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A former juvenile detainee is released to his family near Camp Cropper in western Baghdad, Aug. 13, 2008. There are about 200 juvenile detainees held by Multi-National Force - Iraq as security threats to the coalition and the Government of Iraq. Photo by Spc. Brandon Hubbard. CAMP CROPPER — Coalition forces released 49 juvenile detainees to their families on Aug. 19, bringing the number of all detainees released in 2008 to just above 11,000.“As Iraq prepares for Ramadan, we are attempting to release as many detainees as the security situation allows,� said Brig. Gen. Robert Hipwell, commanding general of the...

Sociological research reveals paradox of higher education, crimeBOSTON — Men who attend college are more likely to commit property crimes during their college years than their non-college-attending peers, according to research to be presented at the annual meeting of the American Sociological Association. Sociologists at Bowling Green State University found that college-bound youth report lower levels of criminal activity and substance use during adolescence compared to non-college-bound youth. However, levels of drinking, property theft and unstructured socializing with friends increase among the college-bound after enrollment at a four-year university, and they surpass the rates of less-educated peers. "College attendance is...

SAN FRANCISCO -- Three more juvenile illegal immigrant drug dealers sent by San Francisco to group homes hundreds of miles from the city have escaped... The three were among the offenders previously protected from possible deportation under a long-standing city policy against handing over juvenile illegal immigrants to federal authorities, even those convicted of felonies. Chronicle stories about the policy prompted a national outcry, and Mayor Gavin Newsom rescinded it earlier this month. Newsom acted shortly after eight Honduran juveniles convicted of dealing crack on the city's streets walked away from unlocked group homes in San Bernardino County, where the...

The state has quietly ordered male-only juvenile detention centers to keep bras and panties in stock for transgendered delinquents - angering many jail staffers.   Each facility must stock a dozen bra and panties of each size in case it is requested, employees said and agency officials confirmed.  Girls' centers also must stock men's underwear.Two longtime employees of the agency ripped the policy, saying they fear it promotes an alternative lifestyle in order to accommodate a miniscule population.   "People are appalled," one employee said. "The vast majority of kids in here don't fit the category and want nothing to do with...

MARGARETVILLE _ Seven second-graders at Margaretville Central School were arrested last week for allegedly plotting an attack on one of their classmates. The boys aged 7 to 9 were charged by state police as juveniles with fifth-degree conspiracy, a misdemeanor. A parent of the student allegedly targeted by the children learned about the plot Wednesday and informed school officials Thursday that the child felt threatened, Margaretville Superintendent John Riedl said Monday. State police in Margaretville were contacted at about 1 p.m. and seven arrests were made by 1:30 p.m., according to troopers. In a letter sent home to parents the...

They were passing out cash like it was candy — a few grand in Franklins for all their friends. When police and staff noticed this middle-school generosity at C.E. Williams Middle School, they quickly rounded up nearly $3,000 in $100 bills, and a new $500 iPod. This, they realized, wasn't any milk money. Two 13-year-old Charleston boys are charged with second-degree burglary and grand larceny, accused of stealing money and jewelry from a West Ashley home. They were suspended from school but are back now studying for PACT tests and facing an uncertain future. "They were kind of bragging at...

When the number of kids locked up at San Francisco's juvenile hall reached record numbers last spring, Mayor Gavin Newsom ordered the population at the hall to be reduced and the city to recommit to partnering with community groups that work intensively with troubled youth while allowing them to live at home. Nine months later, however, executives with the Annie E. Casey Foundation, a leading private funder of such initiatives around the country, say the $587,500 it has given San Francisco since 2001 to help achieve that very goal has been wasted and that change is happening at "a snail's...

WASHINGTON, Dec. 14, 2007 – Terrorists in Iraq are preying on the country’s juveniles, a top Army commander there said today. “Terrorists will continue to prey on juveniles unless these kids are given messages that outweigh the messages of the insurgents,” Army Brig. Gen. Michael R. Nevin, commander of 177th Military Police Brigade, said in a call with online journalists and “bloggers.” More than 900 juveniles are in coalition custody in Iraq. Ninety percent of these detainees are 15, 16 or 17, and were detained as security detainees, meaning they posed an “imperative” security risk to the government in Iraq...

NEW YORK -- Family and friends gathered Sunday at a funeral home in the Bronx to remember Eric Rosado, the 14-year-old shot and killed while robbing a South Miami-Dade grocery store last week. Many wondered why the teen, who moved to South Florida in 2005 and returned home to be buried, had suddenly gone astray. Rosado, a freshman at Cooper City High School, died when a store manager who was being robbed pulled out a gun and shot him. Police said the teenager's two accomplices in the attempted holdup of the Diaz Grocery Store in Naranja on Tuesday -- and...

60 Minutes piece by Bob Simon. Fifteen year old Canadian "refugee" captured in Afghanistan waging jihad. His father has been killed, a brother paralyzed, fighting against Americans.

BISMARCK, N.D. (AP) -- Two state officials have been added to the list of defendants in a lawsuit filed by the nation's largest group of atheists and agnostics. The Wisconsin-based Freedom From Religion Foundation says that referrals to the Dakota Boys and Girls Ranch, which serves troubled children, are funded by taxpayer money and that staff at the ranch facilities in Minot, Fargo and Bismarck indoctrinate children with religion. The Boys and Girls Ranch, which is affiliated with the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod and the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, and state officials dispute the foundation's claims. The group initially...

Robert Haberlein is a 19-year-old charged with first-degree murder, but the grin on his face Friday in Wyandotte County Juvenile Court belied the gravity of that charge. And it didn’t sit right with the judge. Wyandotte County Judge David W. Boal surprised the courtroom Friday when he interrupted an attorney and focused his attention on Haberlein. In a stern and frank voice, he demanded to know what the Kansas City, Kan., teen found funny about a premeditated murder hearing. The young man couldn’t answer. “Well, then, why don’t you wipe the grin off your face and get serious,” the judge...

<p>Joe Clark fired back at state juvenile justice officials yesterday, saying they were encouraging a possible gang uprising at the Essex County Juvenile Detention Center by criticizing him for using harsh measures to restore order to the facility.</p> <p>Clark, the facility's famously combative director, made a defiant response to a report by the Juvenile Justice Commission that accused him of using straitjackets, long-term isolation and other prohibited measures to control his detainees.</p>

JENA, Louisiana (CNN) -- Mychal Bell was like a lot of boys his age, his mother says. The always-smiling 16-year-old often spent weekends on the couch, munching Little Debbie snack cakes, watching football and dreaming of a day he might join his heroes in the NFL. That was before police arrested the star running back and five other teens -- dubbed the "Jena 6" -- on attempted murder and conspiracy charges after a December 4, 2006, fight at the local high school. Bell, now 17, sits in a cell in Jena, Louisiana, waiting to learn later this month if he...

<p>Resident reports 14-year-old with gun kicked in door, opened fire, and homowner shot back.</p> <p>PINE BLUFF — A 14-year-old boy was shot and killed Thursday night by a man who told police the teenager broke into his home and started shooting.</p>

BAGHDAD — A juvenile detainee education facility opened at Camp Victory, Iraq, Tuesday. Dar Al-Hikmah, or “The Wisdom House,” is designed to give juvenile detainees an education, which would benefit their eventual release and reintegration into society. “Al-Qaeda and other extremists are using juveniles against us,” said U.S. Army 1st Lt. Rob Glenn, the Dar Al-Hikmah education program manager. “As a consequence, we’re detaining many juveniles.” “In order to prevent another generation of insurgents and those who would do harm (against) the future of Iraq or Coalition forces, we’re educating them,” he added. Dar Al-Hikmah, or “The Wisdom House,” provides...

HOUSTON – A 15-year-old boy who slammed a stolen car into a freight train parked at a railroad crossing has been charged with murder in the deaths of four passengers. Bobby Davis of Baytown was booked into a juvenile detention center Thursday and is scheduled for a Friday detention hearing. His family's attorney, Richard "Racehorse" Haynes, couldn't be reached for comment Thursday, but previously pointed to the train as the problem.

When a maximum-security jail for dangerous juveniles closed just over two years ago, some legislators, law enforcement personnel and juvenile corrections employees sounded alarms. Putting violent, predatory teens into general jail populations was dangerous for everyone, they argued, especially teens who were incarcerated for lesser offenses. Now, after two alleged sexual assaults within days at the Youth Diagnostic and Development Center in Albuquerque, the alarms are growing louder. Ed Abreu, superintendent of the New Mexico Boys' School, is speaking out for the first time about the violence... Abreu, who has been in juvenile corrections for 25 years, said he decided...

SACRAMENTO - California will have to revamp the way it incarcerates juvenile offenders by using smaller and more modern lockups to replace the warehouse-style prisons it currently uses, according to a court-mandated report from the state corrections department. The report marks a compromise between the state and a nonprofit legal center and is the latest indication of how attempts to solve systematic problems in the state's corrections department will end up costing California taxpayers. The state already faces hundreds of millions of dollars in additional costs to reform its adult prison system and the way it manages inmate health care....

Student journalists on La Serna High School's newspaper The Freelancer have a track record of tackling serious subjects. Previous issues of the monthly campus paper have looked at such topics as the differences in religions and teen drug use and drug abuse. But the May issue of The Freelancer, in which the staff put a spotlight on teenage sexuality - including a column on homosexuality, a campus sex quiz and a glossary of sexually oriented medical terms - pushed the edgy publication to the extreme in the eyes of some school administrators and parents. In the fallout, the newspaper's advisor...

Editor’s note: This is the first installment of a two-part series looking at how New Orleans failed to evacuate children held in custody prior to Hurricane Katrina. Next week: The juvenile justice system tried to ensure children wouldn’t suffer the same fate as adults who remained incarcerated post-Katrina without representation or court dates. NEW ORLEANS — Two days before Hurricane Katrina made landfall, the Louisiana Office of Youth Development evacuated 83 inmates at the Bridge City Center for Youth to the Jetson Correctional Center for Youth in Baton Rouge. OYD Secretary Simon Gounselon said when a major hurricane threatens the...

The four teenaged punks who chased an NYU student into the path of an oncoming car looked and laughed as he lay on the street dying, a prosecutor revealed yesterday. "They didn't call for an ambulance. They didn't call for help. Rather, they stood on the street corner and laughed," prosecutor Joel Seidemann said of the 13- and 15-year-olds who chased Broderick John Hehman into traffic. Hehman, 20, died four days later from his massive head injuries. And the wolf-pack thugs, who allegedly laid in wait for their victim, could have even more to smile about now. Prosecutors lost their...

IMETTE: I BLAME SOCIETY & NOT KILLERS By HEATHER GILMORE Imette St. Guillen wrote about murder 15 days before she died. April 9, 2006 -- Just 15 days before she was brutally slain, Imette St. Guillen wrote of her compassion and understanding for juvenile killers - blaming poor education and rising unemployment for a troubling rise in homicide in Boston, her hometown. "I strongly believe that the reason for the increase in juvenile homicide in Boston during the past 15 years stems not from criminal justice policies and programs but from a lack of job opportunities for young people, a...

Commentary: The following dissent appears in a case where an individual who was 17 at the time he committed a heinous murder should suffer the death penalty.  The majority opinion held that, although Stanford v. Kentucky, rejected the proposition that the Constitution bars capital punishment for juvenile offenders younger than 18, a national consensus has developed against the execution of those offenders since Stanford. Commentary: The text of the opinion is in italics. The times opinion is in bold: Justice Scalia, with whom The Chief Justice and Justice Thomas join, dissenting. In urging approval of a constitution that gave life-tenured judges the power...

GLENCOE, Ala. — Two juveniles were arrested on arson charges in a weekend attempt to set fire to a small church in Etowah County, a state official said Tuesday. Ragan Ingram, a spokesman with the state insurance office in Montgomery, said a 16-year-old boy and a 14-year-old girl were accused of second-degree arson in connection with a fire Sunday at Chapman's Chapel, which has fewer than 20 members. Both of the youths lived in the area, he said. Their names were not disclosed because they are being held under the state's youthful offender law. The outside of the building in...

GARY, Ind. -- A cafeteria worker thought it was odd that a fourth-grader would pay for his lunch with a $20 bill. The cashier at Marquette Elementary School was right. The cashier, who also noticed that the texture of the paper wasn't right, alerted the school's police officer, Patrolman Greg Tatum, who asked the 10-year-old about the money. "He reached into his front pocket and pulled out more," Tatum said. The discovery Tuesday led to the arrest of three fourth-graders at the Gary school, where police and school officials confiscated $179 in counterfeit money. All three face juvenile charges of...

THEY are considered the worst of the worst in Western Australia's juvenile justice system, but to Second Lieutenant Vance Bond, they are Four Platoon. Each week at the Banksia Hill Juvenile Detention Centre in Perth, Lieutenant Bond puts the group of about 20 juvenile offenders through three hours of drills. The inmates, serving time for offences ranging from car theft to murder, make up Australia's only prison-based army cadet unit. Lieutenant Bond runs his young charges through classes on subjects including map reading, first aid, rope work, survival training and field engineering. "Because we teach navigation, it's an incentive for...

GAINESVILLE, Ga. -- A Georgia judge ruled that a 15-year-old boy is a delinquent for skipping school to marry a 37-year-old woman who is pregnant with the boy's child. Juvenile Court Judge Mary Carden said the teenager must have no contact with the woman he married. Carden ordered that his probation from a previous burglary sentence be continued as long as he lives under the care of another relative -- but not his grandmother, Judy Hayles, his former guardian. The judge said the boy can leave Hall County custody as soon as another relative is selected. The teenager, identified only...

A state appeals court has overturned the sentence of a Jacksonville teen who tried to rape another student in a high school bathroom, saying the judge considered the needs of the victim over the needs of the attacker. "They reversed me because I was more concerned about the safety of the girls in our public schools," Circuit Judge A.C. Soud said Friday. The appeals court ruled this week that the judge must reconsider incarcerating the Ed White High School student for pulling a classmate into a bathroom, ripping off her pants and taunting her that he was just the first...

A teenage boy who was charged in January with intentionally beating his pregnant girlfriend's belly with a miniature baseball bat, thereby inducing a miscarriage, has pleaded "no contest" to the charges and will not serve any jail time. The teen, now 17, awaits a juvenile sentencing or disposition on the charge Sept. 29. Macomb County (Mich.) Prosecutor Eric Smith, who said in January that "this crime is shocking and reprehensible," and "I will not entertain any plea bargaining on it" defended his leniency by saying "It's not a plea bargain or a sentence bargain. He pleaded as charged," … "The...

In yesterday's piece I wrote the following statement: If you are old enough to beat your family to death with a baseball bat (see Stephen McGillberry, Mississippi), you are old enough to face the consequences; if you are old enough to murder innocent civilians by means of “sniping;” you are old enough to die for it (see John Lee Malvo, Sniper Case.) This may have lead the readers to believe that I am pro-death penalty. I must state that I am not. I differ with most conservatives on this issue, but in my heart I do not feel that exectuting...

Once upon a time, a father says, he believed the thing to do with a juvenile sex offender was to blow him away. He figured anyone who committed such a crime was, and always would be, a deviant. Then, his own son Drake was charged with a sexual offense against another child. A skinny kid who had been teased relentlessly at school, Drake didn't seem like a deviant. Drake was ordered by an Allegheny County judge into a program that keeps offenders in their homes and runs on the assumption that children are not miniature adults and that most first-time...

Of 100 children who engage in sexual activities with other children in situations that involve some pressure or coercion, one or two might be charged. If you label the kids who get caught deviants, then you are labeling a lot who don't get caught as well, said Dr. David Kolko, director of the collaborative program for juvenile sexual offenders run by the Allegheny County juvenile probation office and Western Psychiatric Institute and Clinic. "Should we change our view of what's deviant? Some are deviant," and should be removed from situations in which they can harm others, said Kolko. But the...

Rhode Island Governor Donald L. Carcieri has vetoed a "medical marijuana" bill, saying it would encourage marijuana use and criminal activity. His veto comes as an anti-drug group has released dramatic video footage of a marijuana activist declaring that he uses dope for a health problem that he doesn't really have. The bottom line for this activist, Ed Rosenthal, is that "I like to get high. Marijuana is fun." The video has the potential of dealing a major blow to the "medical marijuana" movement, largely funded by billionaire George Soros. The video footage, posted at the website http://www.sorosmonitor.com, gives the...

Lawyers representing detainees at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, say that there still may be as many as six prisoners who were captured before their 18th birthday and that the military has sought to conceal the precise number of juveniles at the prison camp. One lawyer said that his client, a Saudi of Chadian descent, was not yet 15 when he was captured and has told him that he was beaten regularly in his early days at Guantánamo, hanged by his wrists for hours at a time and that an interrogator pressed a burning cigarette into his arm. The lawyer, Clive A....

Some were baby-faced teenagers too young to grow facial hair. Others said they were snatched from their families and forced to work for Afghanistan's Taliban. The stories of the youngest detainees at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, chart their journeys from childhood in the villages of Afghanistan to U.S. custody, according to military tribunal transcripts obtained by The Associated Press under a Freedom of Information lawsuit. Guantanamo officials released three Afghan boys ages 13 to 15 last year, but the transcripts of the hearings to determine whether prisoners were correctly classified as "enemy combatants" verify they weren't the only teenagers at the...

According to the new interpretation of the Bill of Rights approved by five Supreme Court justices this week, if an al Qaeda terrorist who was 17-years-and-364-days old detonated a dirty bomb in a U.S. city, murdering hundreds of thousands of Americans, no state could execute him. That is because executing any killer under 18--no matter how cold-blooded his crime--would violate America's "evolving standards of decency" and thus is prohibited by the 8th Amendment, which bars "cruel and unusual punishment." So said Justice Anthony Kennedy in Roper v. Simmons, an opinion that Justices John Paul Stevens and David Souter joined, and...

LANCASTER - Three months after being sentenced to probation for attacking a group of young siblings at Jane Reynolds Park and choking one of them into unconsciousness, 15-year-old Barry Hawes is facing murder charges in the shooting death of a 50-year-old Lancaster man. The apparent escalation in violence has scared and angered the parents of the youngsters who were attacked at the park. Court authorities confirmed Wednesday that Hawes was one of three unnamed defendants - then 10, 14, and 17 - charged with felony assault for the Aug. 27 park attack. The assailants allegedly kicked, punched and choked a...

Last month the Supreme Court ruled that teenagers under age 18 who commit premeditated murder cannot be executed. The court based its ruling in part on recent studies that found that the frontal lobes of teenagers were not sufficiently developed, making them not fully responsible for their actions. To justify its ruling, the court majority adopted many of the arguments put forth in an amicus brief sponsored by the American Medical Association and the American Psychiatric Association, among others. That brief argued that recent neuroimaging studies had found that the "brain's frontal lobes are still structurally immature well into late...

There are plenty of reasons to deplore Roper v. Simmons, the Supreme Court’s decision that a murderer under the age of 18 when he committed his crime cannot be given the death penalty. The Court majority once more exhibited for all to see that dazzling combination of lawlessness and moral presumption which increasingly characterizes its Bill of Rights jurisprudence. The opinion starts unpromisingly, informing us that by “protecting even those convicted of heinous crimes, the Eighth Amendment reaffirms the duty of the government to respect the dignity of all persons.” Readers may wonder about the dignity of the victim. Christopher...

Fact-o-ramaThe incidence of homicide, aggravated assault, rape and robbery committed by juveniles is tracked by the U.S. Department of Justice’s Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS). Data for 2002, the most recent year available, shows that juveniles aged 12 to 17 were involved in 278 thousand serious violent crimes. But that number is way down from the 1 million, 108 thousand serious violent crimes committed by juveniles in 1993. In fact, the 2002 figure is the lowest for the period involving 1980 to 2002. (SOURCE: U.S. Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics)

WASHINGTON -- Justice Antonin Scalia criticized the Supreme Court's recent decision to strike down the juvenile death penalty, calling it the latest example of politics on the court that has made judicial nominations an increasingly bitter process. In a 35-minute speech Monday, Scalia said unelected judges have no place deciding issues such as abortion and the death penalty. The court's 5-4 ruling March 1 to outlaw the juvenile death penalty based on "evolving notions of decency" was simply a mask for the personal policy preferences of the five-member majority, he said. "If you think aficionados of a living Constitution want...

The U.S. Supreme Court,5 -4,says evolving standards of "decency " forbid the death penalty for anyone under the age of 18 at the time of the crime.Pennsylvania is among 19 of 38 death -penalty states that allowed execution of juvenile murderers.From the bench, the Legislature that acts in your name is declared indecent.Pardon us for being "indecent " also....

I have a confession to make: I am an opponent of the death penalty. Right now I’m a quiet opponent, but if I ever believed the left would interpret “life without parole” to mean life without parole I would become a much more active and vocal opponent. I am absolutely opposed to the death penalty for juveniles, a matter I don’t have to lobby on because Illinois has long forbidden it. Having said that, the Supreme Court’s ruling earlier this week overturning 19 state laws that allow for the execution of 16- and 17-year-olds is the shabbiest and most dangerous...

JAMES CITY -- An 8-year-old boy was taken from Rawls Byrd Elementary School in handcuffs Tuesday after he lost his temper, began overturning desks and throwing chairs, head-butted his teacher, kicked an assistant principal, threatened to bite her and finally kicked a police officer in the head, a police spokesman said. The boy was charged with disorderly conduct and assault and battery, said Maj. Stan Stout.

Five Justices Shred Constitution To Protect Cold-Blooded KillersThe Supreme Court's decision barring execution of murderers who commit their crime before age 18 as cruel and unusual punishment is not only fundamentally flawed, but also deeply troubling -- for more than just a few reasons. In its 5-4 decision on March 1, the Court decreed that "Juveniles are less mature than adults and, no matter how heinous their crimes, they are not among 'the worst offenders' who deserve to die." While I certainly respect that opinion, I strongly object to the United States Supreme Court presuming to impose it on our...

Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy has many attributes, but judicial modesty isn't one of them... Yesterday's ruling concerned a death penalty case, which isn't something we usually write about. But what makes Roper notable, and worthy of wider debate, is the way it symbolizes the current Supreme Court's burst of liberal social activism. From gay rights to racial preferences and now to the death penalty, a narrow majority of Justices has been imposing its own blue state cultural mores on the rest of the country. We suspect it is also inviting a political backlash... As Justice Antonin Scalia writes in...

The Supreme Court has murdered the Constitution. It was a subtle murder with no blood visible. We know they did it because they left a coded confession, in the form of what appears to be a legal decision. Like many crime scenes, this one is deceptive, at first. It looks like the Court simply decided the case of Roper v. Simmons, the juvenile death penalty case from Missouri. But a little C.S.I. investigation reveals the truth. There are two deaths in this matter. The first was a woman who was kidnaped from her home by Christopher Simmons. He told his...

In a 5-4 decision the U.S. Supreme Court ruled Tuesday that executing juvenile offenders violates the Eighth Amendment ban on cruel and unusual punishment - thus outlawing the executions of death row inmates who committed their crimes when they were juveniles. This ruling removes 72 inmates from death rows nationwide. After reading numerous articles regarding this decision I've put together this sampling of some of the "children" now safe from "cruel and unusual punishment" for their childhood crimes:

  Supreme Court's illegal ruling (on cap punishment) should TRIGGER THE NUCLEAR OPTION -- The problem is, SCOTUS is basically immune to public opinion. Which can be a good thing or a bad thing. We can protest at SCOTUS until we are blue in the face - but I doubt Sandra Day O'Connor would care. Now, if governors told SCOTUS that their ruling was illegitimate and carried no influence on their state perogatives, now THAT would get the attention of SCOTUS.    A MOVE TOWARD DEMOCRACY ... AND THAT'S A DANGEROUS MOVE    The Supreme Court and Foreign Law...