Congress is investigating grants awarded by the Justice Department to fight crime. Murray Waas, Brian Ross and Anna Schecter have the details. Of particular concern are the funds awarded by the Justice Department's Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention.

One $500,000 grant was given to a golf group. A former staffer says the anti-crime funds are given to programs with the "right" connections.

A key witness will be a former employee of Flores' office, Scott Peterson, who says the grants were awarded based more on politics than merit. "This is cronyism, this is waste, fraud and abuse," Peterson told ABC News in an interview aired on Nightline Monday night. Peterson says the money for the golf program is one of a number of grants awarded to lower-ranked applicants rated in rankings compiled by Justice Department staff members.

"It's a lot of our taxpayer money that's supposed to go for some of our most vulnerable children," Peterson said.

Further evidence that the country is finally coming to its senses: the punitive approach to juvenile justice that fails to recognize the difference between children and adults is giving way to a philosophy that reduces recidivism without damaging kids.

About a year ago, New York City started an alternative sentencing program called the Juvenile Justice Initiative. Instead of locking kids up in residential "treatment" centers or detention facilities, nonviolent offenders are sent home where a therapist provides intense intervention to restore order to the family. The program "helps parents learn how to supervise and manage their adolescents so that they act responsibly instead of engaging in dangerous behaviors," according to a city official.

After a year, there is evidence that the program works:

The city said that in the year since the program began, fewer than 35 percent of the 275 youths who have been through it have been rearrested or violated probation. State studies found that more than 80 percent of male juvenile offenders who had served time in correctional facilities were rearrested within three years of their release, usually on more serious charges.

The program takes kids who are a drain on society and makes them productive, saving huge tax dollars in the process: [more...]

A lead story in the New York Daily News this morning:

A 5-year-old boy was handcuffed and hauled off to a psych ward for misbehaving in kindergarten - but the tot's parents say NYPD school safety agents are the ones who need their heads examined.

....Dennis - who suffers from speech problems, asthma and attention deficit disorder - never went back to class at Public School 81 in Queens after the traumatic incident.

Neither the school nor the NYPD are commenting. The matter is under investigation.

Things are looking up at a juvenile detention center in Chicago, thanks to an order transfering authority from Cook County to the court.

The... children and teenagers, most of whom are awaiting trial, will have the chance to spend 12 hours a day, for 12 days, playing games: chess, basketball, even competing in a spelling bee, instead of watching endless hours of daytime television and missing home.

In addition to gifts outside their cell doors,

Today, teens hang blinking lights, sparkly garland and ornaments as they compete for best window display and a pizza party reward. Staff members try to make sure that every child gets a call from family on Christmas Eve. In turn, kids are given cards to send home. And good behavior is rewarded with microwaveable White Castle hamburgers.

The changes are the work of court-appointed national juvenile expert, Earl Dunlap:

The power of the key has turned into the power of due process," he said.

There are more and more articles these days questioning the wisdom of life without parole for juvenile offenders who commit violent crimes.

A recent sampling from this weekend:

• Juveniles Do Hard Time for Harsh Crimes
• Mom Hopes Incarcerated Son Will Be Freed
• 9 Year Old's Murder Changed Law in New Hampshire and Fit for Society?
• Kentucky Court Faces Challenges to Life Without Parole for Juveniles

And from last week,

• States Rethinking Charging Kids as Adults

What's the proper response to a child that steals two cookies? Can it really be calling the police to issue her a citation?

Police cited a [14-year-old female]Bethlehem middle school student for stealing two cookies worth 50 cents from the cafeteria at the request of one of the student's parents, school officials said today.

True, she was on suspension for having stolen candy from a teacher's desk, and it was her parent who asked the school to call in the police, but this doesn't seem to me to be appropriate intervention.

More...

One size fits all justice never works. States that in the past enacted tough laws charging juveniles as adults and in many cases throwing them in prison for life without a key are now rethinking these laws.

They're responding to new research on the adolescent brain, and studies that indicate teens sent to adult court end up worse off than those who are not: They get in trouble more often, they do it faster and the offenses are more serious.

"It's really the trifecta of bad criminal justice policy," says Shay Bilchik, a former Florida prosecutor who heads the Center for Juvenile Justice Reform at Georgetown University. "People didn't know that at the time the changes were made. Now we do, and we have to learn from it."

States considering changes: Colorado, Connecticut, California, Michigan, Illinois. The article is filled with details.

America can't jail itself out of its juvenile crime problem. We can't keep putting law enforcement and punishment over prevention.

The expertise of the family court and the juvenile court system serves a vital function in our society. As I wrote back in 1998 when Congress was considering some ill-advised juvenile crime legislation:

The value of prevention over the pure "lock-em-up" mentality was shown by a Rand Corporation projection: While a $1 million investment in new prisons would prevent 60 serious crimes a year, the same $1 million, if invested in parent training, could prevent 160 serious crimes a year. And if the same amount were spent on graduation incentives for disadvantaged students, there might be 258 fewer serious crimes a year.

It's time to get smarter, not tougher about crime.

If you believe in justice, the best news you are likely to hear today is this:

The Georgia Supreme Court on Friday ordered the release of Genarlow Wilson, the Douglas County teenager who has been serving a controversial 10-year sentence for consensual oral sex. The court's 4-3 decision upholds a Monroe County judge's ruling that the sentence constituted cruel and unusual punishment under both the Georgia and U.S. constitutions.

Wilson was caught in a bind because he was sentenced under a law (later changed) that imposed a ten year mandatory minimum for having consensual oral sex with a minor, even though she was only two years younger than Wilson, who was 17 at the time. Wilson's ordeal is chronicled in these TalkLeft posts.

The Georgia Supremes made the decision bullet-proof by concluding that the sentence was cruel and unusual under the Georgia Constitution. Even if Georgia were to ask the U.S. Supreme Court to review the federal constitutional holding, the independent state constitutional holding will continue to protect Wilson.

Wilson should be released from prison soon. He will presumably need to be resentenced, but the court will no longer be bound by the 10 year mandatory minimum, and should be guided by the Georgia legislature's recent determination that the crime shouldn't be punished by more than a year in jail -- a sentence that Wilson has finished serving.

Update: (TL): The court's opinion is here (pdf.)

Unbelievable. The guards at the Florida boot camp have been acquitted in charges arising from the death of Martin Lee Anderson. (Background here and here.)

[A] video showed the boy was kicked and hit repeatedly by guards.....A second autopsy found the boy died of suffocation because his mouth was blocked and he was forced to inhale ammonia smelling salts, which resulted in a blockage of his airway. The medical examiner said he died as a result of the "actions of the guards."

Here's what's been happening at teen boot camps.

I wrote about the new GAO report (pdf)on juvenile boot camp deaths, but this Times (London) article is really a must read.

Selected quotes:

The Government Accountability Office, the US Congress investigative arm, identified 1,619 incidents of child abuse in 33 states in 2005. It selected ten deaths since 1990 for special investigation in boot camps and “wilderness programmes”.

What they found:

Examples of abuse include youths being forced to eat their own vomit, denied adequate food, being forced to lie in urine or faeces, being kicked, beaten and thrown to the ground,” Gregory Kutz, a GAO investigator, told a congressional committee.

One teenager, Mr Kutz said, was “forced to use a toothbrush to clean a toilet, then forced to use that toothbrush on their own teeth”. The abuse that preceded the deaths of the ten teenagers was particularly shocking. “If you walked in partway through my presentation you might have assumed I was talking about human rights violations in a Third World country,” Mr Kutz said.

More...

Update: The GAO report is here (pdf). Committee Chairman Miller's opening statement at today's hearing is here.

*****

The GAO has completed its report on abuse at teen "boot camps." It's not a pretty picture.

The first federal inquiry into boot camps and wilderness programs for troubled teens cataloged 1,619 incidents of abuse in 33 states in 2005, a congressional investigation out today reveals.

The study, by the Government Accountability Office, also looked at a sample of 10 deaths since 1990 and found untrained staff, inadequate food or reckless operations were factors. In half of those cases, the teens died of dehydration or heat exhaustion, the GAO says.

A few of the problems: A lack of regulations for the programs and no central clearinghouse for reporting abuse complaints. A Congressional hearing on "Cases of Child Neglect and Abuse at Private Residential Treatment Facilities" is being held this morning by the House Committee on Education and Labor.

More...

If I were currently raising a teen, the last place I'd live is Texas.

Read this sad tale. While the article breaks it down along racial lines, the truth is that Texas is over-incarcerating its youth with disastrous consequences.

Grits for Breakfast has been following this and other stories of abuse at the Texas Youth Prisons.