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statistics
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experiences || story
angles
Nationally:
- The federal government fully supports information sharing
between schools, police and district attorneys.
- Since Janet Reno became U.S. Attorney General, there has been
a new emphasis on enhancing defender services in the U.S. Department
of Justice. For the first time in its history, the DOJ has issued
21 grants totaling over $5, 760,067 for defender initiatives.
- The federal mandate to states to address disproportionate
minority confinement has no teeth: there is no mandate for states
to participate and there is no pressure to implement a DMC plan.
Massachusetts:
- Police patrol urban public schools in greater numbers than
suburban schools. School-based police and security officers
arrest and refer youth to police for arrest at increasing rates.
- Poor neighborhoods are more aggressively policed.
- Racial profiling remains in effect inpolice work - despite
pledges to avoid it; frequently racial profiling is defended
by police officers.
- Juvenile Justice Community-based Roundtables convened by District
Attorneys and police, require school personnel to identify youth
for priority
prosecution .
- Overcharging by District Attorneys is routine; DA's use overcharging
to force pleas and threaten transfer to adult court on youthful
offender indictments to persuade youth to accept plea bargains
and commitment to DYS until the age of 18.
- Judges commit youth to DYS for violation of the terms of probation
- curfew, attendance at school - thereby circumventing the spirit
of the Juvenile Justice Act's prohibition on committing youth
to DYS for status offenses.
- DYS is the only child-serving agency which cannot refuse clients
and is
mandated to provide a range of services to youth in its custody
including education, special educational, vocational education,
transitional services, health services, and mental health services.
- As the number of minority youth in DYS has grown by 55%, the
classification grid, which determines the duration of commitments,
has been modified to lengthen all commitments.
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