Tag Archive for 'missouri model'

Abandoned, Abandoned Again Then Tasered – What’s Next For At Risk Youth?

Published
by
Mike Tikkanen
on July 23, 2009
in Crime and Courts, Invisible Children, Public Policy and The States
. 1 Comment

As a long time guardian ad-Litem, I’m familiar with abused and neglected children responding badly to authority figures. And I understand why.

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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Not My Role Model

Published
by
Mike Tikkanen
on May 19, 2009
in Crime and Courts, Health and Mental Health, Invisible Children, Kids At Risk Action (KARA), Politics and Funding and Public Policy
. 0 Comments

Missouri went from 90% recidivism in its juvenile justice system to about 10% over just a few years as it transitioned into a restorative justice model that treated youth as children in need of counseling instead of adult criminals (about 30% of American youth are tried in adult courts).

California locks up young people longer than any other state — on average young people spend about 3 years in the Division of Juvenile Justice (DJJ). More than a year of this time is tacked on by DJJ guards, who extend parole hearing dates for disciplinary and other reasons.

This flies in the face of research that shows that positive incentives are much more effective at helping kids improve than are negative, disciplinary actions. And, because DJJ spends $234,000 a year to lock up each youth, it’s not only unfair and ineffective, it’s incredibly expensive.
AB 999 would eliminate the “time adds” system, and institute a model that provides incentives for youth to prove they’re ready to return home. (Learn more here.)  But the DJJ won’t change without clear direction from lawmakers — and from you! Even if you’ve already taken action to support AB 999, your elected officials still need to hear from you now that the bill is headed for a full Assembly vote. Click here to send an email now:

http://www.ellabakercenter.org/?p=bnb_ab999_support

Postscript;

 

It was MN Supreme Court Chief Justice Kathleen Blatz who commented that 90% of the youth in juvenile justice had passed through child protection.  As a long time guardian ad-Litem working with children in child protection, it hurts me greatly to see children born into almost certain lives of crime and incarceration.  

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100 Years of Juvenile Justice

Published
by
Mike Tikkanen
on November 5, 2005
in Crime and Courts, Health and Mental Health, Invisible Children, Kids At Risk Action (KARA), Politics and Funding and Public Policy
. 0 Comments


At the William Mitchell Law School today, I learned that Minnesota has been a genuine leader in Juvenile Justice in America for one hundred years.

The vast majority of people working with abused and neglected children quickly see the need for healing the mental and emotional scars left on children that have been terribly abused by their parents.

Most thinking people also perceive the benefits to the larger society of making children well and allowing them to become productive members of society (instead of leaving them dysfunctional and to go on to have more dysfunctional progeny).

Healing children through the efforts of the courts is making some people stretch their brain to accommodate something other than an adversarial approach to a Justice System.

Today at the William Mitchell Law Schools Conference on Innovations Ideas in Juvenile Law I observed the incongruity of bright committed people arguing opposite ends of the spectrum.

This would be just an interesting curiosity if it did not so glaringly exemplify the difference between healing emotionally and mentally disturbed children and imprisoning kids whose entire lives have been a punishment.

I call it our abandonment of twice-abused children. Once by their parents, and once by our Justice System.

Instead of assessing their mental status, we send them to jails and boot camps, to reinforce how different they are from we good people and why they must live apart from us.

I’m won’t recite the mental illness statistics within the Juvenile or Criminal Justice Systems (way over half), but I will draw your attention to the fact that most of the children in Minnesota’s Juvenile Justice System have come out of Child Protection system and most of the adults in Criminal Justice have come out of Juvenile Justice.

Inevitably, these children go on to spend many years in our institutions.

They hate it, we hate it, and great expense and suffering is incurred along the way as it happens.

Some very smart people at the Symposium suggested that we just quit doing counterproductive things and do things that work. There are so many successful models.

We’ll save big money and many lives and we’ll feel much better about ourselves.

Thank you William Mitchell for your Symposium celebrating 100 years of Juvenile Courts in Minnesota. This was a much needed public dialogue.

It is efforts like yours that will spread the word and make people see the wisdom of better public policy towards children.