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 A NEWSLETTER OF RECENT DEVELOPMENTS IN JUVENILE LAW AND RESEARCH PROVIDED BY THE NATIONAL JUVENILE JUSTICE PROSECUTION CENTER
Volume II, Issue 9, September 2004
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RECENT CASES
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| SEARCH AND SEIZURE |
Doe v. Little Rock School District, __ F.3d __ (8th Cir. 2004)—A panel of the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals held that the Little Rock School District’s policy of conducting random, suspicionless searches of secondary school students violates the 4th Amendment. The Court held that students retain a sufficient privacy interest in their backpacks, book bags, pockets, etc. that, absent individualized suspicion of the student, the school could not violate.
http://www.ca8.uscourts.gov/opndir/04/08/033268P.pdf
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DEATH PENALTY
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State v. Harwell, 807 N.E.2d 330 (Ohio 2004)—Even though Defendant was a juvenile at the time he committed murder, and therefore was ineligible for the death penalty in Ohio, he was nevertheless entitled to receive the special sentencing procedures provided for “capital offenses.” The prosecutors had charged aggravated murder with special circumstances.
http://www.sconet.state.oh.us/rod/documents/0/2004/2004-ohio-2149.doc
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SEX OFFENDERS
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In re N.V., __ P.3d __ (Mont. 2004)—The Montana Supreme Court reversed a juvenile court’s disposition order for an adolescent sex offender on the ground it was impermissibly tainted by the results of a polygraph. The polygraph results indicated that N.V., then 13 years old, had not fully disclosed his sexual victims or contacts during treatment. A psychologist who evaluated N.V. for the court and considered the polygraph results recommended out-of-home placement of N.V. The juvenile court stated that it would not consider the polygraph results, but did accept the psychologist’s report and followed the recommendation. The Supreme Court held that any use of polygraph results was impermissible, including receiving in evidence any psychological evaluation which considered the results.
http://www.lawlibrary.state.mt.us/dscgi/ds.py/Get/File-29282/03-371.pdf
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NEWS AND INFORMATION
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Mentors Aim Students In Right Direction, FORT WORTH STAR-TELEGRAM—“When some students come home from school, they throw their things into an empty house and go outside to play in a neighborhood rife with juvenile crime.… Last year, the Fort Worth school district called for 200 volunteers to help reverse the trend by giving almost 400 at-risk students in grades four through eight a new look at life. This year, administrators are calling TEAM Fort Worth Mentoring Program a success and are searching for another 100 volunteers. In a report to the U.S. Department of Education–which is providing $225,052 to run the program–students, teachers and volunteers say that mentoring is making a difference.”
http://www.dfw.com/mld/dfw/news/9242011.htm
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Newspapers Sue To Gain Access To Juvenile Court, LOUISVILLE COURIER-JOURNAL—“A group representing Kentucky's newspapers yesterday filed a federal lawsuit seeking to open the state's juvenile courts, arguing that the laws keeping them closed are unconstitutional.… The suit, filed against the state by the Kentucky Press Association in U.S. District Court in Frankfort, asks a federal judge to invalidate the state laws and immediately grant public access to all juvenile court hearings and records. It argues the state constitution requires an open court system and laws seeking to restrict access are unconstitutional.”
http://www.courier-journal.com/localnews/2004/07/16ky/A1-kpa0716-7237.html
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The New Face Of Underage Drinking: Teenage Girls, CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR—“It's something that young people have long been forbidden to do, and done anyway. But the reality has been changing, with evidence that it is now girls …, not boys, who constitute the majority of youths using alcohol. The gradual shift, which has only emerged over the past few years and has not been widely reported, raises questions about whether society understands enough about the different forces motivating boys and girls as they move from grade school to college. Some factors affecting both sexes are obvious: Start with alcohol's huge presence in American culture, add more absent parents and rising rates of stress and depression among youths, and you have a cocktail of reasons explaining underage alcohol use. Beyond that, many girls ‘want to be one of the boys,’ says Joseph Califano, president of the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University in New York. Also, in the center's studies of 12- to 17-year-olds, girls report far higher stress levels than do boys. That, along with more spending money, correlates with a greater propensity to drink.”
http://www.csmonitor.com/2004/0708/p01s01-ussc.htm
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Program To Monitor Crackdown On Teen Drinking, THE JOURNAL NEWS (WESTCHESTER COUNTY, N.Y.)—“For every teen-ager with a beer, there is an adult who has provided it. That is the perspective of an increasing number of advocates who claim that deaths due to underage drinking would drop if adults would simply take more responsibility. Now the federal government is testing that theory with a national trial that spotlights four towns in [New York]. In the next two years… researchers will watch how well the towns crack down on the sale and supply of alcohol to minors. The data, which also will be collected from three other towns in New York and from four other states, will be analyzed with comparable towns in the same states where there is no intervention.”
http://www.thejournalnews.com/newsroom/070704/a0107teendrinking.html
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Schools May Use Spray To Trace Kids' Drug Use, MIAMI HERALD—“Two years after approving the use of drug-sniffing dogs, Broward County schools may have another narcotic-fighting weapon: an aerosol spray that detects residue on school desks or backpacks, similar to bomb-detection equipment used in airports. Despite research that shows drug use is down among high school seniors since the early 1980s, school systems nationwide are becoming more aggressive at trying to curtail the problem. And the federal government is helping, with grants to more than 20 school systems that want to try the new spray. If the Broward School Board approves the kits this fall, a principal could rub sticky paper on a locker or desk -- or anything else that might have been touched by a drug user -- and then spray it with a chemical to find traces of marijuana, cocaine, heroin, speed and Ecstasy.”
http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/news/9043403.htm?template=contentModules/printstory.jsp
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Schools Add Random Drug Tests, DALLAS MORNING NEWS—“Schools across Texas are adding random drug testing and increased locker inspections to the agenda this year. At least three school districts in the Houston area and dozens more across Texas will begin random drug testing, spurred in part by a U.S. Supreme Court ruling upholding the practice and by the lure of federal money that may help pay for it.”
http://www.dallasnews.com/s/dws/dn/education/stories/081604dntextest.bb056.html
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RESEARCH
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Victims of Violent Juvenile Crime, OFFICE OF JUVENILE JUSTICE AND DELINQUENCY PREVENTION—This OJJDP Bulletin, produced by the National Center for Juvenile Justice, analyzes statistics on violent juvenile crime from the FBI’s National Incident Based Reporting System. The study finds that 20% of all non-fatal violent crimes in the reporting period were committed by juveniles, either alone or acting with others, and most of their victims were other juveniles.
http://www.ncjrs.org/pdffiles1/ojjdp/201628.pdf
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After-School Activities, CHILD TRENDS DATABANK—“In 2001, 38 percent of children in kindergarten through eighth grade participated in after-school activities at least once per week. Twenty-seven percent participated in sports, 19 percent in religious activities, and 17 percent in the arts.… Through after-school activities, children can develop social skills, improve their academic performance, and establish strong relationships with caring adults.… Children who regularly attend high-quality after-school programs are more likely to be engaged in school and attentive in class. They are also less likely to skip school and start drinking alcohol. Older children who consistently participate in after-school activities are more likely to attend college, vote, and volunteer later in life.” http://www.childtrendsdatabank.org/pdf/86_PDF.pdf
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Evaluating G.R.E.A.T.: A School-Based Gang Prevention Program, NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF JUSTICE—“Gang Resistance Education and Training (G.R.E.A.T.) is a 9-hour gang prevention program administered by uniformed law enforcement officers to middle-school aged youths. This report summarizes results of a 5-year study of the program. The study revealed that G.R.E.A.T. has modest positive effects on adolescents’ attitudes and delinquency risk factors but no effects on their involvement in gangs and actual delinquent behaviors.”
http://www.ncjrs.org/pdffiles1/nij/198604.pdf
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Juveniles in Corrections, OFFICE OF JUVENILE JUSTICE AND DELINQUENCY PREVENTION—This OJJDP publication “[p]resents the latest available national and state-level data from the Census of Juveniles in Residential Placement (CJRP). The biennial CJRP provides a detailed picture of juveniles in custody—age, race, gender, offenses, adjudication status, and other information. It asks all juvenile residential facilities in the United States to describe each youth assigned a bed in the facility on the fourth Wednesday in October. The data presented in this OJJDP National Report Series Bulletin portray the 134,011 youth held in 2,939 facilities on October 27, 1999.”
http://www.ncjrs.org/pdffiles1/ojjdp/202885.pdf
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WEB RESOURCES
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Childstats.gov—This is the Web site of the Federal Interagency Forum on Child and Family Statistics, a consortium of six federal agencies which collect statistics about children, and the Office of Management and Budget. Each year the Forum issues a report called America's Children: Key National Indicators of Well-Being, which collects and publishes statistics on a comprehensive set of facts about children, including criminal offenses, child abuse, and other information pertinent to juvenile justice. The Web site makes available current and past editions of the report, as well as a large volume of other statistical information.
http://www.childstats.gov/
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NIJ Journal Archives, NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF JUSTICE—The NIJ is the research, development, and evaluation agency of the U.S. Department of Justice which compiles research results pertaining to crime and justice issues. It periodically publishes the “NIJ Journal” in which it presents the current research results. For example, the most recent volume of NIJ Journal contains an article entitled “Youth Gangs in Rural America.” The current and past issues going back to 1995 of the NIJ Journal are available on the agency’s Web site.
http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/nij/journals/welcome.html
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 This information is offered for educational purposes only and is not legal advice. This project was supported by Award No. 2002-MU-MU-0003 from the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, U.S. Department of Justice. Points of view or opinions expressed in this document are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent the official position of the United States Department of Justice, the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, the National District Attorneys Association, or the American Prosecutors Research Institute. |
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