Juvenile Justice in Wyoming from Marc Homer on Vimeo.

Via Reclaiming Futures, an excellent piece on the effects of juvenile system in Wyoming (and not much different elsewhere unfortunately).

Law students interested in acquiring intensive training in areas of adoption and child welfare might consider an innovative program at Capital University Law School. This summer, the National Center for Adoption Law & Policy at Capital University Law School will be hosting two intensive summer courses focused on adoption and child welfare.

The Interdisciplinary Child Welfare Institute (ICWI) is a two credit, one-week intensive multidisciplinary class that is offered to law students and graduate level social work students across the country. This course is scheduled for Monday, July 26 through Friday, July 30. This course will provide students with a mutual understanding of the legal and sociological principles central to child welfare practice.

The Summer Adoption Law Institute (SALI) is a two credit, one-week intensive class that is open to law students across the country. The class will be offered Monday, August 2 through Friday, August 6. This course is dedicated to exploring the world of adoption from both academic and practitioner perspectives.

The Center for Children, Law and Policy and the Southwest Juvenile Defender Center are pleased to announce that Bryan Stevenson has agreed to speak at the Zealous Advocacy Conference 2010: Game Changing Strategies.

Bryan Stevenson is the Executive Director of the Equal Justice Initiative in Montgomery, Alabama and also a Professor of Law at the New York University School of Law. His representation of poor people and death row prisoners in the deep south has won him national recognition. He and his staff have been successful in overturning dozens of capital murder cases and death sentences where poor people have been unconstitutionally convicted or sentenced. Mr. Stevenson has been recognized as one of the top public interest lawyers in the country. His efforts to confront bias against the poor and people of color in the criminal justice system have earned him dozens of national awards including the National Public Interest Lawyer of the Year, the ABA Wisdom Award for Public Service, the ACLU National Medal of Liberty, the Reebok Human Rights Award, the Olaf Palme Prize for International Human Rights, the Gruber Foundation International Justice Prize and the prestigious MacArthur Foundation Fellowship Award Prize. He is a graduate of Harvard Law School and the Harvard School of Government. He has published articles on race and poverty and the criminal justice system, and manuals on capital litigation and habeas corpus.

Sullivan v. Florida

Bryan Stevenson most recently argued before the Supreme Court of the United States in Sullivan v. Florida involving a 13 year old who received life in prison without parole in a Florida state court on a conviction for sexual battery. In the Brief on the Merits (.pdf) petitioner argued that sentence was cruel and unusual and thus violated both the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments. A decision on the case is expected soon.

An article by Nina Bernstein in the New York Times, Judge Keeps His Word to Immigrant Who Kept His, highlights the clash that develops at the intersection of juvenile justice with its rehabilitative emphasis and other areas of the law - in this case immigration.

The teenager, a gifted student, was pleading guilty to a string of muggings committed at 15 with an eclectic crew in Manhattan’s Chinatown. The judge, who remembered the pitfalls of Little Italy in the 1950s, urged him to use his sentence — three to nine years in a reformatory — as a chance to turn his life around.

“If you do that, I am here to stand behind you,” the judge, Michael A. Corriero, promised. The youth, Qing Hong Wu, vowed to change.

Mr. Wu kept his word. He was a model inmate, earning release after three years. He became the main support of his immigrant mother, studying and working his way up from data entry clerk to vice president for Internet technology at a national company.

But almost 15 years after his crimes, by applying for citizenship, Mr. Wu, 29, came to the attention of immigration authorities in a parallel law enforcement system that makes no allowances for rehabilitation. He was abruptly locked up in November as a “criminal alien,” subject to mandatory deportation to China — the nation he left at 5, when his family immigrated legally to the United States.

Mr. Wu’s story highlights both a remarkable success in the juvenile justice system and the utter inflexibility of our immigration system, where changes over the past decade have removed the discretion once held by the executive branch to make exceptions where warranted.

• Nina Bernstein, Judge Keeps His Word to Immigrant Who Kept His, New York Times (Feb. 18, 2010)

Washington State Senator Rosa Franklin has proposed legislation that would discontinue use of terms that negatively identify children such as “at risk” and “free lunch recipients” and replace them with more positive terms such as “Children at Hope.”

Democratic State Sen. Rosa Franklin says negative labels are hurting kids’ chances for success and she’s not a bit concerned that people will be confused by her proposed rewrite of the 54 places in state law where words like “at risk” and “disadvantaged” are used. The bill has gotten a warm welcome among fellow lawmakers, state officials and advocacy groups.

“We really put too many negatives on our kids,” says Franklin, who is the state Senate’s president pro tem. “We need to come up with positive terms.”

Republican legislators have challenged the program on pragmatic grounds:

“It’s not the label, it’s the people who show up to help (children) that make the difference,” he says. “What helps is a smart, well structured program, that has funding and credibility.”

The use of such terms may not only be ineffective but risk harmful unintended consequences. Juvenile justice has a long and ignominious history with euphemisms. The harmful effects of labels were recognized by the founders of the juvenile courts. In the 19th century, legislation began referring to children convicted of crime as ‘juvenile delinquents’ to distinguish them from adult ‘criminals’ and to the proceedings to incarcerate them as ‘adjudications’ rather than criminal ‘trials.’ This unobjectionable and seemingly innocuous change in nomenclature, carrying with it the decision to treat the proceedings as civil adjudications rather than criminal trials, was intended to reduce the stigma of the terms and judicially mandate a rehabilitative mission. It’s most lasting effect was to strip children of the constitutional protections in criminal trials that they would otherwise enjoy. The future of children accused of criminal activity was often left almost wholly to the whim of juvenile judges. By 1967, in In re Gault, the mistake was apparent enough for the Supreme Court to intervene. The lewd phone call that would have cost an adult ‘criminal’ at most a $50 fine would have sent 15-year-old Jerry Gault into state custody at the Arizona Reformatory school until his 21st birthday - a 7-year sentence not mandated by any sentencing guideline or statute but all because he was called a ‘juvenile delinquent’ instead of a ‘criminal defendant.’

No obvious harm looms in Senator Franklin’s proposal and she is absolutely correct that labels matter. I’m ‘at hope’ that if adopted, unintended ‘at hopeful’ consequences will be the unfortunate legacy of the bill.

• State. Sen. Rosa Franklin, Labels can shape children – and our attitudes toward them, News Tribune (Tacoma, WA) (January 22, 2010)
• Donna Gordon Blankinship, Wash. lawmaker wants to banish negative language