Free Republic

An unbelievable though ostensibly well-meaning law in California took effect at midnight January 1st. Unfortunately, the bill could have some very unpleasant consequences for the very group it seeks to protect. SB-1322, authored by State Senator Holly Mitchell (D-Los Angeles) and passed by the California legislature’s Democratic “super majority” in September, essentially legalizes the prostitution of minors.

(Reuters) - California Governor Jerry Brown signed into law on Sunday a measure that grants juvenile offenders sentenced to life in prison without parole the chance to petition for their release after serving 25 years. Roughly 300 inmates in California's prison system have been sentenced to a lifetime behind bars for offenses committed as teenagers, according to the bill's sponsor, state Senator Leland Yee, a Democrat from San Francisco. Those inmates will now be eligible for parole after serving at least 25 years in prison. The courts can review their cases after 15 years in prison and lower their sentence...

Walter "J.J." Revear walked out of the Hillsborough County jail that day into hugs from relatives and questions from reporters. "Do you know what a break you got? Are you going to stay out of trouble now?" It was his 13th birthday, Oct. 20, 1995. And he was the chubby-cheeked face of a flawed juvenile justice system at a time judges wrestled over punishments for kids who committed grown-up crimes. The fifth-grader, who stood at 4-foot-6, had driven the getaway car in an armed robbery. The victim caught a glimpse of him, giggling. In court, he had to sit tall...

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....

EVANS -- Sherrie Glover's only child hanged himself with a prison bedsheet more than two years ago. He was 15 and locked up for vandalizing and stealing candy from a ballpark concession stand and breaking into a church storage building and shooting a Coke machine with a stolen gun. "Dear Mom," Richard Brown Jr. wrote on Dec. 19, 2001, the day he died. "I'm sorry for all of the Bad things I'v done in the past. But what I do now is for both of us. Mom, I love you. Please don't be sad." Glover carries a worn copy of...

Tarrant County prosecutors are boycotting a juvenile judge's court after a series of rulings in criminal cases that they say were not "in the best interest of public safety." Assistant District Attorney David Montague said a legal provision allows prosecutors to object to appearing in a courtroom -- that of Associate Judge Kimberly Brown in this instance. Critics say the move is creating a backlog in the juvenile system and could increase costs for the county. Brown is one of three associate judges under the supervision of state District Judge Jean Boyd, the county's chief juvenile-court judge and overseer of...

The 17-year-old lives in isolation, in a room created just for him. His visitors are therapists and teachers, and, of course, there are the round-the-clock guards. The cost to keep him at the state's Green Hill Training School in Chehalis: $1,000 a day, $30,000 a month. Last year, the teen became the youngest person ever to be considered for incarceration as a "sexually violent predator" at McNeil Island's Special Commitment Center. As a ward of Washington and a minor, the state has little choice but to try to treat and educate him. And until he turns 18, he cannot...

Sunday, May 12, 2002 Daytona Beach News-Journal Letter to the Editor Opinion: Juvenile system is better now By Bill Bankhead The contentions in the News-Journal's four-part series on juvenile justice are wrong. We are safer today from juvenile crime than at any time in the last 30 years. Juvenile crime in Florida is down 8 percent in just the past five years alone -- and 19 percent in Volusia County. Murders at the hands of juveniles declined 58 percent since 1999. Youth are leaving the juvenile system and returning less often than ever before. The so-called "get help" approach to...