By John Lash for The Juvenile Justice Information Exchange

Anyone who has spent much time around a prison realizes it is usually not a place of healing or rehabilitation. The truth is prisons are mostly warehouses these days, places where we send people just to have them out of the way. A lot of those people have diagnosed mental health problems, and a lot more have, or also have, substance abuse and addiction issues.

I can’t speak to all prison systems, but in Georgia the “treatments” that both of these groups have received in the past have been, well…, laughable. Short appointments with a psychiatrist and enough medication to keep them sedated was the course of action for guys with mental health issues, while guys with substance abuse problems attended “classes” where they heard a mishmash of moralistic judgments and pseudo-scientific theories.

It isn’t too hard to see that these measures were less than effective.

By Jakada Imani for The Huffington Post

Governor Brown has done it again. He has proposed in the state budget to close the Division of Juvenile Justice (DJJ) once and for all. The DJJ drains much-needed funds from our schools and vital community programs that would help California thrive. The youth prison system promotes violence and re-creates trauma, making it unable to help the youth in its care.

Families have been saying this for years. When I first went with a group of parents of incarcerated youth to Sacramento wearing shirts that said, "Close youth prisons. Open youth opportunities," people laughed at us. They said it could never happen.

But we knew that locking up kids in isolated prisons fails to give them the opportunity to develop into healthier adults. The members of our statewide network of hundreds of families of imprisoned youth knew firsthand that the DJJ prisons fail at rehabilitation and education. The Ella Baker Center knew that a bright future for California demanded that we reverse the trade-off between schools and jails by prioritizing our investment in opportunities for youth, not in locking them up.

By Zach Rausnitz for Fierce Homeland Security

Youth transferred to the adult corrections system recidivate at a higher rate than those kept in the juvenile justice system, and the adult system struggles to keep youth safe and provide them appropriate services, according to a December 2011 report (.pdf) from the National Institute of Corrections.

The findings stem from a June 2010 meeting where NIC convened three dozen juvenile justice and adult corrections experts.

By Lizzie Schiffman for the Huffington Post

CHICAGO -- As Chicago Public Schools have become increasingly dependent on the police department to control student behavior on school grounds, a disproportionately high number of black juveniles are being thrust into the criminal justice system too early and too easily, according to data from a new report issued Wednesday by the Chicago youth advocacy group Project NIA.

The group analyzed Chicago Police Department arrest data and found that 20 percent of all juvenile arrests in 2010 took place on school grounds. Nearly one-third of those arrests were for simple battery charges -- offenses that in previous years would have been written off as schoolyard skirmishes and punished with suspensions or other penalties doled out by the school.

By Susan Ferriss for iWatchNews.org

California, often a trendsetter, could make history if it approves Gov. Jerry Brown’s bid to close all state-run youth prisons and eliminate its state Division of Juvenile Justice.

Much depends, though, on whether the state’s politically influential prison guards, probation officers and district attorneys can be convinced — or forced by legislators — to agree to Brown’s proposal. That won’t be an easy sell, due to both public-safety arguments and sure-to-surface haggling over just who pays to house juvenile offenders.

Vowing to restructure government more efficiently, Brown, a Democrat, wants to close the last three of 11 youth prisons that have long been attacked by critics as “expensive failures.” If the state phases out the last three of its aging detention centers, all future young offenders would be held, schooled and treated by California’s 58 counties.

This is the second time since taking office last year that Brown has proposed closing the state juvenile division, which is part of its corrections system. The division’s responsibility has already been slashed dramatically from 10,000 wards in the mid-1990s to about 1,100 in state custody today. Their numbers may be few, but the cost for keeping those youth in state custody runs about $200,000-a-year for every ward.

From Youth Justice Coalition

Los Angeles— Over two hundred community members showed an enthusiastic display of opposition to the Board of Supervisors and Sheriff Department’s move to expand LA County’s jails. After noting much community pressure, the Supervisors immediately backed down from the $1.4 billion dollar expansion
 plan that Sheriff Baca proposed in October. While the supervisors did not decide to withdraw the county’s application for state AB 900 Phase 2 jail construction funding, they did slow the pace on the commissioning of a $5.7 million report on possible jail expansion.

The overuse of harsh zero-tolerance measures, police, and juvenile courts in addressing school disciplinary issues has led to the needless pushout and criminalization of countless youth across America. In response, a growing national movement has emerged to dismantle this School-to-Prison Pipeline. This grassroots-led effort has already achieved important victories, and the momentum for change is building, but there is much more to be done.

We invite you to join with youth and adult advocates from across the country at one of the 2012 School-to-Prison Pipeline Regional ActionCamps.

Western Region - Los Angeles, CA February 10-12

Southern Region - Raleigh/Durham, NC March 2-4

Midwestern Region - Chicago, IL April 13-15

Northeastern Region - New York, NY June 1-3

From the Real News Network

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