From the desk of Mary Ellen Johnson

The problems with juvenile justice are pretty straight forward. Put in the simplest terms: Children aren’t adults, but society often treats them as if they are. Even in states where kids aren’t treated as adults, they still aren’t treated as children either. Strategies like “blended sentencing” which still focus on punishment as the solution ultimately fail to address fundamental issues like poverty, abuse, broken homes, under-education and post-release employment.

Over the years many solutions have presented themselves, but aren’t implemented because our system gives priority to short-term budgetary and political considerations.

In a poll conducted in March, Pew Center on the States found that 84% of Americans support shifting funds to community corrections for non-violent, low-risk offenders. The irony is that a study conducted last year by Stanford University found that the lowest risk offenders are actually those serving life with parole. Presumably, those serving life sentences—with or without parole—are serving those sentences for crimes categorized as “violent.”

Many alternative solutions have proven effective for juveniles in a non-violent context, but may also be appropriate for “violent” juvenile offenders too.

Youth Court

According to the National Association of Youth Courts, teen courts are “structured to provide positive alternative sanctions for first-time offenders.” Recognizing that, as citizens, each of us have a right to peer-centered disposition, youth court offers an alternative sentencing mechanism “that allows young people to take responsibility, to be held accountable, and to make restitution.”

Many criminal justice professionals might point out that youth lack sound judgment that may lead to a crime and therefore can’t necessarily be trusted to determine guilt or innocence. However, they might also admit that holding children accountable as adults on so-called “violent” first offenses is at least as much a double standard as having youth sit in judgment of violent behavior. That said, it isn’t commonly known that of the 1,050 youth court programs nationwide:

• 93% of youth courts require defendants to plead guilty
• 67% of youth court cases involve assault
• 53% are presided over by an adult judge
• 42% are fully integrated into a jurisdiction’s juvenile justice system, providing adult guidance and sound sentencing guidelines

Restorative Justice

According to Restorative Justice Online, restorative justice responds to crime by:

• Identifying steps to repair harm
• Involving all stakeholders
• Transforming the traditional relationship between communities and their governments in responding to crime.

Some less used strategies for repairing violent harm might be:

• Victim Offender Mediation: Meetings between the victim and offender are facilitated by a trained mediator. With the assistance of the mediator, the victim and offender begin to resolve conflicts and construct their own approach to achieving justice.
• Conferencing: Based on Maori traditions in New Zealand, the families of youth offenders are allowed to choose their child’s punishment with input from victims and other community organizations with an interest in mediating criminal behavior.
• Circles: Based on the practices of First Nations in the U.S. and Canada, healing circles recognize that offenders were often victims first and allow communities to take an active role in healing victims and offenders, alike.

Community Corrections

According to the Colorado Community Corrections Coalition, Community Corrections Programs “give residents a highly structured standard of living [that requires them] to be employed and attend treatment and other life skills programming.”

A typical community corrections experience might involve:

• Electronic Monitoring: Offenders where ankle-mounted tracking units that rely on GPS data and other location monitoring technologies to accurately track an offender’s movement.
• Residential Treatment: Designed to treat offenders who exhibit substance abuse problems and high levels of criminogenic needs.
• Non-residential Treatment: Recovery and behavior change programs help offenders overcome the challenges of living with substance abuse or chronic mental health issues.
• Education: GED, life skills and employment preparation help offenders transition back into their communities while giving them the skills necessary to become productive members of society.
• Employment: As the number one risk factor for recidivism, new crimes and technical violations are avoided by supporting offenders through job search, retraining and “felony friendly” employment opportunities.

Handling “violent” juveniles

Most district attorneys will probably tell you that when they seek a juvenile life without parole sentence, it is typically for the most heinous violent crimes. What they won’t tell you is that they often have very loose definitions of what constitutes heinous violence.

• In 1999, Erik Jensen was convicted of 1^st Degree Murder on the hearsay testimony of two witnesses who weren’t present during the crime and were either cajoled by police or failed lie detector tests prior to giving testimony. Importantly, even the friend he allegedly tried to free from an abusive home has said that Jensen had nothing to do with the victim’s death. Jensen is serving a sentence of life without parole.
• Courtney Shulhoff was convicted of 1^st Degree Murder for plotting her father’s death with her boyfriend. Though she claimed responsibility in testimony at her boyfriend’s trial, the physical evidence pointed to her boyfriend and she told police that she had tried to talk him out of going through with the murder. Shulhoff also claims to have been physically abused by her father.
• In 1999, Kuntrell Jackson stood outside a video store in Arkansas while his friends robbed and shot the cashier. Despite the fact that Jackson didn’t pull the trigger and had no direct control over the events taking place in the store, he was convicted of felony murder and is serving a sentence of life without parole.

In none of the above cases did an unprovoked child actually pick up a weapon and attack someone. Jackson’s case is currently being reviewed by the U.S. Supreme Court and may overturn mandatory sentences for juveniles convicted of felony murder. Another case before the Supreme Court could overturn mandatory sentences for juveniles convicted of 1^st Degree Murder. No matter what happens in those cases, one thing is clear: Even those children convicted of “non-violent murder” on their first offense won’t be leaving adult prison for a long time.

The costs and benefits of juvenile justice reform

It costs approximately $24,000 per year to incarcerate children as adults. Nationwide, there are more than 2,000 offenders convicted as adults for crimes committed as juveniles. In total, the U.S. will spend at least $3 Billion over their lifetimes just to incarcerate those youth currently serving juvenile life sentences. That cost doesn’t account for trials, appeals, new convictions or the increased cost of caring for offenders who reach advanced age.

By comparison, youth court programs only cost an average of $33,000 per year to administer, handle thousands of cases nationwide, have a post-conviction recidivism rate of 6 to 9% and allow the use of both community service and victim restitution as sanctions. One study on youth restorative justice found that, contrary to popular belief, restorative justice was most effective when used with “violent” offenders. “Non-violent” children who were offered RJ outside of prison had a recidivism rate of 11%. Likewise, Community Corrections programming is roughly half the cost of prison and allows offenders to pay taxes back into the system while working on an electronic monitoring device that ensures public safety.

Conclusion

Hands down, alternative trials and sentencing for youth have proven to be effective both correctively and financially when compared against a punitive juvenile justice system. In the context of Stanford’s recent studies and studies on restorative justice for “violent” juvenile offenders, all evidence suggests that alternative strategies for juvenile lifers would be even more effective.

An amicus brief filed by the American Psychological Association in Graham v. Florida which overturned juvenile life without parole for non-homicide offenses outlines how kids are different from adults. Among those differences are:

• Reduced capacity for mature judgment
• Increased vulnerability to negative external influences
• Evidence that incomplete brain development makes change more likely

America is waking up to the fact that in trying to make children pay for “violent” crimes, it is we, not just children, who bear the brunt of our most draconian sentences.  When we punish children as adults—especially for things like “non-violent murder”—we deprive ourselves of thousands of productive citizens; billions of dollars in lost revenue; and the very justice that we want out of our judicial system.

Victims have the right to recompense, but juvenile offenders should also have the right to an opportunity for redemption. It is estimated that as much as 84% of the juvenile offender population were also, at one point, victims of violent crime. Perhaps it’s time to acknowledge that rehabilitation is possible and that, by themselves, punitive sanctions for kids simply make victims of us all.

Gail Garinger, a former juvenile court judge, hit squarely on a topic of major concern in her keynote address at a national conference on juvenile justice this week.

The “Kids Behind Bars, Where’s the Justice in America’s Juvenile Justice System” was held at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice’s Center on Media, Crime and Justice and brought media professionals together with juvenile justice experts for two-days of discussions.

Garinger referenced the now debunked superpredator theory that helped fuel the rush to laws and policies that led to more juveniles being tried as adults and noted that change is coming, but that it is coming slowly.

Speaking from her own experience, Garinger said, “I can’t believe the stupid things kids do.”

That level of stupidity exhibited by juveniles is, she said, one more reason that we should all be paying more attention to the importance of brain science.

That science is increasingly supporting findings that full maturity in the human brain occurs well beyond the teenage years. Paying attention to the science of brain development could open new avenues for addressing the problems of juvenile crime and for dealing with those young people who commit crimes.

Such a change in focus is much needed in the juvenile justice system.

That would at least start the process of addressing some of the problems created in in recent years in dealing with juveniles that commit crimes.

Such a focus should also drive state judicial, legal and political officials to revisit the cases of those juveniles who have already been tried and convicted in adult courts and who are serving excessive sentences in adult correctional institutions.

The Pendulum Foundation welcomes all to contact us to continue the discussion on this and other issues relating to juveniles being convicted in adult courts.

Perhaps one of the greatest injustices in Colorado history involves the case of Erik Jensen. Erik was sentenced to life without parole for a crime he witnessed when he was only 17 years old. That’s when his friend and fellow band member Nathan Ybanez murdered his mother after years of physical and psychological abuse. Will Jensen spend the rest of his life behind bars simply for befriending another youth with a troubled family life?

Erik Jensen met Nathaniel Ybanez through a mutual friend, Brett Baker. Ybanez began playing in Jensen’s band and the two started spending a great deal of time together. Ybanez would often come over to the Jensen house to practice and got to know Erik and his parents fairly well. Even so, he was reluctant to divulge the mental and sexual abuse he was experiencing at home.

The allegations of abuse would reveal themselves in a shocking way to Erik Jensen. On the night of June 5, 1996, Jensen gave Ybanez a ride home after work. The two had planned for Ybanez to go up to his apartment for a few minutes and then return and leave again with Jensen. He reportedly told his friend to come up and check on him if he was not down in about 20 minutes.

After this time, Erik Jensen went up to the apartment and was let inside by Nathan’s mother Julie. She told him to go to Nathan’s bedroom, and Jensen complied. He claims he then heard sounds like fighting going on and walked in to realize that Ybanez had beaten his mother over the head with a set of fireplace tongs. Nathan later ensured his mother’s death by strangling her with the same set of fireplace tongs.

Jensen does not deny that he helped Ybanez clean up the crime scene and dispose of evidence. He does deny any involvement in the murder itself despite testimony from Brett Baker, which suggests otherwise.

After the crime was discovered, Jensen was arrested and tried as an adult. He was then sentenced to life without the possibility of parole. Jensen never anticipated his life would take such a drastic turn on that summer evening back in 1996. Since his incarceration, he has earned a college degree and is a published author. With the help of his parents, he also operates a website dedicated to helping troubled teens.

Contact us to find out more about how you can help juveniles like Erik who have been sentenced to life without parole.

My mother’s family has lived in the Cresson, PA, area for nearly a century. Once a summering place for the wealthy who fled the heat of Philadelphia or Pittsburgh, my grandparents and their 11 children lived in Andrew Carnegie’s summer home long after Cresson had lost its elite cachet. Cresson became a railroad town. Then the railroads went away. Depressed, no work, lots of drinking and drugs. Many broken lives including members of my mother’s family who chose to stay.

In the last twenty years prisons have sprung up in the area like noxious weeds – and obviously the community sickness is reflected in the behavior of guards and prison officials.

Kudos to The Nation for its expose of solitary confinement practices in my childhood playground. Pennsylvania, which also has the most children sentenced to life without parole in the world, has not ruled the barbarism related in “Why are Prisoners Committing Suicide in Pennsylvania?” unconstitutional. SCI Cresson psychologist, James Harrington, who oversaw these unspeakable crimes, should be arrested, convicted and placed in the very cells where his minions have tortured and directly or indirectly murdered so many helpless men.

When atrocities are committed by our troops, Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta keeps saying the acts aren’t representative of America. “That’s not who we are.” Obviously, these actions ARE indicative of who we’re becoming – whether on the barren battlefields of Afghanistan or in the depressed and dying former railroad town of my youth.

http://www.thenation.com/article/167459/why-are-prisoners-committing-suicide-pennsylvania

Contact us to see what you can do to help change it.

It seems like just yesterday that the U.S. Supreme Court declared it unconstitutional to sentence juveniles not convicted of murder to life without parole.  In the legal precedence timeline, it was.  Just two years ago, in Graham v. Florida, the Court favored the idea of rehabilitation for juveniles convicted of non-homicidal crimes.  Considered cruel and unusual punishment, life without parole for juvenile offenders who had not murdered – went the way of the juvenile death penalty, abolished earlier by the Court in 2005.

Which brings us to today.  On March 20, the Court heard arguments on the constitutionality of juvenile life without parole (JLWOP) in cases where the defendant is convicted of felony murder.  Distinguished from homicide, felony murder makes all participants in a crime liable for the death of another causally related to the furtherance of the crime.  On the docket were, Jackson v. Hobbs and Miller v. Alabama, both involving felony murder convictions of 14-year-old defendants.

In Jackson, the defendant received JLWOP for his participation in an armed robbery where an accomplice committed murder. In Miller, a fight led to the defendant and friend setting fire to a trailer from which, the victim did not escape.  Both defendants convicted of felony murder and subject to JLWOP, post Graham, as a homicide did occur in furtherance of the crimes.

The question, then, facing the Court is whether JLWOP remains unconstitutional when the juvenile defendant did not receive a homicide conviction, but the conviction involved a murder.  Fortunately, the justices on the bench haven’t changed much since the 6-3 majority (or 5-4, depending on how one views Chief Justice Roberts’ opinion) in Graham, so a similar outcome is expected.  The since-retired John Paul Stevens’ replacement, Elena Kagan and the remaining justices are expected to extend the unconstitionality of JLWOP to cases involving the felony murder rule, in accordance with just about every other country in the world.

The fight is far from over; however, we still need your help to ensure that children are not treated as adults in the justice system.  You can help abolish juvenile life without parole!  Contact us to get involved.

Colorado’s Juvenile Clemency Board, the first and only such board in the nation, was the brainchild of The Pendulum Foundation and CO legislator, Cheri Jahn. Our former governor agreed to the board in lieu of further legislation dealing with our 50 kids serving life without parole. Legislation, particularly dealing with retroactivity, was always grueling, divisive and emotionally gut wrenching for all involved. The Juvenile Clemency Board was created as a safety valve, specifically, the governor told then-Representative Jahn, to address the problem of our juvenile lifers.

When Governor Ritter left office, he commuted the sentences of 4 former juveniles. Not one was serving life without parole.

Needless to say, we felt betrayed.

Colorado’s Juvenile Clemency Board is a good idea that has been poorly executed. The current head of the board is a former district attorney who prosecuted some of the juveniles who submitted petitions. She testified in a legislative hearing against my friend, Jacob Ind, who later applied for a commutation. Now, really. This woman would be fair? I’m always annoyed by the opposition saying advocates such as myself are ruled by emotion, or are unreasonable, or see issues only in terms of black and white. I don’t. And I call those accusations against many of us “projection.” I believe I could far more fairly weigh the facts and repercussions of these petitions than someone who has spent his or her lifetime prosecuting the applicants. And the rest of the clemency board, heavy weighted with law enforcement types, has not been much better. No wonder the board, according to our sources – how can we really know? All the deliberations are secret – never recommended pardoning or commuting the sentences of any of our juveniles. I particularly remember the case of one juvenile lifer, Christopher, who had put in a clemency packet and had his application denied due to a misinterpretation of the rules. After the misinterpretation was corrected, the administrator of the board strongly urged that Christopher apply again. Christopher was reluctant. Why should he subject himself to something that was obviously a farce? Be rejected yet a second time? Made to look like a fool? I convinced Christopher. He re-submitted his petition. It was promptly denied.

I feel like the proverbial mouse, being swatted around by a bureaucratic cat. Are we being played with? Mocked? Patronized?

While we’ve been assured that board members agonize over the decisions to always recommend denial, others have told us that members spend “less than a minute” on deliberations. The clemency packets are never returned to family members or applicants who spent weeks readying them, but are destroyed. And, of course, when an applicant is denied, if he is lucky enough to receive an official denial, it comes in the guise of a form letter. When we suggested that such a letter might be personalized and give suggestions as to what the supplicant might do to improve his chances for a future commutation, we were told, “Clemency is not a get out of jail free card.”

Obviously.

The Pendulum Foundation and other advocates are seeking changes in the make up of the Juvenile Clemency Board, and in the criteria, which is currently identical to that of the adult board. We want allowances made for such things as age at the time of the crime, victims’ input, number of prior offenses, whether the juvenile killed his abuser and whether that abuse had been reported – important details like that. Right now it’s pretty much a one size-fits-all-identical-to-the-adult board, which hasn’t worked so well either. And how about a series of concrete steps that could lead to the applicant’s freedom? Programs? Step-downs to other prisons and then to community? A privately owned and operated halfway house that would care for re-entering former juveniles? Something? Anything? The possibilities could be endless, if we so choose.

We have a new day and a kind of, sort of new administration, and the bare bones of a good idea that, if fleshed out, could work very well for everyone.

No legislation, but a real path to freedom for our deserving juvenile lifers – and there are many.

Almost everyone agrees that the sentence of juvenile life without parole is a product of the bad old waning years of the 20^th century when retribution and tough on crime nonsense was the rule of the day.

That didn’t work for anyone.

So work with us to give Coloradans something that will.

It almost appears sometimes that in our struggle to have the judicial system re-examine the current system of trying children as adults that people forget.  They draw all kinds of complicated theories, previous statistics, expert testomonies, and dramatic examples into a case, and they seem to have forgotten.

If each and every one of us, with few exceptions. could turn back the hands of time and both observe and feel the emotions and reactions we had when we were 16 years old, we may not have so much opposition to a reform.

Recently I spoke with a woman of 61, who was following our appeal and she decribed her remembrances of her teenage years.  She is currently a Certified Counselor, having worked in Addiction Counseling for more than 30 years.  She also writes.She has raised a family, is reasonably content most of the time. However, she often tells the parolees that she counsels, “There but by the grace of God ” , meaning she could be sitting in their chair instead of hers.

She remembers, and so she empathizes.  She remembers a time in her developement, that, looking back after all these years, she can only describe as delusional and out of reality.  Her emotions were not out of range for most teenage children.  She felt exaggerated and percieved emotions , thought untrue thoughts were reality and often felt hopeless.  Now this is from a successful woman from a stable, functioning and happy family. The drama between her ears was real to her, while nothing other than high school and growing up was really happening. Her brain development was nowhere near complete.

She then can place herself in the shoes of a client, from an abusive household headed by a drug addicted mother,  multiple children raising themselves, making adult decisions with a child’s brain. Add to this the unstable, moody, exaggerated emotions of a teenager, and then tell us that a child caught in this envirnoment is to be held responsible, the same as an adult, for any and all mistakes they make.

People, wake up and remember.

In our appeal for juvenile life without parole, contact us :   http://pendulumfoundation.com/contactus.htm

To read more:    http://www.pendulumfoundation.com

A new article in The New Yorker offers a detailed — and bareknuckled — take on supermax, prison life in general and how the United States has come to lock up more of its own citizens than any other before it.

“Mass incarceration on a scale almost unexampled in human history is a fundamental fact of our country today—perhaps the fundamental fact, as slavery was the fundamental fact of 1850,” Adam Gopnik’s article says. “In truth, there are more black men in the grip of the criminal-justice system—in prison, on probation, or on parole—than were in slavery then. Overall, there are now more people under ‘correctional supervision’ in America—more than 6 million—than were in the Gulag Archipelago under Stalin at its height.”

Chilling, shaming … but true.

And the trend is only getting worse, Gopnik notes.

“The accelerating rate of incarceration over the past few decades is just as startling as the number of people jailed: in 1980, there were about 220 people incarcerated for every 100,000 Americans; by 2010, the number had more than tripled, to 731. No other country even approaches that.

“In the past two decades, the money that states spend on prisons has risen at six times the rate of spending on higher education.”

The article goes on to describe the brutality of prison life, the statistical racism of the judicial system and the distorting of constitutional principles to justify incarceration over rehabilitation. And it discusses the hopelessness of supermax, the prisons within prisons reserved for the prisoners viewed as unsalvageable — “the worst of the worst.”

But the story also points out a telling fact about justice in New York City itself where, contrary to the rest of the country, incarceration numbers have declined dramatically in the past 20 years.

Among other reasons, according to Franklin E. Zimring’s new book, “The City That Became Safe,” police have made crime less convenient — more officers are posted in places that were once high-crime areas, for example.

But it’s clear the strategies that are working in New York aren’t connected to tougher sentencing or “getting tough on crime,” as many politicians advocate.

“Whatever happened to make street crime fall, it had nothing to do with putting more men in prison,” Gopnik’s New Yorker article concludes.

Contact us if you’d like to help.