Chapter 2
Juvenile Justice: Story Ideas
By Jack Kresnak

			In this sidebar
			• Death Penalty • Juvenile   Confessions • Rehabilitation • Abuse and Neglect • Foster Parents • Adoption • Hallmarks of the   Best Juvenile   Justice Stories • How to Investigate   Conditions in   Juvenile Facilities • Story Examples

Death Penalty
The death penalty for juveniles, especially since the arrest of two alleged Washington, D.C.-area snipers in the fall of 2002. One defendant was Lee Boyd Malvo, then 17, who the federal government and the state of Virginia want to be put to death. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 1988 that the U.S. Constitution bars the death penalty for juveniles aged 15 and under. The United States is the only country in the world that refuses to sign international agreements prohibiting the death penalty for juvenile offenders, generally seen as children under age 18. Nearly two thirds of the juvenile death penalty cases come from Texas. Stories could include profiles of juveniles on death row, the public attitude toward juvenile killers, and features on successfully rehabilitated juveniles who have killed.

Juvenile Confessions
The issue of false confessions began making headlines in 1998 when Chicago police arrested two boys, aged 7 and 8, in the sexual assault and fatal beating of 11-year-old Ryan Harris. The boys were released when prosecutors determined that they weren't mature enough to make the semen that was left on the girl's body. (A convicted adult sex offender later was charged with the crime). Five New York teenagers who were convicted in the highly publicized "Central Park Jogger'' case because of their graphic, albeit inconsistent, confessions, finally were declared innocent 13 years after the assault. Are kids more susceptible than adults to confessing to crimes they did not commit?

The Columbia Journalism Review covered this subject in 2003:
http://cjr.org/year/03/1/hancocksidebar.asp
with a story on media coverage of New York City's Central Park Jogger case
http://www.cjr.org/year/03/1/hancock.asp

The Detroit Free Press covered the subject in this story:
http://www.freep.com/news/metro/false27_20010227.htm

Rehabilitation
Delinquent children who have been rehabilitated – or not. He or she may be over 20 now and had done something truly awful in the past (such as murder). Now, they are adults, walking around free and, presumably, law-abiding, tax-paying citizens. Persuading a juvenile court judge to release the files is helpful.

Abuse and Neglect
What are the connections between child abuse or neglect as a small child to delinquent or criminal behavior as an older child?

Foster Parents
How do public and private child-care agencies deal with their foster parents who may be underpaid and overwhelmed by the demands on them?

Adoption
Why should someone adopt an abused or neglected child? Babies, especially white ones, are usually snapped up by adoptive parents. But older kids, urban kids, kids who have been through an emotional wringer, may spend their lives without a real family.

Hallmarks of the Best Juvenile Justice Stories
From LynNell Hancock, assistant professor, Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism

1. Illustrate with flesh and blood people. Readers make emotional and intellectual connections to stories through the human beings within. The realistic voices of kids and the adults around them should be central to the purpose of every story. Flesh out multi-dimensional humans. Not angels or devils, but complex people with distinctive voices, nuanced responses, and messy lives.
2. Real Context. Not concocted context leaving a skewed perspective, but real context, derived through interviews with top experts, through dissecting the best research, through a sophisticated knowledge of child development, the history of juvenile justice.
3. Newsy point. Stories that are not simply a thrill-seeking walk through the exotic halls of detention centers, but stories that help us understand kids and the institutions that serve them in different ways.
4. Make unexpected statistical connections. Connect statistics of adult crime with juvenile crime statistics. Look at poverty rates alongside juvenile crime. Ditto for school spending rates, dropout rates, etc.
5. Find unorthodox paths into stories.
        Schools: Kids who are suspended and expelled; cops in schools; conflict resolution versus suspension; Bullying culture on playgrounds, lunchrooms.
        Churches: Search for spirituality among troubled kids; church outreach programs.
        Armed Services: Recruitment centers targeting troubled teens
        Neighborhood parks and recreation centers: Go where kids play to understand
        Children's homes and families: Explore teen violence in different cultures

Common Traps To Avoid
Stereotypic Straw Men: Kids are either victims or perpetrators, angels or devils. Teens are inscrutable, alien mutants or honor students. Children are either completely innocent or miniature adults with a remorseless streak. The juvenile justice system is either an evil force against downtrodden youth, or a mysterious bureaucracy disconnected from reality.

Use with extreme caution: "Epidemic of violence.''

Cumulative inaccuracy: Individual stories may be accurate, but the cumulative perception they leave in their wake is false. For instance, a daily diet of stories on kids in trouble may add up to the public's false perception that all teenagers are bad seed.

How to Investigate Conditions in Juvenile Facilities
By Mary Hargrove, Associate Editor, Arkansas Democrat-Gazette

• Determine the type of facility and who runs it, for example:
       State lockup
       Wilderness camp run by state, private agency or out-of-state corporation
       Boot Camp
       Juvenile Detention Center
       Community-based program
• Do they require criminal background checks on staff?
• Check civil lawsuits and possible criminal charges against staff – city, county, state and federal
• List of employees fired and reasons why
  Lawsuits filed by employees against the facility
  State system of grievances and appeals of discipline of employees
• Staff salaries, type of training. Compare training for juvenile system to training for corrections officers in adult prisons
• Ratio of staff to juveniles; check days, nights and weekends
• If children attack staff, are charges filed against them?
• If the staff attack, abuse or neglect the children are charges filed or is it handled internally?
• Number of slots in treatment programs for sex offenders, substance abusers, violent behaviors. The average time in these programs, cost of programs, bids for programs, waiting list for treatment.
• Are children segregated by age, type of crime, sex offenses?
• Is there a waiting list for entry to a juvenile facility?
• Incident reports – make a computer run on days, times, dates, types of incidents. Determine if the abuse is happening on a certain shift or with certain guards or against certain children.
• Get a copy of the "use of force policy." Can they use stun guns, bean bag pellets in rifles?
• Is there an isolation room? Are restraints used? What is the restraint policy?
• Does punishment include taking away mattresses, bedding, clothing or turning the temperature up or down in the children's rooms?
• Are there video cameras? Where are they? Does anyone monitor them daily? Take a look for yourself.
• Is there an ombudsman program? Is there a way for juveniles to complain that goes to someone outside the facility?
• Are there contracted services – psychologists, counselors, educators?
• Is there an outside review of these contracts to see how well they are performing?
• Auditors – request audits and list of firms with contracts. Check newspaper clips to see if companies or individuals have been in other juvenile facilities.
• Get the annual reports of the agency running the facility.
• Visiting days – go with parents.
• Reports by juvenile facility officials to legislative committees. Also ask for complaints and talk to legislators.
• Fire department inspections
• Health department inspections
• Check ambulance runs to the facility
• Check police runs to the facility
• Child protective services reports on abuse or neglect at facility.
• Ask about facility at the public defender's office.
• Doctors and nurses who are called to the facility.
• Is the entire facility or program accredited by any out-of-state group?
• Is the school accredited? Does anyone from outside the facility review the educational program? Are there quarterly reviews of school programs or contracts to the legislature?
• Juvenile court judges – How involved are they in monitoring the facility? What are their roles after the juvenile is sent to a facility? Do they decide where the juvenile is placed? Can they extend a sentence or release them early?

Story Examples
Steve Twedt, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, "It's a Crime: How Mentally Ill Teens are Trapped in Lockups" (2001)
http://www.post-gazette.com/nation/20010715juvenilejp1.asp

Curtis Krueger, St. Petersburg (Fla.) Times, for "Under 12/Under Arrest" (2001)
http://www.sptimes.com/News/webspecials/under12

Janet Tobias, Laura Rabhan Bar-On, Michel Martin and contributors, PBS
Frontline and Oregon Public Broadcasting, "Juvenile Justice" (2001)
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/juvenile

Joe Richman, Radio Diaries/National Public Radio, for "Prison Diaries
Series" (2001)
http://www.radiodiaries.org/prisondiaries.html

Barbara White Stack, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, "Open Justice" (on opening courts) (2001)
http://www.post-gazette.com/nation/20010923opencourt0923p8.asp
http://www.post-gazette.com/regionstate/20010923justicechart9.asp
http://www.post-gazette.com/firstamendment/20021024juvenilep4.asp

Bill Lichtenstein, President, Lichtenstein Creative Media, "If I Get Out Alive" (1999)
http://www.lcmedia.com/getout.htm

Mary Hargrove, Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, "Juvenile Justice: The War Within" (1998)
http://www.ardemgaz.com/prev/juvenile
"Juvenile Justice: Pain and Promise" (2000)
http://www.ardemgaz.com/prev/juvenilepain

Jack Kresnak, Detroit Free Press
http://www.freep.com/news/childrenfirst/child19_20021219.htm
http://www.freep.com/news/childrenfirst/child20_20021220.htm

Susan Taylor Martin, St. Petersburg Times, series on a fatal school shooting from the 1970s that would be handled much differently today.
http://www.sptimes.com/News/021101/Floridian/murder1.shtml

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette on naming juvenile suspects
http://www.post-gazette.com/headlines/20010925names0925p8.asp