West Virginia schools' reliance on zero-tolerance policies are driving more kids into the juvenile justice system - with lifelong consequences, experts say.

New data from the Brookings Institution show Black and Hispanic female students are disproportionately referred to the juvenile justice system for minor offenses.

Elizabeth Shahan, executive director of the nonprofit West Virginia Prevention Solutions, said behavior like vaping in a classroom can land a child in a magistrate's court.

She said research supports using a peer or youth court model that emphasizes positive action, and added it's a huge investment for communities to offer alternatives.

"But when done well, you are judged by a court of your peers, much like a regular courtroom," said Shahan. "That court's job is to come up with a way for you to restore faith in and/or to remedy the situation."

According to the Brookings report, juvenile complaints lead to more school absences and lower test scores.

Black students are more than twice as likely to receive a referral to law enforcement or be arrested at school than white students.

Shahan said research has shown young brains aren't developed enough to fully understand the consequences of their actions.

So, the current punitive model only ensures they have no path forward to recognize their behavior as wrong, or be provided examples of good behavior.

"We now have a situation where we have a serious black mark on that youth's record," said Shahan. "We've basically doomed them to failure."

Shahan added that overuse of the juvenile justice system for minor or nonviolent offenses comes with a hefty price tag for the state.

"A lot of economic research has gone into if we spend a dollar on preventative services, preventative intervention before kids engage in risky behaviors," said Shahan, "then we save $24 in treatment costs, court costs, consequences costs."

She noted that criminal punishment also doesn't address mental health issues that often led to problematic behavior.

According to data from the Annie E. Casey Foundation, the number of school-aged kids struggling with anxiety or depression nationwide rose by 1.5 million between 2016 and 2020.

North Dakota's county jails and state prisons have been bursting at the seams. Elected leaders are calling for meaningful solutions, with legal voices watching in the wings.

Last fall, the state Department of Corrections began using an admissions system likened to a "wait list" because prisons for men were over capacity, and overflow beds in county jails were also full.

In this week's State of the State address, Gov. Kelly Armstrong outlined ideas, including more funding for support services for those involved with the criminal-justice system.

Travis Finck, who oversees the state's public defenders as executive director of the North Dakota Commission on Legal Counsel for Indigents, said overcrowding poses risks for his team's clients.

"A lot of our clients are held pretrial because they're not able to post any sort of bond or bail amount," he said, "and with the process sometimes being delayed, they are sitting in county jail and not receiving the level of programming that's available at the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation."

That roadblock to rehabilitation also can happen after a client is sentenced. Finck agreed with the governor that North Dakota can't just simply add more beds. He said the state has to increase funding for public defenders, arguing there's too much staff turnover, creating continuity issues for clients as their cases proceed.

National groups such as the Rural Democracy Initiative have called for innovation, arguing that jail overcrowding is a big problem in smaller communities, draining local resources.

Meanwhile, Jen Lee, executive director of Legal Services of North Dakota - which helps low-income people in civil cases - said she was encouraged to hear the governor talk about wrap-around issues, such as child care and filling workforce shortages.

"A lot of our clients who are trying to work their way through any kind of legal issue, whether it's a custody battle or a debt or bankruptcy issue that often impacts their ability to be in the workforce fully," she said. "And so, when we solve those problems, they are able to be productive members of the workforce."

Potentially complicating reform efforts is the state attorney general's expected push for a mandatory minimum sentence law. He has argued too many people convicted of violent crimes aren't incarcerated long enough.

Finck said alternative thinking shouldn't be viewed as a lax approach.

"Being smart on crime is not being soft on crime," he said.

He echoed the phrase used by the governor in this week's speech. Finck said he feels the state should build on some of the reform efforts from the past few years as it tries to balance public-safety needs.

By Marilyn Odendahl for The Indiana Citizen.
Broadcast version by Joe Ulery for Indiana News Service reporting for the Indiana Citizen-Free Press Indiana-Public News Service Collaboration.

One Indiana lawmaker is expecting the Indiana General Assembly to step back this coming session from continually approving requests for more trial court judges and, instead, start shifting judicial resources from slower courts to busier courts.

Rep. Chris Jeter, R-Fishers, said he anticipates legislators will insert language into the biennial budget that will mandate that the Statehouse take a look at the Indiana court system as a whole when considering bills for new judges and magistrate judges. The new language, he said, will probably require a judgeship to be closed somewhere in the state, before a new judgeship is opened.

“I do think that we have gotten in the habit of adding,” Jeter said. “All we’ve done over the last decade is add judges, add judges, but nobody’s ever looked to see are there some counties that maybe we should take them away from?”

The Fishers Republican, who chaired the Interim Study Committee on the Courts and the Judiciary, and will chair the House Judiciary Committee, said the data provided in the Indiana Trial Courts Weighted Caseload Report supports reallocation of existing resources.

According to the 2023 weighted caseload report, the most recent analysis available, Indiana has enough trial court judges, overall, to handle the demands of the docket, but the problem seems to be the distribution of those judicial resources. Identifying a utilization rate of 1.0 as indicating a county has enough judicial officers to meet its needs, the 2023 report calculated Indiana’s utilization rate at 0.98. However, a closer look at the individual counties shows utilization rate swings between Hamilton County’s 1.34 – the most severe in the state – and Union County’s 0.35 – the lowest in the state.

Jeter said he does not believe judges in the state are “sitting around twiddling their thumbs doing nothing” and he realizes that judges in some rural counties are presiding over a wide range of cases from criminal and family to probate and commercial. Yet, he said the legislature has to look at the data.

“I think that what we’ve decided is we don’t need to create any more new judges,” Jeter said. “We have the right number of judges in the state. We just need to get them in the areas that are growing or get them in the areas where the population is.”

Rep. Victoria Garcia Wilburn, D-Fishers, who served on the interim study committee and will be the ranking minority member of the House Judiciary Committee, pointed out in a statement to The Indiana Citizen that the members of the interim committee did recommend that judgeships from less busy county trial courts be moved to counties with busier trial courts. However, she noted the General Assembly might need to do more to address the issue.

“It’s critical that we make sure we are maximizing the working time of judges and relieve the burden on high-need counties like Hamilton County,” Garcia Wilburn said in her statement. “At the same time, we need to consider that reallocation may not be a long-term solution and start to explore other thoughtful solutions.”

Cannot continue adding judges

Along with recommending reallocation, the interim study committee advised the legislature to provide additional judges and magistrate judges to Elkhart, Hamilton, Lawrence and Vigo county courts. They rejected a request from Spencer County for a magistrate judge, because that court had a low weighted caseload utilization rate of 0.64.

Hamilton County requested two new Superior Courts, two new judges and two new magistrate judges. Jeter said he plans to carry the bill that would give Hamilton County the additional judicial resources it wants.

Any judgeship approved by the legislature in the 2025 session will probably not be new, Jeter said, but, rather, be created by closing a judgeship in another county. The reallocation will be done in a “fair and humane manner,” he said, by allowing judges in positions or courts targeted for elimination to finish their elected terms before being removed. Consequently, the state’s overall utilization rate could increase because of that lag, but the rate will self-correct as sitting judges in the less busy counties end their tenures on the bench and the judgeships are closed, he said.

The cost of each new judgeship approved by the legislature is covered by taxpayers. A fiscal analysis by the Legislative Services Agency estimated the yearly salary and benefits for a judge and a magistrate judge in 2024 totaled $230,961 and $187,759, respectively.

Indiana Chief Justice Loretta Rush served on the interim study committee and, according to a spokeswoman, will work with lawmakers on a possible reallocation of trial court judges. However, Kathryn Dolan, Indiana Supreme Court chief public information officer, said Rush does not support reducing the number of judges statewide.

“Chief Justice Rush is supportive of working with the legislature on the best way to allocate judges to meet judicial needs throughout the state,” Dolan said. “A weighted caseload study has been conducted and it shows that Indiana has about the right number of judges, but not necessarily in the right location. Population shifts and caseload changes affect the need for judicial officers in specific areas of the state.”

Although some counties may lose judges and courts through reallocation, Jeter does not anticipate lawmakers will fight hard against it. He acknowledged some legislators might need some convincing, but the idea of shifting judicial resources to the high-need counties has been “floating out there” for some time.

“I think there has been an acknowledgement from both chambers that this is a change we need to make,” Jeter said. “It’s not going to be easy, but I think everybody acknowledges that we need to take the tough medicine and we need to start looking harder and not just keep adding, adding, adding, adding, adding.”


Marilyn Odendahl wrote this article for The Indiana Citizen.


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In Jackson, where violent crime rates have historically been high, a local organization called Operation Good is taking a proactive, community-driven approach to reducing violence without relying solely on law enforcement.

Frederick Womack, executive director of Operation Good, better known as Gino, focuses on violence intervention, mediation and mentoring to address the root causes of crime in Mississippi's capital city. In one recent case where homicide was involved, Womack intervened in a potential retaliation killing.

"Constantly killing someone for revenge is a never-ending cycle," Womack pointed out. "After we talk to the people involved and the person involved in the homicide, I think they ended up turning themself in. So that pretty much stopped retaliation killing in Jackson."

Womack noted violent crime in Jackson has dropped 38% based on early December data and reported a steady decline year over year since Operation Good began its community interventions. Unlike traditional policing, which he described as largely reactionary, Operation Good focuses on preventing crime by mediating disputes before they escalate.

Operation Good believes communities can best police themselves. While the Jackson Police Department did not respond to a request for comment, Womack stressed their relationship has improved, especially with his precinct commander, who understands the value of a different approach.

"Traditional law enforcement approaches are not the best approaches to causing a reduction in violence," Womack contended. "So with it, there's been success with our relationship."

According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, Black people are more than three times as likely as white people to experience use of force during law enforcement encounters, a pattern Womack said he sees regularly.

"The white population in our community commit probably 90% of all crime but they never get targeted as the person for the crime because they're white," Womack asserted. "They could be drug addicts, dope fiends, even in those conditions, police still don't mess with them, but they will kick in a Black woman's door."

Womack believes empowering communities to take charge of their own safety can reduce racial bias, as residents hold individuals accountable based on actions, not race. As more communities explore alternatives to traditional policing, Operation Good's model offers a blueprint for reducing violence and fostering safer neighborhoods without increasing police presence.


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