Why does the U.S. lead the world in youth imprisonment? What should a truly effective juvenile justice system look like? How can the media stay ahead of the story?
On April 23-24, 2012, 30 journalists from around the nation joined some of the country's most prominent juvenile justice experts, practitioners and advocates to explore those questions at a special symposium at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York, organized by John Jay's Center on Media, Crime and Justice with the support of the Tow Foundation and in cooperation with John Jay's Center for Research and Evaluation.
The 30 journalists, selected as Reporting Fellows, examined current sentencing and detention practices, the impact of race, treatment of mental health and substance abuse, and the role of police, courts, schools (and parents) in the so-called "school to prison pipeline." The year-long fellowship also includes the establishment of a "juvenile justice news network" for reporters to assist them in following trends in this area, and new research--with the aim of providing the tools that can help foster informed public debate at local and national levels in 2012 and beyond.
The symposium entitled Kids Behind Bars: Where's the Justice in America's Juvenile Justice System, Covering the Juvenile Justice Reform Debate in 2012 featured keynote speeches from Gail Garinger, The Child Advocate of the State of Massachusetts; attorney Bryan Stevenson who argued the Supreme Court case related to juvenile Life Without Parole; and Mike Bocian, Pollster & Founding Partner, GBA Strategies.
Panelists included: Vincent N. Schiraldi, Commissioner, New York City Department of Probation, James Bell, Founder and Executive Director, W. Haywood Burns Institute, C. Jama Adams, Professor and Chair of John Jay College's Africana Studies Department and Joseph Gaudett, Chief of Police, Bridgeport, Connecticut.
Proceedings of the conference, including podcasts, research materials provided by speakers, are covered below. For a full list of speakers, panelists and the agenda click here.
NOTE: this page will be updated regularly with articles by Fellows and other information as it becomes available.
By Cara Tabachnick
Journalists and juvenile justice experts gathered on day two to discuss covering the juvenile justice reform debate in 2012 at John Jay College of Criminal Justice.
Read full entry »Last week, the Supreme Court heard arguments about the fate of 2,500 offenders who were sentenced as teenagers to life in prison without the possibility of parole. Seventy-nine of them were 13 or 14 when they committed their crimes. Many prosecutors and family members of victims supported he sentences. In a cafeteria near the Supreme Court, NPR reports, families of teenagers who committed horrible crimes got together with the families of victims.
One man's mother had been killed by four teenage girls. Another man's son was killed by a teenage boy. Yet all of them want the court to find life without parole for juveniles unconstitutional. It's not a group you often hear about. Many said they frequently are unwilling to share their feelings about the issue because they have been accused of not missing their loved ones enough. On this day, there was enough sorrow in the room to fill an afternoon — but also enough forgiveness. NPR tells some of their stories.
Read full entry »Arguments over the constitutionality of a sentence of life in prison without the possibility of parole for juveniles provoked strong comments but no clear...
Read full entry »
By Matthew T. Mangino
The U.S. Supreme Court is hearing cases on the issue of life without parole for juveniles. Commentator Matthew Mangino says that if recent trends are any indication, the court will restrict the use of life without parole for juveniles, but will not eliminate the practice.
Read full entry »Next week, the U.S. Supreme Court hears arguments on whether mandatory life sentences are too cruel for juveniles. In the first of a 5-part series, MLive Media...
Read full entry »A survey by the Sentencing Project of 1,579 inmates serving life sentences in prison without the possibility of parole for crimes committed as juveniles found "high rates of socioeconomic disadvantage [and] extreme racial disparities in the imposition of these punishments." The survey said nearly half had experienced physical abuse as youths and 79 percent witnessed violence in their homes. Fewer than half were attending school at the time of their offense, and nearly 85 percent had had been suspended or expelled from school at some point in their academic career. The proportion of African Americans serving life sentences for the killing of a white person is nearly twice the rate at which African American juveniles are arrested for taking a white person’s life.
The survey found that about 62 percent of juvenile lifers are not engaged in programming in prison. This is generally not due to their lack of interest, but because of state or prison policies. Among the juvenile lifers who were not participating in programming, 32.7 percent were prohibited because they will never be released; an additional 28.9 percent were in prisons without sufficient programming or had completed all available programming. The survey said that, "Many juvenile lifers are engaged in constructive change during their incarceration when they are permitted the opportunity to do so."
At least 2,500 inmates nationwide who were convicted of murder as juveniles have been sent to prison with no chance of parole. The Los Angeles Times say that the U.S. Supreme Court and California legislators may give some of these inmates another chance. The court will hear arguments March 20 in two cases involving 14-year-olds, on whether it is unconstitutional cruel and unusual punishment to put young juvenile murderers in prison without hope of release.
In Sacramento, a state Senate-passed bill to make juvenile murderers eligible for parole fell two votes short in the Assembly last year but is up for reconsideration this week. In the Supreme Court, attorneys for the 14-year-olds point to forensic evidence that a teenager's brain is not fully developed and that youths consequently take too many risks. Laurence Steinberg, a psychology professor at Temple University, says, "Adolescents, because of their immaturity, should not be deemed as culpable as adults. But they also are not innocent children whose crimes should be excused." Even if these inmates win in Washington or California, it does not mean they will all be released. They would have to prove to judges and parole boards that they deserve to go home, probably after they have served 25 years. They would need to show near-unblemished prison records, true remorse and proof they can function in society.
Youth Today assess options for the Supreme Court in newly accepted cases on life without parole sentences for juvenile offenders, which were reported yesterday in Crime & Justice News. Just 18 months ago, the high court banned such sentences for juveniles in non-homicide offenses. A ban on "LWOP" for juveniles would affect more than 2,500 current inmates. More than half of them are in four states: Pennsylvania, Michigan, Louisiana, and Florida.
A ban on LWOP for youths under 15 appears to be what will be sought by the offenders’ lawyers, from the Alabama-based Equal Justice Initiative. There are only 73 current LWOP inmates who were convicted for crimes they committed when they were 14, and nine others who were convicted when they were younger. Another possibility is a ban on LWOP for youths who did not commit a homicide but merely were present for an action that precipitated it. There also could be required judicial review of juvenile LWOP usage in mandatory sentencing schemes, a ruling that seem to be in line with Chief Justice John Roberts’ suggestions during the previous case that requiring review of LWOP in all juvenile cases would be more practical than a categorical ban on the sentence for certain offenses.
Read full entry »The U.S. Supreme Court today agreed to decide whether 14-year-olds convicted of taking part in a murder can be sentenced to life prison terms without...
Read full entry »Booth Newspapers profile Michigan’s “juvenile lifers,” who were sentenced to life in prison without chance of parole. Michigan spends more than $10 million a year to house more juvenile lifers than all but one other state, Pennsylvania. In all, 358 inmates are serving life sentences for crimes committed from ages 14 to 17. One in five has been in prison 25 years or longer.
As a federal judge weighs whether such sentences are unconstitutional, reporters interviewed nearly two dozen inmates, including some who committed crimes before they could drive. They talked to victims’ families, prosecutors, judges, and lawmakers. They found regret and bitterness, anger and forgiveness. They found an issue measured more in shades of gray than black and white. Ask Shirley Schwartz what her brother would think of imprisoning teens for life. “That’s a really difficult question,” she says. Her college professor brother was “very liberal,” an advocate for his Grand Rapids urban neighborhood. That was where Jerry Fried died after being beaten to death with a baseball bat in a burglary by a 16- and a 17-year-old.
Read full entry »
Kyan Bucknor was 15 in 1999 when he shot two patrons and a Broward County sheriff's deputy outside a nightclub. He was sentenced to life in prison. But Bucknor, now 26, will get a reprieve thanks to a May U.S. Supreme Court decision banning life-without-parole sentences for juveniles who did not kill anyone, reports the Miami Herald. The ruling left Florida in a quandary: For undeniably violent crimes, what is an appropriate alternative sentence in a state that has no parole system?
Bucknor is one of 23 South Florida men -- among 100-plus statewide, the most in the nation -- who must now be resentenced under the Graham v. Florida ruling. So far, none have received new prison terms as the judicial system struggles to comply, case by case. But since keeping criminals like Bucknor behind bars for good is no longer an option, prosecutors and defense attorneys are staking out their positions, each seeking a solution that passes constitutional muster yet delivers justice for both defendants and victims. Two possible fixes have emerged, from prosecutors and a lawmaker, both requiring mandatory lengthy prison terms followed by the possibility of parole.
California legislators are debating whether to allow juveniles sentenced to life prison terms without the possibility of parole releases to seek court reviews of their cases after serving 10 years in prison, reports the San Francisco Chronicle. The bill is a watered-down version of a proposal that would have barred life imprisonment for all juveniles. It has been approved by the state senate and is set to be taken up by the Assembly as soon as tomorrow.
"Other civilized countries have already banned lifetime sentences (for juveniles)," said state Sen. Leland Yee. "This doesn't ban it [] horrible killers will not get out. Only those individuals who demonstrate they recognize the problem they created, take responsibility, show remorse, and turn their life around (can) petition the court for a resentencing." Opponents, including the California District Attorneys Association and the Assembly Republican Caucus, argue that the current system works and that only the "worst of the worst" are eligible for life without parole now. Scott Thorpe, the association's CEO, noted that juveniles are considered for lifetime sentences if they are tried as adults.
Read full entry »
Why has it taken a century for America to mend the flaws in its juvenile justice system? In an exclusive commentary for The Crime Report, Barry Krisberg, one of America’s foremost experts on juvenile justice, calls this month’s Supreme Court decision on juvenile lifers in Graham v Florida a “small, but important, step” towards improving the way we deal with our most troubled children.
America’s foremost legal philosopher, Roscoe Pound (1870-1964), once observed that the American juvenile court was the greatest step forward in Anglo-American law since the Magna Carta. He was referring to an ideal of justice that was individualized, compassionate and infused with the value of human redemption. This was the vision of Jane Addams, Judge Ben Lindsey and the youth advocates who lobbied to create the juvenile court in Illinois and Colorado in 1899.
Sadly, this ennobling model of justice has been honored more in the breach than in reality.
The juvenile court system has never had the resources or widespread political support to achieve its goals. Moreover, some have sought to virtually eliminate the juvenile court by making it more like the failed criminal justice system.
Beginning in the mid 1970s and continuing over the next two decades, the core child protection provisions of the juvenile court have been weakened. Despite the rhetoric about how much America loves its children, this nation allowed juveniles as young as 12 years old to receive the death penalty, until the Thompson v. Oklahoma case (1988) limited the application of capital punishment to youngsters older than 16.
It took several more years for the U.S. Supreme Court, in Roper v. Simmons (2005), to ban the death penalty for youth under age 18. Before these decisions, the U.S was virtually the only civilized nation to put juveniles to death.
Draconian Punishments
Despite the progress in limiting the death penalty for children, the legal system continued the practice of sentencing young people to Life without the Possibility of Parole (LWOP) or sending minors to prisons for long terms. The political pressure to seize the macho “get tough on crime” low ground was irresistible. It was as if we adults could scare off young criminals by showing them how mean and out-of-control we were. But there was no research supporting the theory that these draconian punishments produced lower juvenile crime rates.
In Roper, Justice Kennedy argued for a 5-4 majority that the juvenile death penalty was cruel and unusual based on a key notion of “evolving standards of decency.” He cited international legal standards that were contrary to this bizarre practice and relied on emerging neurological research suggesting that adolescent brains were not fully developed, and that adolescents possessed diminished capacity to judge the consequences of their actions. It was also shown that the application of the juvenile death penalty was used in a rare and arbitrary manner. The right-wing talk show hosts had a field day criticizing Justice Kennedy, implying that he was a traitor to America.
With Roper on the books, many of us assumed that a legal challenge to sentencing youth to LWOP would be next to succeed. The fundamental logic of Roper seems central to the constitutional challenge to LWOP for youth. It was not hard to see that putting a child in prison for the rest of their life, with no hope of mercy, was arguably as cruel as the death penalty.
With its May 17 decision in Graham v. Florida, the Court took a small but important step forward by banning the automatic use of LWOP for minors who had not committed a murder. The heirs to Jane Addams’ vision probably wondered why it took over a century to figure this out. The critics of Justice Kennedy and the Court howled again about the reliance on international opinion and standards as one basis of the decision. This time the Court was able to muster a 6-3 majority, with Justice Roberts offering a limited concurrence. But, Justices Thomas, Alito, and Scalia expressed their continued support for the harshest possible penalties.
The Next Step
It now remains to be seen if the logic of Roper and Graham will be further extended to practices of sending very young children to prisons for much extended terms. It is hard to see how the same basic legal and philosophic arguments do not apply to laws that allow minors to be tried in adult courts without careful consideration of their “fitness” for the juvenile justices system.
There is growing evidence that children placed in prisons and jails are more likely than adults to commit suicide, to be subject to rape, and that the minors spend more of their confinement time in segregation. Moreover, there are many juveniles sentenced to long prison terms for non-lethal behavior, such as conspiracy or alleged gang involvement. But there is no credible research supporting the theory that these harsh penalties increase public safety. The data also show that the vast majority of minors who are sent to prison are African American and Latino―a shocking indictment of America’s quest for racial fairness.
The slow march to justice for children that was spearheaded by Jane Addams and celebrated by Roscoe Pound has taken a modest step forward with Graham v. Florida. We can only hope that advocates for humane treatment for our children continue the struggle for justice.
Barry Krisberg, PhD., is currently a Distinguished Senior Fellow and Lecturer in Residence at the UC Berkeley School of Law, and a Visiting Scholar at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York.
Read full entry »
This week’s split U.S. Supreme Court decision may give new life to young black Floridians who were sentenced, as boys, to life without parole.
If most Floridians were asked to name the criminal justice system that has the highest rate of incarcerating children, many would name former President George W. Bush’s “axis of evil”: North Korea, Iran, or Iraq. A few might designate so-called “failed states” like Somalia and Sudan.
Only a few would name the United States; probably no one would name Florida.
According to Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International, the United States is the only country in the world that currently sentences youth to life without parole for committing crimes. More than 135 countries have abolished the life without parole sentence for children, even when they commit homicides.
There are more than 2,500 youthful offenders serving life without parole in the United States – most for committing a homicide.
In the rest of the world, there are none. Zero.
There are 129 people in America who are serving life without parole for a non-homicide crime they committed as a child. Seventy-seven of them were sentenced in and are incarcerated in Florida. The other 52 are imprisoned among 10 other states and in the federal system.
Of the 77 locked up here in the Sunshine State, a review of records submitted to the Florida Courier from the Florida Department of Corrections indicates that 76 are black males.
Graham’s Story
Terrance Graham of Jacksonville was 16 when he committed armed burglary and another crime. Graham had a horrific upbringing as the son of crack cocaine addicts. Under a plea agreement, a Jacksonville-area judge gave him a break. Graham was sentenced to probation and the judge withheld adjudication of guilt, meaning Graham did not have a criminal conviction.
Graham later took part in an armed burglary of a home. The same judge found that Graham had violated the terms of his probation, adjudicated Graham guilty of the earlier charges, revoked his probation, criticized Graham for choosing a life of crime, and sentenced him to life in prison for the burglary. Because Florida has abolished its parole system, the life sentence left Graham no possibility of release except through executive clemency – essentially, a government pardon.
Graham challenged his sentence under the Eighth Amendment’s Cruel and Unusual Punishments Clause of the U.S. Constitution, but a Florida appeals court turned him down. Graham then asked the U.S. Supreme Court to review the case.
It did. And on May 17, the court ruled 6-3 that Graham’s sentence constituted cruel and unusual punishment because he was a juvenile when a judge put him away for life. Five of the justices agreed that the ruling should be a blanket policy for all non-homicide acts committed by juveniles.
‘Die in Prison’
"By denying the defendant the right to re-enter the community, the State makes an irrevocable judgment about that person's value and place in society," wrote Justice Anthony Kennedy in the majority opinion. "This judgment is not appropriate in light of a juvenile non-homicide offender's capacity for change and limited moral culpability."
Kennedy said Graham’s life sentence means "he will die in prison without any meaningful opportunity to obtain release, no matter what he might do to demonstrate that the bad acts he committed as a teenager are not representative of his true character, even if he spends the next half century attempting to atone for his crimes and learn from his mistakes.
"Life without parole is an especially harsh punishment for a juvenile," Kennedy wrote. "Under this sentence a juvenile offender will on average serve more years and a greater percentage of his life in prison than an adult offender. A 16-year-old and a 75-year-old each sentenced to life without parole receive the same punishment in name only."
Kennedy also cited a "global consensus" among all nations but the United States that juvenile criminals should not be locked up for life with no chance to rehabilitate themselves.
"From a moral standpoint, it would be misguided to equate the failings of a minor with those of an adult," he wrote, quoting his opinion five years ago that rejected the death penalty for under-age murderers. That ruling in 2005 spared several dozen young murderers from a possible execution.
Kennedy's previous invocations of international legal practice drew fire for supposedly undermining U.S. legal sovereignty, and 16 conservative members of the House of Representatives, including Florida Republican Gus Bilirakis, filed an amicus brief urging the court to shun the "increasing influence of international organizations."
Undaunted, however, Kennedy said again on Monday that the "judgment of the world's nations" deserves to be considered when U.S. judges decide what is cruel and unusual punishment. These international norms are not "binding or controlling," he said, but they can "provide respected and significant confirmation for our own conclusions."
Victory Not Clear-Cut
Monday's ruling gives new hope — but no guarantee of release — to at least 129 prisoners nationwide who were given life terms for crimes such as robbery or assault that took place before they were 18 years old.
Graham's case was remanded back to the lower courts and he could still face a long time in prison for his crime, though not life. The other cases involving juveniles sentenced to life without parole can now be reopened as well for revised sentencing.
Florida Attorney General Bill McCollum released a statement Monday afternoon saying that the court does not prohibit "stern" sentencing for juveniles who commit serious crimes and he expects Graham to be "resentenced to a very long term in prison."
"This ruling will have a significant impact on our state's juvenile justice and corrections systems both going forward and for current inmates, and Florida will need to make provisions to address these issues," McCollum said. "I will work closely with the legislature to identify and implement solutions that can better protect Florida's citizens, families and guests."
State Rep. Perry Thurston is a former Broward County assistant public defender and is a criminal defense attorney. He called the Supreme Court decision “well-supported and well overdue.
“It saddens me that Florida is the worst of the worst when it comes to how we treat our children,” Thurston told the Florida Courier. “This decision finally brings us in line with the rest of world.”
A spokesman for Human Rights Watch agreed with Thurston, while hailing the decision for bringing U.S. law into line with international standards.
"The United States is the world's worst human rights violator in terms of sentencing young offenders to life without parole," said Alison Parker, U.S. director for Human Rights Watch.
The Justice Policy Institute (JPI), a Washington, D.C.-based organization dedicated to reducing society’s use of incarceration as a social policy, also praised the decision.
“The research on adolescent brain development clearly shows that youth are different from adults and should be treated differently under the law,” explained JPI Executive Director Tracy Velázquez. She added, “While this is a step in the right direction, we’d like to see more changes in sentencing practices for both youth and adults, especially those shown to unfairly and disproportionately impact communities of color.
“In the United States, we have locked up too many people for too long, without regard to the negative impact incarceration has on our country. We need to make better use of the many other evidence-based practices we have available that protect public safety, and strengthen communities at the same time. ”
Florida’s prison population has increased five-fold in the past 30 years, while its general population hasn’t even doubled.
Today, 5.4 of every 100 Floridians are incarcerated. Meanwhile, each new prison costs roughly $100 million to build and $25 million to operate annually.
Disproportionate Minority Contact
Researchers have made it clear how Florida’s criminal justice system adversely impacts African American communities, primarily by criminalizing black boys as juveniles or incarcerating them in disproportionate numbers, an effect known in social science as “Disproportionate Minority Contact,” or DMC.
The DMC effect is evident. According to Florida Department of Juvenile Justice (DJJ) statistics:
$62 million, or 48 percent of DJJ’s $130 million detention budget, is spent to temporary confine black boys pending pretrial release, juvenile court proceedings, or disposition of their juvenile case;
More than $141 million, or 47 percent of DJJ’s $300 million residential budget, is spent to keep Black boys in on-site in program housing away from their own homes.
Approximately 1,500 black boys were transferred from DJJ into the adult prison system in 2007-08. That’s about 50 percent of the total number transferred. Statistically, half of them, or about 750, will eventually be imprisoned as adults.
In the adult system, more than 53,000 black men are incarcerated in Florida state prisons. That’s more than 50 percent of the 103,000 total inmate population. More than $1.2 billion of DOC’s $2.4 billion budget is spent incarcerating Black men.
Sixty percent of the DJJ's Prevention and Victims Services’ $59 million budget is spent to provide safe places for children through shelter care within Florida’s network of contracted providers and for the PACE Center for Girls.
In many instances, African American children are not participating in these "front-end" prevention and intervention programs. Yet, black kids make up a disproportionately high number of those in the system who are taken from their homes, placed in detention centers, sent to adult court, and subsequently sent to state prison.
Nationwide statistics show African American children represent about 15 percent of the population, but make up 26 percent of all juvenile arrests, 44 percent of detained youth, 46 percent of youth transferred to adult court, and 58 percent of the youth sent to state prisons, according to the study "Disproportionate Minority Contact: An Examination of Prevention, Diversion, Intervention, Residential and Aftercare.”
County by County
Florida statistics mirror the nation’s. According to DJJ’s 2009 DMC Benchmark Report, every county but one – Gilchrist (west of Gainesville) – had Black youth referred to the juvenile justice system by at least twice the rate of White youth referred.
Glades (southeast of West Palm Beach), Gadsden (west of Tallahassee), and Miami-Dade counties were the bottom three with the most serious DMC issue. black youth were 12.8 times more likely to be referred to the juvenile justice system than white youth in Glades County, and 5.7 times more likely in Gadsden and Miami-Dade.
"No one is born with a gun in his hand. Yet our kids go from home to jail," former DJJ Assistant Secretary Greg Johnson, who recently retired after 35 years with DJJ, told the Florida Courier.
"We can lower Disproportionate Minority Contact numbers by not sending kids (into the juvenile justice system) for less than a misdemeanor,” Johnson added.
"Every referral (when a kid is placed into Florida’s juvenile justice system) costs $14.43 per child. Some counties have 1,500 referrals; that's $21,000. We can take that same money and put it to work in prevention.”
Johnson's greatest concern is to catch those youth most at risk before they enter the system.
"There are no exit doors all the way through the system. We want to get them before the police, before probation, before they divert them into a diversionary program, and cut them off from the beginning (of the juvenile justice system).”
Charles Cherry II is editor and publisher of The Florida Courier. This piece is one of a series of original criminal justice journalism projects around the country produced by 2010 John Jay/H.F. Guggenheim Fellows. Michael Doyle/McClatchy Newspapers, Kathleen Haughney, The News Service of Florida and David G. Savage/Tribune Washington Bureau (MCT) all contributed to this report. We thank the Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation for their generous support of this project.
FLORIDA JUVENILES SERVING LIFE
(NON-HOMICIDES)
Total number: 77
Race: 76 Black, 1 White
Sex: All male
Age of youngest children arrested: 13 years old (3 total)
Average age at time crime committed: 16 years, two months
Average age as of today: 26 years, one month
Primary crime committed:
Robbery: 34
Kidnapping: 15
Sexual battery: 13
Burglary: 12
Carjacking: 2
County of conviction:
Broward, Hillsborough: 9
Miami-Dade, Orange, Polk: 7
Duval, Escambia: 6
Palm Beach: 5
Brevard, Pinellas, St. Lucie: 3
Highlands: 2
1 each: Alachua, Citrus, Gadsden, Lake, Leon, Marion, Osceola, Sumter, Volusia
Source: Florida Department of Corrections records;Florida Courier research
Read full entry »
