Lorenzo Montoya, convicted of murder at age 15, released after legal challenge

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By Phil Tenser, Marc Stewart
June 16, 2014

After 13 years, a man previously convicted of murder as a teenager had his charge changed and was released from prison Monday.

Lorenzo Montoya was originally convicted of the first-degree murder of teacher Emily Johnson in 2000, when he was 15-years-old. Lynn Kimbrough, spokeswoman for the Denver District Attorney’s Office, said Montoya returned to court for a motion that he had ineffective council at the time of his trial.

Montoya, now 29, is now represented by lawyers from the Center for Juvenile Justice, a non-profit organization. According to that group, their argument also presented new DNA evidence that showed Montoya did not commit the murder.

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'Zero tolerance' policies need to be tamed

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The New York Times Editorial Board
June 13, 2014

 

The “zero tolerance” disciplinary policies that swept through the country’s schools beginning in the 1990s have led to millions of children each year being suspended, expelled and even arrested, mainly for minor misbehavior that would once have been dealt with at the principal’s office. Federal civil rights officials warned this year that these tactics are often used in a discriminatory fashion against black and Latino children, who are at greater risk of being thrown out of school and denied an education.

 

The good news is that these policies are being rolled back. A new report by the Council of State Governments Justice Center, a nonprofit policy group, shows that states and school districts can cut down on suspensions and unwarranted arrests at school within relatively short periods without sacrificing safety or disrupting the school environment.

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What a weekend in prison taught me

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By David Grosso
June 13, 2014

I spent a recent weekend in prison.

As a guest of a program that looks to address the violent daily reality of prison, I had the opportunity — over 20 hours at the maximum-security Patuxent Institution at Jessup, Md. — to reflect on such important issues as human rights, prison culture and conflict resolution.

Some two-thirds of the more than 2 million Americans behind bars are nonviolent offenders, most convicted of drug charges. But in an overcrowded prison system, where many people are serving mandatory minimum sentences, nonviolent prisoners are turning into violent ones.

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Juvenile Hall Mass: Reiterating the pope’s call for LWOP review

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By Doris Benavides
June 12, 2014

Chances are that when at the time this article is being read, a child in the underserved areas of Los Angeles (or in any part of the world) is being victimized by some form of abuse, usually by an adult close to him or her, or is being neglected by his or her parents or guardians.

A large percentage of children who have gone through such trauma, if untreated, will be negatively affected. Many may end up in juvenile halls and, in the United States, condemned to die in prison.

Children like this were represented at a June 8 morning Mass at Barry J. Nidorf Juvenile Hall in Sylmar. Attired in gray T-shirts and blue slacks, the incarcerated youth listened attentively as restorative justice advocates explained the work being done to make the criminal justice system rehabilitative and restorative, instead of punitive.

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No child is a superpredator

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By Xavier McElrath-Bey
June 5, 2014

I am a superpredator.

At least that is how criminologists would have described me when I was a teenager.

I was sentenced for my role in a first-degree murder when I was 13, just before the superpredator theory came into being.

A handful of criminologists, using apocalyptic language, claimed that kids would be responsible for a dramatic increase in violent crime during the 1990s. Such kids would be impulsive and remorseless. Black and Latino youth would be the center of that explosion in violence, according to the theory.

These predictions and the ensuing media hype fueled fear of young people of color and, with it, “tough on crime” policies that made it easier to try children as adults and sentence them to long prison terms, including life without parole.

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Prison program turns inmates into intellectuals

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By Ginia Bellafante
New York Times
May 30, 2014

Otisville Correctional Facility is a medium-security state prison, 79 miles northwest of Manhattan, on the site of a former tuberculosis sanitarium — with an equalizing element of portent, near the town of Mount Hope. Many of its prisoners are serving life sentences; they are men whom time, as one guard put it “has mellowed out.” Nearby, but unrelated, is the Otisville federal prison, named by Forbes Magazine as one of America’s “cushiest” incarcerators. Observers have likened it to a college, which is not an analogy you would easily draw at the state prison, where inmates rely largely on encyclopedias for the retrieval of information, in volumes that look as if they were last current when the nation was debating the merits of Dan Quayle.

Still, an intellectual firmament has taken hold. On a recent afternoon, 10 men gathered under the tutelage of Baz Dreisinger, a professor of English at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, to share some of their writing and to talk about the Brazilian philosopher Paulo Freire’s “Pedagogy of the Oppressed.”

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Something extraordinary is happening at Ironwood State Prison

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By Scott Budnik
June 3, 2014

I know a good movie when I see one, but recently I had a day that was more fascinating, inspiring and compelling than the greatest of films. And every minute of it was real.

Picture driving on a desolate two-lane road, past one low flat building after another, before seeing the tall steel fences and razor wire that signal your destination: a maximum security prison, blazing hot, in the middle of the desert, not far from the border between California and Arizona, an hour past the sunny vacation destination of Palm Springs. After several checks of your identification and passing through multiple sets of sliding steel gates, you’re directed down a long sidewalk with an empty yard on one side and concrete buildings on the other. It’s eerily quiet, though you know 3,280 men live here in a space built for 2,200.

But inside these concrete buildings, something extraordinary is happening. The largest prison education program in California is thriving at Ironwood State Prison, where men are transcribing college textbooks into Braille, learning trade skills and where an astonishing 1200+ students have earned college degrees.

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Sacramento County Youth Detention Facility: innovation, one program at a time

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By Lee Seale, Chief Probation Officer, Sacramento County Probation Department
May 22, 2014

In the last five years, Sacramento County’s juvenile hall in California has undergone a significant culture change, overcoming claims of excessive force and over-reliance on room confinement. With an emphasis on rehabilitation and positive interventions, our juvenile hall now strives to provide specialized programming to better prepare youth to return to their families and reintegrate into society. It has become a national model of innovative practices.

In 2013, the paradigm shift within the juvenile hall culminated in Sacramento County Probation Department receiving the Barbara Allen-Hagen Award from Performance-Based Standards for the second time. The department’s juvenile hall received the award in the short-term detention center category.

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Why are kids being tried in kangaroo courts?

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By Molly Knefel
Rolling Stone
May 14, 2014

Of all the constitutional rights afforded to Americans, the right to counsel is one of the most well known. In movies and TV shows, cops recite Miranda rights immediately upon arresting anyone, informing suspects of their right to an attorney even if they cannot afford one. This protection for indigent defendants was ensured by the Supreme Court case Gideon v. Wainwright in 1963; four years later, another case established due process rights for children. In that case, called In re Gault, the court ruled that “Under our Constitution, the condition of being a boy does not justify a kangaroo court.”

But in juvenile courts across the country, children often face the full weight of the criminal justice system without the protection of a defense attorney. According to a report from the U.S. Attorney General’s office, “Some systems ensure that every child in the system is represented, while others allow 80-90 percent of youth who are charged with offenses to appear without counsel.” Children may be unrepresented for a variety of reasons, including lack of access to a public defender or pressure from judges or prosecutors to waive their constitutional right to an attorney.

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Open Society Foundations award fellowships to 14 criminal justice visionaries

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OpenSocietyFoundations.org
May 14, 2014

The Open Society Foundations today awarded $1.25 million to the newest class of Soros Justice Fellows working on a range of criminal justice issues, from solitary confinement to DNA databases to police misconduct.

“We are proud to support these extraordinary individuals working to curb mass incarceration and develop new approaches to ensure accountability in the justice system,” said Ken Zimmerman, director of U.S. Programs at the Open Society Foundations. “We hope their projects will spur debate, catalyze change, and lift the curtain on a closed system rife with inequities.”

Fellow recipients include the only “juvenile lifer” ever to be pardoned by the governor in Washington State. Her project will develop the leadership skills of young people in detention so they can better advocate for their rights and lead productive lives upon release.

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