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Monday, April 14, 2008
Ind. Courts - "Indiana near top in locking up kids"
Bob Kasarda of the NWI Times writes today:
Indiana has been locking up a higher percentage of its young people than all but three other states, according to a recently released report on the well being of children in the United States.Indiana's per capita juvenile incarceration rate is topped only by Florida, South Dakota and Wyoming, according to "Geography Matters: Child Well-Being in the States," prepared by the nonprofit and nonpartisan Every Child Matters Education Fund.
Vermont is locking up the lowest percentage of its young people and Illinois follows in 11th place.
The results are not surprising when you look at priority spending in the states, said Michael Petit, president and founder of the fund.
He said Indiana's high incarceration rate stems, at least in part, from the state's poor ranking in other areas looked at in the report, such as child welfare expenditures, infant mortality and births to teen mothers.
"When they're popping out on the planet, they're not misbehaving," he said of newborns.
The report was of interest to juvenile judges in Porter and Lake counties, who said they are doing what they can to reduce the need to lock up juveniles.
Porter County Circuit Court Judge Mary Harper said the county, which had 565 admissions at its detention center in 2007, sent just seven juveniles to the Indiana Department of Correction last year.
The DOC commitments were far less than the number sent by comparable counties such as Tippecanoe with 24 and Vanderburgh with 34, she said. This was accomplished, she said, by a series of local programs aimed at addressing the needs of young offenders.
Dan Rau, who heads up Porter County's Juvenile Justice Services program, said the young offenders are evaluated in eight potential areas of risk, including substance abuse, family life, education level, recreational activities, peer behavior and personality type.
Lake County has a similar effort in place, in addition to a program to bring young people back early from the DOC, which seems to be successfully reducing repeat offenses, said Lake County Juvenile Court Judge Mary Beth Bonaventura.
It is her belief that lockups should be the last resort for juvenile offenders since it does the least to accomplish the mandated goal of rehabilitation.
Lake County, which has just more than three times the population of Porter County and more urban areas, sent 102 juveniles to the DOC last year and 83 the year before, Bonaventura said.
The state announced plans to take over the entire cost of juveniles sent to the DOC as part of the recently approved property tax reform bill, but Harper and Bonaventura said the change will not lessen the commitment to keeping young people out of custody.
"It's not going to alter the way I do business one bit," Bonaventura said.
Posted by Marcia Oddi on April 14, 2008 09:27 AM
Posted to Indiana Courts