ACLU of MaineVerified account

Mark Soler, Center for Children's Law & Policy: "The issue is not what the problems are or even how to fix them. The real issue is, do the govt and people of Maine have the will and motivation to make change?"

CCLP conducted interviews w/Gov. Mills, Chief Justice Saufley, AG Frey, judges, prosecutors, law enforcement, victims, parents, educators, advocates, experts from across the country, etc, & focus groups with youth across the state.

Lisa Macaluso, CCLP: Research consistently shows evidence-based, data-driven, community-based responses reduce recidivism more and are more cost-effective than other strategies, including incarceration-based strategies.

Naomi Goldstein, Drexel U: Looked at who was detained at Long Creek btwn 6/1/18 – 5/31/19. Found: kids there are as young as 12. Black youth disproportionately detained.

In over half of detention cases, the reason for detention was to “provide care.”

73 percent of imprisonments over 30 days were for children awaiting placement or outside programing. (i.e. we are keeping kids in prison for lack of a better place/lack of community-based support.)

81 percent of detained youth & 71 percent of committed youth were designated low or moderate risk (vs. high or very high) using a Youth Level of Service (YLS) assessment.

Youth assessed as low or moderate risk are held at LC *longer* on average (535-580 days) than “high risk” youth.

69 percent of youth committed at LC received some sort of behavioral health services in the year before they were incarcerated (i.e. most of the kids we are putting in prison have mental health issues)

Mark Soler: A majority of youth at LC classified as low or moderate risk could be in a different setting (including home) with investments in a community of care.

Andrea Weisman, consultant: There is a significant shortage in Maine in the availability of needed services. Many providers have closed because they couldn't be financially sustained. Notably, Maine pays lowest Medicaid rates for treatment in the nation.

"Staffing shortages have occurred due to the insufficient reimbursement rates and has led to the hiring of staff without the necessary qualifications and training to provide the services they were hired to provide"

Mark Soler: There is clear frustration and pain among youth and families in the juvenile justice system as well as those who work within it. We need to put more trust in our communities to help solve these problems.

There are too many youth in Maine’s justice system not because of violent crime but because of unaddressed/ under-addressed behavioral health problems, a belief that there are no other places for them to go, delays in securing community-based service

Lisa Macaluso: "Representatives from immigrant communities and poor communities reported that youth feel targeted, not protected by police." There are disparities in police contact in poor/immigrant/communities of color. Kids report being stopped by police and asked for ID.

CCLP: Data shows diversion works. We need to create more opportunities to divert kids directly to programs and services w/o justice system contact.

Jenny Lutz, CCLP: Detention should not be used to: *treat youth, “save youth,” provide services *deliver services that are not available in the community *detain low/medium risk youth *detain youth charged with minor/non-violent charges *detain on technical violations

Harms and Risks of Detention *Disrupts connections to family, school, and communities *Exacerbates mental illness and risk of self-harm *Increases likelihood of delinquent behavior *Slows the natural aging out process of delinquency

Jason Szanyi, CCLP: there are several areas where current probation and community reintegration practices depart from best practices. Terms/conditions of probation are not focused on skill-building & positive goals.

Report of @CrimeVictimsOrg/@JusticePolicy: “Research shows that length of stay has a negligible impact on rearrest rates after 3 to 6 months. Providing the wrong dosage of supervision can impact a youth’s future involvement in violence.”

“Restorative justice practices allow youth to remain in the community and have better recidivism outcomes than the use of confinement, hold youth accountable for their actions, and achieve more victim satisfaction than other justice system processes.”

Long sentences don't make a positive difference. Expected rate of rearrest does not go down by holding kids for longer periods, and can even go up.

"There is widespread consensus that youth must ultimately have the skills to be successful within the communities to which they will return – skills that are difficult to build in a large secure facility that is far from many youth’s homes and families."

Here are a few key CCLP recs:

Create a presumption of community-based responses for most youth, limiting the use of commitment and out-of-home placement. Develop placements that could better address the needs of the small number of youth requiring an out-of-home placement.

Eliminate mandatory length of stay requirements and create length of stay guidelines for youth in placement that are aligned with research, best practices, and considerations of victims. Create a process for judicial review of commitments and out-of-home placements.

Train judges, prosecutors, defense attorneys, and other juvenile justice personnel on adolescent development, research on effective interventions with youth, and the harms associated with out-of-home placement

Reassign responsibility for youth justice to a new agency or different child-serving agency

Do NOT co-locate youth and women at LC. This would limit youth access to programming recreation, etc. Other states don’t do this. (**This is significant because Maine is currently considering moving a number of women prisoners to LC.**)