvenile offenders ranging in age from 10 to 18, knew who Jimmy Santiago Baca was, and probably many didn’t care at first. They figured he was just another adult authority figure about to bore them with empty rhetoric or tell them how screwed up they are.

To help break the ice and gain some trust, Baca told them a story from his childhood.

He did not begin with tales of his abusive father, who died of alcoholism. Nor did he begin with the story of his mother, later murdered by her second husband, or why they abandoned him at an early age. He did not mention his five years in a maximum-security prison in Arizona on a drug-possession conviction or the guy he stabbed in self-defense inside the joint.

The 58-year-old ex-felon and award-winning poet and author told them about the time he was caught stealing a man’s glass eye at the rural New Mexico orphanage where his grandparents reluctantly placed him.

“There was a marble contest, and as little kids, they thought the glass eye could see,” Lawrence Lucio, principal of the Hennepin County Juvenile Detention Center’s Stadium View School, related to me Thursday as we waited for Baca to address a group of schoolteachers and corrections officials.

“So they figured if they could cop the eye, they could use it as a marble,” said Lucio, a lifelong resident of St.

Paul’s West Side.
Baca, caught red-handed, swallowed the eye and then humorously recounted what nature yielded a few days later.

“And then he transitions from that to having the kids write about experiences they recalled — good, bad or indifferent — in their lives,” Lucio added. “Getting kids to write about what’s inside — it’s a great tool for kids to release stress and frustrations.”

The ability to write. The ability to read. It’s a power, a freedom most of us take for granted or don’t ponder much. Not Baca, a former illiterate who spent 25 years in some form of confinement — from an orphanage to juvie halls to the big house.

THE PRICE OF ILLITERACY

A quarter-century later, the former runaway and street tough is an in-demand speaker, educator, poet and documentary filmmaker. He once held the Wallace Stevens Endowed Chair at Yale University.

“The bad thing about not being able to read and write is that you are not a part of it, of life,” he told the small group of educators and jail officials. “And that’s the horrible thing about it. When you do get the grasp of language and look back behind you, the horror of being manipulated and used by people who were supposed to love you is so overwhelming.

“That’s why I work with people who can’t read or write,” he said.

There’s a strong connection between illiteracy and incarceration.

A recent national study found that 85 percent of all juveniles who come into contact with the juvenile court system are functionally illiterate. So are 60 percent of all prison inmates.

Another study concluded that inmates have a 16 percent chance of returning to prison if they receive literacy help, as opposed to 70 percent for those who receive no help. This equates, according to the study, to taxpayer costs of $25,000 per year per inmate and nearly double that amount for juvenile offenders.

Other research suggests that 75 percent of inmates are illiterate at the 12th-grade level and 19 percent are completely illiterate.

Most of the juvenile offenders at Stadium View School are three to five years behind their peers in reading and writing levels. Lucio has seen his share of illiterate kids walk through the door.

“I’ve had 18-year-olds in here who are basically nonreaders,” he said. Many of the detained youths are awaiting disposition of their cases. Some will return home or be sent to the juvenile facility in Red Wing. Quite a few will be certified as adults and, if convicted, head to the state prisons in St. Cloud and Stillwater.

FINDING THE WRITTEN WORD

Prison life seemed like just another inevitable stop in Baca’s life.

As he writes in his 2001 memoir, “A Place To Stand”: “I had visited it a thousand times in the screams of my father and my drunken uncles, in the tight-lipped scolding of my mother; in all the finger-pointing of the nuns at Saint Anthony’s orphanage; in all the finger-pointing adults who told me I didn’t belong. I didn’t fit in, I was a deviant. … By the time I arrived, a part of me felt I belonged there.”

But somehow, he knew there had to be a way out. He artfully navigated the prison culture of gangs. He carved the respect he needed to be left alone. A letter from “Harry,” a World War II veteran and Christian mission volunteer in a wheelchair, triggered a feverish plunge into poetry and prose. He devoured Pablo Neruda, Federico Garcia Lorca, Ezra Pound, Walt Whitman and other poets. He began writing poems about his life and times. Mother Jones published three in 1979, the year he was released from prison.

He found the way out. He has won numerous national and international poetry awards. He made it. But he resigned the Yale chair. The ivory tower perch in the Ivy League was quite an accomplishment. But it wasn’t where Baca felt he was needed.

No, it was places like the barrios of Northern Mexico, the kids in the public school in Newark, N.J., with the barbed wire or inside this little jail school in Minneapolis. He has conducted hundreds of writing workshops in prisons, community centers, libraries and universities throughout the country.

In 2005 he created Cedar Tree Inc., a nonprofit foundation that “transforms lives through reading and writing.”

Fame has its rewards. But one of his biggest paychecks came the day he received an honorary doctorate from the University of New Mexico. There, in the stands, were roughly 9,000 young men and women.

“Those are all the people you helped to read and write,” a university official told him.

It brought him to tears.

ON A MISSION

Five years later, he’s in Minneapolis, trying to light the fire inside educators about youths who some of us don’t care about or have given up on. He believes deep in his heart that youths still have choices to make, no matter how dire their situations appear to be. But they need care and guidance.

“The first day (of a workshop) you have to be prepared to come in and you have to be prepared to go back when you were 18 years old and you believed the world was an open heart and all you had to do was sing and the angels would hear it,” he told them. “You have to believe that; if a teacher is not prepared to go do that, you have no business in that room.”

He tells me about a momentous event in his life. It was the same year he left prison, where he taught himself to read and write.

He attended night school in North Carolina in search of his high school equivalency diploma. His teacher pointed to a book and asked him if he knew the word printed on it.

“I looked and I saw a picture of this monarch butterfly on the biology page and then the caterpillar on the other page,” he recalled. “I had seen that on the farm, that these things change into those things, but I didn’t know there was a word for it.

He asked the teacher what the word was. “Metamorphosis” was the reply.

“And I’m that,” he recalled telling himself. “I better metamorphosis or I’ll die. And I did.”

Rubén Rosario can be reached at 651-228-5454 or rrosario@pioneerpress.com.

“For every child who is in conflict with society the right to be dealt with intelligently as society’s charge, not society’s outcast; with the home, the school, the church, the court and the institution when needed, shaped to return him whenever possible to the normal stream of life.” — Inscription on a plaque at the Juvenile Detention Center in downtown Minneapolis, from “The Children’s Charter,” 1930

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Judge Heidi Shellhas shared her genuine concern with me about the psychotropic medications proscribed to large numbers of very young children that passed through her courtroom. I was often moved by the heartfelt attempts a judge would make to see that these hearings would be personal and meaningful to an abandoned/abused child. It is not an easy task.

How impossible the job of judge must be, removing a child from her mother, or denying visitation rights to a father and knowing the system has such limited resources and is so unable to adequately serve the poor vulnerable children that come before them. Month after month, year after year, seeing these children grow up in your courtroom.

This book, RAISED BY THE COURTS: What happens when a judge has to be the parent?, brings home the feelings and heartfelt observations of a judge that has spent years working with abused and neglected children in Florida’s juvenile justice system.

This quote from the book hurts, but it needs to be circulated; “I remember bringing my Norwegian cousin to my Florida court. She runs her own child welfare agency outside of Oslo. When she saw kids ages 10, 11 and 12 in handcuffs, leg restraints and jumpsuits, she scowled and asked, “Does Amnesty International know about this?”

Judge Irene Sullivan’s observations are very painful & very accurate, and I wish everyone could know what she knows. We would treat children better, our schools would work, and our communities would be safer and happier places to live.

Raised by the courts: What happens when a judge has to be the parent?

By Waveney Ann Moore, St Petersburg Times Staff Writer
In Print: Sunday, October 10, 2010

Editor’s note:

Judge Irene Sullivan could write a book, so much has she seen in her Unified Family Court. Now she has. In Raised by the Courts, she recounts the balancing act she performs in trying to help rehabilitate kids who often grew up in horrible circumstances in her geographical area, which stretches roughly from Ulmerton Road in Pinellas County south to the Skyway, excluding the beaches. She has strong ideas about what works and what doesn’t for young offenders as well as society.

Her book is timely, coming as the NAACP just held a crowded community forum in St. Petersburg to sort through solutions to the dismal graduation rate of black males in Pinellas schools — among the worst in the nation by one measure. Staff writer Waveney Ann Moore interviews the judge, who is retiring in December, and intersperses Sullivan’s observations with edited excerpts from the book.

Standing before me, he looked younger than 15. Slim, with neat dreadlocks, sad brown eyes, his trademark jeans and plaid shirt and silence. That set him apart, the silence, because most juveniles are anything but silent in court. Trying to avoid incarceration, they are agitated, pleading, imaginative and dramatic. They flap their arms, raise their voices, beg, smile and agree with everything you say. The clever ones write letters.

“I’m turning my life around, Judge, you gotta believe me.”

“You can’t send me away. I gots me a shorty (a child)” — or “a job,” or “a test to take,” or “a sick grandmother.”

“I know you gave me a second chance before, but this time I really mean it. I won’t go near those guys again. I’ll keep my curfew. I really mean it.”

When sentenced, some of those same youth scream “F— you!” when taken into custody.

Javaris didn’t say a word. He stood silent and alone. None of his relatives was with him in court. I wanted to hug him rather than sentence him.

“Javaris is a good kid, but we can never find him,” said his probation officer, a large, kindly black man, his hand resting on the youth’s shoulder.

“He’s a drug dealer and a thief,” the victim in the front row interrupted, “and his family doesn’t give a damn.”

Family? What family? A bed or a couch at his grandmother’s or aunt’s house?

“He’s basically been raising himself,” the psychologist said at the podium, “roaming the streets at night, occasionally at school, finding his own food, violating curfew.”

“I’m sorry, Javaris,” I said after sentencing. “I can’t excuse your crimes, but somehow I think that we failed you too. Your family failed you, the system failed you.”

His sad eyes met mine, and he still didn’t speak when handcuffed and led away.

— From Raised by the Courts

Judge Irene Sullivan, 68, speaks forthrightly about juvenile justice and her passion for kids. There are no bad kids, says the woman once referred to by a local Fox TV reporter as Judge Hug-A-Thug. After all, children don’t choose their parents. “We want people not to have children if they can’t responsibly raise them in the first place,” she says. “Secondly, we want them to be there for their children, both parents, ideally.”

So instead, she claims as her own the kids who appear in her courtroom at the Criminal Justice Center in Clearwater — making cocky excuses, cajoling, hanging their heads or struggling to hold up drooping pants while being fingerprinted. Some have been neglected and abused by parents who lost their rights or simply gave them up without hesitation. Many stand before her for infractions from skipping school to shoplifting to serious crimes such as gun and vehicle thefts, drug sales and home invasions.

She’ll miss them when she retires in December. In her nine years as a juvenile judge, she has presided over the lives of children for whom a court appearance often is more routine than an outing to the beach and whose future points to adult prison, not a college campus. That world is at once hopeful and tragic.

WATCHING a 10-year-old jump for joy, pointing and screaming, “That’s my judge!” brings a bittersweet smile. Why does he have so many criminal charges at age 10 that he has his “own” judge? Where are his parents? Why is he living in a group home?

— From Raised by the Courts

Even though the United States locks up about 1 million teenagers a year — more than any other nation in the world — Sullivan offers a surprisingly upbeat outlook, focusing on the people and organizations committed to alleviating this national crisis of teens awaiting trial and serving time in detention facilities.

For Sullivan, who has traveled the country speaking to experts and sharing her own knowledge, the good news is about prevention, diversion and innovative programs that are keeping juveniles from crime or relapsing into crime. It’s about a U.S. Supreme Court decision that said it was unconstitutional to impose the death penalty on defendants younger than 18 and another more recent ruling stating that it is cruel and unusual punishment to send juveniles to prison for life without parole if the crime they commit does not involve killing someone. Her message is about giving young people and their families the help they need and even a second chance.

“I’m not trying to be soft,” she said at her home in Pinellas Park. “It’s just that you have to recognize that these are kids. Not to excuse their behavior. They have to be taught, mainly. Also punished, sometimes.”

One morning last week Sullivan presided over cases dealing with abuse and neglect and juvenile crime. She praised a caregiver who stepped forward to give a home to a 14-year-old whose father regularly abused him. She listened to a young mother who had used opiates and marijuana throughout her pregnancy. Her baby was positive for OxyContin at birth. A couple appeared before her who had been arrested after their five children were found in filthy conditions in their home. A neighbor found their 18-month-old and 4-year-old wandering a nearby street.

That morning, a 14-year-old getting A’s and B’s at Dunedin Middle School looked shamefaced in his detention uniform. He had been picked up for burglary. Sullivan didn’t want to interrupt his schooling, so she placed him on home detention for 21 days. His co-defendant got the same. The boys were not to have contact with each other, she instructed.

“He won’t have contact with anybody,” said the stern-faced mother of one boy. She already “has put his punishment in place,” she told the judge.

Sullivan ordered home detention for two more boys. One had left the scene of a crash and another was arrested for possession of cocaine and marijuana. All four boys in trouble that morning were African-American.

Disproportionate minority contact (DMC) is the elephant in my courtroom. Nobody mentions it, yet twice a week when I take the bench in delinquency court, I face a courtroom full of black faces. Most of the kids put on probation are black, as are the vast majority of kids committed or charged as adults.

— From Raised by the Courts

It frightens her to see African-American males, ages 12 to 17, enter what she called the “pipeline to prison,” Sullivan said in her book. Close to 70 percent of the juveniles in her delinquency court are African-American, though roughly only one in five people in her court’s geographical area is black. She believes she knows the prime reason the numbers are so high.

“If there is an area of white kids exposed to guns and gangs and such, they would have the same problem, but there are so many more single black mothers than there are single white mothers,” she said.

“And there are — this is from my observation in the court over nine years — there are more single black fathers having multiple children. This is done very young. … I’m talking about 16 years old, boys and girls, 14, 15, 16. I’ve had a number of people 16 and 17 who have two children, young men who have two children and one may be two years old and another on the way.”

I remember bringing my Norwegian cousin to my Florida court. She runs her own child welfare agency outside of Oslo. When she saw kids ages 10, 11 and 12 in handcuffs, leg restraints and jumpsuits, she scowled and asked, “Does Amnesty International know about this?”

— From Raised by the Courts

Sullivan’s court takes in an area of St. Petersburg recently in the headlines for a middle school’s brawls, an 8-year-old girl killed in a drive-by shooting that sent bullets ripping through her bedroom and a high school senior shot in the head while standing in front of a house.

Sullivan has toured the area with state Rep. Darryl Rouson. She was impressed with the parks, community centers and many modest but neat homes. She made a point to attend the 8-year-old’s funeral. She later saw a juvenile involved in the shooting in her courtroom. More than a year after the funeral, Sullivan can’t forget the little girl lying in her tiny coffin.

As she sat in the spacious home she shares with three rescued cats and a rambunctious golden retriever, she discussed the cumulative effect of what she referred to as “risk factors.”

“Kids can live in poverty or poverty level if they have parents that are urging them to get an education and reading to them at night and interested in their grades and wanting them to succeed,” she said.

“If you combine poverty with drug use in the home, which might be a reason for the poverty, then you have two risk factors. It’s very common to combine poverty and drug use. Many combine them with domestic violence, because a mother who is poor and on drugs can’t support herself, so she has to put up with a man she meets at a bar on Monday night moving in with her on Wednesday night and certainly is a stranger to her little girl. He will often become violent with her, either because he’s prone to domestic violence, anyway, or because they have no respect for each other. He wants sex and she wants support, financial support. … It always amazes me and has broken my heart when sometimes in court, these mothers choose that person and the children are removed for foster care.”

Still Sullivan mines nuggets of hope from what appear to be dismal prospects. She says there’s public support for reform. They generally understand “that services on the front end, counseling, drug treatment, preventing kids from being locked up, preventing removal of kids, is really the way to go,” she said.

Advocates for that approach, though, can’t seem to get the support of legislators, she said. Instead, Sullivan said, lobbyists for prison industries tend to get the ear of candidates running on a platform of being tough on crime.

“It is true when you start an infrastructure of prisons, juvenile jails, they have to be staffed, they have to be air conditioned and it’s hard to shut them down and go in the other direction. It can be done by not building any new ones. In fact, that’s kind of what’s going on nowadays. Due to a shortage of funds in Florida, they’re closing residential programs,” she said. “Bad times kind of make for good decisions that should have been made a long time ago.”

There have also been bad decisions, she said. Last legislative session, funding for Florida’s Healthy Families Program was cut by $10 million. “It’s going backwards, because we know from the evidence that Healthy Families, which is a nationwide program, works to prevent child abuse and neglect at a very early, critical time in children’s lives and we know that preventing abuse and neglect prevents delinquency,” Sullivan said.

Innovative intervention and prevention programs can be found in Pinellas County, across the state and throughout the country, she said. Some are funded by organizations like the Annie E. Casey, MacArthur and Eckerd Family foundations. A few require stable infrastructure, but some are dirt cheap, like the chess club initiated by Sullivan’s colleague Judge Raymond Gross. The game is taught by volunteers in St. Petersburg and participation sometimes is part of the disposition of a juvenile’s case.

A member of the Juvenile Welfare Board, Sullivan attended an institute offered last year by the lauded Harlem Children’s Zone in New York City. The program headed by Geoffrey Canada motivates children in poor, high-crime areas and emphasizes education and parental outreach. Recently it was introduced at Fairmount Park Elementary in St. Petersburg, an area covered by Sullivan’s court.

Canada’s message, she said, is that kids without hope commit crimes and that those with hope succeed.

Picture the scales of justice sitting on the bench in juvenile court. Stacked on the left scale is a bunch of blocks, sacks or bars of gold, with labels that say: “teenage brain,” “victim of abuse,” “can’t control the situation,” “acting in self-defense,” “failing in school,” “influenced by bad adults,” “untreated mental illness,” “uncontrolled anger,” or, simply, “a child.” On the right side is one huge block, sack or bar of gold that says in big black letters: “Public Safety.”

Absolutely, it is my duty to commit a youth to a locked-down, secure, residential facility if there is no other way to protect the public from the crimes the youth is committing. Public safety concerns trump social, psychological and parental concerns for the child. A juvenile judge has the same obligation as an adult criminal judge to protect the public’s safety. That’s the first order of business. It makes sense. A community held hostage by juveniles committing crimes is not going to be interested in rehabilitating those kids.

— From Raised by the Courts

Sullivan is finding it a little difficult to let go as she prepares to leave the bench. She’s watched the same kids come before her again and again, like the boy who stole a monkey.

“He struggled through his teens. He was a foster kid and went back with his parents and they were homeless and had drug problems, so we moved him out a lot in and out of foster care,” she said.

At 17, he was charged as an adult for burglary. He’s now 18.

“So he came in the other day. Fortunately, not from jail,” Sullivan said. “He came in and he said he had a good chance of getting a job and we put him on a payment plan to pay off this couple hundred dollars he stole. The state attorney set a hearing in three months to four months to see if he got the job and could start making the payments. The hearing was set for Jan. 5, and so that’s the first time I thought, I’m not going to see him in January. I’ve known him since he was 10. So I got a big pang in my heart.”

No other division of the court provides a judge with such a chance to make a difference in a person’s life for better or worse. Juvenile judges hold delinquent or dependent children in the palms of their hands, looking for solutions: programs that work, caregivers that are nurturing and responsible, therapy that’s appropriate and punishment that is effective. The contradictions break my heart.

— Raised by the Courts

Waveney Ann Moore can be reached at wmoore@sptimes.com or (727) 892-2283.

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amy.rostronledoux@yahoo.com

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Much research exists that identifies failed education systems as a source of juvenile delinquency. More research shows that juvenile delinquency leads to criminal activity when a troubled youth reaches adulthood.

The need for strong education programs should be a primary concern for state and local governments. In addition to improving students’ chances for success in college and their subsequent careers, effective education programs can help keep juveniles from engaging in delinquent activities. This, in turn reduces costs to taxpayers for funding court proceedings and, if necessary, housing juvenile offenders.

Due to the importance of education and the widespread benefits of a successful program, one might question why some programs that have shown wonderful results are being cancelled in the interest of saving money. One such program, implemented by the New York City Council and rallied for by the Coalition for Educational Justice, was very successful in improving the test scores at some of New York City’s worst middle schools. The program, which focused $5 million of its budget on 51 middle schools in northern Manhattan, helped to improve test scores at 40 of them early in its implementation (Melago, 2008).

The extra funding at these middle schools was used to purchase new computers, increase the length of some school days, and improve social service staffs. One of the middle schools, located in Harlem, received a mere $38,000 and was able to use the funding to purchase 20 computers, extend the school day three days a week, add Saturday academies, and add arts programs for students. At this school, the Renaissance Leadership Academy, the passing rate for state English exams rose from 12% in 2007 to 54% in 2009. Meanwhile, the passing rate for state Math exams went from 14% to 80% over the same period (Kolodner, 2010).

So why would the city cancel such a wonderful program? There is just not enough money to keep such a program going. Unfortunately, city officials who handle the budgeting of educational programs are either unable to identify the potential for cash savings by educating middle school students rather than trying and housing juvenile delinquents, or they have been unable to gather enough support to make education a priority in the city’s budget.

If officials in cities across the country can rally to get more funding for programs like the recently abandoned program in New York City, it might be possible to help adolescent kids do well in school and avoid trouble in their lives.

My note on Dave’s piece;

25% of juveniles charged with crimes are prosecuted as adults in our nation. My experience as a guardian ad-Litem convinced me that communities save big money by investing in programs like the one Dave writes about. Safer communities and healthy citizens are a also bonus for doing the right thing.

References
Kolodner, M. (2010). Successful education program faces ax even though it helped turn middle schools around. NY Daily News. Retrieved September 10, 2010 from http://www.nydailynews.com/ny_local/education/2010/06/17/2010-06-17_class_act_taking_a_budget_hit_successful_middle_school_program_faces_ax.html
Melago, C. (2008). City has plan, cash to revamp failing middle schools. NY Daily News. Retrieved September 10, 2010 from http://www.nydailynews.com/ny_local/education/2008/08/26/2008-08-26_city_has_plan_cash_to_revamp_failing_mid-2.html

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25% of U.S. high school grads are functionally illiterate upon graduation, our drop out rates are the worst in the industrialized world.

America is sending juveniles into adult prisons at alarming rates. By privatizing service providers, overwhelming government service agencies, & not providing resources we are abandoning children at an institutional level.

Many third world nations treat prenatal care more seriously than we do. There are no industrial nations that suffer the sexually transmitted disease rates or early pregnancy rates that America does.

Talking to the people at The Academy on Violence and Abuse http://www.avahealth.org/ very important things have become clear to me;

1. Child abuse impact children for life. Chronic illness and early death are significant within the population of abused and neglected children as they age.

2. Dr Bruce Perry’s research indicates that 25% of all American’s will be classified as “special needs” within a generation if the mental health aspects are not addressed in a direct and meaningful way.

As a long time guardian ad-Litem, I have seen the evidence of the Academy’s research at a very personal level. I have lost friends and now know why.

Mental health becomes all important when you work with the population of abused children and understand the concept of violence, sex abuse, and trauma as it applies to two and three year olds (and what it will mean to them for the rest of their lives).

Children become citizens. Healthy citizens lead normal productive lives and are a benefit to society.

Children born into unhealthy homes and poor resources, are abandoned, abused, or ignored, end up in juvenile justice, criminal justice, pregnant without the ability to parent (just like their parent) lead painful lives and are a problem for society.

There is NO percentage is the communal abandonment of our children (it is sinking our nation).

What you do to your children, they will do to your society (Pliny – 2500 years ago)

Let’s all agree to support child friendly programs and legislation (even if it costs money and takes effort).

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There are strong arguments to be made for separating private enterprise and policing and punishment, not the least of which Michael T Conahan has proven beyond mere words (2.8 million dollars in commissions).

I can tolerate the stealing of money but I am not able to stand by and watch children denied their youth because those of us that vote (and run this nation) don’t see the connection between healthy institutions and healthy children.

It is up to us as citizens to have the depth of understanding and concern with our community to see how what happened in Pennsylvania is happening by degrees to youth throughout our state and our nation (just without the commissions).

We have not yet fully understood and agreed that healthy youth make healthy adults and citizens, and that ensuring that youth have a solid chance to be healthy is worth the investment.

Until that happens, we will continue to underfund programs that help struggling children and families with health and mental health and live with the results that we have been getting for so many years. I draw your attention to the ACE study in Ramsey County that points out the great majority of violence and serious crime committed by juveniles in St Paul was committed by youth from three or four percent of the families in the community http://www.tacommunities.org/getfile/view/id/1000/cid/1004/p/folder_1004%252Ffolder_5040

Helping these children helps us all. Better schools, safer streets, a more educated work force, and healthier communities (less frightening newspapers and TV news).

Let’s get behind this; Denounce the cuts in programs (it won’t save money in the long run) Vote for the people that understand the value of healthy youth and families.

Philadelphia Inquirer Posted Friday April 30 2010

Ex-judge pleads guilty in Luzerne ‘kids-for-cash’ scandal

By Trish Wilson
Inquirer Staff Writer

One of two judges at the center of the Luzerne County “kids-for-cash” scandal entered a guilty plea Thursday to one count of racketeering conspiracy, a charge that carries a sentence of up to 20 years’ imprisonment.
As part of his plea agreement, Michael T. Conahan, former president judge of Luzerne County, will also face a maximum $250,000 fine and is to acknowledge his guilt in a labyrinthine scheme that allegedly sent thousands of teenagers to jail – some for minor infractions – in exchange for money.

The agreement also requires Conahan, 58, to give up his license to practice law.

He and Judge Mark A. Ciavarella Jr. were indicted in September 2009 on charges that they conspired to send young defendants to two detention facilities for $2.8 million, the indictment says.

Ciavarella’s lawyer, Al Flora Jr., told the Associated Press on Thursday that his client had no plans to plead guilty. “He’s going to trial,” Flora said.

Both former judges previously pleaded guilty to fraud and tax evasion in exchange for 87-month prison terms, well below federal guidelines. Senior U.S. District Judge Edwin M. Kosik rejected that deal last summer, saying neither man had fully admitted his misdeeds.

The plea that Conahan entered Thursday in federal court in Scranton is “open,” meaning the sentence is to be determined by a judge and not by a prearranged agreement between the U.S. Attorney’s Office and Conahan’s defense team.

That lawyer, Arthur Donato Jr. of Media, declined to discuss the guilty plea. “I just don’t think it’s appropriate to comment on the filing of a plea agreement publicly,” he said.

Some found the plea surprising.

“It is yet another novel development along the road to whatever road we’re on,” remarked Marsha Levick, chief counsel for the Juvenile Law Center in Philadelphia, which sued on behalf of about 4,500 young defendants who appeared before Ciavarella between 2003 and 2008.

Levick said Conahan’s plea agreement was so vague that she could not determine exactly what part of the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act it referred to.

“He pleaded guilty to one count of RICO, but we don’t know any of the details of what conduct he is admitting he engaged in,” Levick said.

Nevertheless, she said, the acknowledgment of guilt is one she expects may help her in the continuing civil suit.

“I assume he made a calculation that pleading now was in his interest,” she added.

Other lawyers familiar with the case said the plea could have ripple effects in the long-running federal corruption investigation in Luzerne County.

“He’s just opened himself up completely to what the court wants to do to him,” said former prosecutor L. George Parry, a Philadelphia-based lawyer.

“If I had to bet, I would bet that he’s worked out a deal with the feds, he resigns from the bar, he testifies in hopes of mitigation of his sentence, and tries to minimize the damage as much as possible. But that’s all speculation.”

Parry noted that if Conahan were cooperating, he could be of great value.

“If you put it in the context of the overall investigation that’s under way now, the FBI has been very active up there,” he said. “And the way it works now with sentencing guidelines and the government is, you really want to be the first in the door to get the best deal.”

More than 20 people have been caught up in the investigation, including a school superintendent, a third county judge, four courthouse officials, and five school board members.

Kids At Risk Action needs your support for its successful launch of televised public service announcements building awareness to the issues surrounding child abuse.

In collaboration with award winning Salo of Finland, KARA is working to create and place ads on national TV.

Contact KARA with your questions and support. Please contact us with your questions, referrals, and donations.

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The vast majority of the children we will be tying up & confining come from very troubled homes. Or, as former MN Supreme court Chief Justice Kathleen Blatz has stated, about 90% of the youth in juvenile justice have come through child protection services.

Before a child can become removed from a home through child protection services, they have lived for a long time in an abusive or neglectful home and have been tortured as defined by the World Health Organization.

It’s not the happy children that we will be restraining - it’s the three million children that are reported to child protection in America each year.

In my experience, the WHO’s definition of torture fits the life experience of a child that has been removed from an abusive home; “extended exposure to violence and deprivation” has been their life. The U.S. has no other child protection policy than the IMMINENT HARM DOCTRINE.

The link between an abused child’s past tortured life and future troubled life is clear to most of us that have lived with or worked with these damaged children long enough. It causes me great pain to see my guardian ad-Litem kids handled like mad animals (tasered, confined, beat up by under-trained staff in under-resourced detention centers)

These are the children that develop behavior problems in school, get into trouble with delinquency, juvenile justice & the court system. Without appropriate services, they are on a one way path to criminal justice, poverty, preteen pregnancy & dysfunctional lifestyles (and that is often forever).

Our schools, jails, and courts are filled with abused and neglected children.

Thirteen million prison and jail releases in the U.S. last year, & America has more crime and criminals per capita than any other nation in the world. All because we can’t stop punishing abused and neglected children.

States that have discovered restorative justice and a therapeutic approach for youth are saving money and getting terrific results. States that continue to punish and incarcerate are feeling the burden of failure of public policy.

Children with serious behavioral problems need help getting to normal.

Most children with serious behavioral problems that don’t get help end up leading dysfunctional lives. It is far less costly to help a child get to normal than to let the child develop into a dysfunctional adult.

A good number of the children I have worked with in child protection have never had a nice day in their life, have a great need for mental health services, and do not respond well to threats or punishment.

The need for early childhood programs and mental health help is tremendous. Most states are using way to many psychotropics along with brute force and punishment against children that have already endured horrifically tortured home lives.

The A.C.E. study in Ramsey County demonstrated that about 70% of the serious and violent crime committed by youth in the county was committed by youth from under four % of the families in the county.

Our current policies of punishment instead of treating the behavior problems of children has failed and will continue to fail.

If our policies are to be measured by what they produce, it must be said that America’s politics of punishing abused and neglected children (restraint, confinement, imprisonment, lack of a humane approach to children), are producing juvenile delinquents, preteen mothers, overcrowded prisons and unsafe cities. Internationally, we are no longer a leader in the quality of life indices that we lead in for so long.

Minneapolis Minnesota has a mental health model in its school system that could work for the nation. Missouri went from 90% recidivism in its juvenile justice system to almost 90% success in just a few years with a therapeutic and caring approach to youth.

The economics of saving children through these models is proven and our mandate to care for the weakest and most vulnerable among us has been with us since time began, yet we continue to charge eleven year old children in adult criminal court & legislate to heap more punishment on abused and neglected children.

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Almost half (46.3%) had experienced a physical assault in the study year, 1 in 4 (24.6%) had experienced a property offense, 1 in 10 (10.2%) had experienced a form of child maltreatment, 6.1% had experienced a sexual victimization, and more than 1 in 4 (25.3%) had been a witness to violence or experienced another form of indirect victimization in the year, including 9.8% who had witnessed an intrafamily assault.

One in 10 (10.2%) had experienced a victimization-related injury. More than one third (38.7%) had been exposed to 2 or more direct victimizations, 10.9% had 5 or more, and 2.4% had 10 or more during the study year.

http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/cgi/content/abstract/124/5/1411Published online October 5, 2009
PEDIATRICS Vol. 124 No. 5 November 2009, pp. 1411-1423 (doi:10.1542/peds.2009-0467)
ARTICLE
Violence, Abuse, and Crime Exposure in a National Sample of Children and Youth
David Finkelhor, PhDa, Heather Turner, PhDa, Richard Ormrod, PhDa, Sherry L. Hamby, PhDb
a Crimes Against Children Research Center, University of New Hampshire, Durham, New Hampshire
a Department of Psychology, Sewanee: The University of the South, Sewanee, Tennessee

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In 1985, the National District Attorneys Association established the National Center for Prosecution of Child Abuse as a program of the American Prosecutors Research Institute (APRI). Aimed at responding to an increasing volume of reported child abuse, the National Center provides training, technical assistance and publications to prosecutors, investigators and allied criminal justice professionals on all aspects of criminal child abuse and exploitation. Investigation and Prosecution of Child Fatalities and Physical Abuse
February 1 – 5, 2010
Santa Fe, New Mexico
Brochure Agenda

What Can NCPCA Do For You?

SERVICES

The National Center for Prosecution of Child Abuse works to improve the handling of child abuse cases by providing:

Expert training and technical assistance by experienced attorneys through conferences, state-specific training programs and thousands of phoneand email consultations each year.

A clearinghouse on child abuse case law, statutory initiatives, court reforms, expert witness information, transcripts, and trial strategies — a unique, comprehensive and continually expanding resource.

Research on substantive child abuse information including, but not limited to, medical, psychological and sociological aspects of child abuse, neglect and exploitation. Best practices and innovations in forensic interviewing, investigation and prosecution of child abuse and maltreatment.
To access these services, contact the National Center for Prosecution of Child Abuse and speak to one of our attorneys.

PUBLICATIONS

Go to child abuse publications
FAQs

Go To NCPCA FAQs

NATIONAL CONFERENCES

NCPCA conducts National Conferences across the country as well as through the National District Attorneys Association (NDAA) at the National Advocacy Center.

Equal Justice: Investigation and Prosecution of Child Abuse
Investigation and Prosecution of Child Fatalities and Physical Abuse
childPROOF: Advanced Trial Advocacy for Child Abuse Prosecutors
SAFETY NET: Multidisciplinary Investigation and Prosecution of Computer-Facilitated Child Sexual Exploitation
Unsafe Havens I: Prosecuting Online Crimes Against Children
Unsafe Havens II: Advanced Trial Advocacy for Prosecution of Online Crimes Against Children
STATE AND LOCAL TRAINING

NCPCA sends its senior attorneys throughout the country and abroad to lecture and deliver presentations on all aspects of child abuse investigation and prosecution. The federal Children’s Justice Act supports multidisciplinary training on investigation and prosecution of child abuse. Contact APRI’s National Center for the Prosecution of Child Abuse for expert help in developing training programs or requesting a trainer.

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Today over 75% of children entering New York’s JJS have drug and alcohol issues over half have mental health problems, and one third have developmental disabilities. The state spends about $210,000 per child annually and 75% of the children are re-arrested within three years.

Other states look this bad too (California, Florida, Texas)

A few years ago Missouri had the same problem and solved it by concentrating on reducing confinement, a humane approach to youth combined with the mental health needs of children, and restorative justice.

What hurts most is that the youth I know in Juvenile Justice almost all have come out of child protection badly damaged from violent or neglectful families and unable emotionally or developmentally to cope with life.

Most of them have mental health issues that have been ignored even if they were “lucky enough” to have had help through child protection services. I don’t consider access to Prozac, Ritalin, or other psychotropic medications without adequate therapy a useful approach to dealing with the traumas of child abuse.

MN Chief Supreme Court Chief Justice Kathleen Blatz puts it well when she says, “the difference between that poor child and a felon is about eight years” & about 90% of the youth in juvenile justice have passed through the child protection system. Here’s the NYTimes article in full;

ALBANY — New York’s system of juvenile prisons is broken, with young people battling mental illness or addiction held alongside violent offenders in abysmal facilities where they receive little counseling, can be physically abused and rarely get even a basic education, according to a report by a state panel.

Related
Draft Report on New York State’s Juvenile Prisons

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Robert Stolarik for The New York Times
Violent offenders could be housed with young people in custody for lesser offenses, including truancy, the report said.

The problems are so acute that the state agency overseeing the prisons has asked New York’s Family Court judges not to send youths to any of them unless they are a significant risk to public safety, recommending alternatives, like therapeutic foster care.

“New York State’s current approach fails the young people who are drawn into the system, the public whose safety it is intended to protect, and the principles of good governance that demand effective use of scarce state resources,” said the confidential draft report, which was obtained by The New York Times.

The report, prepared by a task force appointed by Gov. David A. Paterson and led by Jeremy Travis, president of the John Jay College of Criminal Justice, comes three months after a federal investigation found that excessive force was routinely used at four prisons, resulting in injuries as severe as broken bones and shattered teeth.

The situation was so serious the Department of Justice, which made the investigation, threatened to take over the system.

But according to the task force, the problems uncovered at the four prisons are endemic to the entire system, which houses about 900 young people at 28 facilities around the state.

While some prisons for violent and dangerous offenders should be preserved, the report calls for most to be replaced with a system of smaller centers closer to the communities where most of the families of the youths in custody live.

The task force was convened in 2008 after years of complaints about the prisons, punctuated by the death in 2006 of an emotionally disturbed 15-year-old boy at one center after two workers pinned him to the ground. The task force’s recommendations are likely to help shape the state’s response to the federal findings.

“I was not proud of my state when I saw some of these facilities,” Mr. Travis said in an interview on Friday. “New York is no longer the leader it once was in the juvenile justice field.”

New York’s juvenile prisons are both extremely expensive and extraordinarily ineffective, according to the report, which will be given to Mr. Paterson on Monday. The state spends roughly $210,000 per youth annually, but three-quarters of those released from detention are arrested again within three years. And though the median age of those admitted to juvenile facilities is almost 16, one-third of those held read at a third-grade level.

The prisons are meant to house youths considered dangerous to themselves or others, but there is no standardized statewide system for assessing such risks, the report found.

In 2007, more than half of the youths who entered detention centers were sent there for the equivalent of misdemeanor offenses, in many cases theft, drug possession or even truancy. More than 80 percent were black or Latino, even though blacks and Latinos make up less than half the state’s total youth population — a racial disparity that has never been explained, the report said.

Many of those detained have addictions or psychological illnesses for which less restrictive treatment programs were not available. Three-quarters of children entering the juvenile justice system have drug or alcohol problems, more than half have had a diagnosis of mental health problems and one-third have developmental disabilities.

Yet there are only 55 psychologists and clinical social workers assigned to the prisons, according to the task force. And none of the facilities employ psychiatrists, who have the authority to prescribe the drugs many mentally ill teenagers require.

While 76 percent of youths in custody are from the New York City area, nearly all the prisons are upstate, and the youths’ relatives, many of them poor, cannot afford frequent visits, cutting them off from support networks.

“These institutions are often sorely underresourced, and some fail to keep their young people safe and secure, let alone meet their myriad service and treatment needs,” according to the report, which was based on interviews with workers and youths in custody, visits to prisons and advice from experts. “In some facilities, youth are subjected to shocking violence and abuse.”

Even before the task force’s report is released, the Paterson administration is moving to reduce the number of youths held in juvenile prisons. adys Carrión, the commissioner of the Office of Children and Family Services, the agency that oversees the juvenile justice system, has recommended that judges find alternative placements for most young offenders, according to an internal memorandum issued Oct. 28 by the state’s deputy chief administrative judge.

Ms. Carrión also advised court officials that New York would not contest the Justice Department findings, according to the memo, and that officials were negotiating a settlement agreement to remedy the system.

Peter E. Kauffmann, a spokesman for Mr. Paterson, said the governor “looks forward to receiving the recommendations of the task force as we continue our efforts to transform the state’s juvenile justice system from a correctional-punitive model to a therapeutic model.”

The report contends that smaller facilities would place less strain on workers, helping reduce the use of physical force, and would be better able to tailor rehabilitation programs.

New York is not unique in using its juvenile prisons to house mentally ill teenagers, particularly as many states confront huge budget shortfalls that have resulted in significant cuts to mental health programs. Still, some states are trying to shift to smaller, community-based programs.

The report by New York’s task force does not say how much money would be needed to overhaul the system, but as Mr. Paterson and state lawmakers try to close a $3.2 billion deficit, cost could become a major hurdle.

Ms. Carrión has faced resistance from some prison workers, who accuse her of making them scapegoats for the system’s problems and minimizing the dangerous conditions they face. State records show a significant spike in on-the-job injuries, for which some workers blame Ms. Carrión’s efforts to limit the use of force.

“We embrace the idea of moving towards a more therapeutic model of care, but you can’t do that without more training and more staff,” said Stephen A. Madarasz, a spokesman for the Civil Service Employees Association, the union that represents prison workers. “You’re not dealing with wayward youth. In the more secure facilities, you’re dealing with individuals who have been involved in pretty serious crimes.”

Advocates have credited Ms. Carrión, who was appointed in 2007 by former Gov. Eliot Spitzer, with instituting significant reforms, including installing cameras in some of the more troubled prisons and providing more counseling.

But the state has a long way to go, many advocates say.

“Even the kids that are not considered dangerous are shackled when they are being transferred from their homes to the centers upstate — hands and feet, sometimes even belly chains,” said Clara Hemphill, a researcher and author of a report on the state’s youth prisons published in October by the Center for New York City Affairs at the New School.

“It really is barbaric,” she added, “the way they treat these kids.”

As a postscript to this article, I would like to remind you that the percentage of the California state budget that went to higher education and prisons last year was 12% and 10% respectively. In 1979 the percentage was 15% and 3%. Many states mirror this perverse and economically indefensible approach to public policy.

Minneapolis MN arrested 44% of its adult black men in 2001 & nationally 13% of black men can’t vote because they are felons. From the data and my own years in child protection, I can make the argument that America’s public policy makes it statistically improbable for an African American male child to have much of a chance to lead a normal life.

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This judge began using trained community volunteers to speak for the best interests of these children in court. The program was such a great success in Seattle that very soon judges across the country decided to use citizen advocates.

Perhaps the hardest decision a judge will ever make is to remove a child from a birth family.

For people outside the legal system, it is important to recognize the adversarial nature of courts and law in America. Divorce law is a tiny example of how painful our system makes the resolution of family legal matters. Child abuse and neglect are a sad but very real part of life in America and children must be protected against dangerous home environments.

Today, federal law mandates that children in need of protection will have a CASA voice in the courtroom. After all, a five or six year old has not much more comprehension or ability to testify than a three year old in a courtroom setting.

Not all CASA members are volunteers. Some CASA are paid staff and some are attorneys.

As a long time volunteer CASA, I am partial to the volunteer programs mainly because we take fewer cases and by taking fewer cases we can spend more time and have more involvement with the child and family (read my book; http://www.invisiblechildren.org/our-book/ ) — these children really do need all the time, concern, and resources that this community can deliver.

The following are a few CASA blogs and websites I have discovered that give a snapshot of CASA programs and accomplishments:

Mass:
http://www.masskids.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=frontpage&Itemid=1&d4dad6935f632ac35975e3001dc7bbe8=279969f8375c4284bcbb8496b9eee605

Oregon;

http://www.myspace.com/casacc

Mi
http://www.casawashtenaw.org/

National CASA Youtube:
You Tube CASA video

OklahomaCASA
myspace

National CASA

CASA MN

Send us your favorite CASA blogs and website and we will post them here;

send to info@invisiblechildren.org

MN day care

It is a bigger step to convince people that healthy children become healthy citizens, but it is true.

• Support at risk children! Become a CASA volunteer or start a KARA group in your community.
• Have something to add? Attach a comment to this blog post or Contact Us to tell us your point of view or story.
• If you think someone might appreciate this information, click the ShareThis button below
• Buy our book or listen to it (for free)
• Join the public debate for children (they have no senator, lobby, or voice)

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The local newspaper (Star Tribune) interviewed me because I have written about a case (as a guardian ad-Litem) where the police had been to a home 49 times before removing the child from a terrible environment (I believe the 7 year old was prostituted). I told the editor about several of my cases where three year olds were sexually abused and cocaine positive, and one experience where the four year tried hard to kill herself.

Its important for each and every one of us to react as compassionate beings for children. It is all that separates us from animals.

Not having empathy for the screams of your neighbors six year old child as he is being murdered, or as she is being sexually abused is the very last sign that we have entered the dark ages. Not having resources or systems to insure that children will be removed from toxic environments is the community’s way of not having empathy for the screams of your neighbors six year old.

From the Los Angelas Times By Hector Becerra and Garrett Therolf
July 25, 2009 South L.A. boy died after previous reports of abuse

Dae’von Bailey had injuries that suggested blows or other trauma over an extended period of time, a police lieutenant said.

A 6-year-old boy whose battered body was found on the floor of a South Los Angeles home was the subject of roughly a dozen calls to Los Angeles County’s child abuse hotline alleging abuse or neglect, a county official briefed on the case told The Times on Friday.

Dae’von Bailey had injuries that suggested blows or other trauma over an extended period of time, said Lt. Vincent Neglia of the LAPD’s Abused Child Section. Police are searching for the boy’s stepfather, Marcas Fisher, 36, as a “person of interest” in the case.

Dae’von’s death appears to fit a pattern in which children have been killed after their cases already had come to the attention of county child welfare officials. The Times previously reported that last year, 14 children died after being evaluated by the county Department of Children and Family Services. Some of those deaths involved breakdowns in the system in which some agencies knew about potential abuse but had failed to share the information with other agencies. In other cases, investigators found that poor decisions by social workers had contributed to the deaths.

The county Board of Supervisors has repeatedly been warned by auditors and other experts that the child welfare system lacks efficient ways to share information about risks faced by children. After the reports in The Times, the board last month voted to approve a new effort to ensure that agencies share information.

Supervisor Mark Ridley-Thomas, whose district includes South Los Angeles, called on the board Friday to appoint an independent investigator to thoroughly review Dae’von’s case. Thomas said the probe should include looking at the boy’s contact with Family Services and any other government agencies to identify any breakdowns that might have contributed to his death. The inquiry, if approved, would be the first of its kind since 2006.

“We need to get to the bottom of this,” Ridley-Thomas said. “To have a county that has a stain on its image, to have children dying under these circumstances, is very, very difficult to bear. . . . The public has a right to have confidence that we are taking care of these matters competently.”

Family Services Director Trish Ploehn, who since taking office two years ago has made better accountability of social workers a top priority, said she’s already launched “a full and comprehensive internal investigation.”

“This was a tragic and senseless death,” Ploehn said. “I’ve had a full team of people looking at it all day.”

On Friday, neighbors on South 87th Place tried to make sense of what had happened to Dae’von, whom they described as a sweet, well-behaved child. Relatives found him dead on the floor after being alerted by a frantic call from an unidentified person in his home. Fisher was not in the house when officers arrived. Neglia said Fisher had “no history of violent crime” but that he did have a history of property crimes. The coroner’s office had not determined the cause of death.

The county official, who was not authorized to comment on the case and therefore spoke on condition of anonymity, said the dozen calls reporting abuse or neglect occurred at various times in Dae’von’s life. The source said county officials had opened an investigation after each call. But it remained unclear Friday whether social workers had concluded that abuse had occurred or whether the county had an active case file on Dae’von at the time of his death.

The boy’s mother, Tylette Davis, 28, said Fisher had been with her when she was pregnant with Dae’von, but he wasn’t the boy’s biological father. She separated from him some time ago.

Davis said she never witnessed Fisher abuse Dae’von, but she said that about three years ago, Fisher “whipped” one of her older sons until “his butt was all red.”

Davis said that none of her six children, including Dae’von, were living with her because she was “going through things, and I thought he could take care of the kids while I got my stuff together.”

Dae’von and Davis’ 5-year-old daughter — who is now in protective custody — were staying with Fisher; a 14-year-old daughter was staying with a cousin in Compton; and her other three children were staying with her mother, also in Compton…

He and other neighbors say they heard the movie “Medea Goes to Jail” playing loudly in the house. Davis said the film seemed to be playing in a loop, along with a taped performance by comedian Katt Williams. Later, he wondered whether the sounds were intended to cover up tumult inside the house.

hector.becerra@latimes.com

garrett.therolf@latimes.com

Times staff writer Richard Winton contributed to this report.
Read entire article;

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-child-killed25-2009jul25,0,220819.story

In my many years working in child protection services, it has never been the fault of the social worker when a child dies. It has always been the lack of support, lack of training, huge caseloads, minimal resources and public policy that abandons other peoples children. It is easy to blame social workers, but it solves nothing. Support at risk children and the people, programs, and policies that will help these children lead normal lives.

MN day care

It is a bigger step to convince people that healthy children become healthy citizens, but it is true.

• Support at risk children! Become a CASA volunteer or start a KARA group in your community.
• Have something to add? Attach a comment to this blog post or Contact Us to tell us your point of view or story.
• If you think someone might appreciate this information, click the ShareThis button below
• Buy our book or listen to it (for free)
• Join the public debate for children (they have no senator, lobby, or voice)

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The stun gunning, choking, obscene language, and over the top violence by police to kids at the Illinois emergency youth center shows just how deplorable America’s policies for At Risk Children are.

Well meaning, often under trained and under resourced youth center staff call on police to help with uncontrollable youth. Under trained police respond with a level of violence appropriate during a prison riot. Note (below) Sheriff Mulch’s attitude towards dealing with children at the youth center. Perhaps he shouldn’t.

It is absurd to expect at risk children to live peacefully among us when they are mistreated by their families & communities, and then brutalized by law enforcement. Their graduation rates remain extremely low and their criminal records extremely high. The only way this will change is by supporting children while they are young. Missouri seems to have one of the best programs in place in our nation today.

http://www.invisiblechildren.org/2005/12/17/missouri-model/.

The following is an example of what not to do;

From the Huffington Post Blog 7.20.09 http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/07/20/sheriffs-deputy-used-stun_n_241332.html

EAST ST. LOUIS, Ill. — A sheriff’s deputy zapped three children with a stun gun at an Illinois emergency youth shelter, threatening to sodomize one of them before choking a fourth child and throwing her in a closet, according to a federal civil-rights lawsuit.

The suit against Jefferson County sheriff’s deputy David Bowers and another deputy claims they were unprovoked in the incident at the adolescent center in southern Illinois that houses youths ages 11 to 18, often with behavioral issues.

No charges have been filed in the case. Sheriff Roger Mulch, who also is named in the lawsuit, said Monday the deputies followed protocol and did “nothing out of the ordinary.”

The suit, filed July 1, called the deputies’ actions “extreme, outrageous and unjustified,” and it does not release the names or ages of the three boys shot with the stun gun. The fourth kid was a foster child who did not live at the center, according to the lawsuit.

The suit claims that Bowers and sheriff’s deputy Lonnie Lawler went to the center near Marion on July 4, 2008 in response to a report that three teenagers were acting unruly. But the young people suing the deputies were not those disruptive children, the lawsuit said.

Bowers allegedly pushed one boy toward his bed, and repeatedly shocked him with a stun gun. Bowers then held down a second boy, stunned him several times and threatened to sodomize him, ultimately causing the child to soil himself, the lawsuit claimed.

A third child complied with the deputies’ demands that he sit on a couch, but Lawler handcuffed him before Bowers zapped him repeatedly, the lawsuit said.

The fourth child, a girl, pleaded with the deputies to stop but Lawler handcuffed her. Bowers lifted her off the ground, pressed her against a wall and choked her, the lawsuit alleges.

“Do you want to live or die (expletive)?” the lawsuit, filed July 1, claims Bowers asked the girl before she was thrown into a closet, vomiting.

Bowers did not immediately return messages left at his home, and Lawler does not have a listed home telephone number. It was not known whether either had an attorney.

Gene Svebakken, president and chief executive of Lutheran Child and Family Services of Illinois, which runs the center, said Monday after reviewing the lawsuit that he was “really alarmed and distressed by the allegations.”

“These are young people often traumatized in their circumstances, and that they, like all children, needed to be treated with dignity and respect,” he said, noting that the shelter serves a myriad of children, ranging from runaways from placement elsewhere to youths between foster homes.

Mulch portrayed the center as a chronic hassle, this year accounting for more than 100 requests for his department’s help.

He defended his deputies, saying separate investigations by his department and Illinois State Police determined Bowers and Lawler did nothing wrong.

Support at risk children, become a CASA volunteer/start a KARA group in your community.

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