Nice Read on Juvenile Justice Reformist

A little over a year ago I posted some information from a fantastic workshop I attended centered around juvenile justice reform. It was facilitated by two sourthern judges from Alabama and Georgia who have done tremendous things around they ways police, schools, and juvenile courts all do their jobs and how they work together. Their progress came from a move away from the "zero tolerance" policies that have a habit of sending more kids to court that there probably should be and more towards graduated responses that more appropriately deal with normative teen behavior in a way that's both developmentally appropriate and situationally based as opposed to one-size-fits-all.

I bring this back up because there was a really nice write up on Judge Teske and his successes in the Washington Post not to long ago. Its a nice read on why this work is so important and some of the struggles associate with making these kinds of reforms. Hope you enjoy.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/judge-steve-teske-seeks-to-keep-kids-with-minor-problems-out-of-court/2011/09/21/gIQA1y8ZsL_story.html

We've done some work directly with them since that intial workshop and look forward to continue to partner with them through the Connecticut Juvenile Justice Alliance as one of the four communities in the state looking to be the early adopters to their work. As Judge Teske has said in the past, court and its resources should be squarely focused on dealing with the "kids who scare us not the ones who annoy us." Additionally, all kids should be allowed to make mistakes without the intervention of police is a really important notion to me. This does not equate to a lack of being held accountable but as a society we've criminalized a lot of things for today's juveniles while past generations were afforded a different set of consequences. From the article above:

Both men (Judge Huf and Judge Teske) admit to their own teenage trouble.

Teske recalls pulling a prank at age 13 that set off his school’s fire alarm. He recalls the mass havoc that ensued. The threat of arrest. The terror he felt.

His principal prevailed in insisting the school system would mete out the punishment. “Would I even be a judge today had I gone to jail that day?” he asks.

To me, that is a really important question. I think with these types of reforms, right or wrong, agree or disagree, we as a community really need to ask ourselves some important questions around the systems we've created to "protect" our youth and evaluate if our goals are being met with the outcomes we've intended.

We're hopeful to faciliate some conversations during the begining of the new year around these types of questions on juvenile justice and later in the spring around some even larger questions based on our new developmental assets data which will be recently released around that time. I really hope you will join us in these conversations as we make Middletown an even better place for kids to grow up.