Balance needed

Published March 25th, 2008

By John Johnston
Managing Editor

For an hour and a half this Thursday afternoon, the Palm Beach County Criminal Justice Commission (CJC), the Department of Juvenile Justice (DOJ) and the Florida Blueprint Commission (FBC) will present a study about Florida’s juvenile justice system.

That study will say, in summary: “It is time for Florida to get smart about juvenile justice.”

However, getting smart doesn’t mean so called “tough love” or coming down with both feet on juvenile crime.

Neither does it mean adhering to what a 2000 national report by the American Youth Policy Forum said – that getting tough was in fact “a counterproductive fad that actually exacerbates juvenile crime.”

Rather the report is perhaps a swinging of the pendulum back toward a middle ground.  In the words of Blueprint Commission Chairman and Florida Atlantic University (FAU) President Frank Brogan:

“We must strike the balance between providing for public safety, and providing opportunities for young people to learn from their behaviors and receive the treatment and rehabilitation services needed to become productive members of their families and their communities.”

Brogan and the Commission want in fact a compromise between tough love and Dr. Spock – with Brogan saying in Jan. 28 letter to 
Florida Department of Juvenile Justice Secretary Walter McNeil:

“We believe that Florida must get smart about its response to and treatment of at-risk youth. We must move toward a more balanced system, one that proactively seeks to prevent juvenile delinquency, that redirects those youth at risk of delinquency, that provides more appropriate, less restrictive sanctions for low-risk and misdemeanant youth offenders, that focuses on rehabilitation, and that reserves serious sanctions for violent and habitual offenders.”

This Thursday’s public meeting will be held from 2 to 3:30 pm in the 6th floor commission chambers of the Palm Beach County Governmental Center, 301 N. Olive Ave. in West Palm Beach. Participants will learn that the during its study the FBC learned:

• Communities, which bear the burden of providing prevention services for at-risk youth, have limited capacity and resources with which to respond.
• Public school systems - themselves under stress increasingly are using Zero Tolerance practices to send youth into the juvenile justice system rather than apply alternative methods of discipline.
• Even in the face of a decline in overall juvenile justice system referrals, the use of secure detention Gail-like setting) is increasing. Florida places youth in secure detention and in residential commitment at rates that exceed national norms.
• There is a growing proportion of girls in the juvenile justice system, which presents a host of health, mental health and programmatic challenges.
• There are a disproportionate number of minorities in the system - and the disproportion grows worse the deeper into the system you go.
• The BRC also learned that at all levels, across gender and race, the health and mental health needs of youth in the juvenile justice system were significant -- with two-thirds of youth, in some cases, having mental-health or substance abuse issues.
• And while so-called “troubled youths” wander in, around, and through the ‘juvenile justice system’, the Department of Juvenile Justice is struggling to keep pace. The FBC says:
• Direct care staff is poorly equipped.
• Compensation is low.
• Annual turnover ranges from 35 to 66 percent, depending on the employee category.

Recommendations

Any commission is, of course, going to issue recommendations. The FBC itself calls what it has concluded “extensive and diverse.”  But its recommendations can be summarized as follows:

• The State of Florida needs to invest in a continuum of services that can provide the right services at the right time in the least-restrictive environment, while continuing to provide serious sanctions for youth involved in serious and violent crime, where appropriate.
• Florida should invest in community-based programs that help keep kids out of trouble.
• Florida should develop alternative programs and interventions at the community level to prevent youth who do not pose a public safety or flight risk from placement in secure detention.
• For those youth who require commitment to residential facilities, Florida should provide facilities that are small, that provide good educational and skill-building programs, and that best prepare youth for return to their communities.
• Florida must provide gender-specific programming that effectively addresses the needs of girls in the juvenile justice system. And it must address the disproportionate presence of minorities in the system.
• Florida must provide adequate resources to meet the mental and physical health needs of youth in the juvenile justice system. Florida must invest in the human resources that provide direct care services to youth in the system and develop a more professional and stable workforce.
• And at every point, Florida should implement only those programs and strategies that are evidence based, that have been demonstrated to be effective in protecting public safety while at the same time providing an optimum future for our youth.

From Within

 
"Florida's lifeblood is its children and young people, including those who may have gotten into trouble by taking a wrong turn," said Governor Crist in announcing the FBC. "We must always remember that we can never give up on our young people."

And one of the critical elements in the FBC recommendations is that conclusions and subsequent policies must be “evidence based” and result from within, not without, the communities being served.

“The thing that impresses me the most about America is the way parents obey their children,” said King Edward VIII.

Parents: that’s where juveniles literally begin, and that’s where justice must begin as well.