The Haywood Burns institute, a San Francisco-based national nonprofit dedicated to improving the lives of youth of color has created a State Map of Disproportionate Minority Contact (DMC) to quantify Disproportionate Minority Contact on a state-by-state basis. DMC includes measuring the differential in arrest or referral rates among youth based on race, an historic disparity many jurisdictions are working to mitigate. These quantification projects serve important functions in both tracking progress and identifying problem areas, while keeping the public apprised of the state of the problem.

Under the federal Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act (JJDPA), States are required to address Disproportionate Minority Contact (DMC) in their juvenile justice systems. The nature of DMC and/or racial and ethnic disparities in the juvenile justice system varies among States, as does each State’s effort to reduce DMC and disparities.

To facilitate analysis of these variations, our interactive map provides State-by-State and County data regarding juvenile justice system involvement, using data from the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention. Click the desired State to learn about State data on racial and ethnic disparities in the juvenile justice system, State’s efforts to reduce disparities, and State’s juvenile justice system information, including state contact information and relevant law.

• State Map of Disproportionate Minority Contact (DMC)

The National Juvenile Defender Center (NJDC) has released a second edition of the MacAurthur Juvenile Court Training Curriculum

Intended for juvenile court judges, defense attorneys, prosecutors, and probation staff, the curriculum provides in-depth training materials on the most up-to-date adolescent development research and its application to juvenile court practice. As a part of the MacArthur Foundation’s project, Models for Change: Systems Reform in Juvenile Justice, this curriculum is available to jurisdictions across the country to enhance the capacity of professionals to make high-quality, developmentally appropriate decisions about the court-involved youth with whom they work.

Each module contains an estimate of presentation timing, a list of learning objectives, a summary of key concepts, and comprehensive substantive material on the particular topic. To encourage trainings to be interactive, the authors have included several exercises, including hypothetical case scenarios, discussion guides for video clips, and other training tools.

To receive a copy of the Curriculum or to request training based on the Curriculum contact:

National Juvenile Defender Center
1350 Connecticut Avenue NW, Suite 304
Washington, DC 20036
Phone: 202-452-0010
Fax: 202-452-1205
www.njdc.info
inquiries@njdc.info

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).

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)